I’m in the wrong state for Handcart Days but they were celebrated all throughout my childhood by the people around us. It was like Christmas in the summer. It took me years after I left there to stop thinking of July 24th as a holiday. Years. And we weren’t even Mormons. We were just the [...]
Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If [...]
I don’t often use the word “beautiful”. Overuse of a word ends up draining it of all importance and weight. But “beautiful” is exactly the right word to describe the Afghanistani treasure currently residing in New York’s Met until the end of September. I have been to a lot of museums in a lot of [...]
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are to arrive today. Why such inaction in the Senate? Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws? Because the barbarians are to arrive today. What laws can the Senators pass any more? When the barbarians come they will make the laws. Why [...]
I almost had a panic moment today after I went to see the last of the promising listings with my agent. The place is a new condo conversion but all units are laid out in an unwieldy, ineffective fashion that nearly renders their fabulous neighborhood meaningless. We saw all units and hated every one of [...]
A few quotations from Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill. To what point Islam has advanced in this development is a question beyond the scope of this book. But it may be said without fear of contradiction that Islamic society and Christian society have been generally bad neighbors now for nearly fourteen centuries, [...]
I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows the day it was released and I settled down to read it that afternoon. I finished the next morning after forcing myself to put it down at 2AM. I’ve waited a week to write about it because I needed it to settle first. After [...]
He’s taking Julius’ month away from him. This week the new movie, fifth in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix comes out, and the week after that, the last book of the series. It’s been about ten years, right, since the first book. Because I remembered so little of the last [...]
I try to read everything. I do, especially if it gets good reviews and sounds like my favorite kind of literature, which is lengthy narrative (I also love ancient history, scholarly reads but that’s another subject). From The Iliad to Harry Potter, I’ve read them all. Recently, I’ve been on another reading kick (it comes [...]
The King Tut exhibit opens this Saturday. In its honor, the university’s museum hosted a lecture tonight by Dr. Zahi Hawass (link included for the sake of completeness, be aware it has a lot of exclamation points). This guy is quite possibly the closest thing to Indiana Jones in real life– without the Nazis– but [...]
When I was in high school, an essay assignment in English class asked us to answer if Jane Eyre benefitted or suffered from a comparison to a fairytale. Contrary to what most of my classmates wrote, I said that though the character of Jane had a lot in common with fairytale heroines, the book did [...]
I never pay full price for books, preferrring to wait until they come out as paperbacks or getting them through Amazon for a huge discount. I just paid full price for this one– Anthony Everitt’s Augustus. It made me do it! I’ve been waiting for this book since reading his Cicero and in the meantime [...]