Michael Downs
@michaeldowns.bsky.social
Writer. A few books, plenty of journalism, and a fascination with the song "Sitting on Top of the World." http://michael-downs.net "It is not time that is lacking, only focus." – Zagajewski
"When she came to the house in sweatpants about five sizes too large and her wet hair thrown up in a mess on top of her head I thought, well, she looks about as bright as a root cellar, but she asked me good questions, as a matter of fact." –a #SundaySentence from Virginia Evans' The Correspondent.
"We're the house in the neighborhood that's always fighting, there's always something going on, music's blaring, the cops are being called every week -- that is America." – a #SundaySentence from an interview with National Book Award-winner Jason Mott, published in the Southern Review of Books.
Memory, the whole lying opera of it. – a #SundaySentence from Barry Hannah's story, "Testimony of Pilot," from the book Airships. #booksky
Evidence of my ever-so-brief affair with Dark Agnès. I do miss her.
Malcolm T. North@malcolm-north.bsky.social · 4w agoToday for the feast day of St. Denis, I recommend Michael Downs' story "Dark Agnes: The Head of St. Denis", art by Piotr Kawalski, found in The Savage Sword of Conan, Issue 6 (2024). #SwordandSorcery
... the fierce sun that sparkled the windscreen made Ugwu wonder if he had died and this was what happened after death: an unending journey in a car. – a #SundaySentence from Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun.
#Baltimore deserves a scrapbook like this one-of-a-kind Baltimore Scrapbook, which I wrote about for @bmoreart.bsky.social. bmoreart.com/2026/10/book...
Book Review: Baltimore Scrapbook - BmoreArt
Ed Berlin, riding in the passenger seat of my hatchback, waves his hand at a building near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, signaling that I’m meant to notice the glass-and-steel edifice and dismiss it at th...
bmoreart.com
"She got back to Nsukka in the middle of the afternoon, that still hour when the sun was relentless and even the bees perched in quiet exhaustion." – a #SundaySentence from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun
The @nytimes.com 's best 100 didn't include docs, but OJ Simpson: Made in America makes my list anyway. The Wire (2); Mad Men (3); The Americans (17); Deadwood (24); The Good Place (51); Ted Lasso (75); Reservation Dogs (87); A French Village; OJ: Made in America; Man in the High Castle
Five years ago, thanks to the auspices of Fulbright Poland and Jagiellonian University, we arrived in Kraków for the start of ten months in that remarkable city. We had no idea how our time in Poland would transform our lives. Polska: Dziękujęmy. Dziękujemy z całego serca.
Remembering the comfort this poem by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski —selected by Alice Quinn to run in the New Yorker on Sept 17, 2001 —gave to so many. #NeverForget #September11 www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57095/...
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Try to praise the mutilated world. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and…
poetryfoundation.org
"The Adagio ignites our grief, then lets us go, to deal with its flame. ... Music accomplishes only so much. So much and so little." Thoughts from this book about Barber's Adagio, which twenty-five years ago became an artistic outlet for a grieving country.
The Saddest Music Ever Written
simonandschuster.com
Today's my first day teaching the Novel: Structure, Form, and Style for Johns Hopkins. We'll dig deeply into these novels. This will be fun. #BookSky
"Jolene" is a live-forever song. Also impressive is "I Will Always Love You," her professional break-up song from Porter Wagoner. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XSj...
Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You [Official Music Video]
YouTube video by Dolly Parton
youtube.com
Michael Downs@michaeldowns.bsky.social · 2mo agoThank the universe that we for eighty years we had a Dolly Parton to break barriers, speak truths, and write exquisite songs. dollyparton.com
Thank the universe that we for eighty years we had a Dolly Parton to break barriers, speak truths, and write exquisite songs. dollyparton.com
Dolly Parton | Official Website
The official website and historical archive of Dolly Parton.
dollyparton.com
For a long time they sat together without moving, as if any movement might let escape from them the strange and terrible thing that they held between them in a single grasp. -- a #SundaySentence from John Wiliam's Stoner. Hard to choose from this one
On a recent trip to the Oregon coast we watched clear spring water flow over beach sand to the Pacific, creating these amazing designs. So much to see and imagine in these geographies.
"It's a bad habit, talking to the dead." – a #SundaySentence from Stewart O'Nan's A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, which he once described as a "Christian existentialist horror" novel. #BookSky
Sometimes you read sentences that make you want to sit down and start writing and give up all in the same moment. Here's one.
Jo Lloyd but jolly 🌍🐎@jolloyds.bsky.social · 3mo agoSure the eclipse was good, but have you seen this sentence from Jon Kalman Stefánsson? "that is why the sea is salty"
Sure the eclipse was good, but have you seen this sentence from Jon Kalman Stefánsson? "that is why the sea is salty"
What a gift to hold this novel, just arrived from @regalhouse.bsky.social and how great it will be to crack its spine and again be in the good company of Skip Hays, who is much missed. #BookSky
Playing bluegrass music, it’s like a portal back to my childhood, back before I knew anything dirty about the earth. – a #SundaySentence from a NYTimes interview with @billystrings.com
Billy Strings Escaped the Darkness. He’s Playing to Not Go Back. (Gift Article)
The genre-straddling musician could have been lost to addiction and trauma. Instead he’s filling arenas.
nytimes.com
Twenty-first-century road trip: during a restroom stop, I'm facing a urinal and my phone–sinister, insistent–says, "Proceed to the route."
Today marks 80 years since a senator from Arkansas led the creation of the #Fulbright program, an effort in global cultural exchange meant to help people across the globe learn to better negotiate their inevitable misunderstandings. Thank goodness this year didn't also result in the program's end.
House Rejects Amendment to Eliminate Fulbright Funding
On July 15, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to H.R. 8595 that would have eliminated funding for the Fulbright Program by a vote of 79-348. To those who spent the...
fulbright.org
She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas. She walked like a warm room full of smoke. – two for #SundaySentence from James McBride's The Good Lord Bird
No #SundaySentence from me this week, but here is my dog pal, Raven (name evoking the poem), performing her best trick in a secondhand bookstore in Montana.
"What do you remember from that day when the circus fell to ash?" 7.6.1944 – eighty-two years ago - a circus tent burned in Hartford, killing nearly 170 people. In my book about the fire, The Greatest Show, a character notes that "the redeeming currency of old pain is drama."
These words were written months before we came to understand the historically unscrupulous income that came to the president in his first year of gaming our government to his benefit.
Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 4mo ago"The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark". A gift link here: lnkd.in/dAYq6ydz
