Away From Here

 The search for truth - be it the subjective truth of belief, the objective truth of reality, or the social truth of money or power - always confers, on the searcher who merits a prize, the ultimate knowledge of its non-existence. The grand prize of life goes only to those who bought tickets by chance.

The value of art is that it takes us away from here.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 361

It's difficult to look at the world today and not agree with Pessoa's observation that the "grand prize of life goes only to those who bought tickets by chance." And in America, today more than ever, those random tickets are based on inherited wealth. The oligarchs are stripping America economically - and the religious fanatics are stripping America spiritually - and have somehow convinced tens of millions of Americans that the greatest threat they face are trans folks just trying to live their life as best they can. However, does that really mean that the "subjective truth of belief, [and] the objective truth of reality" don't exist at all? This may be Pessoa simply being Pessoa, I guess, although the "truth" of the American dream clearly doesn't seem to exist anymore. If the collective dream is dead, does that mean that the individual dream is dead as well? That's a tougher one. I've talked quite a bit lately about my desire to turn around from the cruel, callous world that we live in, this Trumpian nightmare where empathy is mocked and heartlessness is celebrated. Instead, I've turned inward, even more than usual, and I'm making a deliberate effort to read even more than usual (and that's saying something). As Pessoa opines, "The value of art is that it takes us away from here." However, in doing that are we letting the barbarians win? This brings us back to the New Monastic Individuals concept, and maybe it's enough to try and preserve the best and the most beautiful, culturally and spiritually and intellectually, and just attempt, as best we can, to pass it along to others. 

2025 Readings 37

 This morning I finished a very quick reading of Sarah Kendzior's The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America. Yes, this is the second Kendzior book that I've read in the last week - with two more in the queue.  This is the book - and the essays - that introduced her to America as a brilliant social critic and Casandra-esque ignored prophet of the age of Trump. As with The Last American Road Trip, it's difficult for me to praise her work too highly. If you care about the state of the US right now you should definitely be reading her and following her on social media; she's the real deal. Her essays on race and inequality and education are insightful, thought-provoking, inspiring, and also humbling. In this case, let me quote from her essay "The Fallacy of the Phrase 'the Muslim World.'"

   "It is time to retire the phrase 'the Muslim world' from Western media. Using the phrase in the manner above disregards not only history and politics, but accurate reporting of contemporary events. The protests that took pace around the world ranged in scale and intensity, in the participants' willingness to use violence, and in their rationales. The majority of 'the Muslim world' did not participate in these protests, nor did all of the Muslims who protested the video advocate the bloodshed that took place in Libya.

   By reducing a complex set of causes and conflicts to the rage of an amorphous mass, the Western media reinforce the very stereotype of a united, violent 'Muslim world' that both the makers of the anti-Islam video and the Islamist instigators of the violence perpetuate.

   Essentialist views of Islam and Muslims are nothing new. In Western media, Islam is often presented as a contagion, with Muslims as the afflicted, helpless to their own hostile impulses. What is different about the current crisis is that it comes in the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring' - another series of intricate events depicted as interconnected and inevitable. Democracy would 'spread' from one Muslim country to another, analysts argued, regardless of the unique historical trajectories of individual states. Some analysts wet so far as to suggest it would spread to Central Asia, a region of largely isolationist dictatorships uninfluenced by Middle Eastern politics. The current protests are being portrayed as an 'Arab Winter' - a simplistic reversal of a simplistic perception of success, with Muslims, undifferentiated, receiving the blame.

   There is, of course, cohesion among Muslims, in the sense that there is cohesion among followers of any faith. The notion of the umma is an essential part of Islamic doctrine. But the way the idea of 'the Muslim world' is expressed within Islamic communities is different from the way it is expressed outside them. It is rare to hear the phrase 'the Christian world' used in the English-language media, because doing so would generalize about the motives of over 2 billion people. No such respect applies to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Googling the phrase 'the Christian world' yields 5.8 million results, while the phrase 'the Muslim world' yields 87 million results, many of them wandering what is 'wrong' with the queried target. When the phrase 'the Muslim world' is invoked, it is usually to reduce, denigrate, or impugn."

Changing

 The weekend before last we headed to the local Grange to attend a Bob Dylan Wannabe Concert to raise money for the Montpelier free clinic - and, of course, knew people on stage - all of which is about the most Vermont thing you could possibly say. It was one of those bittersweet evenings. On the one hand it was a reminder, and one that I guess I didn't need, of what a special community we live in. On the other hand, it was almost painful for everyone to join together at the end for a group singalong of The Times They Are A-Changin'. There were a lot of 70 year old who gave their times and money in support of a noble cause, and championing the spirit of the 1960s in the process, while at the same time the majority of the young men in my class are visiting for Trump. 

At the end all of the performers sang a rousing version of The Times They Are A-Changin', which was both lovely, and as I proposed above, heartbreaking.

We were so happy that G3 and Ali were able to join us for the performance. 

Noli, Ali's sister, a proud possessor of her first driver's license, drove up to the wilderness for the weekend.

My friend Art, who I've known for twenty years through Champlain, was performing, and it was great to see him. It reminded us to get together more often for breakfast.

2025 Readings 36

 I'm embarrassed to admit that I followed Sarah Kendzior for years on Twitter but had never read one of her books. My great friend, and office-mate, Erik dropped off a copy of The Last American Road Trip the other day, along with one of his masterfully forged autographs (or maybe it was simply nice of Kendzior to write me a personal note). I blew through The Last American Road Trip in a couple days and have gone right into The View from Flyover Country, her first book. The former is her latest book and it reflects upon a series of family trips that she and her husband took their two kids on, while there was still an America to see. From this framework she's able to include a fair bit of criticism of what's happening to America, but what really comes through is her love of the country and her sadness at what is happening to it. Beyond everything else, she's also a very powerful writer. The book, as with all her books, is highly recommended. Let me just include a short section, dealing with her response to hearing that Roe v Wade had been overturned:

   "Missouri is a trigger stage, which means that band on abortion prohibited by Roe's 1973 passage would become law once federal protections were struck down. At some point, I know, I would become a second-class citizen. One morning, I would wake up and legal protections I had known my entire life would be gone. One day, everything would be the same except my husband and son would have more right than me and my daughter, and I would have to explain to my children why. I have never had an abortion and have no intention of getting gone, but that is true of many women who end up getting abortions. The perverse pain of the Roe reversal was how it made me feel like a failure, above all, as a mother: the very identity the state prescribed. I could not protect my daughter from the government. Our bodies were state property now.

   When the day came - June 24, 2022 - I knocked on the door of my husband's makeshift pandemic home office, said 'they overturned Roe,' and left before he could respond. I got in my car and drove to Creve Coeur Lake, an offshoot of the Missouri River where I go kayaking in the summer. Creve Coeur is French for 'broken heart' but I didn't know that because no one knows how to pronounce or interpret Missouri French. 'Creev Core,' we say, we unsophisticated rubes whom the Supreme Court had made cattle - cattle that so many different forces wanted to corral.

   I kayaked until my hands blistered and bled, and while I was out on the water the attorney general of Missouri signed away my bodily autonomy. I don't know the exact moment it happened, whether it was when I saw a duck shielding her ducklings and started to cry, or when I passed an elderly woman drifting under a highway bridge, her face streaked with tears, and she put on sunglasses so they would not show, or when the clouds darkened the lake with the threat of rain and I thought, Bring it. You cannot do anything worse to me today. Show me some action. Give ma a battle I can fight. And then the clouds parted, and in the light of the sun I saw the blood on my palms like a stigma, like stigmata. I knew God did not want this and that state officials did not care about god because they had decided to replace him with themselves."

Moonie

 I've been pestering my friends today with this odd trivia question: Who are the three individuals who are in the CFL and NFL Halls of Fame? The first answer is an easy one, and not simply because I had already sent around the picture below: Warren Moon. The other two are more of a challenge: Bud Grant and Marv Levy. The fact that Grant and Levy are a combined 0-8 in the Super Bowl probably signifies something important. It's also interesting that two of the three Double Hall of Famers have Vikings connections. Weird. Of course, as I've doubtless mentioned too many times on blog (I mean, come on, you don't close in on 3000 posts without repeating yourself) the fact that led me to the CFL in the first place was that I learned early on that Grant had coached (wildly successfully) in the CFL before he moved on to the NFL (where even his brilliance as coach couldn't overcome the Curse of the Vikings). Anyway, I guess I'm now one step closer to being fully prepared for June's CFL Doubleheader of Excellence. Oh, one final thought: I had to have this Warren Moon jersey made, as you might have figured out since he played for the Edmonton Eskimos and not the Edmonton Elks (same franchise, just a name change a couple years ago). For some reason you couldn't order player jerseys on the Elks webpage (which probably doesn't say much about how good they are at the moment). 

I think it was all worth it for the comped Elks lanyard and decals.

2025 Readings 35

 Last night I finished Voices of the Fallen Heroes, a collection of late Yukio Mishima short stories. Over the decades I've read a lot of his work, including Forbidden Colors, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The Sound of Waves, Death in Midsummer, and his Sea of Fertility tetralogy (Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel; these four novels make my all-time favorite list, and I've read the collection multiple times - and it may be time for another read). It was odd to think that he was writing these short stories at the same time as the last couple volumes of the Sea of Fertility collection. 

Vermont Public Philosophy Week 2025

 Here's a nice picture of Janet, dominating at our Vermont Public Philosophy Week Doubleheader a couple Saturdays back. We had fifteen people stop by, which was a solid turnout, especially on a cold and rainy day and during a time that coincided with an anti-Trump rally downtown in Montpelier (we weren't counter-programming, obviously, and would have been down there ourselves, but we scheduled the talks several weeks before the protest). Janet discussed co-ops and community and read from her book, and I blathered away about Fernando Pessoa. Oddly, three people showed up who had read a goodly amount of Pessoa and had seen my talk listed on the Philosophy Week website. Who knew that Pessoa would be a draw? Although, and not surprisingly, Janet drew more folks than I did (which clearly says something good about her - and her community).

The Adamant Community Club is a great spot for a talk, although it's a more beautiful view out the window almost every other month of the year.

2025 Readings 34

 Yesterday I finished reading Vida Scudder's autobiography, On Journey. I included a Family label on this post, although I think that's a stretch. Yes, there aren't that many Scudders in the world, but I think our lines of the Scudder crew veered apart back in England. Still, I still claim her, mainly because, as I say way too often, she's the other socialist Scudder (socialism is definitely a recessive gene in our broader family). She certainly led an amazing life, from being born in India (as so many Scudders have over the years, which is why I think I was genetically determined to go to India), but then leaving early on after the drowning death of her missionary father, to eventually being a college professor and author and socialist and having her own feast day on the Episcopalian calendar. She was also lived a committed relationship with Florence Converse for decades, so I guess she has so many qualities that the radical right would hate today. I think their relationship was a well-known fact at the time, although it's handled gently in the autobiography, which I completely understand and respect for multiple reasons. However, she also doesn't dodge the reality of their relationship entirely, but instead handles it in a very understated and casual fashion. In this passage she discusses her living arrangements with her mother and with Florence: "So we settled at Wellesley (gs - where Vida taught); and it was lucky that the house had grown bigger than first planned, for neither my mother nor I wished seclusion. Someone always shared our home, and in 1919. Florence Converse and her mother came to make one family with us. Miss Converse had for years shared my life in all ways except in living under the same roof. Now that Joy was given us, and we have never been separated since."

There are so many beautiful passages, ranging from her views on socialism to faith to even her cats. Here's one of my favorites, reflecting up on her view of immortality:

"I fear I have never really made that Act. Immortality does not interest me. Stress on duration seems to me the note of an imprisoned mind. Now, this fleeting instant, I experience the Eternal and it suffices me:

          'He who kissed a joy as it flies/Lives in eternity's sunrise.'

Survival? It is to me an unreal conception. Moreover, by what right do I demand from Deity a privilege which I have no reason to expect my cats to share? Or the roses in the garden? Though looking at the matter from another angle, I should not be surprised to find that all the roses which have ever bloomed on earth, blossom forever in the Paradise of God."

Maybe I'll come back to this post and amend it later, adding more of her observations on life.

It's sad that she doesn't receive more attention. Her book Socialism and Character is queued up for one of my next reads.

Elks

 Yesterday I bought our tickets for the Edmonton Elks game in June, so the trip is starting to come together. Now I just have to wait a couple weeks for the Calgary Stampeders tickets to go on sale so that we're set. The Elks tickets are great, right on the 55 yard line. After this trip I'll have visited six of the nine CFL stadiums, and the challenge will be getting to the last three. These two games will certainly not be my only CFL games of the season: #VermontsLeadingCFLFan

Back To Me

 The other night I finally got the chance to see Kathleen Edwards in concert. We had briefly met years ago - as chronicled in this blog - when, on a drive across Canada, I swung over to Ottawa and stopped by Quitter's Coffee (the coffeeshop she ran during her temporary retirement from the music industry). She could not have been more gracious during my visit years ago, and I was really excited about finally getting a chance to see her perform in person. I'm a huge fan, and have been for twenty years, and a couple of her songs have been "the song" of different times of my life. It was a wonderful show, and I heartily recommend that you take the opportunity to see her if she comes anyplace close to your town.

I was less blurry pictures from the show, but not a picture that I like more than this one.

Kevin, Mike, and Cyndi - which made the event even more fun. As I told Mike at one point, referencing one of my favorite Edwards's song, I hoped he understood how much I appreciated all that times that he and his wife Jamie had been my soft place to land.

Missing Friends

 OK, so I shamelessly (although with permission) swiped this picture from my friend Heidi. She ran into our friend Sean at a conference (one of the best reasons to go to an academic conference is to catch up with friends). We're all in the same fantasy football league (and, similarly, maybe the best reason to play fantasy football is to keep in touch with folks),  but I don't see them nearly enough.

I miss these two way too much.

2025 Readings 33

 I just finished yet another reading of Homer's Iliad. Partially, I'm trying to finish my chapter on the Iliad for my book (never to be finished manuscript) on the Epics, and Homer's epic will serve as the first chapter in the envisioned work. Granted, the Ramayana is older, but I wanted to start with something that folks might be more familiar with, so that I can lay out the recurring structure of each chapter. So, with that in mind, the first half of the book would be: Ch 1: Iliad, Ch. 2, Aeneid, Ch. 3, Ramayana, Ch. 4, Shahnameh, Ch. 5 Journey to the West. The second half of the imagined book would be the thematic chapters, such as Ch. 6 on Heroism and Ch. 7 on Gender, etc. 

However, saying that, the other reason why I gave it a reread (of a seemingly endless series of rereads) is that I simply love the Iliad. Every time I read it I get something new out of it, and I can't imagine that I'll ever tire of it. Truthfully, I get so much more out of it than I did when I read it decades ago, and the desire to share what I've learned - and the tools that I've given students to make these epics more accessible - is at the core of my desire to write this book in the first place. Several sections jumped out at me this time, and I wondered why they didn't resonate with me as much previously. Maybe I just have more wisdom/experience or maybe I'm just giving the book more of my time and attention. One of the lines that spoke to me this time, not surprisingly, was from Nestor, the aged Greek who gives sage advice, while celebrating and lamenting the passing of time. In Book 23, during the games that were held to commemorate the passing of Patroclus, Nestor, in response to Achilles awarding him a prize because he is too old to complete, says:

"You've put the matter very well, my son.

My legs are strong no longer, as you say;

I am not fast on my feet; my hands no longer 

move out fast to punch or throw. Would god 

I had my young days back my strength entire . . .

That was the man I was. Now let the young 

take part in these exertions: I must yield 

to show old age, though in my time I shone 

among heroic men.

                                          Well, carry on

the funeral of your friend with competitions.

This I take kindly, and my heart is cheered 

that you remember me as well disposed, 

remembering, too, the honor that is due me 

among Akhaians. May the gods 

in fitting ways reward you for it all."

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.