Chambord

This fine liquor is a real treat! I just discovered it, and drink it straight or with cognac.

I got a copy of Samuel Barber's First Symphony (op. 9) on CD the other weekend, and have listened to it many times since. It's a one-movement wonder, like Sibelius' Seventh and Hanson's Fitth. The final five minutes or so are a deeply moving passacaglia that burns like, well, thinking about long talks in the evenings on College Street, I guess. It's been a long time since orchestral music has brought real tears to my eyes. Maybe since the coda to Brucker's Ninth, first movement. . . .

Chords

My recent post on Hillsdale as Avalon has garnered a few emails. Apparently College Friend No. 1 struck a chord. I got this response in the mail the other day:

Poor guy.  I know how he feels.  I don't know who he is, but I think he is Hillsdale Everyman.  The only drawback to Hillsdale being the best of times and the worst of times is that leaving it becomes such a painful farewell to the land of our emotional birth.  And sometimes, I, too look wistfully up the oval towards the end of the semester, almost thinking I could see the Wiley of the Apocalypse thundering down the path towards me, almost thinking I could hear his primal scream marking the end to the semester's angst, and almost feeling the breeze as his heronic legs pumped wildly by, wishing he could carry my spirit away, like the horsemen of legend.

How about we open a Hillsdale alumni cemetery, with the plots divided according to class year, and special monuments for the RA's.  Our selling point could be "The Ultimate Reunion--Eternity!"

Hillsdale, it seems, has an odd effect on many of its alumni. For four years, we literally sat around and, like Socrates and the gang, talked about virtue all day--well, at least after we had stopped talking about Kappas or Waterman girls. :) Granted, the school did lack things. Latin and calculcus weren't compulsory. We didn't read enough Thomas Aquinas in the core clases. And the reality of the polity was always a little short of its catalogue. (The "Spenser and the 16th Century" class was never offered, for example.) But the 'Dale was, nonetheless, a really hard place to leave.

Dolor cum fine!

Well, after two days of mind-numbing ear pain, I have been healed! In fact, I now feel almost as good as I did when I came screaming out of the womb as I did last week before this all started. Turns out, my acute earaches seem to have been due to an abscessed tooth. I really enjoyed the root canal (relatively speaking). It was an interesting operation and, now, as the anesthetic wears off, I feel quite better!

Cleveland Metro Auto Tour

I left Marsha with her comp and rhet homework. For the afternoon at least.

I drove all over the Cleveland Metro area,
seeing the hood,
checking out the big houses, and
running errands.

John Zubal's was closed, but I did manage to visit the two remaining Half Prices in the Cleveland area--so now I've been to all four (yeah!). I think that maybe when my sisters come up, I'll try to take them to all four in one afternoon. (Or maybe that's too much?) Anyways, today I sold about four boxes of my old books and found several interesting new books: Cost Management: Accounting and Control, Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and the Poetics of the Law (White),The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis(Leo Strauss), the Wippel and Wolter Medieval Philosophy sourcebook, a fascinating sourcebook by Sebastian de Grazia entitled Masters of Chinese Political Thought, and Majid Fakhry's book on Averroes. All in all, a very good run!

I also picked up our fax machine (now repaired, so please send us faxes, everyone!), and identified a very nice suit at Jos. A. Bank. Finally, I stopped at the liquor store. Have Kelpie to share with family in near future. Also, I have discovered the joys of Chambord! Sex on the beach, here we come!

BTW, has anyone read the Kurazi?

It's the Hour of the Wolf, and I can't sleep. Before trying to sleep, I had read some snatches of Ibn Tufayl, then glanced at Maimonides. Didn't touch the Metaphysics. LOL. Then I did try to sleep. After 45 minutes, I got up and have now spent the last three hours working on email, to dos, and contract drafting. Not exactly penserosive, but it brings Milton to mind all the same.

Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in som high lonely Towr,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook


My family thinks I just need more calcium and magnesium. . . .

An interesting CV. What a difference a good early education makes!

The Big Trip!

As a part of Dodteye's and Marsha-Nini's enduring saga of madcap summer weekend trips, I am pleased to bring you the chapter about the trip to Dayton. First of all, there were the books. We went to three separate half-prices, and got some good shit. Like a Marquette U. Press edition of Henry on Ghent's questions on the Will, and an audio CD of selections from the Faerie Queen for $3.50. We also went to Books & Company, one of the greatest of all bookstores, where I got Bates' book on Aristotle's Best Regime. And I read Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political.

After we did the books, we did the peeps. Marsha's people, to be precise. Enjoyed spicy crackers, Polish-Baltic-Hungarian-German cuisine at the Amber Rose of Dayton, and a cool pool at a motel, and Guiness at the Thirsty Scholar. Had some good conversations, drank some wine. Everybody had a good time. Except you?

I didn't realize how many books I really have. I need some people to take some of these off my hands. Perhaps I can trade books for (more) beer (?).

Beautiful high-res color satellite photo of Frances from Friday

This NASA MODIS page is a fantastic site for satellite imagery of things like Frances--and clouds over Greece.

A beautiful view of the deadly storm, Frances.

The Rare Second Hit

If Frances hits, it could be the most potent two-hurricane combination to hit a single state in at least a century of record-keeping. Frances is as strong as Charley, but forecasters said it could become a Category 5 with winds of 156 mph or higher.

Hurricane-force winds extended about 80 miles from Frances' center, making it about twice the width of Charley and increasing the possibility for damage.

The last time two major hurricanes hit Florida in rapid succession was 1950. Hurricane Easy struck Tampa around Sept. 4 of that year and Hurricane King hit Miami six weeks later on Oct. 17. They were Category 3 storms.