Had the food pantry volunteer visited Kafka’s house on any of his trips to Prague? No, he didn’t like Kafka much. Did he think there was any value in seeing authors’ houses in general or in going to Mount Vernon even? As a native of Connecticut, but not only for that reason, he would say that Mark Twain’s house was worth seeing. Did the food pantry volunteer recommend visiting the thermal springs around Budapest? Emphatically yes.

What movie had two of the three Food Pantry Volunteers seen in the theater recently? Wicked. What movie from 2007 did the third volunteer rewatch recently which the two who’d seen Wicked never heard of? There will be Blood. What architect that was spoken of by the volunteers who’d seen Wicked made the volunteer who’d seen There Will Be Blood mentally note he would need to look him up? Walter Gropius. (“Basically unheard of you would have two by Gropius in one town,” said a volunteer.)

What was said to the food pantry volunteer as he adroitly reoriented his cart full of boxes of tomato sauce from back-facing to front-facing in a narrow corridor by a passing school administrator? “You handle that better than I do.”

What subject most dominated the banter and small talk of the food pantry volunteers as they worked? Politics. Did the food pantry volunteer find the President entertaining? No. Were there any topics on which the food pantry volunteer differed with her husband with respect to politics? They broadly agreed but didn’t get into specifics, which maybe they should more.

Did the food pantry volunteer share the food pantry volunteer’s opinion that immigrants to a country have a kind of distorted view of its politics? Politics were shaped by experiences, said the volunteer. Immigrants to this country have different experiences than people who were born here.

Were politics actually formed by experiences or by genetics I wondered aloud? I remember having heated political debates with a libertarian oriented kid in the fourth and fifth grades. We didn’t know anything, we hadn’t experienced anything, but we knew which side we were on.

Were any boxes of corn and tomato sauce carted up from the storage area? Yes, eight of each. How many boxes of sized 5 diapers did you place into ziplock bags, six per bag? Perhaps four. How many boxes of size two diapers did you put in bags? About a half of one.

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To wrte as to take “one’s stand in the rites.”…o tone’s .”
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swin…ang…ines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
dabashitru
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…

Liberace: Stardust ; As Time Goes By. . . . This is a Louis Armstrong version of Stardust, by way of contrast.

Noting how the repetition of κλίνω in these lines at the opening of Iliad book 22 contrasts the Trojans leaning on their battlements with the Achaeans leaning their shields on their shoulders. Book 22.2-4.

κεκλιμένοι καλῇσιν ἐπάλξεσιν: αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὶ
τείχεος ἆσσον ἴσαν σάκε᾽ ὤμοισι κλίναντες

“they leaned on their beautiful battlements; but the Achaeans / drew near the wall, their shields leaning on their shoulders.” 

So shields are contrasted with battlements, as a means of self-defense, yes; but also, the Trojan battlements are leaned on, indicating exhaustion, or a need for shelter, while the Achaean are leaning their shields on their shoulders, indicating, I’m not sure what: maybe that they don’t anticipate using them?

Finally, there is a curious symmetry to the syntax of these lines: with “leaning” serving as bookends, “walls” (teixos — another defensive work) occupying a middle ground between them; and “battlements” and “shields” occupying a middle point between them.

“Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.” (AP)

Reporter Laura Rozen: “Feels a bit like we have entered one of those alternative history novels, like The Plot Against America.”

Vernon Dalhart’s “I’ll Be with You When the Roses Bloom Again“

Going away for a bit and putting up a few old things of mine, one of them straightforward and the other less so… I was looking over my old writing tonight: so many stupid ideas pursued, so many missed opportunities…. in sum, I’ve spent a lot of time getting things very wrong, I observe.

My thought about writing today is that I pursued it, not for itself, but in the avoidance of something else (which is the only thing that could explain the degree of wrongness); and yet, in the event that this was not the case, and I were to reapply myself to the task, I’m wondering, would I now know what to do? I’m not sure. I know now what not to do, I’m fairly sure! A bientot.

Invisible World
The invisible world he so dreads
Is made of microbes not the dead.
The dead are dead, they are not here,
(he says, applying the sanitizer)
While life is threateningly everywhere.

There did truly seem no escape
Our bodies invitingly agape —
As strange to them as stars to us
To which, inexorably, they rush,
Bringing us sickness and our death
We the host and they our guest.

This was the unseen world to fear,
Of beings minute, of gasses clear,
Hell was this and what was heaven–
To be still healthy and still living

A Grove

“I’m walking in a grove.” I’m walking in a grove, according to Hendrick, because decidedly you are not in a grove but where what is anything else would better suffice. I’m decidedly not walking in a grove, according to Jim, because I was not doing it correctly. Hendrick was walking in a grove (though it was not a grove) Jim was walking in a grove (and doing it correctly), and I was — where I was– not walking in a grove, not walking in a grove correctly, but actually being there, where I was, which also wasn’t it (was even less it than not being there) but I was accompanied I believe by Hendrick and by Jim.

*

I’m walking in a grove. I remark to myself that I should know the names of the species of trees that I come upon but I know them only imperfectly and it is a task complicated by the fact that the names of the trees of the grove are somewhat different from those of the trees outside of it, and from those of the place where I first learned the names of all the trees. So that one could come upon an oak for example and discover that it is here called an ‘Oash’ or some such thing. And yet I don’t see anything I would even think to call an ‘oak’. Nothing I know by the name plum, elm, birch, poplar, locust or dogwood is present either. Those trees seem not “in the same conversation” with the trees that I here constantly encounter, which are “just trees,” and generic. There is the feeling that if I could know the name of just one of the trees I would know the names of all of the trees and then I would know the grove itself and then I would know what I am doing in the grove and then I would know what might be found in it, but I know not one, not any, not all, not the grove. If I could just get out of it, if I could just get into it, if I could just know what I’m doing with respect to it, know the first thing about all or any part of it. But I find myself growing quiet beside it, moving along by its side rather pensively now thinking — it’s green and inviting, though not to be entered.

“America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

This is a great sentiment but according to wikisource, misattributed to De Tocqueville.

I can’t understand this shortage of socks
At a time like this, a terrible shock.

What recourse do I have, to whom do I appeal
For this bareness that persists from my toe to my heel?

(And O how annoying and O how it rankles
to walk like this with uncovered ankles!)

It’s very apparent, the drawer says to me,
That I have socks in my corner — there, do you see?

No, I say, that is not quite right.
Those are dress socks while I need a rather different type.

Over here! says the trunk, I’ve got what you need!
Every color, every stripe, every fabric, even tweed!

No, good sir, you have not socks but shirts.
You’re quite well intended but aren’t helping my search.

And what of me says the proud closet with anger,
Are these not socks that droop from my hangers?

Closet, I respect that you are literally very neat,
But alas you have nothing that can go on my feet.

Now, roars the laundry basket, I’ve heard quite enough!
Look under these towels, peer under their fluff,

At the clothes that days ago you ought to have folded,
There you’ll find socks, he berated and scolded!

And O what is this, I now happily discover?
But two fabric tubes my two feet to cover.

And the problem thus solved, a moral is disclosed:
If you can’t find your socks, try folding your clothes.

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Iliad 19, with its talking horses. The book seems to be about the vulnerability of the human body: the living vulnerable to hunger (Achilles), the dead vulnerable to rot (Patroclus). Notable that both A & P are given ambrosia (by Athena and Thetis respectively) to deliver them from these ills…. This vulnerability is distinct from the armor of Hephaestus which bookends 19: Achilles receiving it at the beginning and putting it on at the end.

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Children’s poem conceived: Where on earth could my Iliad be?

Where on earth could my Iliad be?
Not anywhere around here that I can see.
Not in those papers or under the pile.
Hasn’t been in the shelf for quite a long while.

Not in the car, not in the kitchen…
Beginning to despair of completing this mission.
Rummaging memory, thinking it over,
Where was it exactly I was last reading Homer?

It seems to me it would only be fitting
If it were somewhere around here, right where I’m sitting.
And so it is, it had only fallen out of sight,
So let’s start reading of the Achaeans’ sad plight.

a notional or actual hecatomb: intersting video of Homerists

At vic got me thinking about the version of The Iliad I would make for modern reading and television audiences, and this is what first comes to mind —

(a) I wouldn’t make any attempt to tell the whole Iliad. I don’t think ancient audiences would have cared for that either. I would attempt to tell one or two stories from the books — the night raid!– or tell of one relationship throughout all the books: Hector and Ajax, Agamemnon and Menelaos, Athena and Apollo.

(b) In book form I would probably have the most literal possible translation a la Lattimore, of not more than a few thousand lines, but OVERLOAD it with marginalia. This would include alternate translations, remarks of scholiasts, fragments of original language, fragments of the Odyssey and Homeric Hymns, Troilus and Cressida, modern criticism, wikipedia entries… make it suggestive of how much there is to explore. Make it beautiful with its elaborations — a scholiast’s document, something that arrived at the reader through history.

(c) In a word, a beautiful looking, extremely dense book.

(d). If we’re talking a television series, I would straight up ditch the 24 book structure and try to juxtapose scenes from different books that go together (e.g., the two duels, the battles over corpses) or even make it a Homeric-centered telling of all of Greek myth rather than about the Iliad per se. You could contrast the Ajax of Homer with that of Sophocles. Or it would be fun to imagine things Homer doesn’t go into like Heracles sacking Troy by himself. You could contrast scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey, etc.

……q……g
.au………..ra
lia…..P……vel
swin…ang…ines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
rrida bashitru Mar
gUAr dnnelS o-da
.BubbsalnBubb..
..Bub.ooBubb….
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“His weakness made his desire for glory manifest: he would refuse no labor and shirk no deed.” (*)

But I am weaker than a woman’s tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night
And skilless as unpractised infancy.

(Troilus & Cressida)

And great hearted long suffering Odysseus pondered deeply in his heart which of these courses was best: whether to put the sweet potato, beloved among tubers, in the quick-heating microwave, which took only seven minutes, or would he construct again the elaborate stir fry, which took the greater prep work by far.

And in the division of his heart this way seemed best, that he would have the stir fry, for in the refrigerator, with its well-illumined interior and convenient racks for the sauces, there were luscious vegetables losing divine freshness: vibrant cauliflower and green brocoli and brazen carrot, lordly among veggies.

And so with good intention towards all he moved quickly to heat the oil in the well made pan and to chop up the ingredients into similarly sized bits…