Many an ambitious ruler, seeking to extend his power, has stubbed his big toe on the brute facts of family and kinship, and many an ideological revolution that failed to reckon with the bind forces of greed and competition has been brought down by the primitive passions and instincts they had hoped to eliminate or at least suppress.
Now, “brother” and “friend” are or at least used to be rather exclusive terms. They did not refer to just anyone, much less everyone.
Friends, acquaintances, sometimes virtual strangers who are acquaintances of friends, come to visit us in Palermo and stay with us every so often. Obviously impressions of the personages inhabiting one’s own house are vivid, far more intense than of those with whom one dines or has drinks, whence, inevitably, the urge to somehow reflect on them in this diary.
This is the text of a talk presented at a conference, in Waterford, Wisconsin, attended by mostly Lutheran pastors plus a sprinkling of heretics and one papist, arranged by my friend Pastor David Ramirez.
Almost everything in America now is illegal. The old saying, “Don’t make a federal case of it,” no longer is heard, because now everything is a federal case.
No less than Time, which the precocious T. S. Eliot pedantically capitalized already in his school essays, Memory is a slippery subject.
David Hume’s essay on The Original Contract has been added. Passages Added from Plato and Aristotle. In addition to the assigned readings, the following passages and fragments will be referred to. More will be added in the coming days. P
In this final episode of the 1929-1959 era, Dr. Fleming and Stephen discuss 1958’s Buchanan Rides Alone and just how endearing a smiling stranger in town can be. Homework for next episode: watch Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. To see the Taylor Hackford video Dr. Fleming refers to, click here.
Celeste Dell’Anna, interior designer of genius and my friend of thirty years, is coming to visit us today from Milan, where he lives.
