Wednesday, December 18, 2024

A blog by any other name

 When Eric Hoffer wondered whether he was slipping in old age, he began a journal. 

I wanted to find out if the necessity to write something significant every day would revive my flagging alertness to the first, faint stirrings of new ideas.

 

He recalled the sluice box he’d used as a prospector. What would happen if he searched for ideas instead of for gold?

I have taken several stabs at calling this collection of notes something other than a blog. I’d thought it might be a concatenation. It might be a sluice box.

• Source: Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath; New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Capturing 'the youthful soul'

  Maybe it was yesterday’s note on a 15-year-old farmer in England that made me think of Denis Johnson, who liked stories that “ speak to th...

  • When Willa Cather's life began
     Willa Cather had a maxim: “Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember.” She liked what the Greeks called  anamnesis , ...
  • After the election
      People who are disappointed by elections ought to be careful about what they say — not out of fear of tyrants but out of concern for sprea...
  • Anthony Griffin: 'The Water Cries'
     Anthony Griffin set out to answer a couple of simple research questions: How many auction houses sold enslaved people in Galveston, Texas? ...