I’ve been in 15th century Florence, to be precise, colloguing with Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Savonarola, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Machiavelli, and others. As a traveler in time and space, I was eager to share my thoughts on the American present, which for them is an unimaginably distant future.
Cyril Kornbluth was a popular science fiction writer of the 50’s and 60’s, and a frequent collaborator with the somewhat better known Frederick Pohl.
Our next program abroad is scheduled to begin roughly, for Oct 16/17 and will last 7 days with the possibility of additional days in Rome.
Before going to bed, I made the mistake of checking the news and found clips of “the debate.” I exhausted my vocbbulary of Americanisms drawn from Captain Billy’s Whizz Bang. Gee Whillikers. Holey Moley.
I keep my FB account for a few reasons. I do occasionally get news of distant friends. Sometimes I can also share something from the Fleming Foundation, in the hope–usually vain–that it will attract a new subscriber–who feels our work is worth the quarter or fifty cents a day we charge.
I have been asked more than once to clarify what is meant by faith, hope and charity. Faith and hope seem, in English at least, to overlap: If I have faith that my friend will pick me up for work in the morning, doesn’t that mean that I hope he picks me up?
The American republic was founded, for the most part, by men with fine classical training, and anyone who takes the trouble to read the correspondence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson will see that their conversation is studded with discussions of points of grammar, ancient history, and even the rhythm of ancient poetry. Jefferson and Adams, although old friends, belonged to rival political parties. What would our presidents have in common that they could talk about? Football? Reality shows on television?
Dr. Fleming and Rex begin a conversation on the plunge of the United States into anarcho-tyranny and on the American refusal to look reality in the face without flinching. In the next six (possibly seven) episodes, they will take up, one by one, the key events that turned a naive American boy into a Jeremiah, First up will be the downing of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960.
Karl White writes in to ask which translations of Herodotus and Thucydides I recommend. In some ways, I am not the best person to ask, since I do not spend much time reading translations, but I have used a number of translations of the historians for classes.
So begins an epic poem that many readers even today regard as the best work of literature that has ever been written, equalled only by the Odyssey. I never cared for such judgments—the most important theologian, the 3 greatest western movies ever made, the world’s best hotdog. I leave the making of lists to newly wed brides who torture their husbands with “Honey Do lists” they post on the bathroom mirror.
