🍕 party

Pilgrimage

[On Substack...]

 Since Jacob's and Avery's reports yesterday on Wanderlust, and Gary's mention of his recent trip to his old alma mater, I've been thinking of my own periodic "pilgrimages" to Columbia MO where I was an undergrad in the '70s...

The first house I lived in, on Westmount, partly constructed of materials salvaged from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair:

 

On the Mizzou campus:

 

You can go home again, Thomas Wolfe. Happily.

Also thinking about the long journey from our earliest steps to another world. We're still taking baby steps, who knows how far we can go?

  

"We humans have set foot on another world in a place called the Sea of Tranquility, an astonishing achievement for creatures such as we, whose earliest footsteps three and one-half million years old are preserved in the volcanic ash of east Africa. We have walked far." Carl Sagan, Cosmos

And the further we walk, the more we feel at home.

Also: the guy I mentioned who recently finished his walk across America for men's mental health: Tim Perreira.

And: MTSU's convocation speaker a few years ago did his own walk across America and wrote about it in Walking to Listen, Andrew Forsthoefel.

==

Is this also "pilgrimage"?

The Simple Pleasure of a Long Walk and a Fun Meal
Charlotte Ward just wanted to share photos with family and friends, but she has built a community of people documenting their journeys, and the food they eat afterward.

The concept behind Charlotte Ward’s X account is simple. Every day, Ms. Ward, 22, goes for a long walk, usually through the lush woods near her home in Yorkshire, England, before she sits down for dinner. And every night she posts three photos of the scenery from her walk along with a photo of what she ate.

Sometimes she heads to the Yorkshire Dales to hike the highlands, other days she traverses the streets of London, but the result is always the same: three photos of the walk, and one of what she ate. It has been a perfect recipe for her growing audience.

Since starting her @hikingshawty account in April 2024, Ms. Ward has amassed more than 170,000 followers and has built an audience of nearly 200,000 in an X community she created called “today i walked…” Many of the people who come across her posts express their desire to live a quieter life like hers, spending time in nature and baking cakes from scratch.

For Ms. Ward, who originally started her account to share photos of her hikes with friends, the attention has been surprising... (continues)

Nietzsche on walking and creativity

"The best thoughts come while walking…"

https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/12/nietzsche-walking/

A good life

What makes a good life – revelatory learnings from Harvard's 75-year study of human happiness

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/08/23/harvard-grant-study-robert-waldinger-ted/

Fwd: Avery Eaton - Phil of Happiness PP

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Avery Eaton <aae3n@mtmail.mtsu.edu>
Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Subject: Avery Eaton - Phil of Happiness PP
To: Phil Oliver <Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu>

Hello Prof here is my power point for my presentation!

The .pptx File is prefered! 

Eaton_Wanderlust A History of Walking.pdf

Eaton_Wanderlust A History of Walking.pptx

Fwd: Fw: [EXTERNAL] Presentation

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=1ae14f9128&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-a:r-1309311798004922385&th=199bf902f91a3689&view=att&disp=safe&realattid=199bf8f424bccd248e31&zw

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Carol Edwards <cde2i@mtmail.mtsu.edu>
Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Subject: Fw: [EXTERNAL] Presentation
To: Phil Oliver <Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu>

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say

(Are MTSU students more studious than Harvard's?)

Many students don't do the reading and don't speak up in class, according to a report. Now, professors are trying to change a campus culture they say hurts achievement and stifles speech.

Harvard University is one of the most difficult schools to gain admission to, with the school turning away some 97 percent of applicants every year.

But once they get in, many of its students skip class and fail to do the reading, according to the Classroom Social Compact Committee, a group of seven faculty members that produced a report on Harvard's classroom culture that has been fueling debate since it was released in January.

When they do show up for class, they are focused on their devices, and are reluctant to speak out. Sometimes it is because they are afraid of sharing ideas that others will disagree with. But often, they have not read enough of the homework to make a meaningful contribution, the report continued.

Rampant grade inflation allows them to coast through anyway, it concluded.

That means many students graduate without having benefited from talking very much with their teachers and peers, and they stay stuck in ideological bubbles, unwilling or unable to engage with challenging ideas...


https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/us/harvard-students-absenteeism.html?smid=em-share

How to Save a Book Festival

The Southern Festival of Books in Nashville has been one of the highlights of October for me for decades. Trump's & Elon's DOGE tried to kill it. The owner of my favorite bookstore helped save it. It'll be back weekend after next. Thank goodness!

"… a festival where tens of thousands of people come together to celebrate books — books of all kinds, for all ages — tells us something about the power of storytelling. Especially in a time of terrible fear and sorrow and vitriol, stories remind us of who we are and of how we belong to one another.

It's too soon to say how long the public arts and humanities, among so many other facets of the public good that are now in profound peril, will survive. Will people part with enough $20 bills to save them forever? Will philanthropic organizations support endangered cultural assets indefinitely? Will a lawsuit by the Federation of State Humanities Councils restore funding until the federal budgeting process returns to normal?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. What I do know is that we need the humanities now, perhaps more than we have ever needed them, because we live in a time when so many of us have forgotten this crucial truth: We are a fangless, clawless, furless species, and we survive only in community."

— Margaret Renkl 

The 37th annual Southern Festival of Books will be held in Nashville Oct. 18-19. As always, it is free and open to the public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/opinion/how-to-save-a-book-festival.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

All the lonely people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxbYPk1MIyw

In 1966, Paul McCartney famously sang of “all the lonely people,” wondering aloud where they come from. Nearly six decades later, their numbers seem only to have increased; as for their origin, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen priest Robert Waldinger has made it a longtime professional concern. “Starting in the nineteen fifties, and going all the way through to today, we know that people have been less and less invested in other people,” he says in the Big Think video above. “In some studies, as many as 60 percent of people will say that they feel lonely much of the time,” a feeling “pervasive across the world, across all age groups, all income groups, all demographics.” (continues)

https://www.openculture.com/2024/01/how-loneliness-is-killing-us-a-primer-from-harvard-psychiatrist-zen-priest-robert-waldinger.html

Banned Books Week

On this first day of Banned Books Week, we consider again the importance of libraries.

https://bit.ly/4lAz2M0