/ America
Cormac McCarthy's Satan-figure judge
In all this time the judge had spoke hardly a word. So at dawn we were on the edge of a vast malpais and his honor takes up a position on some lava rocks there and he commences to give us a address. It was like a sermon but it was no such sermon as any man of us had ever heard before. Beyond the malpais was a volcanic peak and in the sunrise it was many colors and there was dark little birds crossin down the wind and the wind was flappin the judge’s old benjamin about him and he pointed to that stark and solitary mountain and delivered himself of an oration to what end I know not, then or now, and he concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her. Then he turned and led the horse he had been ridin across that terrain of black and glassy slag, treacherous to man and beast alike, and us behind him like the disciples of a new faith.
Amy Hungerford, Professor of English, teaches Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in the first of two lectures (I’ll post the second later in Lent). If you strictly go in for page turners, romance and that sort of thing—if Melville and Faulkner and The Iliad are not among your favorites—then you may not have the eye for McCarthy’s vision. But if you are a member of the Church—that support group for adult children of Adam and Eve—and remember that the first fratricide was Cain; if you hear the slogan “Yes, we can!” and are skeptical of hubris wherever it may be found—then Blood Meridian can take you to the north plains of the human soul. In such parts, the hunger is as dangerous as anything on the Texas frontier.
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, on Virgil, Novus Ordo Seclorum, the Enlightenment, and where the British are relative to Continental and American philosophies
2LT Evan Robert Ellsworth—second row from the top, just left of center—in a class photo with graduating classmates of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Field Artillery, B Company, Basic Officer Leadership Course II, 4th Platoon Renegades, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Evan is on his way now to The Armor School, Ft. Knox, Kentucky. By the end of the summer, he’ll report to the 82nd Airborne Division (“All-American”), Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
Kevin Bacon talks with Lt. Col. Michael Strobl about the HBO Film “Taking Chance”
I was in graduate school when a classmate handed me a book — The Priestly Kingdom — Rodney Clapp wrote was an inscription inside: “To Phil: In anticipation of enduring friendship. Yours, Rod.” We’ve been good friends ever since. Rod writes good books (see his last, Tortured Wonders). Another in his train of keepers is coming, comin’ ‘round the bend. It’ll be released March 23. Tolle legge.
