To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing. And so, the question is not to know whether taking action is or is not damaging to art. The question, to everyone who cannot live without art and all it signifies, is simply to know—given the strict controls of countless ideologies (so many cults, such solitude!)—how the enigmatic freedom of creation remains possible. —Albert Camus on the Responsibility of the Artist
Greetings from the far left coast where we appear to be leaping from a terribly brief spring straight into summer. Yikes. Morning runs in t-shirt and shorts are nice. Afternoons are scorchers.
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Memo from the literary desk. Mill Hill Scientist by James L. Stevens was published May 9. JIm was inspired by conversations with USC students on Career Nights to write "this book about how many factors enabled a boy from a poor 'Mill Hill' family to find a way to fulfill his dream to become a scientist."
My copy is on order from Powell's. Mill Hill Scientist is also available through Barnes & Noble and Satan's spawn Amazon.
Full disclosure. I may be biased. Jim is the husband of my lifelong friend Bonnie. We go back I guess to Sunday School at St. John's Lutheran Church in Irmo and on through Mrs. Coogler's kindergarten, Dutch Fork Elementary, and Irmo High. We attended the University of South Carolina, but I do not recall that our paths crossed there.
Memo from the sports desk. After enduring a rash of injuries and a slow start to open the season, my Phillies have stormed into second place in the NL East. Things are looking up.
New at Portable Bohemia Substack:
And Now for Something a Little Different, You Know, Poetry. A change of pace, wandering out with my little poems as I read "Tango Girl with a Pale Green Shawl"…read more>>
A Lesson in Resistance; and, the Authoritarian Threat Today. Remembering Alexandros Panagoulis, reckoning with the House blockhead caucus, a de facto junta, as it seeks to impose its will, Will Saletan on the corruption of Lindsey Graham, pondering what lies ahead…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
Pictured below: Lizard's Thicket, a good place for breakfast, Irmo, SC. July 2007. L – R: Jerry and Sara Shealy, Trani, yr oft humbled scribe, Bonnie, and Bonnie's mother, Mrs. Blonnie Ellisor. I believe Jim is behind the camera taking the photo.
