michaeldowns.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

This book became a teenager today. Pretty soon it'll need to get a job and help out around the house.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Thank you, @vanhollen.senate.gov. Please convey this same message to your colleagues on the other side of the Senate aisle.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

"We began talking about love." – a #SundaySentence from the opening of Chekhov's "About Love." I posted this sentence earlier this week in a different context. It remains the best sentence I read and for me, one of the all-time greats.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Readers, enjoy this charming tale about books, travel, creativity and whimsy. And yup, that byline belongs to the love of my life. Good work, @sheriven.bsky.social!

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Great news, @matthewjohnauthor.bsky.social. Congrats! Well deserved.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Having served as a #Fulbright in Poland, I can't imagine my hosts there doing me dirty this way. What an embarrassment. Cut elsewhere if you have to cut. FFS, be good hosts, @usstatedept.bsky.social.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

The real problem isn't Trump, it's that half of the voting public believe he's the best choice for America.

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

Dear Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.

submitted 6 days ago • 462 comments

A disgusting and shameful day. May the free world forgive us.

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

President Zelenskyy was the adult in the room. Trump and Vance were merely schoolyard bullies. So ashamed for my country-- and not only today.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Ways to offer support. A thread.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

We open our short-form summer contest categories on March 1. We want to be amazed at how you abracadabra words into magic and maybe feel a little jealous of how you do that. Check out the winners of our winter contest here: baltimorereview.org/winter_2025/...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Happy Tłusty Czwartek to all our Polish friends! To celebrate Fat Thursday, @sheriven.bsky.social and I opted for raspberry jelly stuffing -- pączek malinowy -- as close as we could get to a traditional Polish pączki here at Baltimore's Fenwick Bakery. Smacznego!

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Readers, enjoy this charming tale about books, travel, creativity and whimsy. And yup, that byline belongs to the love of my life. Good work, @sheriven.bsky.social!

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Constance Garnett's translation of Chekhov's "About Love" starts in 1st person, narrator unnamed. "We began talking about love." In the last graph, the story goes 3rd person. But I can't find any commentary on this. A flub? Something else?

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

"The Conversation" is the Gene Hackman role and film that most surprised me. It's a tight-rope performance -- and for an amateur he delivers some nuanced saxophone playing.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot 38 million children and people would still vote for me.”

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

This podcast is like a fresh breeze after a hurricane – an intelligent discussion with journalist Maritsa Georgiou, former Montana Sen. Jon Tester, & guests. A necessary addition to the national discourse. Do yourself a favor & give a listen. groundedpodcast.podbean.com

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Dear @vanhollen.senate.gov: During my time as a Fulbright Scholar in Poland, the dictator Putin invaded Ukraine. News since-Bucha war crimes, kidnapping children, murdering Navalny-underscore Putin's status as a pariah. That my government now coos at him makes my skin crawl. Please support Ukraine.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

More than 100 Ukrainian writers and cultural figures have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine 3 years ago. By reading their work, we ensure their stories live on. Read our blog on the legacies of Victoria Amelina and Volodymyr Vakulenko: pen.org/as-long-as-a...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

One way to commemorate the end of the third year of Russia’s senseless, criminal war against Ukraine is to read the work of Ukrainians about it. Vika did not live to see the publication of this book, since she was killed by a Russian missile. But we can see her in her words.

submitted 10 days ago • 45 comments

Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he had not prayed. -- a #SundaySentence from Joyce's ULYSSES

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Recalling 2/24/2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, gathering with thousands of people protesting outside the Russian consulate in Kraków. We know who started the war. It wasn't Ukraine. #MoreTruth

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

"More truth" is an excellent proposition. Thank you, President Zelensky, for the suggestion.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

"I could weep over how badly I've begun to write!" "Come now," Chekhov explained. "It's wonderful to begin by writing badly!" Then he began to argue that ability is not talent. Able writers begin well because ability is knowing how to adapt oneself, whereas talent suffers seeking to reveal itself.

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

"School choice becomes a calculation: Are they willing to endure long, stress-filled journeys to get to the best school for them?" Compelling reporting by @lizbowie.bsky.social and @thebaltimorebanner.com revealing consequences when a dysfunctional transportation system combines with school choice.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Reading about Russia/U.S. meetings in which they discuss Ukraine's fate without involving Ukraine resounds with echoes of Molotov-Ribbentrop, the pact by which Russia & Germany divided up Poland pre-WWII. Naturally, no one consulted the Poles. Slava Ukraini. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Pyotr Leontich filled his glass from the decanter with a trembling hand and drank it off hurriedly, greedily, with repulsion, then poured out a second glass and then a third. – a #SundaySentence from Chekhov's "Anna on the Neck"

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

ALA, AASL decry U.S. Defense Department censorship of schools and libraries on military installations Read the full statement: www.ala.org/news/2025/02... #ShowUpForOurLibraries

submitted 19 days ago • 6 comments

If they're going to destroy this country, let's make it grueling work. Let's make sure in 100 years kids know that regular people went down screaming and thrashing, enraged, stubborn, tireless, sand in gears, sticks in wheels, that millions of us stood in front of tanks and said fuck you, make me.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Thanks for the chuckle, @nytimes.com .

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Oh, the romance of doing taxes with the wyf on Valentine's Day morn. ❤️

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. Trans. wapo.st/41e87Pl

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

What a pleasure to see someone bring immense craft and skill, cultivated over years, to a project dear to his heart. Real page-turning stuff here. Thanks for this work, @patrickzircher.bsky.social

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

She was 71. She relied on a U.S.-funded hospital for oxygen that closed with Trump's USAID purge. She died by suffocation. We've become such a petty and cruel nation.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Forced displacement of a people is a war crime (see Stalin). The Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of Mexico (see Associated Press). A president is no king (see the Constitution).

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Bottle tree in Baltimore.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Three doctors came, consulted together, and drove away. -- a #SundaySentence from Chekhov, revealing -- with his brilliant efficiency -- a hopeless prognosis, in "The Bishop."

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments