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Daegan Miller

@daeganmiller.bsky.social

1.8K followers 580 following 2.1K posts

Essayist and Critic. For all the beautiful radiant things. Book: *This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent* http://bit.ly/2HYSaSK | Essays: http://bit.ly/2Gn3EPM

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · Jun 5

I spent the spring reading through Robert Macfarlane's catalog to understand his remarkable new book, *Is a River Alive?* @literaryhub.bsky.social let me go long on the book that I think Macfarlane has spent his entire life writing toward. #nature #writing #booksky
lithub.com/the-world-is...

The World is Alive; or, How Robert Macfarlane Came to Trust His Senses

“While writing about landscape often begins in the aesthetic, it must always end in the ethical.” –Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks * There is a sentence 256 pages into Robert Macfarlane’s newest book,…

lithub.com

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Frog and Toad Bot @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 1h

“Frog,” asked Toad, “was that a true story?”

“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,” said Frog.

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 2h

full spectrum capture. pls everyone try to get your parents, relatives, and friends to seek out reliable sources of information beyond the functionally propagandist mainstream press

Jon Passantino @passantino.bsky.social · 2h

CNN is now using the Trump preferred “Department of War” name in its official statements

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Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 4h

This essay on place making in a pluralist city, valuing memory and identity and acknowledging fracture, but also moving toward a collective rebuilding and repair, is vital reading. It's about Homs in Syria, but no city can design its way out of history: placesjournal.org/article/mapp...

Memory Maps of Homs, Syria

A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, illuminates the complexity of rebuilding after war.

placesjournal.org

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 1d

Western Mass friends--on Tuesday, 10/21 I'll be in conversation with @lancerichardson.bsky.social and photog Hans Teensma about Lance's marvelous, monumental new biography of Peter Mathiessen. Join us at Broadside Books, Northampton, 7PM

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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 1d

You can’t visit many sites on the web these days without being bombarded by ads, pop-ups, and paywalls.

We’re happy to report that there is absolutely nothing to interrupt you when you read an article on placesjournal.org. No ads, no pop-ups, no distractions. A rare luxury in online reading today.

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Lance Richardson @lancerichardson.bsky.social · 1d

Book launch next Tuesday at the New York Public Library. Going to be a tremendous event. Tickets are free!

True Nature: Lance Richardson with Sam Anderson

Tickets for True Nature: Lance Richardson with Sam Anderson in New York from NYPL. The author of the first biography of Peter Matthiessen discusses the trailblazing novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi...

www.showclix.com

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Dolly Jørgensen @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social · 3d

Tomorrow Monday Oct 6, we’ll be talking to @royscranton.bsky.social about Impasse: Climate Change & the Limits of Progress on the @greenhouseuis.net book talk.

Join us for the live discussion at 4pm Central European time / 10am Eastern
newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

Book cover of Impasse by Roy Scranton with swirls of color like a wave or dragon

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 4d

Many thanks to the @bostonglobe.com for their invitation to write about mowing my lawn with a scythe for their Wild Issue: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/03/opinion/mowing-lawn-scythe-nature/.

Why I cut my lawn with an old-fashioned scythe - The Boston Globe

Yes, it's a lot of work. And it's worth it.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Frog and Toad Bot @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 4d

“Why are you pouring water over your head?” asked Frog.

“I hope that if I pour water over my head, it will help me to think of a story,” said Toad.

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 4d

You can read all the essays in the issue here: globe.com/wild

Ideas | Wild Issue: The call of our untamed spaces

12 contributors tackle how our relationship to nature is transforming in unexpected ways.

globe.com

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 4d

Many thanks to the @bostonglobe.com for their invitation to write about mowing my lawn with a scythe for their Wild Issue: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/03/opinion/mowing-lawn-scythe-nature/.

Why I cut my lawn with an old-fashioned scythe - The Boston Globe

Yes, it's a lot of work. And it's worth it.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 5d

ICE is buying a location tracking tool that harvests data from hundreds of millions of phones a day. Protect your location data by updating a few settings on your phone 🧵 (1/4): www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

www.404media.co

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eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 11d

Safe travels to Professor Jonathan Lear, whose words and thoughts transported so many of us.

His radical hope remains.

Photo of Jonathan Lear in glasses

Jonathan Lear
1948 - 2025
Philosopher, psychoanalyst, teacher
Image ht harvard up

"It is not only good but wondrous that there should be mourning [...]
In response to loss, we make meaning: re-creating in memory and imagination what we have lost and reanimating forms of life that might otherwise disappear."
—Jonathan Lear
Imagining the End
Image via harvard up

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Spencer Beswick @spencerbeswick.bsky.social · 7d

I don't give a flying fuck that Hegseth called generals fat, I care that he and Trump are mobilizing the military for internal war and occupation of American cities!

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 7d

And just so it's clear--I think the very best literary criticism (like Philipps's essay) not only turns the reader on to new work, but gets the reader considering, arguing, reconsidering, questioning...truly thinking.

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 8d

Anyway, kudos to n+1; they don't often publish nature/green/enviro/ecocritical work (maybe once a year?), but when they do, it's best to pay attention.

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 8d

...the tired old rejection of nature writing as "an exhortation to commune with the natural." The essay itself doesn't seem to need that particular (and particularly inaccurate) refusal to work, which makes me wonder why this rejection--almost a standard of the ecocritical genre--has such longevity

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 8d

...one of those pieces to chew on, disagree with, and come back to. (Incidentally, every book/chapbook he mentions has landed on my to-buy-immediately list, if I haven't read it already). I do wonder though about the opening move...

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 8d

For the last few years, @nplusonemag.com has published some of the best non-academic ecocriticism. Just finished Ben Philipps's "Evasive Species," on avant-garde ecopoetry, and it is wonderfully though-provoking... www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/rev...

Evasive Species | Ben Philipps

Eco-confessionalism marshals the self-reflexivity of poetic language, its distance from everyday communication, to register commitments without reifying them, to critique the present without lapsing i...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 8d

It is instructive to compare the response of New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh, who calls Trump's speech a "garden variety tear," with @atrupar.com, who says that "Trump is trying to become a dictator."

There does not seem to be a clear point or purpose in President Trump’s address to military generals today. It’s a garden variety tear; he’s talking about tariffs, Joe Biden and the autopen, the southern border, CNN, his personal feelings about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his anxieties that he won’t be given a Nobel Peace Prize he feels he deserves. These are things he talks about almost every day regardless of audience or setting. Every so often he throws in a statistic or observation he has about the military.

“I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships by the way,” he said at one point, pausing a riff about tariffs to bring up a 1950s documentary series about naval warfare. “I used to watch ‘Victory at Sea.’ I love ‘Victory at Sea.’”

hope it's clear to everyone now that Trump really is going for it - he's trying to become a dictator. I don't know if he'll succeed, but he's working to install himself as an autocrat unaccountable to voters. And he's weaponizing the military against Americans who oppose him as part of that effort

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 9d

Will follow this thread! Will just note that I’m not sure what EK means by deterministic—probably you’re right he means the same as fatalism. But being alive to the dynamic of continuity and change has *always* been part of doing good history, public history too, I think.

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 11d

The thing regular people don’t often grasp about ‘academic freedom’ is that if you don’t allow experts to research & teach in their fields of expertise, guided by their professional judgment & decades of training, you have effectively given up on the concept of knowledge & shut down your university

Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם) @bestonetx.bsky.social · 11d

Universities are moving rapidly to comply with laws that don't exist.

Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 11d

“I’m emotionally shellshocked right now,” said one professor in the Texas Tech system. “What does it say about academic freedom? It says we don’t have it.” The professor spoke by phone from the inside of a car to avoid being overheard by colleagues.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

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Ben Wurgaft @benwurgaft.bsky.social · 11d

In @thewalrus.ca, @tajjaisen.bsky.social has a terrific reported essay on publishing, which I recommend highly. I know that people in publishing will argue endlessly over what does and does not help make books "succeed," so with that grain of salt: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus

Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

thewalrus.ca

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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 12d

Books are beautiful things.

Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 12d

Very much looking forward to my convo w/ Nick Triolo Tues 9/30, 7PM, Odyssey Books in South Hadley, MA. We'll be talking about walking in circles, travel and nature writing, time, character...and his new book, *The Way Around*. Check it out:
www.odysseybks.com/event/nichol...