Disease and sickness, whether forestalled temporarily or not, are the heralds of death, which is both a divine punishment, given so that rebel mankind will not live forever, making up good and evil for himself, eternal beings given to evil, and at the same time death is Satan’s masterpiece.
t was the social and moral dimension of the pestilence that most attracted the analytical mind of Thucydides. Some perished through want of attention, while others, falling into despair, gave up the fight.
Wilhelm Roentgen, Leonard Nimoy, Gorky, Cy Young, Vincent Van Gogh, Eric Clapton, Mehmed II the Conqueror, Herb Alpert, Edward Fitzgerald
Once upon a time there were Lennon and McCartney, and before them Rodgers and Hart, Gilbert and Sullivan, Rimsky and Korsakov (old joke), and now the inspired song-writing team of Fleming and Scott offer this their first recording…..
The title of the present series of posts, as I’m confident the gentle reader realizes, refers to a popular chess opening whereby Black, who by the rules of the game is a move behind, essentially cedes to White control of the center, using its energies to build up a rival alternative until the timing may be right for a Sicilian Vespers. The Sicilian’s motto, “lie low,” is writ large upon this strategy, and the knack of invisible resistance to domination by central government – whether Arab, Norman, or a myriad others leading up to the present day – is dormant...
In this episode of Off the Shelf Dr Fleming discusses Trent’s Last Case by EC Bentley. Bentley was a childhood friend of GK Chesterton, and like him, managed to create a compelling murder mystery detective.
On the economics of the coronavirus panic, scholars and editorialists commonly have compared it to the Great Depression, World War II, the Great Recession of a decade ago or some other event, but…the best comparison is what is ironically called “The Great Depression of 1946,” because there was no Great Depression, or even a small recession.
Broncho Billy and Elton John, JS Bachand Leonard Joseph (Chico) Marx, Fannie Farmer and Gail Clark Fleming, Harry Houdini and Saint Catherine of Siena.
Thucydides account of the plague that struck Athens during the war with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League is among the most cogent and relevant descriptions of a pestilence.
While Paris started the year in the midst of a transportation strike that the strikers by and large lost in the end, there was only a brief respite for the hospitality industry as the specter of the global panic pandemic landed in Europe and then worked its way west.
Sane Americans are getting on with their lives. This means living with the knowledge of death.
