a slide from a presentation on McTeague featuring a gigantic mouth and mustache and a quote from the text "fearful snorting sounds"
Photo from a student presentation today (as licensed as the Dental Parlors)
"Odd fish!"
"Poor fellow!"
"Who can he be?"
"Casper Hauser."
"Bless my soul!"
"Uncommon countenance."
"Green prophet from Utah."
"Humbug!"
"Singular innocence."
"Means something."
"Spirit-rapper."
"Moon-calf."
"Piteous."
"Trying to enlist interest."
"Beware of him."
If you see this post a concert photo you took #skinlikeleatherandthediamondhardlookofacobra
Hand-lettered cardboard No Kings sign that reads “yes it is scary but we are brave“ paraphrased from a fictional Russian hockey playing bisexual menace princess
Protest sign of my heart
Rob. We have talked enough about Moby-Dick this week. (Never enough)
🙌🐳😭❤️⚓️
Rob Delaney and me in front of Melville’s lodging spot in London
Get yourself a Moby-Dick interlocutor as crazy-witty as @robdelaney.bsky.social
Some personal news:
A student described Ishmael as “touch-starved” yesterday 😭😭😭
FB memory On this day 14 years ago Hester Blum ... March 10, 2012 .%; "Mommy can you tell me a new story of Moby-Dick? Chapter One is called 'Hope Still,' and the first sentence is 'Years passed, with no sign of Queequeg.' Tell it."
In my FB memories of my now nearly 20yo kid:
Chanda! 🙌🐳💦
The multimedia, interdisciplinary, creative meditations featured here are drawn from our experience of Arctic flora and fauna; anthropogenic climate change; resource extraction histories; the Northern Lights; and Svalbard’s geological outlandishness.
www.regeneration-journal.org/issue/1298/i...
The twenty-three contributors to this special issue of @regenerationeac.bsky.social are artists, writers, and researchers who sailed around the high Arctic archipelago Svalbard on a tall ship with the expeditionary residency program The Arctic Circle. www.regeneration-journal.org/issue/1298/i...
Image of Arctic expedition leader listening to infrasound recordings of a glacier via Brian House's macrophone, with a Svalbard glacier and mountains in the background
Thrilled to present a special journal issue--a glorious, monumental issue--on Arctic environment, art, & culture in @regenerationeac.bsky.social: “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard,” eds. Hester Blum, Candace Jensen, and Jacinda Russell
www.regeneration-journal.org/issue/1298/i...
(even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy)
I love it. This town is nuts
The weirdest medical waiting room you’ve ever seen, with ornate theater seating, multiple framed late 19th century family portraits, and three giant teeth
My new St Louis dentist’s office is literally McTeague’s Dental Parlors #C19 #ThatOldWeirdAmerica
I'm bummed not to be in Philly today talking about polar ephemera in the blizzard; see you next year. Here's a tooth:
Next year! I'm super bummed but hope things are stable in Little Canada
My awesome new colleague Rachael DeWitt convened this roundtable on "An Ecosystem View of 1776" for @early-am-lit.bsky.social; a great conversation with Scotti Parrish, Matthew Sivils, Timothy Sweet, Annie Persons, Michael Ziser, and yr correspondent: muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...
It will be excellent to see you IRL!
Monday!
Philly phriends, Monday I’ll be at the Workshop in the History of Material Texts: pennmaterialtexts.org
I’ve been writing an essay on Heated Rivalry and Moby-Dick in my head for weeks and need to get it on the page
🙌🙌🙌
Reading your grandfather too!
Teaching Moby-Dick is always such a towering joy and I can’t believe I get to do this for a living; my students this semester are so searingly smart I can’t even take it. They spent such a gratifying 10 minutes on Ishmael’s hands being down in the pelvis of the world!
Must-read:
New Jersey:
Two gentoo penguins I saw in Antarctica, seemingly holding flippers, with a guano-splashed foreground and a background of ice and snow
🐧 ❤️