A Single Volume Ramayana - And a Bit too Much Excitement

 You know, there are moments when I have to admit to a ever so slightly nerdy moments. Generally, I accuse many of my friends (for instance, Cyndi) of being much bigger nerds than me (well, Janet gets a pretty consistent accusation), but, maybe I may have an ever so insignificant, almost unmeasurably small, degree of nerd in me. No one should be so excited about the arrival of a thousand page version of the Ramayana. To be fair, I do love the Ramayana, but the arrival of a single volume is huge for my Epics project. I have been able to tie my research and writing to single editions of the Iliad (Robert Fitzgerald), the Aeneid (Robert Fagles), the Shahnameh (Dick Davis), and Journey to the West (Anthony Yu, although Yu's classic is four volumes - he did create his single volume The Monkey and the Monk, which I use every year). All of these are easy to track down and inexpensive to acquire. The outlier was always the Ramayana. There simply wasn't a single volume that featured the original text from the Indian poet Valmiki. There are several much shorter retellings, but I wanted my readers to experience the original text, and not a modern retelling. So, I tied my writing to Robert Goldman's massive Critical Edition, which is extraordinary, but something that would be hard to find unless you had access to a library at a research university. So, the arrival of The Ramayana of Valmiki: the Complete English Translation from Robert Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman is a godsend. I have my single, affordable edition that I can tie to my research (although lining things up to my original citations from the Critical Edition, and factoring in new translations, is a late challenge to my work) solves a big problem. Beyond everything else, I was simply way too excited to have the book arrive, and provide me yet another opportunity to delve into the Indian classic.

Robert Goldman, who is a major scholar but also a very nice guy, told me about the publication of the single volume Ramayana (which somehow I had missed). It's still a tome, obviously, but here it is next to the seven volume Critical Edition of the Ramayana from which it is culled. 

Earthquake Museum

 And how did I never post anything about the Earthquake Museum? I've talked about the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755 many times in various classes over the years, most recently in my Nature of Evil class in the fall. It inspired a poem from Voltaire., and, for that matter, Candide and his crew witness the earthquake in the novel Candide. Some philosophers propose that it was to philosophers of the 18th century what the Holocaust was to philosophers of the 20th century. That is, they are not claiming that the two events are close in regards to loss of life, obviously, but rather that they provided an existential threat to a worldview. That is, they were both events that thinkers had to address, in that you simply couldn't ignore them. The 18th century was dominated by the Enlightenment and the emphasis on reason, and the random nature of the earthquake, killing tens of thousands who were all in Church on All Saints Day, certainly spoke to the absence of God in daily life. I had wanted to visit it for a while, but in this particular case I was hoping, unrealistically, of leading one last student trip before my legs gave out entirely. Sadly, I had a heart scare (which turned out to be overrated), and I had to cancel the trip before it ever got off the ground. When you visit Lisbon a trip to the Earthquake Museum is definitely worth your time.

The museum does a pretty good job building the anticipation. Plus, well, it's a popular tourist stop, and they move you along pretty quickly.

It's pretty high tech jazzy, although this reminded me of the movie Tron.

There's a fair bit of scientific learning and quizzes. 

You get a sense of what Lisbon looked like pre-quake. The woman in the background is part of a sophisticated video of people walking in and out of the scene.

The high point of the experience is sitting in pews in a church as the earthquake hits, the jarring ride begins, which is synced up with the video.

And a Different Afternoon in Portugal

 This was just popped up on my phone as a memory the other day, and I captured it. It's from the Spain/Portugal student trip that I led with my great friend Mike and Kelly. We were just walking up the hill in Sintra, and we seemed awfully happy. Maybe it just jumped out at me because I was doing something as radical as walking without pain. Also, the weather looks awfully nice for late November.

Sadly, Janet and I couldn't retrace these steps on our trip to Sintra because of all the wildfires in the area.

Afternoons in Coimbra

 Maybe this is just because it's another Vermont day where the temperature isn't interested in climbing out of the 20s, but I was just sitting here thinking about Portugal. This is the first year in several that I won't be making a trip to my beloved Portugal. I was tempted to make one last dive into my PD funds and present a paper in Lisbon, but in the end it seemed much better to keep up the momentum of my Epics book (my goal is to get it finished - granted, books are not finished until they're published - by my last day at Champlain, so that I can go into the summer with a freedom I haven't had in a while). Plus, well, I figured that Champlain needs the money. Anyway, I found myself scrolling through some pictures, and it's amazing to me that I still have stories from last summer's trip that I haven't told (although this is a pretty common occurrence for me, as I have dozens if not hundreds of posts queued up to be written). I was thinking that I liked my time in Coimbra quite a bit, and would definitely like to go back. Here are a couple pictures that I snapped at a little restaurant when I was killing time waiting to get into the famous library. It's just a sandwich on a side street, but I wish I were there right now.

I'm always taking pictures of menus and coasters, although not as much as I should, just as reference points.

It was just a simple lunch, but it just screams Portugal.

Movies in 2026 91

 

Blue Velvet, (David Lynch, 1986)

In honor of the 40th anniversary of my personal boycott of the Academy Awards, I thought I'd revisit (again) the film that started it all, David Lynch's 1985 masterpiece Blue Velvet (that is, the fact that the film wasn't nominated for Best Picture led me to take an oath never to watch the Oscars again - a promise I've kept for four decades). I don't know what needs to be said about this film, one that I consider a top five selection. What struck me last night was how many iconic, unforgettable scenes there are in, including the scenes that you'd actually like to forget. As I've long opined, there were movies before Blue Velvet, and after Blue Velvet - just as their was TV before Twin Peaks, and TV after Twin Peaks. The other thing that I thought about last night was that I used to show his film during my adjunct days at Franklin College in the late 1980s, before I headed south to Atlanta for my first full-time gig at DeKalb (soon to be Georgia Perimeter) College. Not only did my students like the film and as part of a discussion sort out the deeper symbolism - but they also sat there and didn't crumble, start crying, or run out of the room. That is, they acted liked university students tackling difficult material. In my Nature of Evil class in the fall semester I showed Lee Tamahori's 1994 film Once Were Warriors, which is a film I've shown in several classes over a twenty year period at Champlain. It's a difficult and often brutal film, but it's also one of the most decorated films in New Zealand history - and for a reason. It gets at profound issues of misogyny and poverty and racism and a painful colonial legacy. In this last fall semester my students competed with each other, in an almost performative fashion, to see who could run out of the room more often. It was a pathetic performance, especially since I had actually given them something I abhor, a series of trigger warnings. What the students don't understand is that all this concern about their feelings and emotional health is not actually about their feelings and their emotional health. Rather, it's a decades long process by corporate America to make them more compliant consumers, and, as we're sadly seeing right now, more compliant in their submission to authoritarianism. Film, more than any other medium, is fueled by an emotional intensity and immediacy, and when we warn the viewers of unpleasant things that are going to happen we're doing incredible harm to the films. The director made a decision to tell their story a certain way, and I'm playing a role in destroying that vision when I warn the students about unpleasant aspects in the way the artist pursued their craft. But, again, it's more than simply tampering with the artistic integrity of an artist. When we dilute the message we're telling the students that they can't deal with unpleasant or complicated or ambiguous scenarios, and it is currently gutting education. Heaven forbid, I'd hate to think the mass faintings that a showing of Blue Velvet would inspire. When you grows up glued to your phone, your used to answers that are presented simply and definitively and entertainingly and comfortably. Unfortunately, life is not like that. Trump may be a unique cult figure, but he's not entirely an outlier. He presents simplistic and entertaining answers to complex and unpleasant problems, and when we decided to stop challenging our students, to make them uncomfortable, we laid the groundwork for the nightmare we're living through right now. Obviously, Blue Velvet is required viewing. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

Movies in 2026 90

 

Kiss of the Spider Woman, (Hector Babenco, 1985)

I don't remember the last time I saw Hector Babenco's 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, but it was probably shortly about it came out. We were living in Cincinnati then, and it was before my son was born, so it's not out of the question that we actually saw it in a theater, but I don't remember that. So, it might have been an old school visit to a video store. I have this vague memory of their being a little video store up in the neighborhood around the University of Cincinnati, but who knows (and why I even remember that, having thought about it in decades, is already entering into the realm of the supernatural). Maybe I'll ask my friend Dave if he remembers said video store. Anyway, the movie is awfully good, although in some ways the performances of William Hurt (who won his Oscar for his role as Molina), Raul Julia, and Sonia Braga outshine the movie itself. It seems that I am watching too many films set in authoritarian states at the moment, which is probably telling of the state of America right now. Definitely recommended.

Movies in 2026 89

 

A Report on the Party and the Guests, (Jan Nemec, 1966)

I suspect I was grousing about my students earlier because of my students criminal inability to understand Jan Nemec's brilliant 1966 film A Report on the Party and the Guests the other night. Not surprisingly, this is another film that the Criterion Channel was kind enough to introduce to me. It's also a great fit for my Images of Fascism class. A Report on the Party and the Guests is a surreal allegory on how Communism spread in Czechoslovakia, both both from the perspective of the Party and also from those who who complied, some by force but also way too many much more casually or easily. My students inability to see parallels to today's nightmare American political scene was very discouraging, and also very telling. I will be showing it again on Thursday night, so the generation has one more chance to redeem itself. Highly recommended, the film, not my students.