Five Amazing Pieces You Will Love This Friday (Oct. 27)

A Relationship with Silence. Memories of the Mormon Church. Adopting Peanut. Portraiture. Adventure to Tashkent.

Friends,

We have some can’t-miss pieces this Friday.

I hope you enjoy them.

As always, please support these writers by reading their work and spreading the word.

Thank you, Ben

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Susie Mawhinney at A Hill and I shares her love of “ungodly hours” before dawn. In the quiet of the morning, she treats us to a private peek of her relationship with silence—as a young girl through adulthood—and how it leads to memorable communions with nature. She writes of the mornings spent with her mother: 

But for our whispered chit chat those mornings were completely silent. I never questioned the hours that passed as we sat in the kitchen waiting for the light of dawn to flood through the four huge sash windows. I remember only that there were many of them and it was the time of day I loved best. 

A tender piece by all means worth reading. 

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Amanda Cessor at

The Hallowed Wilds

shares rich memories of her baptism and relationship with Mormonism and its Church.

She writes:

I remember how the fabric of the dress felt and sounded under my small hands. The polyester made that hissing sound; like when I scratched my nail against my cousin’s trampoline in Utah. Zzzpt. Zzzpt. Zzzpt.

I remember feeling special when all of my family came to see me get the gift of the Holy Ghost. I remember watching the water fill up the off-white tiled walls of the baptismal font and testing the temperature to make sure it wouldn’t be too hot for my little feet.

I loved Amanda’s writing style and introspection.

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Bring your tissues to Poemia

Nojesuittricks

for The Peanut Gallery, the beautiful story of the fated adoption of stubborn little Peanut, the dog who one day arrived at the author’s home.¹

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Robert Naranjo, Potter and Vietnam Veteran. Source: @LarryKerschberg

What sort of son would I be if I didn’t dip just once into the well of nepotism and feature my father’s new substack, Kerschberg Photography

Larry Kerschberg

?

I also happen to really like these portraits, such as the one above. I think you will, too.

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There’s nothing like an M.E. Rothwell-led Cosmographia adventure to an exotic destination — this time Tashkent, the capital of modern-day Uzbekistan and the most populous city (3 million) in Central Asia. Rothwell writes of one of the mysteries of the very old, so-called “City of Stones”:

Tashkent is old. Older than London, older than Baghdad, older than Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, and most of the other cities we often think of as among the great bastions of modern civilization. . . . Tashkent is considered one of the four most probable locations for the legendary Stone Tower, said to be equidistant from Europe and China, mentioned in Ptolemy’s Geographia and other ancient sources.

As with every original Rothwell, you will go on a deep dive into the city’s history, as well as how it has been portrayed in art, verse, cartography, literature, and photography. Cosmographia is always a must-read, and this journey to Central Asia is no exception.

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1. As an aside, I’ll take a moment to encourage adopting elder statesmen, as I call “senior” dogs. They will change your life, teach you lessons, play like puppies, and take you out regularly — a salve for you both, I promise.