Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 10h

32 years.

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · Sep 30

30 years ago this month Counting Crows released their debut album. I devoured it. Masterful start to finish. In the last song, in the last seconds, Duritz goes from singing "shame shame shame" to "change change change." And 30 years later I *still* don't know where he does it.

Magical album.

Counting Crows - Murder of One [HQ]

Lyrics:Blue morning, blue morning,Wrapped in strands of fist and boneCuriosity, Kitten,Doesn't have to mean you're on your ownYou can look outside your windo...

youtu.be

2

Reposted by Stori3d Past

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · Jun 28

Anyway, if you want a 4-minute primer about the most famous Roman fort in Britain (or maybe anywhere), designed with early-access videogame assets, I'm still proud of the work I put into this. I love that the story of the fort is just as much the story of the community that grew up around the fort.

3 7

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 11h

Thanks for the tip, I'm glad to have discovered Cather!

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

I've made inroads with Manhattans and even bourbon neat. So I'm
optimistic. It seems like a noble undertaking at least!

1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

Some day I will become a martini guy.

1 1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

Cather's writing is so effortless that you find yourself sleepwalking through autumn idylls, high drama, and tragedy alike. 'My Antonia' has cast a bit of a spell on me.

2

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

"All afternoon... one could hear the panting wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were such cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was a pity those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground so soon."

- Willa Cather
'My Antonia'

1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 19h

It is pretty fabulous. Especially because the first part of the hike honestly doesn't look very promising. Then the surprises start coming one after another.

1 1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 20h

a poster for indiana jones last crusade

Alt: Indiana Jones launches a torch and sets the screen on fire

media.tenor.com

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 20h

The old pine forest feels very alive in an uncanny way. A number of its trees are genuinely huge.

This area is also about as far away as you can get from humanity on public trails here. That plus the tall ferns blocking sightlines makes the very back part of this loop hair-raisingly eerie.

closeup of map showing trail as dotted line

a couple of the very tall, very thick white pines and the fern undergrowth

1 3

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

I love Saco Heath trail because it takes you through 4 very distinct zones:

1 - young mixed woodland still rapidly evolving.

2 - swampy wetland forest with pools that turn blood-red from leaf tannins.

3 - the open heath itself.

4 - a much older eatablished pine forest & a bed of ferns.

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

When the glaciers melted back 12,000 years ago, they left a shallow bowl a mile wide here at Saco Heath. That filled with rainwater & groundwater and became a pond. For thousands of years.

But with no outflow for sediment, dead leaves & brush built up century after century, finally filling it in.

overhead satellite map of Saco Heath protected area

1 5

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

While this happens a lot, usually what gets filled in breaks down, becoming solid soil. But the acidic environment & colder climate in Maine mean the organics could never fully break down. In some places the peat goes down 18 feet! The Heath will likely always be a treacherous, waterlogged place.

4

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

When the glaciers melted back 12,000 years ago, they left a shallow bowl a mile wide here at Saco Heath. That filled with rainwater & groundwater and became a pond. For thousands of years.

But with no outflow for sediment, dead leaves & brush built up century after century, finally filling it in.

1 5

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

In the summer you point out the cottongrass & people say "Why is it called cottongrass??" In the fall they don't have to ask.

Cottony puffball at top of large slendsr stalk

1 4

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 21h

Back at my favorite local trail, Saco Heath. On what has become a truly gorgeous Fall day.

1 2 13

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 23h

You've inspired me -- I was going to slack off today, but instead I hit the weights & am going out for a walk soon.

1 1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 23h

Definitely got me. She's very vivid with landscape & setting, but manages to make it brisk and relevant within the story itself too. No fillers or digressions. It's the type of writing I would love to be able to do!

1 1

Reposted by Stori3d Past

Jennifer Romig @jennifermromig.bsky.social · 1d

This made me want to see it too www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

A Walk in Willa Cather’s Prairie

How Nebraska’s landscape inspired the great American novelist.

www.newyorker.com

1 3

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Ha! To be fair I think even when she was writing, it was nostalgia for a never-was.

1 1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

I already like this one so much that it's easy to imagine picking up another. Song of the Lark sounds like a good bet. Thanks!

1

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

First freeze this morning. A solid one, 27° (-3°C). Thus ends the growing season, and the last of the greenery will follow shortly. I always hate & love first freeze.

10

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

*Willa ugh. As someone who often had his name misspelled growing up, I try to avoid doing the same to others - alive or dead!

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

This book is a love-letter to a Nebraska that I suddenly would really like to see.

1 3

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

"All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight stronger & fiercer than any other time... The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy & threw long shadows."

W. Cather
My Antonia

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

"I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it... I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be."

- Will Cather
'My Antonia'

A few pages in I already like it

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Next read: "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I know absolutely nothing about Cather except that she wrote in the early 1900s about immigrant experience in the Midwest. Which sounds kinda interesting. So here we go.

2 1 5

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Post a film with an excellent soundtrack! 🎶

6