Friday Links
September 20, 2024
The above image is from the Shrine of St. Andrew Kim. Today is his feast day. You can read more about him and the other Korean martyrs here.
Four Loves at the Houston Ballet
Sam Kahn: “We are in a Writing Renaissance”
Interviews with James Matthew Wilson, Marly Youmans, & Paul Pastor
Rhina P. Espaillat Poetry Award
Jackson Arn on “The Anguish of Looking at a Monet”
Four Loves at the Houston Ballet
Houston friends, Houston Ballet will present Four Loves as part of the triple-bill Velocity performance.
Four Loves, a new one-act ballet exploring the four ancient Greek concepts of love, will make its world premiere with the Houston Ballet in a limited engagement from Thursday, September 19 through Sunday, September 29. Choreographed by Silas Farley with a symphonic score by composer Kyle Werner, the newly commissioned work draws inspiration from C.S. Lewis’s philosophical writings on the Greek ideals of Storge (Affection), Philia (Friendship), Eros (Romantic Love), and Agape (Divine Love). The ballet will be performed by 27 dancers from the Houston Ballet, accompanied by live music by the Houston Ballet Orchestra under the direction of conductor Simon Thew.
Information and tickets are available HERE.
Sam Kahn: “We are in a Writing Renaissance”
Kahn starts off noting that in the 2010’s, when he started in journalism, it seemed that “the old newspaper business model was in terminal crisis.” Now, not so much, though the model has changed:
These days, I do a regular roundup of news sources. I have a long list of newspapers and journals, and it seems to grow constantly to the point where I get dizzy. Virtually every time I do my roundup, I find myself discovering new, professional, well-produced digital magazines that I had never heard of before. And that’s alongside an outpouring of individual voices suddenly able to find audiences online. It’s an embarrassment of riches—a writing renaissance—and we should be celebrating it.
Maybe old-fashioned newspapers will make a comback. There’s a great one that you can get delivered right to your house: County Highway.
Interviews with Marly Youmans, James Matthew Wilson, Fr. Damian Ference, & Paul Pastor
There have been a lot of wonderful interviews recently, both print and podcast, including the Evangelization & Culture podcast with James Matthew Wilson, NVR with Marly Youmans, Evangelization & Culture Podcast episodes with James Matthew Wilson and another one with Fr. Damian Ference, and the Makers & Mystics podcast with Paul Pastor.
Rhina P. Espaillat Poetry Award
All the details for this contest in honor of beloved poet Rhina P. Espaillat can be found HERE.
Jackson Arn on “The Anguish of Looking at a Monet”
Every Monet essay, by decree of the art-history gods, must report what Cézanne said about him: “Only an eye, but what an eye!” Like plenty of catchy quotations, this seems unfair, but with half a point rattling around inside. Monet painted many of the same things as his peers, but he was never an anthropologist on the level of Manet or Cassatt or a shrewd reader of faces and bodies, like Degas (he never painted a single nude). He is so emphatic about looking that you struggle to guess what he’s thinking: whether he’s truly embracing the trees and ponds or if there is something stiff about the embrace.
