also: Rev Ben Wyatt was inspired to release a book about Nicaea this year, it turns out???

(theophite is usually fine, but for some reason he decided to say something hyperbolic that might lead a person to think his description of Nicaea is remotely accurate, and there’s not a single word in this post of his that is even proximate as a description of how Nicaea operated)

I’d prefer it if when we criticize the confusion and heretical nonsense propagated by this administration if we would not add unto it historical inaccuracies and other nonsense…???

I’ve been mentally comparing our current state to the fall of Rome by the Visigoths, but I’m shocked to learn that there’s a follow up Ostrogothic plot too.

watch the new ballroom at the White House is going to adopt Ostrogothic architecture

and the reverse too! people who never spend money and have loads saved up, while their lifestyles are very simple!

the fox Robin Hood really is the best

As I’m writing this I’m thinking about how I have no reason to include this film in my Rhetoric course, so now I need to figure out a fresh excuse to teach it in one of the Spring courses.

ahhhhh, see I am able to return to my three coffees a day thanks to anxiety medication (but I still sleep poorly)

that's when I realized I needed to get medicated for anxiety (not to presume!, but goodness, it's stopped the eye-twitching)

More importantly than all this Beethoven nonsense, this afternoon as #1 practiced and I practiced, I realized that when he gets older and better with the double-bass he and I could join the local (amateur) Symphony Orchestra together (I would play flute)

Anyhow, I'm listening to Piano Concerto No. 1, and it's wonderful because every *shape* of the piano-playing fits patterns I recognize from the Sonatas. The trills and the turns are in the same place, the emotional fabric is consistent - it's like saying hello to an old friend and not losing a beat.

I'm a deep Beethoven Sonata nerd. I have strong feelings about opus 10 (which is a bundle of three sonatas together, Nos. 5-7) - I think opus 10, no. 2, mvt 2's melody resides somewhere in between my heart and my gut - and I've been playing opus 13 (Sonata No. 8, Pathetique) for over two decades now

on a comparative note, every time I hear Gordon Lightfoot sing this line, I find myself turning to Gerard Manley Hopkins' Wreck of the Deutschland

okay okay, this is going on my “we’re in the Lou and don’t want to eat at the same place we always do” list now!

uh… where??????????

I usually write out at least my first draft (although it evolves as I shift from handwritten to typing midway through the week!)

“in twenty years the evangelicals will be New Atheists and the New Atheists will be fascists” is one of those things I wouldn’t have believed circa 2005

also, every now and again, unbidden I hear Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drums!" but specifically in the version written for choir and orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams (I have a lot of Whitman in my head thanks to RVW)