Bernard Shaw or David Letterman?

Happy Birthday George Eliot! “All honour & reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, & children—in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy.”

Happy Birthday George Eliot! Good times in Berlin with George and George.

So, sort of a… Modern Prometheus?

Rollin's got all the feels. My upcoming virtual classes at the Newberry Library include "Watching and Reading Shakespeare's Hamlet" and "A Serial Reading of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss." Available to all. Details to come.

“'To read a poem as part of a justification or a rationale for a judgment of this importance shows how art can express the complexities of what we’re living through in ways that maybe other forms of speech can’t,' said [Srikanth "Chicu"] Reddy." chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Hey @durbin.senate.gov, PLEASE don’t cave to Trump. There is no “middle ground” when it comes to millions losing their health insurance!! cc: @duckworth.senate.gov @laurenunderwood.bsky.social

Caving on a deal that doesn’t fix health care is, and always has been, a giant betrayal of the American people. Hold the line. Save health care. I’m a NO on anything that doesn’t extend ACA subsidies.

The excitements of an election.

Dan Smith “Knowledge Wins” World War I Propaganda Poster (American Library Association, 1918) movieposters.ha.com/itm/movie-po...

(from the inbox) Less than an hour later this morning, just before 10:30 at Roscoe and Harding, feds again released gas as they were driving away, unobstructed, from a relatively small number of neighbors.

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

Because he’s doing his job…reporting. Because we still live in a free country with a First Amendment and a free press.

ICE agents just pulled a gun on Rep. Hoan Huynh — for alerting the community to ICE's presence.    If this can happen to an elected official, it can happen to anyone. I stand with Rep. Huynh and his right to protect our neighbors.

FULL STORY: “These federal agents are operating lawlessly, demonstrating utter disregard for our constitutional rights,” Ald. Mike Rodriguez said. @wttw.bsky.social

The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing

That’s the other thing that baffles me about AI and creative writing, actually. The work IS the joy for me. I don’t want to be able to snap my fingers and have a completed “product.” I want to be transformed by the process. I’m an author but I do this because I enjoy the rigor of being a writer.

👎 👑

It’s going to take ages to pay all these people

No kings.

No literally how you having a computer read for you. Ok so, when you read, what’s written goes in your head. And that’s how you know what you read. So you need to put the words in your head, not a machine.

"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"

This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power by the President of the United States. America is on the brink of martial law. Do not be silent.

I refuse to treat an AI generated avatar as a human while people who are very definitely human in every way are not being treated like humans.

In July, we documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “minimum amount of force.” You can judge for yourself.

Another great silent film version of Dickens. This time, David Copperfield ( Denmark 1922, directed by A. W. Sandberg). Spoiler alert for readers of Danish. www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-...

It was only two weeks ago when we first saw an ICE agent unholster his sidearm at Broadview. Since then, there have been many reports of agents directly pointing their guns at protesters. The escalation is escalating.

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later. harpers.org/archive/1941...

They zip tied children.

ICE in Chicagoland today: CBP agents were seemingly everywhere, with arrests across several neighborhoods and the suburbs. Exact numbers are unknown. Neighbors in Garfield Park witnessed feds choking a Black man in the street, and Border Patrol snatched people at retail strips and traffic stops.

Another wonderful Danish silent film adaptation of Dickens: Great Expectations, 1922. Directed by A. W. Sandberg. www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-...

👏👏👏

We don’t want you here, Donald Trump.

This week in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend. Boffin and Wegg near the Bower, in a still from the 1921 Danish silent film version, direct by A. W. Sandberg. Check out the amazing Danish Silent Film website for (most of this) film and more. www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm/...

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

I’m opening a movie theater in which I show recently released films that I ripped from the internet but the studios are welcome to opt out if they wish.

“Noemi Chavez and her two children are now confined to a room at O’Hare International Airport, awaiting transfer to a detention facility in Texas before deportation to Guatemala,“ reports the @chicagotribune.com

In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look" chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

marching in front of the Newberry Library, shamelessly hospitable to people who really love genealogical research and Renaissance partbooks & like there's a park across the street that people just hang out in and the El is super scary b/c like everyone takes it www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/28/i...

If you think Trump deploying troops in American cities is nothing more than an opportunity to pivot to a completely different subject, you do not belong in Democratic leadership.

Chaos again, feds tackling protesters at random. They just detained @peoplesfabric.com.

The State of Illinois is closely monitoring the federal deployments in the Village of Broadview. Public safety is always my top priority, and the Illinois State Police remains in close communication with the Broadview Police Department to monitor and maintain public safety.

Go Bruins.

Shameful.

On this day in 1957, U.S. Army troops escorted the Little Rock Nine to Central High School in Arkansas. Less well known—in August 1958 all the city's high schools were closed for a year to resist integration. Students learned through televised lessons, as shown in these photos.

Oh, lovely. And long overdue.

a reminder that I have a big website where you can find out things about Victorian London. www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm

‘Come for the stuffed canary.’ ‘It’s three and ninepence,’ returns Venus; ‘have you got the money?’ This week in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend: Mr Venus and his art, by Marcus Stone, for the novel's 2nd installment. Copy held by the Newberry Library Special Collections, Case PR4568 .A1 1865.

this exists it is called thinking