Dave O'Hara

An early morning hike with my class in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Beautiful, dense vegetation, and the songs of howler monkeys in the trees above. ⁦@AugiePhilosophy⁩ @AugustanaSD⁩ #environmentalphilosophy #teachoutdoors

@D_M_Cornell Soon those candles will become little balls of wax.

Happy 430th Birthday René Descartes. The Father of Modern Philosophy. Here is a genuine photo of him, recently unearthed by archivists, taken in preparation for this very day, back in 1640. (He looks pleased with himself because he’s just finished a draft of the Meditations).

@prairieguy2016 At the Rowe Sanctuary last week I found a great little booklet on crane postures and what they signal. There’s so much to learn and to love about these birds. Thanks for sharing your photos!

The first of our Two’fer Tuesday “Gangly Cranes”. On 1 hand Sandhill Cranes look awkward, prehistoric, & kinda scary when they’re coming in to land. On the other they are also graceful & beautiful. prairiewanderlust.etsy.com #photography #nature #birds #cranes #nebraska #migration

@MadisonProgram @McCormickProf Delighted to see my grad advisor’s child is one of these fellows!

The James Madison Program is proud to announce its fellows for the upcoming 2026-27 academic year: jmp.princeton.edu/news/2026/jame…

Same

@ae_stallings My Itzá teacher once showed me how to use a similar plant to make sutures.

What?? How cool is this!:

We need to pray and find time for moments of silence and reflection, in order to quiet the frenzy of doing and saying, of messages, reels and chats, and to delve deeper into and savor the beauty of truly and genuinely being together with God and one another. #ApostolicJourney

When Evelyn Waugh was asked by Nancy Mitford how he managed his fan mail, he replied…

Reading books is like a balanced meal.

When salt and sugar were rare, our species learned to gulp them down when we found them. As they became more abundant, we now consume too much of each. So it is with aural and visual learning. The abundance of video is like coke and Doritos for the mind.

Mostly I am sketching for myself, but I also sketch in the bespoke books I am handwriting for my grandchildren. They’re still too young to read, but someday these will be theirs. Here’s one page from my granddaughter’s book. She’s one of my favorite students!

If I think about my sketches as artwork, each one feels deficient. But if I think about each one as practice for the next one, I see my mistakes as chances to learn and improve. So I try to sketch every day, and as the sketchbooks fill, my ability to observe grows.

We are about to learn who understands what speech, thinking, and teaching is. Pay attention.

Ocean Vuong says you cultivate metaphor by looking at the world. Poetry is the receipt of your observation. Beautiful interview with @david_perell

Apropos of nothing the classics department at Syracuse has been slated for elimination.

Also, I took the photo on the dust jacket of Doug Anderson’s book. A small contribution, but one that makes me very happy as an artist.

These two are also my advisor and my friend, and they’re two of the kindest and clearest thinkers I know.

We have reached that point of living with a dog where I cannot wrap a gift without every single piece of tape having some black fur attached to it.

Students who took notes by hand scored ~28% higher on conceptual questions than laptop note-takers. Writing forces your brain to process and compress ideas instead of copying them.

A few photos from my “classrooms” in Greece last week. In some of the best places (a small monastery I often visit, private homes, e.g.) I take no photos, but these ones i am glad to share. davoh.org/2026/03/17/tea…

“no bad sketches”: this reminds me that the very idea of “sketch” has its historical origins (for example in Pisanello) as an instrument of learning. So, what does a hunting hound *really* look like, by contrast with what the Florentine studio’s model book shows? The sketch is a way for the artist to make that discovery. It can still be that for us - we whose minds are so heavily loaded by layers of preconceived images about the way things appear and even are…