Key West magic

Is it good if the (in flight) plane vents are occasionally spitting out tiny ice chips at you

Weary bar dogs of Key West (I petted them both)

get a bestie that asks if you can fit her sunglasses in your purse so she can b carry her toad wristlet

Key West, we don’t hate it

a huge win for these brave FL faculty members and a good reminder for the rest of us that sometimes putting your head down and hoping things don’t get worse is not the right strategy. sometimes you need to fight in order to win.

This whole Platner scenario will 100% NOT disabuse pundits of the idea that manhood — as a popular concept — means behaving like a brutish, ignorant asshole for most of your youth up until the moment you decide to grow up, at which point you ask for and immediately receive total forgiveness.

for the garden nerds 🌱: “when green-thumbed idealism grows to ungainly proportions…when it begins to seed the public with the impression that their backyard oases alone can decide the fate of life on Earth — it risks becoming a dangerously smug and naïve conceit.”

Soccer not my thing. I miss the summer posting event when those rich idiots went missing in the submarine

Happy 4th to Little Edie’s flag dance, John Waters, & Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free” ONLY m.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0I...

🚨 PHILLY STRIKE ALERT 🚨 As of 12:01pm, 1600 IBEW Local 614 PECO workers are on strike—the first in the utility company’s 145-year history. “PECO's lack of seriousness over six months of bargaining has forced us to this point. We are officially on strike. We strike strong, and we strike to win.”

spent some time in the archives at Longwood Gardens reading the papers of two progressive Quaker sisters, Hannah and Lydia Cox. Their commonplace books have inscriptions & letters from Douglass, Garrison, Whittier, Abby Kelley, Charles Lenox Remond, James Russell Lowell, Maria W. Lowell & & &

the July queen of the garden

in some ladies commonplace book archives today and cracked up at the descendant who needed to specify “my great aunt” and “my *favorite* great aunt” on title pages of each

little green guy

Re-read a (v good! important!) book from 2014, and it’s striking how much faith the writer has in the resistance potential of blogging & social media. They’re weird moments to read in 2026

Also working-class autodidacts didn't just read alone - they read in groups, set up libraries and reading rooms, and battled for Mechanics' Institutes (many long ago merged into unis) to teach music, history, and politics. They built the public adult education infrastructure that's being destroyed

the lilies of June — old owner of this house loved lilies & I swear I still see new ones every summer

new issue of ALH feat. wonderful, smart, needed essays by Jordan Stein & my old grad school pal Ren Heinz. Do yourself a favor and read both!

Four years after the Dobbs decision, pregnant people in states with total abortion bans are now nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period.

I ripped up a patch of poison ivy in my yard the other day and took lots of precautions. Pleased to announce that I now have a poison ivy rash! But just a little on one arm.

freaky little jelly net shoes

Got up early and listened to new Phoebe Bridgers in the quiet. I’m actually in a nice mood despite the dire implications of that first sentence.

I think the reward for believing in ghosts should be that you get to attend your own funeral & then curse or bless the attendees based on their behavior

new summer aesthetic just dropped, courtesy of vintage S Philly photograph

Beebalm just about to pop

This is Pepita. Nicknames include: Peps, Pepsi-Cola Corporation, Pepita Coquita, Bad Girl Peps, & “Pepita, you little fuckhead”

I think I love gossip bc I also love 19th century novels. Yes, please tell me a winding story about the dissolution of a relationship over small yet damning incidents and character flaws. I love Middlemarch!

“Both Sides Now” coming in when Sally looks up at Don will kill me every.single.time. Dads, man.

Big Seltzer must be stopped.

as someone prone to such thoughts, I promise you that no one cares as much as you about how your upper arms look! wear the tank top & keep it movin’

Unnecessarily mean plant names

gah this book is so good! and truly one of the coolest covers I’ve seen in a minute

going to Key West in a couple weeks and my outfits are going to be so colorful, so obnoxious, zero regrets

while getting my blood drawn, the nurse in the next bay ran to bathroom and audibly vomited. Then she came back and explained to her patient that she “just ate a banana and bit into something crunchy” ???

Things that have already made academic research stop: - adjunctification - defunding (of, like, everything) - outright closure of depts and schools - censorship & attacks on academic freedom - obscene teaching and service loads

book proposin’, I wrote 400 words today so…

a great day to be a kid in a fountain

saw a spider eating a moth in its web and said out loud, “that’s none of my business”

Happy bloomsday! Read Sally Rooney's great misreading of Ulysses, with some amazing reminders of how weird Stephen's masculinity is

clover lawn of my dreams in an empty lot behind a boarded up Burger King

started the new Cape Fear last night, and Patrick Wilson still looks great but alas not as great as in the best bottle episode ever: "One Man's Trash" from Girls s2

this is the last bloom I can coax out of these pansies (they’ve been crushing it since April!) but I love how they’ve gone speckled now

good light this morning

Maybe I am missing something , but are we actually in agreement that Appiah’s doctorate in philosophy -and stint as the “ethicist” at the NYT (lol)—qualify him to weigh in on the state of literary criticism ? (not the biggest problem with this report, but sheesh…🙄)

fresh summer hell of Pool Mom’ing has begun

Delco summer: waiting for hoagies at Wawa and my phone in my pocket accidentally hit play. Was it loud? Yes. Was it Juvenile’s Back that Ass Up? Also yes.

The AAUP chapters at Vanderbilt & Wash U have issued a joint statement denouncing the “State of Scholarship” report commissioned by their chancellors. Please, let’s make this as widely read as the gaslighting to which it responds.

Spring Garden street in Philly bein’ cute