Texas Sunsets and Irish Fathers
Sunset over Benedict Farms
Thanks so much to all who replied to my query, in my last edition, about how I might defray the costs of this newsletter, and whether I might start using the newsletter format to publish essays. I got some really helpful responses, and I’ll be using them to explore the possibilities. I probably won’t do anything this year — I have a book to write — but please stay tuned for updates. My apologies to those who didn’t get replies — I tried to answer everyone but eventually the press of other work forced me to give up.
Also, some of you asked about my oft-expressed frustration with the world of podcasting. I wrote a bit about that a few years ago in these posts, and my views haven’t really changed since. But I do like the podcasts I have mentioned in earlier Status Boards.
Now, back to less egotistical service.
A book of beautiful drawings of Cuban botany has recently been found.
Let me very warmly recommend to you Michael Brendan Dougherty’s new memoir My Father Left Me Ireland. It’s a remarkable achievement, but one whose excellence I find hard to describe — the story is far more complex than it seems on the surface to be. I think it’s fundamentally a book about revisionist history, but not in the usual sense of that term. Michael shows how we can revise our understanding of our personal past, our familial past, our ancestral and national past, in ways that draw us closer to health. But only if we find room in our hearts for forgiveness — indeed, often it is forgiveness that makes healthy revision possible. A lovely, lovely book.
I’ve absolutely fallen in love with David Ferry’s translation of the Aeneid, which comes closer than any other translation, I think, to the sober but lyrical dignity of the original. Here’s a sample, from Anchises’ great speech about the Roman future in Book VI:
There are those, I know it, who by their shaping art
Will call forth, from the bronze that breathes, the living
Features of the face; and those who by
Their art of eloquence argue and prevail
In courts of law; or those who by their art
Describe with their pointing wands the radiant wheeling
Of all the stars in all the nighttime sky,
And can foretell the moment of their rising.
And Romans, never forget that this will be
Your appointed task: to use your arts to be
The governor of the world, to bring to it peace,
Serenely maintained with order and with justice,
To spare the defeated and to bring an end
To war by vanquishing the proud.
STATUS BOARD
- Work: Time to make up those final exams....
- Music: Listen to the late, great Freddie Fender sing “Across the Borderline” — accompanied by, among others, Ry Cooder and Flaco Jimenez. It’s a song that, sad to say, only gets more timely.
- Reading: Looking forward to a brief break, before pedal-to-the-metal writing begins, for reading some 1950s science fiction.
- Food: In mere body-maintenance mode at the moment.
- Drink: Ditto.
