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
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 · 3w 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 · last mo.Sure 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 · 2mo ago"The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark". A gift link here: lnkd.in/dAYq6ydz
What I learned at #ZootownFestival: 1. #TedeschiTrucks always deliver, even to those of us far from the stage. 2. Big dang binoculars justify the effort to bring them. 3. I'll forget the bad food and long remember Tedeschi shredding her guitar and baring her soul on "Love Has Something Else to Say."
The cool night air blesses my face, the stars shine brighter than ever, and the near-full moon has tears in its eyes. - a #SundaySentence from The Night is Not For You, a novel by @emanquotah.bsky.social
More than 20 years ago, my wife and gave me an ash sapling for my birthday, and we planted it in our Montana front yard. Aphids can kill ash saplings. So I spent much time on a step ladder with soapy water, brushing aphids from one leaf, then another. There's no tree I love more than this one.
Embarking on a writing project involving "Sitting on Top of the World." If you're a Spotifier, follow my playlist as I keep adding versions of this remarkable song .... open.spotify.com/playlist/6rk...
My Li'l All n All
Playlist · mdowns2014 · 22 items · 1 saves
open.spotify.com
In the primeval forests of Poland, bison fend off wolves. The video is only a year old, but watching it is akin to looking back to something ancient. notesfrompoland.com/2026/06/15/v...
Video captures wolves attacking bison in Poland for first time
notesfrompoland.com
I have an inkling of how the NY Knicks feel today. A few words of mine are a #SundaySentence.
Carol Brisebois@carolbrisebois.bsky.social · 3mo ago#SundaySentence (s) She is both history and now. Her unhappiness travels through time, feels palpable yet is enigmatic, beyond comfort or rescue because she is paint on a wall. "Report" essay, The Missouri Review ~ Michael Downs @michaeldowns.bsky.social
"...she has ambitions, an embarrassing thing for any woman, but particularly for her, who has a magpie's education from the College of Whatever Happened to Be on Father's Bookshelf..." – a #SundaySentence from Sabina Murray's "Fish," reimagining the life of British adventurer Mary Kingsley.
An important read from a columnist in Baltimore.
Leslie Gray Streeter@lesliegraystreeter.bsky.social · 3mo agoICE detained people at my kid's school today, shaking him so much that he begged me to bring him home, but to bring his passport so he could prove he's an American. They are coming for us all. And now my kid knows. I hate this. www.thebanner.com/opinion/colu...
Embarking on a writing project involving "Sitting on Top of the World." If you're a Spotifier, follow my playlist as I keep adding versions of this remarkable song .... open.spotify.com/playlist/6rk...
My Li'l All n All
Playlist · mdowns2014 · 22 items · 1 saves
open.spotify.com
" 'I prefer a living creature,” says Rumpelstiltskin, ‘to all the treasures in the world.” — Sabrina Orah Mark, “Rumple. Stilt. And Skin.”
Rumple. Stilt. And Skin. by Sabrina Orah Mark
August 15, 2019 – Lately I have been hurting people I love with my writing.
theparisreview.org
