Kestrell

This time Brown turns his hand to interpreting Dante's _Inferno_, which is also the title of Brown's novel. I can't say how it works as literature, but I am finding it a potent soporific, despite the little surges of indignation-inspired adrenaline which it repeatedly produces in my system. According to a doctor in the novel, Malthus's theory of apocalyptic overpopulation was correct, and it can be supported with "potent facts," because it is "the truth." I predict that soon there will be a surge of articles and books exploring this, er, robust theory.

Also, it is the protagonist's super-abilities as a "symbologist" which allows him to interpret literature on multiple levels, as opposed to the rest of us unsophisticated readers who only perceive the literal meaning.

I am taking a page from Umberto Eco's book, however, and trying to read the novel through Eco's declaration that Dan Brown is actually one of Eco's imaginary characters. The suspension of disbelief is not working very well, however, because, to me, Eco's writing is like the most beautiful colorful poetry written upon the most luxurious vellum, complex in both its physical and intellectual forms, while Brown's writing makes me think of beige Crayon on the thinnest of toilet paper.

Katherine Hepburn is my favorite actress ever, as she starred in my three favorite films: "Bringing Up Baby," "The Lion in Winter" (in which she played Eleanor of Aquitaine, my favorite historical figure), and "Desk Set" (I always wanted to grow up to be the character Hepburn plays in the movie), so I'm pleased to find such a perfect quote from her:

If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.

Did you know that Mark Twain was a fanboy for Helen Keller? What is it about curmudgeons and blind women?

Here is a letter from Twain to Keller
http://www.braillebug.org/hktwain.asp

My favorite bits:

1. block quote start
I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am to have your book and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrance of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us for nine years without a break and without a single act of violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "there they come--sit down in front." I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same.
block quote end
I expect that it was this sort of encouragement which resulted in J. Edgar Hoover keeping a file on Keller...

2. block quote start
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul--let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances in plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them any where except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his but there were others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
block quote end

3. Oh, and here is my favorite Mark Twain quote about Keller:
Blindness is an exciting business, I tell you; if you don't believe it get up some dark night on the wrong side of your bed when the house is on fire and try to find the door.
- quoted by Helen Keller, Midstream
from this page on Mark Twain quotes about Helen Keller
http://www.twainquotes.com/Keller_Helen.html

4. And last, but not least, here is an online exhibit about Twain and Keller, their friendship, and parallels in each of their lives
http://www.historyofredding.com/epl/twain-keller-exhibit.htm

Again, from Umbie, regarding his review of a book on modern art which he seems to think may have been a bit narrow-minded and reactionary:

"If you are clever enough at this point to skip several chapters of the book, many traumata of reading will be eliminated..."

I've had this migraine which has been following me around since the weekend so I am not up for a precise detailed review of this performance, but I do want to say...

Go see it!!

This is one of those Shakespeare plays which I never got around to reading in its entirety because, well, it kind of drags. Correction, it reeeeallly drags.

However, as in the case of their production of "Cymbeline," ASP does a great job of transforming a sow's ear into a very cunning chapeau (it manages to be a few steps up from the matching silk purse).

It starts off with a lively rendition of the Stan Rogers's version of "Barrett's Privateers" (I can identify the version because they even throw in the little whoopss), and numerous other songs help to enliven the setting of a wild stormy stretch of coastline.
The actor who plays Pericles (when oh when will ASP make their Web site accessible??) is extremely charming, delivering many moments of comic timing, and never descending into a totally depressing emo boy during the sad scenes. (Note: the subject matter of this play involves some references and/or portrayals of incest and intended rape, so it may be disturbing for some people.)

This play also manages to toss in some random pirates, which leads to one of the best "What just happened?" moments ever.

Is there a way to tell if these are an older and newer edition of the same text, or whether the newer text has been changed from that of the older edition?

1. _The School of Peter Abelard: The Influence of Abelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period_
by D. E. Luscombe (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: New Series)
Publication date: October 2008
ISBN: 97805210888a24

http://www.amazon.com/The-School-Peter-Abelard-Scholastic/dp/0521088828/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1I7K4AKE6CO1B&coliid=I1JDHLUTEO5FN3

2. Same title, same author, same series, but different publication date and ISBN
Publication Date: July 1, 1969
ISBN-10: 0521073375 ISBN-13: 978-0521073370

http://www.amazon.com/The-School-Peter-Abelard-Scholastic/dp/0521073375/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1I7K4AKE6CO1B&coliid=I32G10YGABUAPK

I am still piecing together fragments of Greek poetry, although I did recover enough sanity to ask Alexx if he would visually proofread the text at some point, because I'm only on page eighty.

What I heard:
38 Loving girls more than Jell-O.

What is actually printed in the text:
38 Loving girls more than Gello.

Last week I scanned a paper copy of Guy Davenport's _Seven Greeks_, which is a collection of his translations of the writings of seven Greek poets who came after Homer and Hesiod

The page design must have been in two columns, however, because the scanned text came out all scrambled.

But when your scanner gives you scrambled eggs, it's time to make souffle.

So I have been piecing the scrambled fragments together by going to Google and entering the search terms of the title of the book and then the last phrase which I know was in the correct sequence, like this

"Seven Greeks" "The trap's spring."

And I get back a result like this:

7 Greeks - Page 45 - Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=0811212882
1995 - Poetry
115 Gently cock The trap's spring. 116 Let us sing, Ahem, Of Glaukos who wore The pompadour. 117 Damp crotch. 118 Where, where, O Entias, Is the guidon ...

(You may have already realized that this Archilochos guy was more than slightly obscene at times. but, hey, he was a soldier-poet so his two favorite subjects are sex and fighting.)

Anyway, I then take the results and go correct my scanned text. It is both time- and mind-consuming, and I often find I have been doing it for hours without realizing it.

But this morning I realized something--well, two things, actually.

1. I am insane.
2. I am getting a metatextual experience of the fragmentary nature of the texts which is very similar to the scholars who pieced together the original paper fragments.

And *that* is pretty cool.

For my sighted friends who have never had the experience of reconstructing a patchy scanned text, here is a link to an online project which allows people to help piece together papyrus fragments in the British Library.

Ancient Lives
is a collaboration between a diverse group of Oxford papyrologists and researchers in the Departments of Classics and Astrophysics, the Imaging Papyri Project, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, the Egypt Exploration Society and the Citizen Science Alliance, a collaborative body of universities and museums dedicated to allowing everyone to make a meaningful contribution to scientific research.
http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/Ancient_Lives/

Being a navigationally-challenged blind woman, I found this episode of RadioLand titled "Lost and Found" particularly fascinating. One of the things which I find curious about sighted people is how often they reduce navigation to a visual experience, when what is going on is really a multi-modal process, and this episode does a great job of explaining about that. Also, the segment with Charlie the Pigeon Man of Cornell is absolutely great, not only because how pigeons find their way home is really cool but because scientists are still compelled to admit f*** if they know how the birdbrains do it. Finally, the last segment is just a total tearjerker, because there can never be too many true stories about a blind woman and the guy with the not-so-secret-fuzzy-heart who loves her
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/

From a book on the Knights Templar which I am currently reading:

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While in camp, or while in a castle in wartime, the brothers were not allowed to go out without permission, in case of ambush. Nor were they allowed to go out foraging or to reconnoitre on their own initiative. A lone horseman was very vulnerable to attack. Bishop Jacques de Vitry recounted an anecdote of a Templar caught in a Muslim ambush who saved himself by making his horse leap off the cliff road into the sea (the horse died, but he survived).
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