Author: Thomas Fleming

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Feature / Fleming

22 Jun, 2021

From Abraham to Napoleon: Revival

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The empire of the Babylonians was not fated to last, and Cyrus the Persian, after entering the city in triumph in 539, promulgated an edict authorizing the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.  It has been conjectured that the Persians were rewarding Babylonian Jews for their covert assistance in the defeat of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, but, there is no need to posit such a special relationship.   Cyrus’s general policy was to reverse the forced resettlement of inflicted on subject nations by Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, whose strategy of divide et impera would be emulated by later tyrants.

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Poetry

21 Jun, 2021

Poems by Patrick Kavanagh

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Born in rural Ireland (the town of Inniskeen) in 1904, Patrick Kavanagh was a poet, novelist, goalkeeper, and film critic. In my not so humble opinon, he was by far the best Irish poet since Yeats. There is more truth in “Epic” than an in hundred literary articles on Homer.

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Poetry

15 Jun, 2021

Poems by Edmund Blunden

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Edmund Blunden was born in in 1896 in London and saw combat service in WW I. He was the lifelong friend of Siegfried Sassoon. In 1924 he became an English professor at the University of Tokyo, returned at the end of WWII, and accepted a position at Honk Kong. He returned to England and died in 1974.

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Feature / Fleming

12 Jun, 2021

From Abraham to Napoleon, Part II

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Few details of the story of Exodus have been securely confirmed by archeologists.  Nonetheless, it is not unreasonable to suppose that nomadic Hebrews made their way out of Egypt back to southern Canaan, where some of their people appear to have been living already.

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Feature / Fleming

10 Jun, 2021

Ilhan Omar–Unwelcome Guest

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Ilhan Omar’s campaign slogan was “Send Her Back”–to Congress, of course. There is no doubt that the Congress of the United States  deserves a member as loose in her financial dealings as in her intimate life,  but it is not to Washington but to Mogadishu that she should be sent.

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Poetry

9 Jun, 2021

Poems by Vachel Lindsay

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Vachel Lindsay is an American original.  He tramped his way through middle America selling his pamphlet, “Rhymes for Bread”.  He was quite mad and killed himself for love of Sarah Teasdale.  His son lived on Johns Island, SC, and I knew VL’s granddaughter in college.

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Fleming

8 Jun, 2021

Herodotus: Book V

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Herodotus give his account of the resentments of Miletus against the Persians and the story of the Ionian Revolt, which is the beginning of open warfare between the Greeks and Persians