[Between a Rock and a Hard Place] 04-10-18
The only rational argument that this Iranian regime will ever recognize is force majeure
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Website Renovation
We are very grateful for the continuing loyalty of our subscribers in the face of delays, irregularities, and lapses. I do want to alert you all to an upcoming renovation of the site. …While the basic form will be retained, including the featured articles on the front page, we are making a number of changes that should enrich the experience and facilitate use.
Wednesday’s Child: Operation Watchtower
What do I know about Jehovah’s Witnesses? Nothing, naturally, as do most of my readers, I suspect.
Poems of the Week, May 6: Canning on Candid Friends
“Much may be said on both sides.”–Hark! I hear
A well known voice that murmurs in my ear,–
The voice of Candour.–Hail! most solemn sage,
Thou drivelling virtue of this moral age,
Candour, which softens party’s headlong rage.
More Mendacity: “What is a Man?” (Boethius)
If it comes to that, what is a woman? Mention of “Gender liquidity” brings to mind a recent article in The New York Post about Mount Holyoke College. It is the oldest women’s college in the country, perhaps in the world, having been founded by Mary Lyon in 1837, and it admits only women. Or does it?
A Canticle for Leibowitz Part 1: Boethius Book Club, Episode 11
A lively discussion of Walter Miller’s science fiction masterpiece, a future history in which mankind repeats the Dark Ages only to make the same mistakes again. Recorded: March 22, 2018 Original Air Date: May 2018 Show Run Time: 42 minutes Show Host(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming The Fleming Foundation · Boethius Book Club, Episode 11: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Part 1 Boethius Book Club℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2018. All Rights are Reserved.
A Canticle for Leibowitz Part 2: Boethius Book Club, Episode 12
A lively discussion of Walter Miller’s science fiction masterpiece, a future history in which mankind repeats the Dark Ages only to make the same mistakes again. Recorded: March 22, 2018 Original Air Date: May 2018 Show Run Time: 42 minutes Show Host(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming The Fleming Foundation · Boethius Book Club, Episode 12: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Part 2 Boethius Book Club℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2018. All Rights are Reserved.
Wednesday’s Child: Brownlow’s Razor, Part Two
In short, something like a late Romantic. Had Pasternak been born in England, he would now be remembered as the culmination of Romanticism, a poet taking to modern extreme that “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” which, famously, Wordsworth mentions in the preface to Lyrical Ballads. And politics, it would seem, had as little to do with any of this as automobile manufacturing or Olympic sports. Yet this was the same poet who, aged 41 in 1931, published an autobiography entitled Okhrannaya gramota, its title usually, and not incorrectly, translated into English as Safe Conduct. In speaking of a man who,...
Leisure is a necessity, not a luxury
I can still vividly recall my semester in Rome many years ago. Among the books we had brought to study that spring was Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture. I had purchased the beautifully bound Liberty Fund edition (from which I’ll quote below) and couldn’t wait to plumb these two essays that Dr. Pieper had written in the aftermath of World War II, a time in which, it might easily be thought, leisure was the last thing on anyone’s mind. While I remember enjoying Leisure, his ideas were not aimed at (and thus did not then entirely take hold...
“Which Clash, What Civilization?” Part One of Two
One of the minor annoyances of growing old is the uncomfortable feeling that that less time we have left, the faster it seems to be going by. In a dying civilization the annoyance is aggravated by the constant awareness of how rapidly downhill everything is headed.
