Just because I'm feeling munificent.

Well, the Kafkaesque Prozess of getting Kafka's papers to a reliable public institution seems to have come to an end.  We don't know what will be uncovered in the archives, but I expect at least a couple years' worth of headlines will come out of this. 

An interesting piece on the new President of New York Theological Seminary, who is an African-American woman.  I'm not sure I'd want to take over a seminary in this moment of crisis for theological education, especially a "mainline" seminary, but perhaps she can find a way to create a new mode of such education--we badly need it.

If you can get behind the TLS paywall, this is a really good and careful review, not just of this massive biography (still in Polish, though we can hope for an abridged English translation), but of Zbigniew Herbert's complicated life. 

The article is interesting, but brief but brief,  but what’s more interesting is the photo of Bach’s skeleton.  It's always amazing to see famous peoples' bones.  (I saw Boethius's bones once, in Pavia.  And was right near Augustine's bones, as well.  Well, bones that lots of people think might have been Augustine's.  A kid can dream, can't he?)  The thing about Bach is, he was so relentlessly prolific, and at such a high level.  Imagine a genius Cal Ripken, someone with Ripken's focus and endurance but also channeling so much grace and magic that you can't believe their brain is not burned to a crisp yet.  That's Bach.  Much more than Mozart, I say (sniff).  Anyway, I'm on "team Bach," for sure.

A good piece about The Emerging Republican Majority, the book from 1968 that prophesied the "Southern Strategy" of the GOP.

We live in an age of rising "nones," people who have no religious belief (and perhaps don't want to have religious belief, don't care about it--apatheists, if you will, or even if you won't, because they don't care).  Well, some of these people have decided to join forces with serious older religious women--nuns.  So now we have "Nones and Nuns."  An interesting story.  (And heads up: note the way that the "Nones" say they are looking for ritual.  That's an important point, I think.)

Finally, I'm not sure this piece hangs together entirely, but it is an interesting quick drive-by of one of the most thought-provoking--for me, anyway--of twentieth century thinkers.  His book Minima Moralia is one of those that rewards endlessly repeated rereadings.  Maybe that's the way to make it intelligible, too.