Morning Belz, Aug. 23

Art.

An absorbing look at Parmigianino’s Madonna — NYT
Teaching Afghan women about Duchamp’s urinal — BBC*
Poll: 72% of Americans support mask mandates — USA Today
Biden mostly preserves Trump’s immigration policy — Noah Smith
Farm-tech pioneer Indigo’s stumbles and adjustments — WSJ**
Flooding west of Nashville kills at least 21 — Tennesseean
Reminder to be skeptical even of oft-cited scholarship — JSMP

*Note the way one of the women shakes her head in disbelief. The clip is from Adam Curtis’s “Bitter Lake,” a 2015 BBC documentary that I haven’t watched but looks good and is available on Amazon Prime.

**The convenience and reliability of the local grain elevator remains, for now, undefeated.

Quote
“It's this sense that we're eating decomposition. You could call it death. To me it's a taste of that, but a promise of something delicious. So I think it's almost a subconscious way of being prepared for death, and facing our own mortality. And for me that analogy, of, really a death, a decomposition, creating this wonderful flavor, it’s a promise of something better. I experience that over and over again when I look at cheese, when I smell cheese, and then when I look at the microbial ecology of cheese. That’s the wonder for me, that it’s a promise of life beyond death.” — Sister Noella Marcellino

Morning Belz comes out most weekdays and is written by Adam Belz, a former newspaper reporter who lives just outside Chattanooga, Tenn. Hope you benefit from it. Please shoot me a note if you have suggestions, ideas or corrections, share it with anyone you think might enjoy it, and please check out Scuffed News on YouTube. You can support that work, and this, with your money on Patreon.