I wanted, but did not have, an English version of Garcilaso’s canción To the Flower of Gnido. I wanted it for people like Stephen Bess, who has a poetic and artistic blog, and likes old texts, but does not read Spanish. I also wanted it out of mere curiosity, to see how such a translation … More On Odes and Songs
1. Mirror, Mirror… Lakshmi Chaudhry clearly does not read the blogs I do. She believes blogs, and YouTube videos as well, are fame-crazed Americans’ attempts to attain a form of micro-celebrity. Voyeurism, narcissism, and exhibitionism are the order of the day. I would not say that about the blogs I read, any more than I … More Exhuming Banes II
I found this chez Bint Alshamsa. Your Heart Is Purple “For you, love is about establishing and developing a deep connection. If it’s true love, it brings you more wisdom and inner strength. Your flirting style is sincere. Your lucky first date is an afternoon at a tea house. Your dream lover is both thoughtful … More Le jeu du samedi
Once when Operation Rescue sieged clinics in New Orleans I spent an intense Labor Day weekend producing a movement newsletter with Xavier, a very gay English professor from another institution, and Little Robert, an anarchist. He was known as Little Robert because he was short, mild-mannered, and very young. Every kind of activist had converged … More On Seeing Your Oppressor
This sonnet “in praise of a poetess called Antonia” is a tautogram: all of the words start with the same letter. It is not clear to me whether I understand it. I may have to translate it, and/or look up a commentary. A summary, as Antrobiótica points out, would be to join the first and … More Tautogram
What are your very best techniques for convincing graduate students that: a) their theses and dissertations should have a well defined scope: they should be narrow enough, and then deep; b) their committees should include the people in the department whose expertise most closely matches their topic; c) each project they undertake can only address … More Calling All Professors
This is a famous poem by Garcilaso de la Vega. Everyone always quotes from it, or excerpts it, and I have decided it is time to write down the entire text, for those of us who have not memorized it. I have not found an English translation. It is a very melodious poem, flexible at … More Oda ad florem Gnidi
In his famous “On the Question of Free Trade,” a speech made before the Democratic Association of Brussels on January 9, 1848, Marx quotes David Ricardo, who had said: “If instead of growing our own corn . . . we discover a new market from which we can supply ourselves . . . at a … More Karl Marx IV
This post consists of ephemera, namely, notes I took while WordPress was flipping out. When servers and software malfunction, it is interesting to see how users, including myself, become anxious and desperate. I took one of those silly Blogthing tests the other day, and it said I was only 40% addicted to the Internet – … More WordPress Flips Out
Here again is what Bearcy, the pantheist, says about the Jantelov and its internalization. The religious terminology he uses, I would not, but the text is worth thinking about. These are the sentences from it which jump out at me today: According to my narrow point of view, the Law of Jante is the main … More Exhuming Banes I
coldhearted scientist وداد 