Homer is the poet who defines classical Greece as a culture. Plough magazine asks:

If England has Shakespeare, Spain has Cervantes, Italy has Dante, and Russia has Pushkin, then who do we have? Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity?

The article authors suggest Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Herman Melville, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among other writers.

There is much conversation today on X on the subject. I've seen proposals of Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, and, quite cleverly, Walt Disney or Uncle Remus as America's definitive narrative author.

This, of course, assumes that America has a Homer. Within the Plough article, Jane Clark Scharl argues that there is no American national epic equivalent to Homer yet.

But if I had to decide, I'd go with T. Greer's response:

This is the only correct response.

The closest thing American culture ever had to a text like the Odyssey and Iliad… was the King James Bible. https://t.co/xUxuCwkjCi

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) June 17, 2026

The language of this text that was commonplace in American homes has shaped the American English language more than, I think, any other book.

How would you answer the question? Who do you think is America's equivalent or approximate Homer?

Image: Kelly Library

This coffee pot and milk jug are so cute! They look like a pair of penguins on the march.

Various websites indicate that they are of Soviet origin--specifically the Oktyabrsky Porcelain Factory in what is now the Bashkortostan republic within Russia during the 1960s. They can sometimes be found with match cups and saucers.

-via Soviet Visuals

American stands at two hundred and fifty years since its independence. There are those who say that our best days are behind us; that we cannot accomplish great things anymore. Where is the next moon landing, atomic bomb, or squatty potty?

Dennis Lee, a patriot and writer for The Takeout, reassures us of our innately Promethean spirit. He tested the lore that one can produce blue hot dogs by boiling them in blue-colored (and presumably Smurf-flavored) Gatorade. Some experimentation was necessary, as hot dogs float and thus must be continuously rotated during boiling to produce a smooth coloration.

But the discovery works.

Two Australian paddleboarders rescued a stranded wallaby after it was swept out to sea pic.twitter.com/PyPe9Ql3S9

— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) June 15, 2026

Nine News in Australia reports that two men were paddelboarding off the coast of East Grippsland in Victoria when they spotted a small furry creature struggling in the water. They were about 300 meters (176 Quarks stood end-to-end) off the beach, so it was an unusual sighting.

Huwan Medcalf and Harrison Mog found that the animal was a wallaby, which is a marsupial species native to Australia and New Guinea. They placed it on a board and brought it back to shore where it lay stunned for a while before starting to move on its own.

The Guardian reports that during a recent staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, an orange cat wandered on stage, seeking attention from the actors playing the lead roles. Given the physical actions on stage, I think it's during Act 5, Scene 3 in which the star-crossed lovers die. To his credit, the actor who played Romeo remained still after death (the character, not the actor) even as the cat played with his hair.

At the conclusion of this performance in Izmir, Turkey, the cast from the Imperial Russian Ballet Company came on stage to make their bows. The cat joined them.

-via Dailymeow

Alexander Mercieca is a high school principal, weightlifter, and certified CrossFit trainer in Huntsville, Alabama. He loves listening to and playing hip-hop, hard rock, and heavy metal music. He's a multitasker (the quality probably comes from being a principal), so Mercieca sometimes performs heavy lifts while playing music. Here, for example, he plays "Girls" by the Beastie Boys with one hand while benchpressing a barbell with the other.

Dough Lisa is a bread artist whose sourdough work has become a viral sensation. Pictured above is one of her most recent creations: a groovy-looking loaf with woven threads of tie-dye dough covered with an outer black shell.

You can see her full process video here. It has eleven colors inside. The results when she cuts it open are extraordinary. It's like a human brain that's been drenched in the art of the 1970s.

Dr. Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte is a professor of applied physics at the University of Navarra in Spain. He asked 573 people assembled in a schoolyard to roam randomly through the space. Within a few seconds, 80% of them were moving in a counterclockwise direction.

Was this because of a perceived group preference? No. Dr. Echeverría-Huarte performed the test on solitary participants, and about 75% of them moved counterclockwise. This trend persisted across 40 experiments.

A recent article in the New York Times explores the phenomenon and its potential causes. It's clear that left or right-handedness does not correlate with this movement. Nor is it socially conditioned, as young children strongly exhibit counterclockwise movement as well as adults.

Whatever might be the root cause the movement, it will be helpful for architects and other professions that make use of crowd dynamics. I occasionally visit the largest convenience store in the world, which is a masterpiece of architecture designed for crowd movement. An awareness of the counterclockwise tendency could optimize such designs.

-via Althouse | Photo: Sheila Brown

The soft, rolling melody of "Fields of Gold" is among British singer Sting's most famous songs. Here's a cover performance by The Petersens, a family band that is based in Bronson, Missouri. With a fiddle, a mandolin, a banjor, a gutiar, a double bass, and a dobro, this group offers bluegrass, folk, and traditional hymns.

The Petersens also present a folk version of "Dreams" by the Cranberries that is as uplifting as when Dolores O'Riordan first sang it.

Bowling balls can be quite heavy. The United States Bowling Congress requires that they weigh between 10 and 16 pounds. That can be too much for people with limited hand strength or finger coordination, so it's fortunate that the governing organization for that sport accepts adaptive balls.

These balls made by different companies have retractable handles. As soon as the player releases the ball, the handle snaps inside. The ball can then roll down the lane with minimal distruption from the site of the handle.

-via Massimo

William Pool of Bolivar, Missouri passed away at the age of 101. He enlisted in the US Army in 1941 and served throughout World War II, including participating in the Battle of the Bulge and the long Allied offensive that ended in Austria.

Pool was a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, a fraternal organization that honors ancestors who fought for that side of the Civil War. In the 161 years since the conclusion of that war, the organization is in the hands of later descendants, but Pool's father was, literally, a Civil War soldier.

KY3 News reports that Pool's father, Charles Parker Pool, was born in 1844. He served in the 6th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was 80 years old when his son, William Pool, was born in January of 1925.

Who was the last son of a Confederate veteran? What was Calvin Robertson Crane, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 102. Like Pool, Crane was a combat veteran of World War II.

-via Oliver Jia

Sometimes imaginative play can go too far.

Andy Sahlstrom, an artist in Brooklyn, calls his site "Kids Toys, Adult Issues." At Shampoooty, he offers custom toys that parody the Little Tikes aesthetics marketed toward preschoolers. But despite their small sizes, pastel colors, and gently rounded contours, they're made for adults with a very dark sense of humor.

This is going to be a hard sell when I talk to my library director on Monday, but at least there's precedent for professional wrestling in libraries. I mean, there's always been amateur, unsanctioned, and unscheduled wrestling in libraries. But, more importantly, there's already a system in place for wrestling as a form of event programming.

The Associated Press reports that Lucha Libro is an organization that brings theatrical, Mexican-style wrestling performances to public libraries. "Libro" is the Spanish word for "book," so in addition to physical performances, wrestlers share reading recommendations with patrons. Many of the wrestlers have personas inspired by reading and libraries, sucha s Llama Jack, whose appearance is taken from the Llama Llama picture book series.

@badacosplay27 shares this photo of an inventive mashup cosplay. It blends the transformed Denji from the anime and manga franchise Chainsaw Man and the much more kawaii vocaloid character of Hatsune Miku.

And if you don't understand half of the words in that sentence, then you've probably made better life choices than I have.

Researchers and engineers at the General Robotics Lab at Duke University have developed the Argus--a robot that can move in any direction. It doesn't have a back, front, or sides. It can move in any direction at once. Its central design principle is dynamic symmetry, which means that its propusive force can apply in any direction.

The video suggests sea urchins as an analogy. The Argus has 20 legs and 20 cameras, so it can move and see in any direction. If a leg or camera--or even a few of them--fail, the Argus can continue forward relentlessly hunting you across the lifeless postapocalyptic landscape of our futures. It's an unstoppable juggernaut.

-via David Thompson