Jack of many trades, master of some. Editor, @leavenmag, '1916: The Church & the Rising'. Author, 'Cannae: The Experience of Battle'. Multiple CMA award winner.
Joined June 2015
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5,190 Photos and videos
I’m still hopeful this shattering ship will be with us a while yet, but I’ve branched out elsewhere just in case. I’m not yet sold on Mastodon, but I like the other Twitter that’s not Twitter, while @RadiopaperHQ is pleasant and thoughtful whenever I dip my toes into the water.
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Just seven books in a less book-rich May than I’d hoped, though it was fun catching up with Saga which I’d been neglecting, and the other books were all worthwhile, with the one on the Cáin Adomnáin - which should be much better known - being particularly good.
Five books for April, with finishing the depressingly timely Hannah Arendt and the often timeless Chesterton taking most of the month. The Batman book contained some fabulously spooky detective stories, while Boyer was fun and Bratten Weiss was seriously thought-provoking.
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I consistently think it’s an awful shame that we don’t have a finished and accessible translation of the tenth-century Irish epic, ‘The Psalter of the Verses’. There’s about 230 pages of this, translated from Irish, mapping out the whole biblical narrative to Judgment Day.
Jun 5
Everyone forgets that we have an epic poem, in English, that is actually phenomenal they were just maybe made to read it too young
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There are good reasons for the Vatican to say big tech companies “exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life”, such that if we’re serious about freedom States and transnational bodies should regulate and police them for the good of all: theguardian.com/technology/2…
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It’s misleading for Barron to say, for instance, that the Pope’s new encyclical places the moral legitimacy of private property and the free market alongside the universal destination of goods when it explicitly says they are subordinate to it and to the principle of solidarity.
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There’s much more to take issue with here - foxnews.com/opinion/bishop-r… - in truth, this is a serpentine reading, one that should have anybody engaging with it constantly thinking “yes, but…” or “hang on…”
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It’s useful watching frauds spouting off about the worthlessness of the latest papal encyclical in ways that demonstrate how straightforwardly stupid and heedless of truth they are. Those who took their anti-Francis rants seriously should really be revisiting their opinions.
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It’s kind of mad that these chaps are being made bishops when as priests they’re not even allowed to hear each others’ confessions. The LARP is strong among the pixies.
May 26
SSPX bishops announced:
Fr Pascal Schreiber (Swiss)
Fr Michael Goldade (American)
Fr Michel Poinsinet de Sivry (French)
Fr Marc Hanappier (French)
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Some familiar spots on the flight this morning: the Menai Strait flying over Anglesey; Llandudno and Conwy; Brighton with the wonderful charred skeleton of West Pier just about visible; and finally Paris, where I’m currently waiting for my train. Meetings are on the cards.
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Having been involved in curriculum design - not to mention delivery in terms of teaching and textbook editing - every time I see clueless people whinging “will they be taught xyz?” I’m left wondering if they’ve even reflected on whatever classroom experience they themselves had.
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It’s been a full day, what with getting a new jacket in Dublin, sorting out new glasses, starting a new book over coffee, meeting a friend over lunch, and going to see “The Mandalorian and Grogu”. It’s basically three episodes of an enjoyable show on a big screen. That’ll do.
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Good closer to a fine thread. People who are really worried about Classics, History, Greece, “the West”, or whatever should stop whinging about a film they’ve not seen and a translation that irks them - read another, so - and focus instead on trying to save our universities.
Finally, I must note: the very departments that train these skills are now crumbling as a result of the broad defunding of the humanities in the USA and elsewhere.
If we want to still be able to plumb the depths of Greek and Latin, we must support those programs!
/end
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All this Odyssey froth is nonsense. People are judging by a trailer, heedless of how their own expectations are shaped not just by Homer - if that - but by vases and statues and tragedians and Virgil and Ovid and two thousand years of lenses and accretions. Wait and see.
May 19
The Odyssey has survived for nearly 3,000 years because form matters: names, speech, armor, hierarchy, beauty, courage, piety, homecoming, and the moral weight of the ancient world.
But when an epic starts sounding like a Marvel trailer, people are right to ask whether the old world has been understood or merely used.
A director can adapt Homer, but adaptation should still carry the weight of Homer’s world.
When I go to see The Odyssey, I am not only looking for a plot. I am looking for the world that shaped the story: its language, honor, gods, rituals, hierarchy, beauty, fear, and longing for home.
If the ancient poem is only being used as raw material for a modern blockbuster, then why call it The Odyssey at all?
Create your own myth. Give it a different title. Let Homer remain Homer.w
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Headline-writers at @irishtimes, the winner getting one-and-a-half times the points of the runner-up is not “pipping them at the post”.
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Hey look! It’s Homer’s grave!
ALT Ancient Greek grave on the island of Ios, photographed in 2013. Grave made of white stone, traditionally believed to be that of Homer, a blind, illiterate poet who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the background, the Aegean Sea and another Cycladic Island.
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It’s genuinely weird to see people getting upset out this film based on a two-minute trailer: m.youtube.com/watch?v=f_bKjZ… I presume they have similarly sour feelings about both versions of Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, Troy, 300, Spartacus, Rome, Gladiator…
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It’s often funny when people online claim that others are “missing the point”. They might be, sure, but they might just think it’s silly. And if we find ourselves often accusing others of missing the point, we should maybe consider whether we’ve not made our points well…
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