John Wm. Houghton
banner
numenor.reunitedkingdoms.net
John Wm. Houghton
@numenor.reunitedkingdoms.net
Episcopal priest; school & seminary chaplain.
Writes on Tolkien, Bede, Hoosier history.
Dog, Beda.
Poems: https://a.co/d/0CneRK8
Thaumaturge of Annandale series: https://tinyurl.com/B087RS699Q
I-Númenóreo Taracáno Lisseryar: https://tinyurl.com/RKGandA
And the second is “Always make a copy of the title and copyright pages.”

(Possibly the third, if #2 is “Be nice to the librarian / archivist / curator.”)
February 15, 2026 at 11:55 PM
Not reading the room dep’t: Gent came for interviews for the preaching professor at YDS & preached in chapel on All Saints. Not only attacked the cult of the saints in general, but cast aspersions on Thérèse of Lisieux in particular. Even the Baptists were ready to ride him out of town on a rail.
February 15, 2026 at 11:42 PM
And the head reader wasn’t going to admit it, either, until a table leader in the back of the room asked how we were supposed to score an essay that knew the prompt was wrong.
February 15, 2026 at 11:29 PM
I remember that year when I was reading the AP English Literature & it turned out the poetry *essay prompt* misinterpreted Poe’s “To Helen” as a poem *about* Helen of Troy. Good times.
February 15, 2026 at 11:18 PM
Thurgood Marshall, Bicentennial Speech, Annual Seminar of the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association, Maui, Hawaii, May 6, 1987. Cited in Jill Lepore, _These Truths: A History of the United States._
February 14, 2026 at 5:26 PM
I gave up caffeinated Coke once for Lent & by the first Tuesday my students were begging me to pick something else.
February 14, 2026 at 3:51 AM
Boethius works hard to translate everything into Latin c. 500, but iirc knowledge of Greek lasts several centuries more in southern Italy. There’s a revival in England under Abp. Theodore of Tarsus (r. 668-690). John Scotus Eriugena has studied Greek in Ireland before joining the Carolingian court.
February 14, 2026 at 3:27 AM
Lancastrian arms! Not even Chaucer could make “a bordure compony azure and argent” scan.
February 14, 2026 at 2:37 AM
Somewhat similarly, the one US Senator (& former state AG) I ever knew informally used to say it would save a lot of time & money in the courts if Congress would just pass all the bills they *know* are unconstitutional on April 1.
February 13, 2026 at 5:20 PM
Beda is interested.
February 13, 2026 at 2:03 PM
Skiouros the Shady
February 13, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Commodore the Reverend and Right Honorable the Earl of Nonesuch.
February 13, 2026 at 1:19 PM
As I believe Dorothy Sayers pointed out, it would appear that Jesus was either (1) a person who drank wine or (2) a person who falsely claimed to do so.
February 13, 2026 at 4:02 AM
I have a Zoom chat every two weeks with two former students, now in their sixties, and another retiree who was a friend of theirs but didn’t go to our school.
February 13, 2026 at 12:02 AM