Harvey Morrell

My European bread hot take is that Germany has better bakeries than France.

When I was at Harvard, the sociologist David Riesman took an interest in me and personally arranged my transfer to St. John's College in Santa Fe. At Harvard, I sat in large lecture halls listening to brilliant people talk. At St. John's, I sat around a table with fifteen students reading Euclid, Plato, and Dostoevsky, and we argued about what those texts actually meant. That experience rewired my brain. I learned that understanding doesn't come from being told the answer. It comes from wrestling with hard questions alongside other people who are also wrestling. The tutor at St. John's doesn't lecture. They ask questions. They let the silence sit. Their only role is to ask questions, not to lecture. It’s the practice I've spent my entire career bringing into schools and classrooms. I watched what happened to students, including myself, when the conversation was real and the texts were worthwhile, and I've been sharing this tradition with young people my entire life. Riesman saw something in a working-class kid and pointed me toward a tradition of learning that changed my life. I've been trying to pay that forward ever since.

@JackCarrUSA My dad was in Qui Nhon during Tet back when I was in 6th grade. Scary times

And yes…I was taking notes in Vietnam for the next Tom Reece thriller… Photo is from an underground bunker beneath the floor of a coffee shop in Saigon where the Viet Cong hid weapons in preparation for Tet 1968.

@AndrewHammel1 lol

My "father" and "mother" in Hamburg, 1970, shortly before their mysterious disappearance. I had to take care of Fifi for the rest of her miserable life. Pissed everywhere, that nasty little mutt.

@_Billy_Beck_ @RetroCoast Especially for those of us having to put them back in order.

@hmorrell @RetroCoast That's horrible.

If you ever did this, you lived in the best days of America

@_Billy_Beck_ @ingelramdecoucy That’s because you didn’t have the right recipe… again

@ingelramdecoucy I have never understood the enduring manic appeal of that thing. Before I ever heard it, it was in every popular chord book I saw and I thought, "Man, 'MacArthur Park' must really be something!" ...until I finally heard it. "*That's* it?"

If I had access to a time machine but could only use it once, to go to one time and place to change one thing, I’d without hesitation go back to 1967 and stop Jimmy Webb from writing “MacArthur Park” by whatever means was necessary so I’d never have to listen to it again

@_Billy_Beck_ @RetroCoast I remember when we moved our library to a new building and the crane hoisting one section of the catalog tilted and that section fell off, scattering the cards. Took them almost 6 months to get them in order.

@RetroCoast I was always at least as good with a card catalog as the people who maintained it.

Paul Pelosi would like a word

The FCC's unprecedented review of ABC-Disney’s broadcast licenses shows the need to protect free expression, says Cato’s @dr_inserra. “It is past time for Congress to strip the FCC of its censorial powers,” he writes. ow.ly/wHwB50YSZsh

Alan Jacobs mentions that Bullock was "obviously on Plutarch (who ought to be more widely read today) and what BullocK got from reading the ancients. social.ayjay.org/2026/04/30/cur…

Watching the branches of the tree in my front yard dance and sway in the wind and rain.

@Super70sSports Butch Hobson

Name a third baseman from the 70s or 80s. The first guy who pops in your head. I’ll start:

“The fact that college campuses, once the cornerstone of free expression and open debate, are now among the most intellectually intolerant spaces in America should concern us deeply.” - Ben Sasse

@timstarr2001 P.S. I am also 1.x degrees of separation from McBride. I worked with Clifford Thies, who wrote the article about McBride for The Freeman where McBride said he was Rose Wilder Lane's adopted grandson. 😀

@hmorrell Something like that.

Rose Wilder Lane was the real author of the "Little House" books, and the aunt of Roger MacBride, the 1976 LP candidate for President. I knew one of MacBride's employees, so I had one degree of separation from MacBride, and two from Lane:

@_Billy_Beck_ Same. Glad they haven't.

I still wonder why Google hasn't just wiped-out the Usenet archive.

@GAltringham Himmel Über Berlin

Name a great German movie that isn't Metropolis or M

My intemperate words for American Orbán apologists.

@AlexTran677026 Dr. Zhivago. The opening scenes gave me nightmares.

A tragic love story amidst the turmoil of war in a romantic epic. Can you name this movie? 🤔

@couch_loewe Hilft trotzdem nicht. Halbzeit steht‘s 1:2. 😢