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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happy Michaelmas, or perhaps more à propos, Fiesta de San Miguel (📷 Mission San Miguel Arcángel, San Miguel CA)

Reposted by Greg Kindall

Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Else Marie Pade, Danish composer of electronic/concrete music. Began composing while a prisoner of the Gestapo. I listened to this album while beginning to catalog my music collection. youtube.com/watch?v=nR1sbtt9ItE or: open.spotify.com/album/2BbTzg81WU8ft1vMRF00qm

youtube.com

Else Marie Pade - Et Glasperlespil (full album)

YouTube video by When Dubs Cry

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Stirrings Still, by Samuel Beckett (1988), is a 10 minute text, max. But I followed along with Paul Griffith's ruminative 64-minute reading, accompanied by Trevor Bača's Beckettian soundscape (w/ JACK Quartet, ECM 2026). open.spotify.com/album/1JHXIA... or: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

open.spotify.com

Samuel Beckett: Stirrings Still (with music by Trevor Bača) - Album by Trevor Bača | Spotify

Trevor Bača · album · 2026 · 18 songs

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't follow Open Culture but I had this bookmarked - one of you fine folk must have reposted it!

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

youtube.com

Else Marie Pade - Et Glasperlespil (full album)

YouTube video by When Dubs Cry

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Pelligrino Artusi's 1891 'La Scienza in cucina e l'Arte di mangiar bene,' the first cookbook to create a national cuisine drawing from every region of Italy. Artusi added more recipes with each edition until his death in 1911 at which time it had reached its definitive version at 790 recipes.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I read Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024). A cornucopia of poetry by Latino authors for whom the U.S. (or territory that was to become the U.S.) was a first, or second or third, home.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I read Life in the Country, by Giovanni Verga ('Vita dei campi'), an 1880 collection of eight stories of the Sicilian countryside, mostly tragic. These stories mark Verga's adoption of 'verismo,' inspired by the naturalism of Flaubert and Zola. 2003 translation by J.G. Nichols for Hesperus Press.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Hungarian pianist Ervin Nyiregyházi, a child prodigy and rival in the 1920s of Horowitz, but incompetent at handling his affairs, ended up on skid row in California. He made a comeback in the 1970s, as evidenced in this idiosyncratic swan song of an album. open.spotify.com/album/5sFQIr...

open.spotify.com

Ervin Nyiregyhazi in Performance (1972-1982) - Compilation by Ervin Nyiregyhazi | Spotify

Ervin Nyiregyhazi · compilation · 2011 · 23 songs

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I read The Menaechmi, by Plautus (late 3rd century BC). A source for Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, but Shakespeare made it richer and funnier. Frank Copley's 1949 translation attempts an American rapid-fire banter (cf. Abbott & Costello) which might have been funny in 1949.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I read The Dream of Scipio, by Iain Pears (2002). Three layered stories of keeping civilizational ruin at bay, from Rome's 5th century collapse, the 14th century Black Plague, and France's surrender in WWII. Love, honor, beauty, and memory weigh heavily, but with compounding and fatal compromises.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I read the opening trilogy of The Book of Questions, by Edmond Jabès. There is a story here, a Holocaust story, but as Jabès called it, a “récit éclaté” (exploded story): it's a mosaic of aphorisms, dialogues, poems, songs, journal fragments, letters, and commentaries.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Chivers' Marmalade was on the breakfast table this morning, so somehow I ended up watching this 1930 documentary on Chivers and Sons, all 95 mins of it. It's silent -- I put on Parry & Stanford's Nonets (Capricorn Ensemble, Hyperion, 1989), a perfect accompaniment. eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1924

eafa.org.uk

Work - East Anglian Film Archive

East Anglian Film Archive

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I read Exultations, by Ezra Pound (1909). Got my fill of half-baked Swinburne, pale moonbeams and ruddy dawns, dew-misted rose petals and lutes a-plucking. archive.org/details/exul...

archive.org

Exultations. [Poems]

Gallup

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

if your thing is 'Terrors of Ice and Darkness' or 'tightly wound Danish Lutheran pastor sets off for remote Icelandic village to build a church and take photographs' this one's for you... Godland / Vanskabte Land / Volaða land (2022) trailer: youtu.be/ABOyY8LzT3w

youtu.be

GODLAND - HD Trailer

YouTube video by JANUS

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I read The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare (ca.1590-92). As always, a lot of fun, if the War of the Sexes doesn't put you out of countenance.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I read The Sufferings of Young Werther, by J. W. von Goethe (1774). In its time it caused a mania for blue frock coats with yellow waistcoats & knee-breeches, and triggered a rash of suicides. The German Library reprints Bayard Quincy Morgan's 1957 translation, with a Thomas Mann introduction.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I read Light While There is Light: An American History, by Keith Waldrop (1993), a memoir of the family in which he grew up, a family that could never be quite conventional. I could not put the book down. Recently reprinted by NYRB Classics.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I read Range, by Dorthe Nors (in Graywolf's newly released translation by Caroline Waight). The protagonist is an astrophysicist delving into the beginnings and scope of the universe. A proper sense of scale and measure in her own life is sometimes just beyond her grasp.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I read Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, by Louis Armstrong (1954), his account of his early years up to his move (age 22) from the Big Easy to the Chicago to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. The rough life amidst which he grew up was less than edifying, but his love of music led him up and away.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I read The Compleat Angler, by Izaak Walton (1653). Perfect for reading on the bank of a burbling stream, but I read it in my garden. The last line is 'Study to be quiet.'

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I read Adolphe, by Benjamin Constant (1816). The young man falls in and out of love, but it's complicated. A Melville House 2010 reprint of Carl Wildman's 1948 translation for its Art of the Novella series.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I read Imre, an early (first?) gay novella by Edward Prime-Stevenson (1906), just out in Oxford World's Classics. Gay lit isn't in my usual orbit, but I gave it a shot as Stevenson is a cousin: his great-grandmother was a Raynor and so was mine, both from a family out of Southampton on Long Island.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I read Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot (1842), by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841). Wonderful prose poems; shouldn't there be a Penguin or Oxford World's Classic edition, given the influence on Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and their reincarnation in Ravel's piano suite?

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I read Götz von Berlichingen, by JW von Goethe (1773). Goethe's salvo against French classicism and his first blockbuster. Found this serviceable 1965 translation by Charles E. Passage at the library.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I read Ten Colloquies, a selection of representative works from Erasmus's Colloquia (there are 61 of these in the Collected Works). What began as exercises for schoolboys developed by the 1530s into something akin to the dialogues of Lucian of Samosata.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Happy birthday to Izaak Walton (botd in 1593). Almost 50 years since I last read this, and I think it's just the thing for the dog days. Portrait: James Inskipp (1790-1868), Izaak Walton, author of 'The Compleat Angler' (1831). Oil on canvas, 77cm x 63.5cm. Government Art Collection (London) #3209.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I read Cicero's On Old Age, On Friendship, & On Divination [De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione], in William Armistead Falconer's 1923 translation for Loeb Classical Library. Divination was a bit tedious, but the other two were charming, at times even moving.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

did not finish - just posting in case it saves someone the heartburn. Besides being print-on-demand, this gives every indication of being machine-translated, with no effort towards formatting or typesetting. The supplementary materials might well have been AI-generated.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I read Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico, by Javier Marías (1996). Elvis famously filmed Fun in Acapulco without ever setting foot on location. Marías's counterfactual has a translator/language consultant get into serious trouble while hanging out with the star in Mexico.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I read The Famous Magician, by César Aira (2013; 2022 translation by Chris Andrews for New Directions, in their silly 'Storybook' series). Another fanciful daydream from the prolific Aira. I rarely rate his books more than 3/5 stars but keep coming back for more. Inexplicable.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I read Poetry as Enchantment, by Dana Gioia (2016), a plea for recovering the primacy of the joy and experience of poetry, and recalling that analysis and criticism are mere ancillary activities.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I read A Weakness for Almost Everything, by dilettante (architecture, filmmaking, publishing) and bon vivant Aldo Buzzi. "Notes on Life, Gastronomy, and Travel." An amuse-bouche for the pause between weightier tomes. 1999 translation by Ann Goldstein.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I read 'O Pioneers!,' by Willa Cather (1913). Indomitable Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson tames the wild Nebraska prairie, but those she loves are not so easily mastered.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I read The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. Interestingly, it runs in reverse chronology, from Golan Haji's 'The End of Days' (2017), to Aloysius Bertrand's 'Haarlem' (1842). A prose poem is inherently an ambiguous thing, but each of these 200 diverse pieces could be an epitome of the genre.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I read The Other, by Ryszard Kapuściński (2008), four lectures addressing the concept of 'the Other,' especially as he took it from Jewish and Roman Catholic thinkers, and as he brought it to bear in his journalistic career. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, with an introduction by Neal Ascherson.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I read Bach Among the Theologians, by Jaroslav Pelikan (1986). Bach's navigation of some of the Lutheran controversies of the time (not so easy when one colleague calls another "an apostle of Satan"!). I flagged so many passages (great points, further reading, etc.) that I guess this one's a keeper.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

cleaning house this morning to Dewey Balfa & Co www.youtube.com/@LomaxFilmCo...

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I read David McCullough's '1776' (2005), a fast-paced General's-eye account of Gen. Washington's military actions, and those of his top lieutenants, from the Siege of Boston to the routing of the British and their Hessians at Trenton and Princeton.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I've been reading Maintenance: Of Everything, by Stewart Brand, which is great, but I was just now looking in the garage for some old college stuff and found one of his Whole Earth Catalogs (Fall 1969 - I bought it used, I wasn't yet in college in '69). Wow, what a 70s rush!

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Just wonderful: Martin Schoeller's portraits of the guys who impersonate/interpret George Washington at historical parks and such. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I read The Gardens of Mien Ruys, by Conny den Hollander (Timber Press, 2025). Ruys (1904-1999) is an icon of early Modernist landscape design. My uni library doesn't have anything by or about her (!), and the county library rejected my request that they buy it, but then they acquired it after all.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

a birthday stack for birthday boy Hermann Hesse (1877)

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I read The Last Gentleman, by Walker Percy (1966). In part a road trip, a novel of manners, and bildungsroman, with Southern eccentricities. I loved it.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I read the first volume of Paideia, Werner Jaeger's visionary overview of ancient Greek culture (1933; Highet's translation, 1939). Covers Homer, Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Theognis, Pindar, the Tragedians, the Sophists, Aristophanes, & more, up through Thucydides.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

made me think of this bit of lunacy, the Faxa Bay nest of Icelandic filmmaker Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, which I stumbled upon a few years ago.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I read The Soul of Brutes, by Carlo Ginzburg (Seagull Books, 2026). I was sorry to hear that he passed away today. RIP, Professore

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I read A Mere Accident, by George Moore (1887). H/T to Thomas Kitson (@thatiliazdguy.bsky.social) who has been posting it sentence by sentence. One of which tipped me into getting a copy -- I couldn't justify the cost of a first edition (or second) so I got this relatively decent hardcover POD.

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Greg Kindall @gregkindall.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

It's Burl Ives' birthday (1909). Here's a couple of performances for the Ed Sullivan show, broadcast from the deck of the USS Wisconsin in 1955: 1) Ballad of Davy Crockett www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpdQ...

youtube.com

Burl Ives "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett" on The Ed Sullivan Show

YouTube video by The Ed Sullivan Show

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