Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 07/10/2026"It is not down in any map; true places never are" (Moby-Dick) 010
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 04/10/2026"Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon." (-Moby-Dick) 040
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 29/09/2026"Awareness of the multiplicity of human ways is also the necessary precondition for the active search for the better or best way...God's multiplication of languages and his dispersal of the nations [institutes] otherness and opposition." Leon Kass on the Tower of Babel 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Celebrated the official last day of the summer (the last day of the John's Water Ice season) 020
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 27/09/2026"O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven." Collect for the 26th Sunday in ordinary time 020
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Birds of Paradise is a very strong contender for album of the year for me right now, and also cool to see he's a Szymborska guy southwestreview.com/volume-111-n...southwestreview.comThe Guest List | Thomas DollbaumBy Ashleigh Bryant Phillips 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 22/09/2026-Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, on Genesis 9:5-6 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 22/09/2026"Against our ever-present natural temptation to care only for ourselves and for our own and to deprecate or ignore the value of the stranger...the Noahide law teaches that, at least with respect to life itself, every human being has a claim and a standing equal to our own" 110
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 20/09/2026"The story of the Flood seeks to wash away the heroic temptation in the reader. It seeks permanently to drown the natural human aspiration to apotheosis through heroic deed and to replace it with an acquired human commitment to righteousness and the perpetuation of life on earth" 100
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 19/09/2026-Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom (on Genesis 5) 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 19/09/2026"There is more than half a century...during which all nine generations of human beings, from Adam to Lamech, are alive at the same time...[the genealogy] prepare[s] the wisdom-seeking reader to learn, in the sequel, how human beings react to the discovery of their unavoidable finitude" 100
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 15/09/2026"The Biblical rejection of polytheism, in part, means the Biblical rejection of apotheosis" -Robert Sacks, quoted in Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Leon Kass on Cain and Abel in "The Beginning of Wisdom" 031
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 13/09/2026"Herding probably preceded farming...the farmer is the innovator, the man who takes the ambiguous step forward (or is it backward?). But our text invites us to consider the shepherd as the innovator by making him second born, one who did not follow in his brother's vocational footsteps." 150
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 06/09/2026"If the needle is the first tool, clothing is the first product, and hiding is the first goal of art" -Leon Kass, The Beginning Wisdom: Reading Genesis 040
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Good afternoon open.spotify.com/album/2etu1n...open.spotify.comEvery Star in Rockingham County - Album by Dogwood Tales | SpotifyDogwood Tales · album · 2026 · 12 songs 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Some brief eulogistic reflections on Wendell Berry, who celebrated virtues and loves that are for everyone, regardless of their form of life: peterblair.substack.com/p/wendell-be...peterblair.substack.comWendell Berry, That Thoughtful ManRest in Peace 052
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I came upon Berry's work in college out of what felt like some niche political philosophy interests and it was a pleasure in recent years to see his name turn up in (for me) new places: Guy Davenport quoting him in The Hunter Gracchus, his friendship with J. Kenyon and D. Hall 030
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 01/09/2026People often elide the fact that he made space for things like, as here, choice for a place based on preference. Lots to say about Berry all around, but he was a less prescriptive person in this way than some of the 'popular understandings' of him would suggest 120
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Something I'll put my stake in early: In one of the passages of Berry that I've about the most since I encountered him, he refers to treatment for having an "identity crisis" as, in part, "[staying put] in the place to which preference or history or accident has brought [you]" 110
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 25/08/2026As Mary Townsend said www.plough.com/articles/dol...plough.comDolly Parton Is Magnificent | PloughThe beloved Tennessee singer-songwriter gets the joke. Do the rest of us? 010
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 25/08/2026RIP open.spotify.com/track/22GKOo...open.spotify.comAfter the Gold Rush - 2015 RemasterDolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris · Trio II (2016 Remaster) · Song · 1999 140
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 25/08/2026I liked "Tony" as a mediation on the value of being someone rather than anyone—acquiring a context, discarding one's idea of oneself to become a specific person letterboxd.com/peterblair/f...letterboxd.comA ★★★★ review of Tony (2026)(PFS—Bourse) I enjoyed this because it didn't seem as freighted with the weight of the "biopic as a genre" as other ones I've seen recently (A Complete Unknown and Deliver me From Nowhere). It just fe... 030
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 21/08/2026Happy Wild Pink release day to all who celebrate open.spotify.com/album/6wN3op...open.spotify.comStill Coming Down - Album by Wild Pink | SpotifyWild Pink · album · 2026 · 9 songs 021
Reposted by Peter BlairLevi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 20/08/2026He wished it were already fall, season of wisdom and work. —John Crowley, The Solitudes 0123
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 16/08/2026“Scripture wishes to emphasize that the sanctity of the Sabbath is older than Israel, and rests upon all mankind” -Umberto Cassuto, quoted in Leon Kass’s The Beginning of Wisdom 040
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 15/08/2026You won't have to open a heart that's broken / Water's gonna flow in either way / My heart is growin' either way 000
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 15/08/2026I've only dipped into the new Phoebe Bridgers album so far, but digging "Haunted" 100
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 15/08/2026“Because he is the free being, he is also the incomplete or indeterminate being: what he becomes depends always (in part) on what he freely will choose to be…precisely in the sense that man is in the image of God, man is not good—not determinate, finished, complete, or perfect” 120
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 14/08/2026“[In Genesis] the fundamental principle through which the world is created is separation” (Leon Kass); “Yahweh gave [Abraham] just four commands…each time something had to be separated from something else” (Roberto Calasso) 020
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 11/08/2026“The open form of [Genesis] and its recalcitrance to final and indubitable interpretation are absolutely perfect instruments for cultivating the openness, thoughtfulness, and modesty about one’s own understanding that is the hallmark of the pursuit of wisdom” -Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom 020
Reposted by Peter BlairDr. Stephen Poop @drstephenpoop.bsky.social · 07/08/2026beasted on. What a fucking idiot. 14712
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 03/08/2026I listed a lot on this trip to Thomas Dollbaum’s recent album “Birds of Paradise.” Here’s a great review by Joseph Collum in Fare Forward mailchi.mp/ea7669c5ffc9...mailchi.mp#309: Joseph Collum on Birds of Paradise 100
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 03/08/2026Road trip views (Crossing the Delaware in Riegelsville, PA; hiking Mount Tammany in Knowlton Township, NJ, happening upon Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA; attending Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, PA) 1100
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 28/07/2026I went to Dad’s Change of Pace in Port Jervis, NY and everyone knew you 140
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 20/07/2026“Everything took longer than it should, or else went too quick..it was wearying, trying to adjust to all the paces life required.” -Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry 050
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 19/07/2026The only other one I’ve seen (Lost Highway) wasn’t for me 010
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 19/07/2026As far as I’m now concerned this is the only Lynch movie 270
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 16/07/2026The best adaptation of The Odyssey is Tim Riggins' story in seasons 4 and 5 of Friday Night Lights 020
Peter Blair @peterblair.bsky.social · 16/07/2026Hope some marketing team somewhere is enjoying their bonus 020
