I’ve been reading Andrew Hui’s The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries and the pictures in the book include plates showing Montaigne’s chateau tower and the inscriptions in the tower library. All of which reminded me of Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House in Carmel. I toured it twice when living near it and enjoyed both […]
Category: Miscellaneous
And now for something completely different… The Boise area has surprised me with its vibrant music scene. It might not get many of the ‘big names’ coming through, but I’m enjoying the ones that do make it here. I wanted to make a few notes on my favorite shows of the year. Favorites The Lemon […]
Well, that was a long silence, wasn’t it? I have moved my site over from Blogger. I took the first steps a couple of years ago but didn’t follow up on the maintenance/correction issues necessary until now. I am on the last page reviews of correcting or updating posts. I plan on posting on books […]
I just noticed where NYRB Classics has released a new translation of Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs. My brief notes on New Directions’ 1947 translation by Stuart Hood can be found here. I highly recommend it without having read the new translation yet. It is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. […]
Jamie Lyons, co-founder of The Collected Works and so much more (see his bio), has some stunning photos and text from site specific performances he has been involved in. Many of these performances involve surviving fragments of ancient Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Definitely worth checking out. Related posts I’ve made to the […]
If you’re planning on tackling some of the ancient Greek plays or other ancient Greek or Roman literature, I’d like to recommend the Hermes Books series from Yale University Press. I think I found all but one of my books from the series in used bookstores. I’ll post a few comments from John Herington’s text […]
Amateur Reader at Wuthering Expectations will be hosting a read-along of all the ancient Greek plays this year. The order of the plays can be found at this post. The schedule is one play a week, with his posts about them on or around each Friday. The first play is Aeschylus’ The Persians, starting on […]
Sad news: Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Classics and History, prominent for his scholarship, teaching, and social and political commentary, and a longtime colorful figure at Yale, died Aug. 6 in a Washington D.C. retirement home. He was 89. Kagan, who came to Yale in 1969, was a distinguished scholar of Ancient Greek history. […]
The Landmark Ancient Histories has been one of my favorite editions for reading ancient texts. They have long mentioned upcoming editions of Polybius and Xenophon’s Anabasis as “forthcoming” on their website. Yesterday I stumbled across the listing of their edition of Anabasis on Amazon and promptly pre-ordered it. I fully expect the December 7th release […]
Welcome! I have wanted to have my own site for quite a while, so I’m giving it a try. The theme will eventually change and links may or may not work right now. My tags/categories did not transfer quite like I wanted, so I’ll be working on getting those updated. I’m sure there are other […]
St. John’s College brochure for their Summer Classics program came today and there are several tempting seminars I’d love to take. They should update their information page to reflect this year’s program (The Examined Life) in the next few days so you can see in detail what they will cover. It looks like there will […]
It has been a busy year, so I’ll take this opportunity to apologize for staying mostly silent. We have been incredibly fortunate and blessed this year in spite of everything that 2020 managed to throw at the world. What could be called my ‘workload’ multiplied this year with caretaking a friend’s property, but it has […]
Happy anniversary to this tweet! It couldn’t have been me judging from where Mr. Gay lives and writes. Not to mention I don’t like coffee and never drink it. I’m sure, though, I have engendered the same respone from others in coffeeshops that I have patronized for other caffeine delivery methods. Well, all that plus […]
I was extremely sad to see a post from hlo.hu on the passing of Tim Wilkinson, “One of Hungarian literature’s most prominent translators, known best for his work with Imre Kertész and Miklós Szentkuthy.” I’ve read quite a few books translated by him and have posted on some of them. Wilkinson translated many academic books, […]
It’s easy to get bogged down in negative things right now (well, at any time, really), so I thought I would share a few pictures of things that make me smile when I’m walking our dog. On a nearby trail it appears kids have painted rocks and set up a “fairy inn” to house them. […]
I don’t think I have mentioned I have been receiving material from several universities’ and colleges’ admissions departments, marketing their college to names of people that do not live at our house. At first I laughed at them, but then I was concerned. What if there really was a kid out there that wasn’t […]
I want to highlight the enrollment period of Stanford University’s Continuing Studies fall courses (link will take you to their current offerings). I took Christopher Krebs’ spring 2020 course on Tacitus and enjoyed it. I wanted to take several courses over the years, but the money hurdle and the commute time (when I was living […]
2020 strikes again. We were to go rafting in Hell’s Canyon this coming week, but a rockslide closed the only direct road to it (from our direction). I’ve already been to Hell (Grand Caymans) and the Gates of Hell (Stanford campus), so I was looking forward to Hell’s Canyon. Hopefully later this year. On that […]
I have mentioned the Summer Classics program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico (most recently here), so I wanted to give an update in case you have been interested in the courses but were unable to travel to attend. This summer’s program has been changed to virtual seminars, so you’ll be able […]
Just when I think reality can’t get any weirder, I find out it already did. Thanks (I think) to DangerousMinds.net for their article The Oddly Inappropriate Spec TV Commercial for Never-Produced Caligula Action Figures. I’ve seen a lot of strange things, and I’m happy to say the 1980 movie Caligula directed by Penthouse owner/editor Bob […]