Not Writ but Read

Because reading other people's things is often more convenient than rambling on at length, a couple of recent pieces that ought to merit more than a passing glance:

• My friend and colleague Jenny Goldstein has revived her already beautiful and articulate Rooting for Fruit. Its newest incarnation boasts new graphics and colors, but more importantly, Jenny is back writing. Taking wild sourdough starter as her - pardon me - starting point, her latest piece turns on the last of the summer's mulberries. If ever words could be appetizing, hers might be.
• First by way of True Hoop a long while ago (only a little more than a week, really, but already the distant past; Heraclitus' river flows ever more swiftly), and more recently by way of my mother, a recent New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell tries to work through the relationship of genius to precocity. Need genius declare itself at a young age? Or can geniuses also round into form over a period of time? Flattering myself, I might say that this perhaps, perhaps way in which I tend to write myself into things speaks to the necessity of taking time; I do not often speak a tripping speech. I'm also reminded of a piece my friend Jordan passed along in the Chronicle: reflections on the cultures of publish or perish now rampant on university campuses.
• And as a last aside, a piece from the London Review of Books on the fate of English football. I wish I had a more articulate response - beyond a mere nod in its direction - but it's been day that wears heavy at the seams, and it's to bed soon.

A postscript to yesterday's ramble can be found here - I'm still trying to work through this question of modes. Perhaps this: If, following Protagoras, man is the measure of all things, then we might see the world measured relative to ourselves. And if we tend to think of our cars, our clothes, our things, as extensions of ourselves, then it might be possible to measure the world by the size of one's car (tempting, no?). Getting back on a bike changes that: What was once a yardstick is now a ruler a hand's span in length, and the world is suddenly large and heavy.