Weekend Links: Austen, Autism, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Simple Girl: The Improbable Solace of 'Mansfield Park'":

Usually, though, the most arresting scenes in Austen are revelatory, when, for instance, the elegant Mr. Elliot is shown to be cold and self-interested, or Mr. Darcy is exposed as the mysterious savior of the Bennet family. Mansfield Park is weirder. Its best moments are not thunderclaps of discovered malfeasance or heroism, but subtle thickenings in the dynamics of the story, small shifts which are easy to overlook, but in fact are such carefully layered moments as to be eerie, even sublime. One doesn’t often turn to Austen for a chill up the spine, but in Mansfield Park, her Georgian clarity is commingled with dread. In a number of these key moments, particularly those in the three scenes I think of as “the theatricals,” something repellent, even demonic, distends the novel’s porcelain skin.

"Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain":

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions.

"I love you, California!":

I like living in a place that is bigger than me. Obviously most places other than a broom closet fit that qualification, but California is so much bigger than me: I will never master it. I will never visit everywhere I want to go. I will never know it by heart or discover all its secrets. It will always be wild and mysterious and grand, and somehow just out of my reach.

"Royals Round-Up, August 22, 2014: I have an unreasonable love for the Fug Girls' regular round-up of royals. Especially when they do Prince George's dialogue. Like so: "Give me that butterfly now, Daddy, please, it's time for me TO EAT IT. THANK YOU."


Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell