I follow Quintus Curtius because, side from cobbling together a translation of On Duties that I've found a worthwhile read, he often dives into antiquity to shine a light on virtuous behavior. For example, the need for, and how to develop a sense of humor. The entire post is worth reading [https://qcurtius.com/2019/04/22/the-cultivation-of-a-sense-of-humor/], but the following jumped out at me: > The humorist must be a master of imagery and metaphor. He must above all know language: puns, m…
The weekend was spent with family and friends. Also spent a lot of time unfucking things that I had left fallow for far too long - with a reasonable degree of excusability, but I really should have gotten around to it sooner. What next? I think I need to renew my promise of five posts a week. It'll be difficult - I've taken on a couple more daily hell-or-high-water obligations, if not big ones, I'm spending time on music, and maintaining my excercise. In the longer run, I need to figure out…
So no Girl Friday post. May everyone who reads this have a blessed weekend.…
In addition to Gene Wolfe's death, another tragedy yesterday was the destruction of the cathedral of Notre Dame. While it's not been a priority to "bucket list" travel items, much less have a "bucket list," it's a place that I will no longer get a chance to properly see. It's loss is a blow to beauty and the symbols of our civilization. How did it happen? We don't know. That said, the official story, that it was an accident due to construction, stinks to high heaven.…
Science Fiction author Gene Wolfe has left this mortal realm. Ages ago I had a coffee-table book titled something like "Worlds of Fantasy" that, while it also unfortunately introduced me to Earthsea and Gormenghast, also introduced me to Covenant, Elric, and best of all, Conan, Jack Vance's "Dying Earth," and Severian [https://infogalactic.com/info/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun]. An unassuming boy, a member of a torturer's guild on an Earth so far in the future that, like Vance's, our sun was on the…