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I finally got to see this version of Hamlet, the 2015 filming of National Theatre Live‘s production starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. I had intended to see it twice before, but I had been unable to attend either time (even after buying tickets to one of them). I had a strong sense of […]
A few years ago, the boys and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical fiction book that looks at the “disappearance” of the Roman Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) from Britain in the second century AD. While we enjoyed the book (and the 2011 movie version, The Eagle), we also looked […]
I received word that David Womack, a true mentor and influence on my life, passed away on July 11, 2018. For someone that had such a huge, giving heart, it’s a sad irony that it was that physical organ that failed him. For a few semesters when I was in college, I lived at his […]
“[G]reat power involves great responsibility.” Sounds like something from Spiderman, but it’s part of a line from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s undelivered Jefferson Day Speech. Coincidentally, Jefferson Day was officially recognized by FDR beginning in 1938. Anyway…the speech can be found at The American Presidency Project. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia the day before this […]
I wanted to pass on a few of the books and movies the boys and I read and watched this semester for school (6th and 8th grades). My goal was to tie in reading with our U.S. history class as much as I could. This isn’t all we covered, but a few of these were […]
I’m happy to report my wife’s book has been translated into Polish! Which is funny since she gives me grief about the books I read from Central European authors. I’ve proposed a book tour of Poland, but I doubt our budget can handle it at the moment. You can dream, right? Since I’m talking about […]
Contra Mundum Press has made available some excerpts from the forthcoming book Black Renaissance by Miklós Szentkuthy, the second volume in his St. Orpheus Breviary series. The samples can be found at this link. Needless to say, I’m excited and looking forward to the release. The sample contains the beginning of the introductory essay by […]
I have yet to read Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, but I fully intend to soon. In the meantime I have been keeping up with her Twitter account @EmilyRCWilson, where she selects passages from the poem and compares various translations and explains why she chose the words/phrases she did for these selections. It’s a […]
The Minutemen: Mike Watt, D. Boon, George Hurley I owe a debt of gratitude to Dangerous Minds for their post Minutemen Unplugged: Punk Legends’ Rollicking Acoustic Jam on Cable Access TV, 1985. Their post covers the important points of the short performance, although when I saw them in Dallas earlier that year (1985) their set […]
I received a nice note from a teacher in Zimbabwe (“somewhat isolated from the academic world,” as they put it) commenting that my posts on Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War has helped them and it has paid off for their students. That note, along with other nice comments from students reading the book and finding help […]