only part of the story

My other Turkish marbling piece. #art #sibiu

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:42:43 -0600

My other Turkish marbling piece. #art #sibiu

Turkish marbling example—that I made! Thanks to Noyan for...

Wed, 22 May 2013 05:07:48 -0600

Turkish marbling example—that I made! Thanks to Noyan for the coaching. #art #sibiu

Detail from The Saint Mary Evangelic Parish Church in Huet...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:14:45 -0600

Detail from The Saint Mary Evangelic Parish Church in Huet Square. #sibiu

The Stairs Passage, Sibiu.

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:59:06 -0600

The Stairs Passage, Sibiu.

Strange green spaces on the way to the grocery. Good green...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:58:56 -0600

Strange green spaces on the way to the grocery. Good green smells. #sibiu

Tiny jars of Nutella, Munich airport.

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:13:23 -0600

Tiny jars of Nutella, Munich airport.

the hero's story has already been told: setting out

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:54:12 -0600

the hero's story has already been told: setting out:

New post on the eve of travel: I’ll be meeting the world in a Penguins shirt, and some of the reasons are what you’d expect, but some of them probably aren’t:

theparisreview: “Of course, [baseball]’s both: a sport and a...

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:35:45 -0600

theparisreview:

“Of course, [baseball]’s both: a sport and a pastime, to borrow from James Salter. The autograph hounds in Ivan Weiss’s trailer, the voyeurism that unsettles our photographer Kate Joyce, and that peculiar alone-in-the-crowd feeling that haunts [photographer Alec] Soth—none of that arises without the ballgames themselves. There’s a reason A Sport and a Pastime is so full of sex, described in elaborate, ritual detail: Salter understood that the strenuous, disciplined, daily exertions of love—the physical sport—enabled and ennobled the pastime of the life around it. The sex had to be closely observed and recorded.”

In the latest installment of the Bull City Summer series, Adam Sobsey on when baseball isn’t baseball.

HAVE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO WRITE FOR THE RUMPUS?

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:34:52 -0600

therumpus:

No? Why not?

We’d like to know the last book you loved and why. Send us a writeup of the last book you truly loved — a little bit book review and a lot about why you loved it — along with a short bio. We’ll publish our favorites in The Rumpus blog. No length requirements, but please refrain from reviewing books written by people you know.

Please send The Last Book I Loved submissions to LBIL AT therumpus.net

Peach & berry pie.

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:21:27 -0600

Peach & berry pie.

To the Future: Introducing The Classical Magazine

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:48:46 -0600

classicaldotorg:

The Classical is 18 months old, depending on when you start counting. We just got done being babies. We’re toddling now, warily eying the prospect of potty-training, getting ready to upgrade these gross motor skills for some fine motor skills. But, if you’ll pardon the toddlerbrag, we think we’re pretty accomplished for babies. Just in the past few weeks, this toddler had an awesome reported piece about Filipino hoops in the Yukon, a must-read on what came out of the closet with Jason Collins, and more installments in the rad, ongoing Why We Watch feature. But, as is generally the case among our toddler peer group, we’re just getting the hang of solving puzzles.

The puzzle weighing heaviest on our comically oversized 18-month-old heads right now is sustainability: How do we find a way to make The Classical economically just, not just for ourselves, but for our writers? As most of the people reading this will remember, we Kickstarted this site. The $55,000 that 1,070 of you gave to us—the generosity of which still amazes us and fills us to overflowing with gratitude—helped get us this far. We built a site, we paid our taxes, we paid server bills, all thanks to you, with an assist to Kickstarter.

But we need to find a way to turn “kickstarting” into a steady, always-on mode if we’re going to be able to keep this going. To that end, we’re going to do something old-fashioned: 1) create a product (the great and unique sportswriting we deliver on this site) 2) sell it for money. We’ve partnered with 29th Street Publishing—the awesome, nice geniuses who brought you the Awl’s Weekend Companion, Maura Magazine, V as in Victor and many more great publications—to create a magazine.

The Classical’s new magazine format will be for sale, via monthly or yearly subscriptions, as well as single-issue purchases, on the Apple iOS newstand. It’ll be $2.99 if you pay monthly, $29.99 if you sign up for a year in advance, and $3.99 to buy individual issues. (We’ll have a link to share early next week, and will share it then.) On the second Tuesday of every month, a new issue will appear to delight your senses (mostly/only your eyes) and give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of adjectives. We’ll have a PDF option for Applephobes, too, and 29th Street is working hard to make a platform-agnostic version you can get on your Kindle, Dick Tracy watch, whatever. This is just for starters, by the way: the bigger the response, the more frequently we’ll be able to put these issues out, and the more readily we’ll be able to expand in other directions. We’re still growing, and aren’t trying to toddle forever.

If you are naturally inclined to first consider the gloomy side of life, as some of us are, you might be wondering “But so this means no more Classical website, huh?” To answer that: no, this is not the end of that. Will we maintain our present volume of 10 features a week plus Clog posts? Almost certainly not, because it is just an unbelievably immense amount of work given the number of people we have doing it, and because we also have other jobs that we need in order to pay rent, buy food, etc. But you can bank on something new on the site every day, although the magazine will have a supermajority of exclusive material (and some stuff from the website). Not only is this a way to get Classical-quality new reads on sports, but it’s a way to keep on top of things without checking in on the site everyday. We know you’re busy. We can tell this blog post is maybe already too long.

So we’ll let you get back to work/Dwarf Fortress/crafts therapy/your nap. But yes: this is what’s happening with us. We are very happy, and very proud, about The Classical magazine. This is the next step for us, and we hope you like it—we think it’s pretty awesome, ourselves, although we’re obviously somewhat biased. Most importantly, it’s a way for us to keep doing this thing. Stick with us. In every meaningful sense, we wouldn’t be here without you, and it will be fun to take this next step, together. And if you have any questions, ask us over email or on Twitter or Facebook or in the comments.

littlekingwolf: Oh, the drama!

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:22:28 -0600

littlekingwolf:

Oh, the drama!

My friend Jill brought me a present: a Chinese calligraphy set....

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:48:05 -0600

My friend Jill brought me a present: a Chinese calligraphy set. Love.

Pendulum in Wold Physical Science Center.

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:17:37 -0600

Pendulum in Wold Physical Science Center.

"You have to be able to evaluate situations and see if your plan isn’t working because baseball is a..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:03:45 -0600

“You have to be able to evaluate situations and see if your plan isn’t working because baseball is a crazy, stupid game, or if it’s because you have a bad plan. More times than not, it’s just baseball being baseball. If you stick to the plan, over the course of 162 games it’s going to work out for you.”

- Seth Smith (via mightyflynn)

Buffalo!

Sat, 04 May 2013 10:43:22 -0600

Buffalo!

Reblogging because someone I know will love this.

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:58:00 -0600

Reblogging because someone I know will love this.

Last day of ENGL 1020, which read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Happy...

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:22:53 -0600

Last day of ENGL 1020, which read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Happy belated birthday, Annie Dillard!

bonusbaseball: Jesus Montero Hits First Major League Triple:...

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:39:08 -0600

bonusbaseball:

Jesus Montero Hits First Major League Triple: Truly A Banner Day

I don’t know how this season is going to end for the Mariners. In fact, I don’t know how this season is going to end for any baseball team. The only thing I am certain of at this point is that Jesus Montero hit the first triple of his major league career tonight, on May 1st, 2013, off of the Orioles’ Wei-Yin Chen. This is a thing that happened!

Why is this important? Jesus Montero is not a fast runner, and not just in the way that catchers aren’t generally known to tear up the basepaths. People have described his running as stiff and awkward. So, Jesus Montero spent the offseason working hard to become a better runner. One has to admire Jesus Montero’s determination to improve. As someone whose own “running” left much to be desired during a season of Sports Participation in high school, I will always root hard for Jesus Montero to reach base in ways that defy expectations.

With an offseason of running under his belt, Jesus Montero went ahead and did the unexpected: he hit two triples during Spring Training. And then some person projected him to hit 763 more triples during the regular season, which honestly seems like a conservative estimate. With the first of these 763 triples coming tonight, Jesus Montero is already 0.13% of the way to making this projection a reality. You may scoff at that percentage, but it is not 0%. Jesus Montero has now hit a non-zero number of major league triples, which is significant when you consider the expectations surrounding Jesus Montero’s running. Perhaps it is time to reconsider those expectations. Who would win in a race: Jesus Montero or Mike Trout? Suddenly, the answer doesn’t seem so clear anymore.

P.S. MLB.com has finally uploaded video of the triple here. Enjoy the fruits of Jesus Montero’s labor. Look how happy he is! Look how happy the fans are! Jesus Montero triples are good for baseball. Good thing we’ll be seeing 762 more of them this season.

May arrives in Casper. #mayday #snow

Wed, 01 May 2013 06:49:46 -0600

May arrives in Casper. #mayday #snow