Mad Hungry Mind

Visual Journal: Traci Bunkers

I love Traci Bunker's work.  She posts pages of her bold, nakedly honest multimedia journals here. Worth a good long look.

Samuel Johnson on Tea

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. ~Samuel Johnson

The Weekly Wrap: May 16-23, 2008

Every week, a few blog posts get me thinking and asking questions.  I'm grateful for the prodding.  Here's this week's selection:

Thanks to Chekov's Mistress for pointing me to Sentences, which got me thinking about reading fiction critically once again.

Thanks to Classical Bookworm for raising the question:  should the OED be printed in the era of the electronic record?  My personal vote is yes; I have the condensed OED, and there is nothing quite like browsing through a page of arcane words to whittle away a few minutes on a dull Sunday afternoon.

1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die....or, maybe not

Great review in the NYT about this book, which would tell us all what to read during the precious remaining years of our lives.

Nice to have a goal, but better if you set your own bar.

Fun for Word Hounds

I was looking for a good definition of "physicianship" and discovered Wordie.Org, which is a kind of a social wiki-dictionary project. If you like words, check it out. (Oh, and "physicianship" had no entries, but I might just fix that...)

Listening to Sonny Rollins....

...gives me the strength to go on.

Here Sonny plays with Jim Hall on bass, and a couple other great musicians whose names--shamefully--I don't know.  The music speaks for itself:

I suppose everyone else already knows about this great listing of literary magazines, but it is wonderfully new to me. I used to follow litmags more closely but my interests went awry somehow when I was a family practice resident. Now I'm a family practice doctor, and it is time to get back to my roots.

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight.
- A Tulip Garden

Urban Tulipscape, near Soho, May 2008

A creative meditation on house cleaning.A

Sylvia at Classical Bookworm has a saliva-inducing photo of Alberto Manguel's library on her blog. Take a look.

What is it about a room full of books that transports me to such ecstatic heights? I have enough books in my own home to be buried alive beneath them, yet still my eyes are drawn inevitably toward the next full shelf.

Here's my contribution to Bookworm's Eye Candy:

The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Bookstore.

Just Discovered: NewPages

I suppose everyone else already knows about this great listing of literary magazines, but it is wonderfully new to me. I used to follow litmags more closely but my interests went awry somehow when I was a family practice resident. Now I'm a family practice doctor, and it is time to get back to my roots.

Amy Lowell Greets the Spring

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight.
- A Tulip Garden

Urban Tulipscape, near Soho, May 2008

Hm, Maybe I Will Pick Up the Duster After All

A creative meditation on house cleaning.A

Eye Candy for Bookworms

Sylvia at Classical Bookworm has a saliva-inducing photo of Alberto Manguel's library on her blog. Take a look.

What is it about a room full of books that transports me to such ecstatic heights? I have enough books in my own home to be buried alive beneath them, yet still my eyes are drawn inevitably toward the next full shelf.

Here's my contribution to Bookworm's Eye Candy:

The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Bookstore.