The Media have taken to describing Illinois as a “Banana Republic”? So today’s question is: How is Illinois not a Banana Republic? I await your answers. My first answer is: Because Banana Republics have beaches and warm winters… And, Banana Republics have distinctive cuisines and excellent coffee not sold by greedy Communists who think the sky is falling…
Long long ago in another galaxy, I wrote a series of pieces looking at the plain meaning of various passages in the New Testament, not as anyone pretending to be a theologian or Biblical scholar, but as a simple philologist seeking the kind of understanding of a Greek text he might get by studying Demosthenes or Sophocles. I am going to try and dig them up and refurbish them, if I can find them. I am afraid I wrote some of them for another website that has by now undoubtedly 86ed them, as they say in commercial kitchens. I tend...
The first time we went to Rome, we took the slow train from Pisa, where we, with the two older children, had spent a week, first at a beach hotel in Tirrenia and then at the always crumbling, always in the process of being restored Royal Victoria Hotel on the Lungarno Paccinotti. We had been intending to visit Italy for several years, but bringing up four children on a modest income put it beyond our reach. A ticket, back then, cost us $1200, so three tickets (Alitalia charged half price for children!) was $3600, roughly $6,750 in 2017 dollars. Throw...
Bernie Sanders’ anti-Christian hissie fit the other day is overheating the Christian chattiverse. Sanders unloaded on Russell Vought the load of Christ-hating venom he had accumulated in a liftetime devoted to attacking all things normal, decent, and well-groomed, describing his faith as “insulting,” “hateful,” and indefensible.” Christians are drawing the obvious conclusion that for Sanders and his ilk—and, remember, their name is Legion—any form of orthodox Christian faith is a cause for exclusion from federal office. First it will be cabinet posts, then federal judgeships, then college scholarships. Unfortunately, too few Christians seem to understand that Sanders is only making explicit...
10: AM CDT In the palatial headquarters of The Fleming Foundation, Founder and President Thomas Fleming, surrounded by popping flashbulbs and rolling movie cameras, made an official announcement that brought joy to the literally dozens of friends and readers who follow the work of the Foundation. (They actually number in the hundreds, but dozens sounds more poetic.) I am happy to report that we have struck an agreement with the beautiful Grand Hotel del Gianicolo to arrange TFF’s first convivial meeting in Italy: A one week meeting in Rome to explore “the grandeur that was Rome,” specifically, the height...
Though Jonson seems proudest of his tragedies on classical themes–Sejanjus and Catiline–neither was a hit. In fact Sejanus, which invited comparisons between the degenerate courtiers of Elizabeth and those of Tiberius–aroused hostility against the poet. Jonson was also one of a number of Elizabethan writers–Marston and Donne–who excoriated the evils of their time without necessarily correcting any of their own personal vices. As he grew older, however, Jonson’s satires increasingly took on the gentle ironic tone of Horace instead of the Juvenalian savagery affected by his rivals. It is significant that the 1590’s were the great years for English satire,...
IV It’s 2017, and the Rechstaffens have moved from the crazy Bay Area to the crazier Portland, where Fritz IV (J.J.) is doing well as head of an immigrants’ rights organization and Democratic Party activist. He had worked hard for Bernie, but, when his candidate lost, he cheerfully rolled up his sleeves to work for the first woman that would be elected President of the Free World, the human race, and the entire universe. He makes no bones about his loathing of all things Trump, and that is the one subject on which he and his former son, Fritz...
Kathy Griffin, one of nature’s more repellant mistakes, is now complaining that she has been bullied by the Trumps. Preposterous, no? Even Trump-haters with a normal brain—my friend and colleague, Navrozov for example—would have to concede that it is in unquestionably poor taste to get a laugh by portraying anyone, much less the head of state, as the victim of decapitation. What kind of people are these, you may ask: We know what kind of people they are—degraded specimens of postmodern ex-humanity who could not care less what effect their little pranks might have on the families of their victims...
Part III We are some time after the beginning of the new millennium. Americans are fighting “for their freedom” in two wars and liberating their own homosexual citizens who labored under civil disabilities. Fritz Rechstaffen III, who (like President Bush) once did a stint in the National Guard, is an enthusiastic supporter of the President’s war on terror. His son Fritz IV, known as JJ after his two middle names Justin and Joshuah, is not so sure. He is a bit tired of his father’s patriotic rants over the dinner table. He doesn’t want to waste time going...
Part II Jonson wrote some fine poetry and well-crafted plays, but I think he may have missed his calling, which was to be a scholar. Unfortunately, he did not finish Westminster and never attended university, though both Oxford and Cambridge were later to award him degrees. Instead, he learned the art of a bricklayer, a trade he practiced before running away to enlist as a soldier and afterwards, again, when his literary career was stalled. Jonson had a pugnacious disposition and must have enjoyed war. Fighting in the low countries in 1591, by his own account, he ostentatiously took the...
