I've been asked to help as a medium-term musical sub at church, which means I will be posting more about music over the next few months...

I'd really like to sink my teeth into the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, but it's insanely expensive and the only copy in our local library system is library use only. It's also old. Is there newer, more accessible work in folklore taxonomy that I should try instead?

I’m feeling the siren call of a PhD again. I think I could write a darn good monograph on a literary reading of Augustine’s use of Horace, Virgil, and especially Ovid, from my location as a Mexican-American.

Yes! Robert Alter: Contemporary Bible translations, in their quest for “clarity and philological precision,” “obliterate literary features of the original like expressive syntax, deliberate ambiguity, and purposeful repetition of words.” (Art of Biblical Narrative)

The thing is, if you pitched the story idea of “What if a very normal guy from Chicago suddenly became the pope?” it totally sounds like a Hollywood family friendly fantasy movie from the 90s

I would give anything for a Loeb-sized edition of Julian of Norwich in the Middle English

David West somewhat loosely translates the end of Horace's 24th ode as “by enduring, we can make lighter what the gods forbid us to change.” When I read lines like this, I am struck, again, by just how WEIRD Hebrew poetry is, in contrast to this.

I've stopped believing that people in the 1800s were real

“Jeremiah Markland, the great English eighteenth-century classical scholar, admitted that with a lifetime of effort he could not understand a single ode of Horace.” —David West

It occurs to me that when Austen has Darcy say, “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.” He's not that far from Dostoevsky's thesis in Crime and Punishment.

long time followers know that we've walked a long hard road with parenting and mental illness in our family but this morning I just scored a MAJOR parenting win on that front so please join me in celebrating!!

Paul Veyne takes down [?] Foucault: “He believed in neither Marx nor Freud, nor in the Revolution nor in Mao, in private he snickered at fine progressive sentiments, and I knew of no principled position of his on the vast problems of the Third World, consumerism, capitalism, American imperialism.”

one of my favorites from Linda Gregg, a poem that takes on richer layers of meaning with each passing year...

Is it time for me to finally read this?

ancient greeks complaining that the latest bard to sing Homer is not being faithful because he changed some of it

Yesterday was Star Wars Day. In commemoration of this new “Holiday,” the White House posted an AI image of Trump as the Mandalorian, while former president Obama plugged his new presidential center alongside Luke Skywalker.

And now for something completely different…

"'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that,' says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—memory yields." —Nietzsche

I finished the first draft of my Psalm 16 setting! If you would like to be a part of the editing process, offering feedback on versification, melody, anything, DM me your email address!

"Irenaeus' theology is essentially a plea for the validity of ordinary Christian life and tradition, in the ordinary world." —Brian Daley

One of the types of poems Horace borrowed from the Greeks is the ship poem. Reading poems like this one, I’m realizing that DANTE probably alludes to Horace’s ship poems in his ongoing metaphor through the Commedia of his soul as a ship!!

I mean, c'mon, I love his irreverent rendering of Horace Ode I.11:

Horace is so pansexual (and my Latin is so weak) that every time he names a lover at the start of the poem it’s truly 50/50 if it’s a boy or a girl.

As a Reformed person, I am ashamed of Doug Wilson and vehemently oppose his theology and practice. However, if I am being completely, painfully honest, I think I can understand a little of what makes him tick, from inside the tradition.

The first three letters of my license plate are HMF, which I have always assumed stands for "Her Majesty's Frigate"

I really don't like Ezra Pound, his personality or his values, but I have to admit that I really enjoy his poetry sometimes

Years ago when I was scoring parts regularly, I learned how to do it on Finale and then spent the most time scoring parts in Sibelius and Notion. Now, I'm learning how to use MuseScore and WOW music notation software interfaces have come a long way!!

Horace's poetry is full of references to people who fought in various capacities on the *other* side of Rome's civil wars, and who are now a part of the Augustan regime.

What universe am I living in!? Today I sat with 17 high school students as they loudly and enthusiastically discussed the first few pages of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

okay I am so excited to lead the first Pride and Prejudice reading group today!!!

“I am extremely foolish in writing all this unnecessary stuff.” ––Jane Austen, in a letter to Cassandra, her sister.

vacui sive quid urimur non praeter solitum leves. “Sometimes we are fancy free, sometimes a little moved, cheerfully, after our fashion.” —Horace, Odes 1.6 (West trans.)

How many years before we get the exvangelical runaway bestseller Jesus and Chuck Norris

The user interface is basically MYST but Jane Austen lol

I just discovered a website of a virtual version of the bookshelf Jane Austen would have perused at her brother's estate, basically Jane Austen's library. www.readingwithausten.com

Has anyone out there read this book? I am dipping into it and it is like stumbling upon a vast chasm in an underground cave

What is your view of Ted Hughes? A. All around terrible guy B. Bad man, good poet C. Truly great poet D. Never heard of him

I love a long seventeenth century — 1588-1820

Inventing a new period, the Late Early Modern, 1620-1820 this is where I live now, please use this address for all correspondence

“It is equally fatal for the mind to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two." —Schlegel

The word beatus is somewhat important in Horace. It shows up in his second epode, the epode that has had the most lively afterlife in English poetry.

I am fascinated by the Augustan project of cultural reformation, because it occurs on a conservative-liberal axis that is almost wholly alien to Christianity. As such, it provides an interesting mirror by which to judge later, post-Christian attempts at conservative cultural reform.

Reading Virgil gave me one perspective on Augustan Rome. Reading Ovid gave me a different, more subversive perspective, but one that I felt made sense when contrasted with Virgil. But now, reading Horace, he's giving me a perspective on Augustan Rome that I can't square with either Virgil or Ovid.

"There is no doubt that from his first entry into politics Octavian was consciously engaged in manipulating public opinion." —David West

In Ancient Rome, as in America, hiding your privilege and claiming the role of the Everyman was a promising path to economic and political gain.

“Attending lectures in philosophy and gathering an army” peak multitasking

When Brutus fled Rome and gathered forces to fight against Caesar’s faction, he found time to… listen to philosophy lectures in Athens WHAT

Whether Lionel Trilling is right here (and if he is wrong, how he is wrong) is for me one of the central questions of Jane Austen’s oeuvre.

Marilyn Butler makes a convincing case that Austen's plot of Pride and Prejudice is borrowed "narrowly" and completely from previous novels.

Happy Cervantes Day, everyone! Remembering the guy who gave us Don Quixote, the original postmodern revisionist Western!