NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( â it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [The Marginalian]( [Welcome] Hello {NAME}! This is the midweek edition of [The Marginalian]( by Maria Popova â one piece resurfaced from the fifteen-year archive as timeless uplift for heart, mind, and spirit. If you missed last week's archival resurrection â Rilke on the lonely patience of creative work â you can catch up [right here](. And if my labor of love enriches your life in any way, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( â it remains free and ad-free and alive thanks to reader patronage. If you already donate: I appreciate you more than you know. [FROM THE ARCHIVE | The Rabbit Box: A Most Unusual Vintage Childrenâs Book for Grownups Celebrating the Mystery of Life and the Magic of Falling in Love]( 1970, poet, playwright, and former priest Joseph Pintauro teamed up with artist Norman Laliberté on a marvelous limited-edition boxed set titled The Rainbow Box, containing four childrenâs books for grownups, each dedicated to a season and full of playful and poignant fragmentary meditations on love, loss, war, peace, loneliness, communion â in other words, the emotional kaleidoscope of life itself. Dedicated to spring was [The Rabbit Box]( ([public library]( â a most unusual lens on themes both of the time (the dawn of the environmental movement, the anti-war movement) and timeless (love, peace, the meaning of the human experience), equal parts strange and spectacular. What emerges is a poem, a love letter, an elegy for Mother Earth, an incantation against war, and above all a vibrant invitation to aliveness. Lalibertéâs art and design are as striking as Pintauroâs writing â haunting found photographs of children and lovers and soldiers become visual metaphors for the very polarities Pintauro explores in his breathtaking text, which Laliberté renders in beautiful hand-lettering. The weirdness and wonderfulness of the story, at first so strange it renders one unable to understand where it is going, converge to remind us of Gertrude Steinâs memorable observation: [âIf you enjoy it, you understand it.â]( The book is divided into several subtle âchapters,â each eulogizing â or perhaps elegizing â a particular object of wistful affection. Pintauroâs luminous lamentation for Mother Earth is especially moving â doubly so today, nearly half a century later, as weâre facing our part in the destruction of a benevolent planet that has given us nothing but unconditional nourishment. But the most beautiful part of the book explores the transcendent magic of falling and staying in love: Complement [The Rabbit Box]( which is long out of print but well worth the hunt, with [The Magic Box]( the part of the set dedicated to autumn and celebrating the invigorating beauty of the cycle of life and death. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving
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KINDRED READINGS: [The Magic Box: A Whimsical Vintage Children's Book for Grownups About Life, Death, and How To Be More Alive Every Day]( * * * [To Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro's Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent]( * * * [Things to Look Forward to: An Illustrated Celebration of Living with Presence in Uncertain Times, Disguised as a Love Letter to the Future]( * * * [The Well of Being: An Extraordinary Children's Book for Grownups about the Art of Living with Openhearted Immediacy]( * * * A SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE PROJECT: [Uncommon Presents from the Past: Gifts for the Science-Lover and Nature-Ecstatic in Your Life, Benefitting the Nature Conservancy]( [---]( You're receiving this email because you subscribed on TheMarginalian.org (formerly BrainPickings.org). This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a hand-picked piece worth revisiting from my 15-year archive.
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