Readings

From https://lithub.com/when-picasso-saved-matisses-paintings-from-the-nazis/

The first Nazi official to visit Picasso during the war became part of an often-told story that may be apocryphal, but which was nonetheless related by Alfred Barr, Matisse’s first biographer. Not long after the conquest [of France], so the story goes, Otto Abetz, the infamous, though cultivated, German agent, called on Picasso. Picasso received him coldly, refused his offer of fuel, and showed him the door. On his way out of the studio Abetz noticed a photograph of Guernica. “Ah, Monsieur Picasso,” he said, adjusting his monocle, “so it was you who did that.” 

“No,” replied Picasso as he closed the door, “you did.”

Related WITW Posts: Guernica  The Art of Picasso: War and Peace

From https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/israel-palestine-two-state-solution-interview-robert-malley-agha-hussein-tomorrow-is-yesterday/

You’ve talked about Vietnam being a watershed moment for your generation. For younger Americans, the war in Gaza may be playing a similar role. What possibilities do you think might open up in a world in which public opinion allows, or compels, the US government to use its leverage over Israel in the service of trying to resolve this conflict?

There has been a sea change in public attitudes. The polling reflects it. The position taken by growing numbers of members of Congress reflects it. Even the fact that you’re hearing former members of the Biden administration coming out in favor of conditioning or withholding aid to Israel. It comes in different shades, but all of that is a marker of those changes that have taken place.

I teach now, and I hear it in my students. This war—not just the war, but also the US enabling of it, the hypocrisy, the moral indignation combined with, at best, feckless action, at worst, active complicity in the war. I think all of that is going to leave its imprint on a generation of future American policymakers. But also soon-to-be, if not already, voters...

...I’m not saying that the US can impose a solution and dictate how Israelis and Palestinians are going to live. I think that would be another fallacy if we believe that we could just snap our fingers and either Israelis or Palestinians will do as we wish. But if Israel, in particular, didn’t feel the sense of impunity that it has felt, I think that starts changing something.

Related: https://sobrief.com/books/gaza-in-crisis is a summary/review of Noam Chomsky's Gaza in Crisis

From The Black Wolf  by Louise Penny (2025)

The light that was draining from the sky seemed to be absorbed into the homes and businesses around the village green.  Amber light appeared in the windows, spilling onto lawns and gardens.  It was twilight.  A near-magical time in Three Pines, the transition from day to night. As the torch was passed.

From The Black Wolf  by Louise Penny (2025)

But the huge painting that all this led up to, the one at the very end, the last one Clara painted, was of a single snowflake, glittering in perfection.  A moment before it began to melt.

The tragedy wasn't its disappearance.  The gift was that it existed at all..

What a perfect, beautiful world, where snowflakes existed.  Even for a moment.

From "The Mask of Imperialism" - Anatol Lieven (Harper's, March 2025)

Liberal internationalism died in the ruins of Gaza and Beirut. Donald Trump’s return to office has only put a tin plate on the coffin. The doctrine lost all legitimacy through its dependence on American global power and the hopeless contradictions this has entailed. Its demise was a failure of American and other Western politicians, of experts and journalists, to live up to the standards of ethics and courage on which they founded their claims to hegemony—and which they preached to the rest of the world.

Many liberal institutions and individuals played their part in the doctrine’s death, either by actively supporting Israel or by allowing themselves to be intimidated into silence—and in many cases, by engaging in the repression or expulsion of colleagues who have had the courage to protest. As I write these lines, Western officials are complaining about the behavior of the riot police in Georgia. I can observe very little difference between their conduct in Tbilisi and the actions of U.S. police officers against protesters on American college campuses.

From So Far Gone by Jess Walter (2025)

"I've been trying to figure something else out," Kinnick said.  "When you were going through such hard times these last weeks, after your mother died, why you sent the kids to be with me?  And I could only think of two possible answers.  Either you wanted to send me a message.  Or you really needed me. And I want to say, whichever it is, I'm here for it."

Still, that noncommittal look on her face.  Then, finally, a small nod.

Kinnick took a small step toward her.  "I know I've got a lot of years to make up.  And I know I can't do it in a day.  But I'd like to start now, if that's okay."

Kinnick took a few more steps, reached out, and tentatively took his daughter in his arms.  She stiffened at first, then shuddered and began crying, and finally collapsed against his chest.

Kinnick whispered, "I'm sorry," and "It's going to be okay," and "I'm sorry," again.

She managed to say only, "Dad," and he squeezed her tighter.

And then he felt smaller arms around his waist, Kinnick looking down to see Asher, out of the shower, hair wet, barefoot, dressed in sweatpants but no shirt, his arms around them both. "What are we hugging about?"

From You can only truly master one thing, according to Epictetus (Big Think, Feb 2026)

In a sense, Epictetus is saying that only one thing is truly up to us: our deliberate, conscious judgments. If you think about it, our intentions to act or not are the result of our preliminary judgments about things, and our values and disvalues are also forms of judgments. No wonder Epictetus thinks that the faculty of judgment, our prohairesis, is the most precious thing we have, what truly defines us as human beings.

Modern cognitive scientists call this faculty “executive function.” It consists of high-level cognitive processes that act as the brain’s air traffic control system, allowing individuals to plan, solve problems, manage complex tasks, and control their behavior and emotions. Executive functions are typically broken down into three interconnected components:

1- The ability to resist impulses and stop or override a dominant or automatic response in favor of a more appropriate one

2 -The capacity to hold and manipulate multiple pieces of information in the mind over a short period to complete a task

3 -The ability to shift attention and adjust behavior or thinking to changing demands, rules, or priorities

Executive function is primarily associated with the frontal lobes, specifically the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area situated at the very front of the brain just behind the forehead. It is the last brain region to fully mature (often not until early adulthood) and is significantly larger in humans than in other primates.

Related WITW posts: Epictetus, the freed slave who inspired Marcus Aurelius

From Letter From Minnesota: This is Actually What’s Great About America (Literary Hub, February 2026)

What is happening now in the Twin Cities is a repudiation of the MAGA white supremacist vision of America. It is a celebration of what the best in America has always been, a place where people from around the globe have to come to live because we believe in democracy, in equal rights, in justice and fair play. We are saying that strength comes from love not hatred, from our diversity not our sameness, from our capacity and willingness to band together. Patrolling and warning against ICE, delivering food to those in danger, hiding and housing them, walking the streets in protest in sub-zero temperatures, we have gone all in, tens of thousands of Minnesotans, a massive resistance. As some have remarked, it takes more courage to face the barrel of a gun with a phone than to point the gun at an unarmed citizen.

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors — we borrow it from our children.”  - Chief Seattle

From "The Reciprocity Way" (Katie O'Reilly, Sierra Magazine, Spring 2026)

Today, [Salish and Kootenai] tribal leaders and climate coordinators are working together to implement strategies for protecting lands from environmental challenges and a chaging climate.  They are using Indigenous expertise as their guide.  Known as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), this form of ecosystem management - passed down through generatioons of observation, experience, and interaction with a changing environment - offers a holistic approach to land stewardship and climate action, marrying ancestral knowledge with modern climatology.

Within the paradigm of TDK, the natural world is not treated as an object to be managed from a distance but as a living relative deserving of care.  This tenet guides decisions about harvest levels, land use, and restoration, ensuring that ecological systems aren't damaged beyond their ability to regenerate. 

From a NYTimes post "Living Space" - Melissa Kirsch - posted April 4, 2026

The change in perspective, the feeling of awe that people experience when they see Earth from space, is called the overview effect. Astronauts speak of recognizing the beauty of the planet, a feeling of interconnectedness, a deep understanding of Earth as home. These are insights we, forever terrestrial, may understand intellectually but have a hard time truly embodying. Christina Koch, another of the astronauts on the mission, described the phenomenon: “You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth and you see that we are way more alike than we are different.”

Related WITW posts: Pale Blue Dot (May 2018), We are going back to the Moon (Sep 2020)

From Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea - posted May 27 2026

I

I have never encountered anything like the sweetness of springtime in Pietra d'Alba, where  dawn lasted all day long.  The stones of the village would capture the pink glow and transfer it to anything reflective: roof tiles, metals, the mica embedded in rocky outcrops, the miraculous spring, even the eyes of the villagers.  The pink did not gutter out until the last villager fell asleep, because even after dark, it lingered in the eyes of a boy gazing at a girl beneath the lanterns.

II

I ushered Viola into the first cell.  She stepped over the threshold, stopped in front of Fra Angelico's Annunciation and began to cry - there was no sadness, no sobbing, she wept with joy to see an angel with the wings of a peacock and the woman-child who would change the world.  

"Thank you, Mimo."

The storm burst, hammering on the roof above our heads like lead shot.  I  blew out the lantern and allowed us to be guided by the ightning flashes from cell to cell.  And for an hour, in a tempest of cyan, golds, oranges, pinks, and blues, our friendship regained its color.

From Saturday (Ian McEwan) - posted June 29, 2026

[Reading poetry] cost him an effort of an unaccustomed sort. Even a first line can produce a tightness around his eyes.  Novels and movies, being restlessly modern, propel you forwards or backwards through time, through days, years, even generations. But to do its balancing and noticing, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill like dry-stone walling or trout tickling.

Related WITW posts: Poets and Poetry, William Wordsworth: Poet of Nature and the Common Man, Three poems, three takes on getting older

From "Night Soil" by Christine Dombek (Harper's, May 2026) - posted. July 3, 2026

These days, though, I’m thinking a lot about evil and what it is. And still of J’s father running to save her. How it’s not even a choice to move your feet and reach for someone in danger when you consider them kin. It’s a kind of care that goes without saying. It has a responsibility in it that is an action, preceding thoughts or beliefs, before you know what to do, or if what you are doing will work. And this goes without saying, but to live lonely, in inaction, without the responsibility of care, to avoid the grief that caring always risks, is to live in the absence of love.

But in this infinite apartment internet, I’ve been watching Chicago teenagers drive around before school, tracking slow-moving vans, recording license plates, texting locations so that other people can arrive to witness, film, document names and phone numbers, state the facts in public before people are dragged away. I’ve watched the woman in the polka-dot dress flip off ICE officers in New York. The fruit carts and food trucks lined up as barricades. Human chains around vans.

You can see in them the love that runs toward instead. In the one fifth of adults in the United States of America who do unpaid caretaking, some of whom take on debt, miss bills, borrow just to keep going, you can see the running toward. In J’s drives to the vaccine-trial site and cartons of milk on the porch and the care of those who made maps of bathrooms that were still unlocked, of safe places to park during the lockdown, and of M, who organized her entire apartment building so that no elder or shut-in would be left without what they couldn’t go out to get: the running toward. And B, who just the other day ran recklessly into four lanes of traffic toward a pedestrian who’d been struck down, while others took out their phones to film the accident. He just ran toward her laid out on the ground and stopped traffic to protect her. And those biking in slow circles around the industrial park, watching for when the vans turn the corner, or filming from third-floor walk-ups, whispering, They’re here, those reciting rights in Spanish, recording, tracking, running toward instead of away. So many standing against the fiction of away, speaking of a way out of the great loneliness.

So when seven million people take to the streets across the United States of America to protest an administration that would send undocumented people away, non-white people away, trans people away, unhoused people away, people with student loans away, people who need Medicaid and food stamps away, what does the president do but retweet an AI video, set to “Danger Zone,” from the Top Gun soundtrack, of himself wearing a crown and flight suit, in a fighter jet, flying over the protesters, and covering them in long, brown, slimy streams of shit?

From Topeka Station  (Ben Lerner) - posted Aug 30, 2026

From a family systems perspective, a lot has been lost with landlines. Think of how often - before cell phones, before any kind of caller ID - you answered the phone as a child and had to have an exchange, however brief , with aunts or uncles or family friends.  Even if it was that five-second check-in, How are you doing, how is school, is your mom around - it meant periodic real-time vocal contact with an extended community, which through repitition it reinforced.  Now you never speak with anyone unless they call you directly.  I love Facetiming with the girls, I'm not just mourning the older technology, but I think it is a profound shift, if one of the subtler ones...