Yearly Archive: 2020

18

Autodidact

11 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax: The Prologue

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The prologue is rather more dramatic than in many plays, where a god or mortal steps forth (as in Euripides so often) and gives us a brief sketch of the situation and hints at development.  In this scene, Athena surprises Ajax in the act of trailing Ajax to discover if he is the author of the insane night-attack on the animals.  She gives him more knowledge than he bargained for, and, depending on our view of the play and its characters, the ethical point of  the play may be anticipated in this first scene.

14

FF / Free Content

10 Nov, 2020

Thud, Mud & MacIntyre–a geriatric adventure, by Frank DeRienzo

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Two weeks ago on Saturday near my residence in coastal Georgia, I spent an uneventful early morning sitting uncomfortably in a deer stand in a fruitless endeavor to be a murderer. Undaunted, I switched to fishing and launched into the intercoastal tidal river in my kayak at low ebb to try a fishing spot where the rapid outgoing tidal flow temporarily exposes an intermittent island near a bridge.

21

All Paid Subscribers / Seiler

10 Nov, 2020

What the Last Four Years Meant

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Rather than give you a rehash of the recent “election” and whether President Trump somehow can overcome the blatant stealing of his victory, I thought I’d write about something else. Everyone not just in America, but across the globe, has known one day Trump’s reign would end, whether in 2021 or 2025. So everyone has been preparing.

5

Autodidact / Feature

9 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax, Introduction Part II: Principal Characters and the Form

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Aias (Ajax) is a prominent character in the Iliad.  He is the cousin of Achilles and half-brother of Teucer.  He is most conspicuous for his athletic strength and unremitting valor in defense.  Sometimes thought of by readers as a bit of a dumb ox, he is praised for his prudence by Hector and is among the small group chosen to take part in the embassy to persuade Achilles to return to the battle.

8

Free Content

6 Nov, 2020

Us and Them

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When this cotton-mill boy went down to the University in 1959, he noticed something at once.  There was a division between the superior US  (that is, them)  and the inferior THEM (that is, us).  The division had nothing to do with intellectual distinction or even athletic prowess,  but the members of US definitely  regarded themselves as superior.

28

All Paid Subscribers / Seiler

6 Nov, 2020

2020 Election Pre-Mortem

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More than any election in my lifetime – and I remember the 1964 Goldwater bid when I was nine – this one has been nothing but one revolting development after another. One reason is this election has been going on since this time four years ago. Just before the November 2016 plebiscite, Hillary and her minions ginned up the Russia Hoax as a guarantee against Trump’s possible victory. At the time I wrote on this very site that it was impossible for the Russians to rig our election because it’s too complex. That turned out to be the case, as...

9

Feature / FF

6 Nov, 2020

A Letter from an Alabamian

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If Martin Luther King Jr. is considered The American Hero, and the civil rights movement viewed as the ultimate expression or spring board of everything good about America…. Then it is only logical that a reexamination of people like Southerner, three-time elected Governor George Wallace is considered, and written about in a different way to counter it

3

Autodidact / Fleming

6 Nov, 2020

Sophocles’ Ajax I: Preliminary

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I hardly ever read introductions to classic works of English or American fiction; however, the farther removed we are a literary tradition, the more we may feel the need of a little preliminary exposition.  The Athenian poet Sophocles was born a few years after 500 B.C. and would have been about thirteen years old when Xerxes led the Persian army into Greece and burned the temples on the Athenian acropolis.  

15

Free Content

5 Nov, 2020

Announcement: Sophocles Lives!

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I’ve just started rereading Sophocles’ Ajax.  I’m not sure why, apart from the need to keep reading Greek, but there is something that has always attracted me in the portrait of the staunch reactionary who goes mad, after being dishonored, and of his glib enemy, Odysseus, who learns humanity.  (I have a strong hunch that in his depictions of Odysseus–as in his Oedipus–Sophocles is dealing with the Athenian mentality of his own day, and that scholars who see the poet’s friend Cimon in Ajax are on the right track.) If five people promise to start reading it, I’ll start a...