Casual History

 On our second (or third, depending how you count it) visit to Evora I spent part of a lovely day roaming around town. One of the many strengths of our relationship is that Janet and I are very comfortable with the other one carving off time for their own interests or internal schedules, which works on the macro-level (she's heading off to Iowa this summer for a writer's conference whereas I'm heading off to Portugal to present at a conference, while also skiving off to Alberta for a CFL doubleheader; obviously, she's the more serious scholar/person) and the micro-level (as is well-documented, I'm the early revolutionary riser and she takes a more evolutionary approach to starting the day). When we're overseas, this usually takes the form of me getting up early for breakfast and then going for an exploratory walk. On that particular day in Evora, while Janet gave into the overwhelming peace and serenity of the Convent, I ubered into town and went for a walkabout, or at least as much of a walkabout as I could pull off (I remember it being one of those days when my legs were very unhappy with me). I've travelled enough in Italy or, for that matter, Jordan, so I'm used to seeing Roman ruins, so I guess it didn't surprise me to find a temple in the heart of Evora. Still, it was beautiful, and so much a natural part of the city. I was just elected to the Calais Historical Preservation Commission, which I'm enjoying and am looking forward to serving on, but it definitely brings you back to history and real history. I think what struck me about the ruins in Evora was how they were just integrated into the city itself as a very casual and natural part of the city life (in this way I guess it's sort of a microcosm of the entire Portuguese experience).

The ruins, now around two thousand years old, are a temple dedicated to the Emperor Augustus.

2025 Readings 33

 As I mentioned earlier, as part of this project to track my readings for 2025 I'm also forcing/allowing/encouraging myself to read authors or genres that aren't normally on my list. I do think I fall into the habit of reading an awful lot of novels, especially novels from certain authors, and works on religion, whereas I could/should broaden my focus and include new authors or works on, say, history, which is an odd thing for a historian to say. However, after saying that, I suspect that I usually have a more diverse palette than most folks, even before this year's effort. For instance, when I'm at Northshire in Manchester I'm likely to pick up a book or two from the new fiction or staff suggestions section. With that in mind, on my recent visit to Northshire I picked up Jayne Anne Phillips's Night Watch, which I finished last night. Obviously, she's a very good, and rightly celebrated, writer, although I don't think I loved this particular novel. It seems to me that you can think of an interesting story, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily tell it in an interesting fashion. The story rotated between events in 1874 (at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum) and 1864 (covering background events during the Civil War), before finally summing things up in 1883. Sometimes when authors try to achieve a level of mystery they can end up just being needlessly opaque, and thus more difficult to follow than is merited by the interest of the characters. The end felt a bit rushed and convenient, sort of like some Dickens novels where hidden connections are suddenly revealed that tie things up but not in a convincing or satisfying way. This all sounds more critical than I intend, because I did like the story. I do want to read Phillips's Lark and Termite, which I hear is excellent.

Home

 But, in spite of so much sorrow in the world at the moment, I'm very blessed. Five years ago I would have never thought that I'd find someone again or experience such a profound level of happiness. And where would I be without these two (and, of course, Miss Mollie, my constant lap companion).

It is scientifically impossible to get a shot wherein Cici is more still than this one, whereas you could complete a painting of Miss Mollie in real time.

The Pain of the Painful Surprise

 The human soul is so inevitably the victim of pain that it suffers the pain of the painful surprise even with things it should have expected.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 245

Yesterday I was having a chat with a colleague on why our students are so remarkably disinterested this semester. Yes, on the one hand this sounds like a conversation that every professor has had with a colleague since the beginning of time (including my professors about me, doubtless), but on the other hand there is definitely something going on here. In my forty years of teaching I've never experienced a semester where there have been so many absences and late papers and general disinterest. Granted, maybe I've simply, finally, lost it as a professor - or maybe I've grown so old that the consistent ageism of my students (and my colleagues, for that matter) has overwhelmed me. However, I think it's more than that. For decades now the corporate and anti-democratic elements of our country have been attacking expertise. One way to diminish the inconvenient truth of climate change is to shoot the messenger, championing, and somehow equating, the less than one percent of scientists who downplay the danger we're facing. Certainly all professors were hit with shrapnel in that war. Now we've reached the point where the VP is identifying the professors as the enemy. However, I think it's even bigger than that. This generation has had to begin its college and professional careers with the knowledge that they'd probably never be able to buy a house, essentially facing the prospect of having less than the previous generation in the history of the American experiment. Hence, a college education is a more stressful than what I faced, where I wasn't facing crippling debt and could actually just focus on reading great books and discussing great thoughts. We've completely commodified a college education and removed the magic associated with it. But I think it's even bigger than that. With the horror of the Trump administration we're facing an almost existential crisis as a nation, and even though my students are remarkably un-self-aware, they must at least realize that something terrible id brewing. From our side of things we're also suffering a sense of helplessness, and, sliding back up to the top for the Pessoa quote, even though we knew it was going to be a freak show it doesn't make the pain any less debilitating.

2025 Readings 32

 I just finished listening to Elizabeth Vandiver's Great Courses series The Iliad of Homer. This must be the third or fourth time I've listened to it, and I feel like I get something new from it every time (as I do with the Iliad itself). I'm trying to finish my chapter on the Iliad in my probably never to be finished book on the Epics. Essentially, it's done, but I can't convince myself that it's done. There are times when I want to just dump the entire project, and it's become a sort of albatross around my neck. There are just other projects I want to start or continue working on, but I don't feel I can do anything with them until the Epics project is completed wrapped up; at this point I don't know if it even mattes whether or not it's published, I just need to be finished with it. Maybe simply knowing that I've done everything I can do with it will give me some peace of mine on it. My thinking is that I'd like to send off my chapter on the Iliad, which leads off the book, and then on Women in the Epics, which is featured in the second half of the project. That would give an agent/publisher and idea of the larger scope of the book, and while that is slowly working its way through the system I can put the final touches on the rest of the chapters. I've been reading Vida Scudder's autobiography and it gives me some hope that she wrote sixteen books after she retired.

Groan Redux

 If it seems like it's the end of March that is apparently a delusion, although it's clearly not warm enough to qualify as a fever dream.

Greed

 After brooding over the question for several weeks, this morning I went ahead and cancelled my Audible membership. On one level it was hard to do, because I have a long commute and books on tape and Great Courses help make the drive manageable. Essentially, I don't mind the drive as much if I feel that I'm learning something at the same time. I recently made the decision to stop ordering things from Amazon, although it has often made my life a lot easier because I could track down objects, especially books, which would have been difficult to acquire. However, simply because I can punch a button on my phone and have a book magically appear at my doorstep doesn't make the process an ethical one. And if I'm going to ween myself off of Amazon, it didn't make much sense of keep Audible. Bezos climbing into bed with the other oligarchs in their adulation of Trump made all of this an easier decision. There was a time when millionaires invested their money in building libraries, whereas now they alternate between creating vanity spaceships and overthrowing our democracy. I was asked for a reason why I was cancelling my Audible account, so I simply wrote: "Greed of Jeff Bezos."