Welcome Instapundit Readers!

As part of his “series” on the “higher education bubble,” Glenn today links a post with a title which addresses an issue I focus on (directly and indirectly) for much of the time I’m not reading about politics or writing this blog:  ”Kenneth Anderson: The New Physiocrats, or, Is There Value in the Humanities? There can be, if they’re taught rigorously and seriously. That does happen.”

As I finish up the proofreading of my dissertation, I am also working on creating several myth courses to teach, including a general introduction to Græco-Roman mythology, a course on the hero, another on Near Eastern myth and a fourth comparing the themes of great myths to those of classic films.

I have found the greatest challenge to the first course (the one on Græco-Roman myth) to be not organizing the study of the various myths (the outline I constructed corresponds almost perfectly with the two leading college textbooks on mythology), but organizing the first week:  how to introduce the study of myth to show that it’s relevant to people in our contemporary society.

All too many scholars in the humanities (alas!) focus on esoteric and obscure theories, trying to “deconstruct” literature or define its structure while losing sight of its meaning — or even speculating why it is that humans tell stories.  When I was an undergraduate, I sometimes wanted to challenge some of the humanities professors (those whose classes I learned to avoid), asking them why they were pursuing a career teaching language, literature and philosophy to young men and women who were looking forward to careers in banking, law, medicine, industry and other entrepreneurial endeavors.

It is a question I regularly ask myself as I look forward to teaching.

Not quite sure why, but haven’t really been in much of a mood to blog about politics lately. If you think some of my recent posts seem forced, then perhaps it’s because they are. This is not to say I haven’t been thinking about politics; I have scribbled out a few ideas for posts — particularly the more “essayistic” ones which I prefer to craft.

It may be just that other things are on my mind, including the possible purchase of a condo and the preparation of a curriculum to teach mythology at the college/community college level.

That said, one big issue has been on my mind, brought to the fore, in recent days, by Steve Jobs’s commentary on the president’s record. In a nutshell, I wonder why so many on the cultural left who “get” that the Democratic Party is bad for business, including those industries fostering technological innovation and enterprises catering to a, well, more or less countercultural crowd (i.e., certain small businesses in big cities and university towns), continue to support Democrats and spurn Republicans.

This morning, while sipping my coffee and reading a thoughtful piece (via Instapundit) on the Duke “Group of 88″ (professors who signed a letter effectively accusing the Duke lacrosse players of rape despite a paucity of evidence), I caught this:

But, even though I was an Obama supporter in 2008 and will remain so for 2012, Harris-Perry doubtless would dismiss me, too, as an insidiously racist white liberal. After all, I have publicly expressed horror with the Obama administration’s hostility to due process in higher education and my deep disappointment with the President’s indifference to the 2009 plebiscite that annulled the marriage equality law in my home state of Maine.

Emphasis added.  The entire piece merits your time.  It is a devastating critique of an academic’s obsessive focus on race, where “feelings” become subordinate to facts.  That said, the main reason I quote the blog post is for those words I emphasized above.

Now, maybe Dr. Johnson does support the president’s interventionist domestic policies and has to bite the bullet on the differences he identifies above (as we gay conservatives do when it comes to our party’s stand on DADT repeal), but those words did get me thinking about the idea that has been much on my mind of late:

Why do some people (mostly cultural liberals) continue to support Democrats (and oppose Republicans) when they know the economic policies of the president’s party make it increasingly difficult for individuals to establish enterprises while preventing more establish entrepreneurs from innovating and expanding.

I’m back at my alma mater, once again named America’s top liberal arts college. I had come out here for the fall meeting of the executive committee of our Society of Alumni to which I was elected last year, and stayed for a few days in order to address the club I founded when I was an undergraduate, the Garfield Republican Club.

If you’re in western Massachusetts, please feel to stop by tonight at 8:30 PM in Williams College’s Griffin Hall Room 6 to hear me address the question, “Was the Bush Administration the Golden Age for Gays in America?”

As I visit the campus, talking to professors and students, preparing my remarks, I recall so many things, but notably the conversations I had here, not just with my philosophical confrères, but also with my ideological adversaries.  I recall the respect that most showed for my ideas, how we each strove to respect the other’s arguments.  My favorite political science professor here was a Marxist who taught a course in conservative  political theory.  It remains to this day the best class I ever had where I perhaps worked the hardest and certainly learned the most.

And I recall how after Phyllis Schlafly spoke, students asked her tough questions, then engaged each other in thoughtful, though sometimes, heated exchanges about the arguments she made and the conclusions she reached.  My fellow Ephs offered a civil response to a controversial speaker.

I believe my concern for civil discourse begun here, beneath the peaceful shadows of these purple mountains.  As I recall the conversations that took place — and apparently still take place here — I wonder if this medium (blogging) sometimes compromises our ability to comment in a civil manner.  I note how my own tone has become snarkier since I first started blogging.

Now, to be sure, some of our critics, do respond to our points, but all too often they merely attack us not for what we say, but for what they believe conservatives would say.  And, alas, some of our defenders respond in kind.

Perhaps, the difference is that at Williams College, we looked our interlocutors in the eye when we took issue with their points, but in this medium, we don’t see the faces of those with whose arguments we take issue. (more…)

Elmhurst College, Nathan Harden reports in the National Review’s Phi Beta Cons,

. . . has become the first college in the nation to directly ask applicants if they are gay. The question, “Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?” appears on the school’s new admissions application.

Students who self-identify as could could even “qualify for a scholarship worth one-third of tuition at the private, liberal arts school”.

Guess this helps promote the notion of sexuality as a protected victim class entitled to all rights, privileges and honors pertaining thereto.

This is absurd.  Colleges shouldn’t ask about such things on their applications and focus instead on the student’s merits, his accomplishments.

At least since I was an undergraduate, I have noticed that some of the most intolerant leftists I have come across hold tenured positions on university faculties. Those who should be best equipped to wrestle with ideas at odds with their own often show the greatest outrage when students present such ideas.  The latest example comes from the Hawkeye State:

University of Iowa professor who studies same-sex relationships was so upset by an email from a campus Republican group promoting “Conservative Coming Out Week” that she fired off a vulgarity aimed at all Republicans, according to messages released by the school Wednesday.

“F— you, Republicans” was professor Ellen Lewin’s response Monday to the recruiting pitch from UI College Republicans. She sent the email from her school account, drawing outrage from conservative students and one Republican lawmaker.

UI President Sally Mason responded to the incident Wednesday by condemning intolerant political speech.

The university president may have condemned intolerant political speech in broad terms,* but she did not single out, as she should have, the professor nor even identify her political views, as if such intolerance were not legion on the left.  The university should be questioning why a scholar who reacts as Ms. Lewin did was doing on its faculty.

A conservative who spoke out as did she would likely be subject to sensitivity training.  Instead of grappling with her prejudice, this academic used her apology to lash out against Republicans.  In an ”email to the leaders of the College Republicans,” Ms. Lewin explained “that she had just finished reading about ‘fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government’ when she received the pitch”:

“I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities,” Lewin wrote.

But she said the group’s email contained several statements that were “extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity.” She said she was upset that Republicans used the “coming out” language to describe the week given what she called their general disdain for gay rights. She said the email also mocked labor protesters in Wisconsin and animal rights.

This woman just can’t let go of her prejudices and even includes a jibe against those critical of her angry riposte — dubbing their sensibilities “delicate”.  Would she consider a gay man’s sensibilities delicate if he were outraged that a professor replied to his invitation to a talk on anti-gay bigotry with, “F*** you f****t”? (more…)

As many of you may know, I have been very active in the alumni association of my alma mater, Williams College, currently serving on the Society of Alumni’s executive committee.  Whenever we discuss the problems of drinking on campus and ways to promote responsible consumption of alcohol, we learn how the drinking age hamstrings the college, making it difficult to develop a sensible policy.

Such discussion have been ongoing at least since I was an undergraduate.

Rather than discouraging the irrational consumption of alcohol, the drinking age actually promotes it.  It turns the types of beverages human beings have been drinking in ritual celebrations as well as social gatherings for as long as we have recorded our history into a kind of forbidden fruit.

Euripides records how the prissy Pentheus was punished for failing to honor Dionysus, the Olympian whose bailiwick included wine (among other things).

When people see wine, beer and other (potentially) intoxicating spirits as beverages to enjoy with their elders, rather than those to consume on the sly, they will be more likely to drink responsibly, particularly by learning about drinking from those who have been drinking responsibly for a generation (at least).  If you start drinking among a group of adolescents, the age at which we are the most irresponsible, you will likely drink more irresponsibly as you’ll be drinking among those with the least capacity to control their actions and with a spirit inclined to excess.

Studying in Germany, I saw many of my Teutonic peers drinking on regularly basis, yet encountered none of the binge drinking I had observed on American campuses.   They grew up drinking beer.  They did not see consumption of their national beverage as something to do just with your peers, but also as an activity to enjoy with your parents–and their peers as well.

In a piece for the Wall Street Journal essay that he links on his blog, Glenn Reynolds addresses this very topic, where he reminds us that

. . . over 130 college presidents, as part of something called the Amethyst Initiative, have called for an end to the drinking age of 21. (more…)

Just about a year ago this time, I was intensely working on my dissertation, re-reading (and re-re-re-reading) several key passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey, even delighting in some of the scholarly work on these epics.  As I read about Achilles, Telemachus and Odysseus, I often thought I was reading about people I know, in some cases, I felt I was reading about myself.

I saw in the way Athene manipulated her father in the first book of the Odyssey techniques my sisters used to manipulate our father — and my teenage nieces to manipulate theirs.  These stories may have been set in the Bronze Age where supernatural beings intervened on a regular basis in the lives of mortal men and women, but they addressed themes and related experiences similar to those we face today in a world where we’ve banished deities and developed technology that the ancients couldn’t even conceive.

And just as the Olympians have been banished from our stories, all too often those who wield power in academia seek to banish the works once called the “Great Books.”  They replace stories put to paper by dead white males with current accounts by more contemporary authors who address themes these scholars believe more “relevant” in a world of rapid technological progress and instant communication.

In reality, however, students assigned such “relevant” stories find themselves bored and sometimes even cheated, as David Clemens relates:

My former student Joshua, now ambivalently quartered at UC Santa Cruz . . . has an article in Literary Matters about cheating.  Not students cheating; students who feel cheated.  He’s found a couple of excellent literature classes (Cervantes) but most just use books as a vector for stone-cold political ideology.

When he was at Monterey Peninsula College, Josh was the midwife who helped deliver a great books program to a college that had been out to axe all its literature courses.  In my Intro. to Lit., class he heard me refer to Robert Hutchins’s metaphor for Western literature as a “Great Conversation,” and in Literary Matters he writes

“Within weeks other members of the class and I were meeting on our own time to discuss the Great Books. We read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. We read Sappho. We felt and spoke as if we had rediscovered some long-forgotten treasure abandoned by the generation before [my emphasis].” (more…)

Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds linked a blog post today which helps explain why some of the most intelligent of liberals, particularly on university campuses, but also in the halls of Congress tend to be so narrow-minded. Over at National Review‘s Phi Beta Cons, David French offers an explanation of why it has “been so easy” for James O’Keefe to obtain footage exposing the prejudiced attitudes and disregard for inconvenient laws (i.e, ., in the Planned Parenthood sting, those restricting abortion) of individuals working for left-leaning organizations:

Because until now Planned Parenthood, ACORN, and NPR have not experienced real media accountability or real journalistic scrutiny — at least not to the extent that conservative politicians and organizations do. The mainstream media (and NPR is obviously part of the MSM) is sympathetic to their goals and purposes, and reporter calls tend to come from friendly voices seeking talking points rather than skeptical reporters demanding answers. In the MSM’s eyes, those organizations were the good guys, part of the home team. So millions upon millions of public dollars flow into their treasuries, while they bask in the goodwill of the cultural establishment.

Emphasis added.  Read the whole thing.

For further proof of reporters as friendly voices, take a gander at how Katie Couric treated the vice-presidential nominees of the two major political parities in the 2008 campaign.  With the Republican, she was confrontational as if determined to take vengeance on her high school rival after that more attractive, charismatic and popular girl beat her out from prom queen.  With the Democrat, she was adoring as if doting on the kindly next door neighbor who always gave her flowers when she returned home from school.

Many on the left just aren’t accustomed to dealing with confrontational questions.  (Take a gander at how Barney walked off the set when a CNBC reporter asked him a question he wasn’t prepared to face.)  They think everyone they meet shares their worldview and looks down on conservative.  It’s what they come to expect since they were in college.

Perhaps, the problem begins the paucity of conservatives on university faculties.

Via e-mail, reader Peter Hughes alerted me to a looming victory for gay rights in the most unlikely of places, the Lone Star State.  According to the Houston Chronicle,

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he’s in favor of the idea.

This is great news for gay people whom many believe are more vulnerable than straights for harassment based on our sexuality.  If a potential bashers know that gay students might be packing, they’ll be less likely to attack.  And if they do attack, gay people will better be able to defend themselves.

Kudos to Texas legislators for considering providing gay men and lesbians with an important tool to protect against ourselves against those who would do us harm.  Let’s hope gay organizations in Texas and nationwide push the legislature to act speedily on this important gay rights measure.

“THE TWELVE WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH. Syracuse is No. 1.”

Via Instapundit.

Perhaps I’m wrong and it wouldn’t have made a difference if Tyler Clementi had had an older gay friend or mentor to whom he could turn in his moment of mental anguish.

To be sure, it’s not just this story that makes me think of mentoring.  The issue of mentoring has been much on my mind since I first started wrestling with my sexuality.  The first gay “role model” I had was perhaps one of the most negative influences on my life and on my family as well.  And I always wondered if my coming out would have been any smoother had I met an older gay man capable of showing any compassion for my particular situation.

It is perhaps due in large part to his (negative) influence that I was so drawn to the goddess Athene when I read, re-read and listened to the Odyssey in the years after college and in the course of my graduate studies in Mythology.  Her gentle guidance stood in stark contrast to his arrogant indifference.  She both helps the hero’s son Telemachus find his first (male) friend — and facilitates his reconciliation with his own father.  It’s as if Homer knew that we human beings need divine guidance to navigate the treacherous waters when we first leave home and find our way in the world.

This story has stirred up so much with so many of us, in large part because we see ourselves in this young man, recalling the awkwardness of our freshman year in college, our first year away from home, when our aspirations often (unbeknownst to us at the time) conflicted with one another, finding our way in the world while seeking to belong in a new (and often) foreign environment.

Perhaps, the mentor issue comes to my mind because of my own experiences.  And other things surely must come to mind to other individuals, gay and straight alike.

The bottom question we need to ask is what can we do to make that journey less treacherous for young men and young women who differ from the social norm.   (more…)

On Friday morning, when penning a followup post on Tyler Clementi’s suicide, I wrestled with whether or not to call those who taped him as pranksters or tormentors.

Since reading about the story, I wondered whether those two young people were truly evil or just depraved, indifferent to the consequences of their actions.  Had they been older — and not fresh out of high school, suddenly thrust into the new-found freedom of college life — they would clearly more likely qualify as evil.  To be sure, what they did was cruel, but did they intend it to be so?

All that said, it will be for a court of law to determine whether they committed their actions with malice aforethought or depraved indifference.  More importantly, it is for us, as gay people, to determine what we can do to help those young people who find themselves in a situation similar to Tyler’s, in situations in which many of us, once found ourselves.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Mary offers a most thoughtful response:

These kids who thought it was amusing or funny or revenge (who knows what they thought, if in fact they thought at all) are reflecting the narcissistic theme of their generation. To them, all of life is nothing but a reality show featuring them. We’ve raised a generation of kids to believe life is all about them and with no thought of what effect their thoughts, actions, behaviors have on others around them. What will such selfishness bring to the future? I shudder to think. In the end, their behavior is somewhere between prank and torment…more towards the torment end.

The Tyler Clementi story has weighed on me much since I first read the entire details about this young man’s unfortunate.  And not just because of the sadness of the tale, but also because it, to a small degree, parallels a conversation I had with a young gay man at my alma mater, now a senior.

Last weekend, when on campus visiting as part of my obligations as a member of the executive committee of our Society of Alumni, I chanced upon that student.  I had first met him three years ago at a “Send-off” party the LA Alumni Association organized for area undergraduates, in particular, the incoming freshman class.

I sensed that he was gay and seeing myself in him and recalling my own difficult freshman year, sought to reach out to him as best I could.  I recalled e-mailing him and offering words of encouragement and support, letting him know that alumni were there to support him.  But, I didn’t tell him I was gay.   Because I believe each individual must come to terms with his sexuality on his own timetable and in the way appropriate to him, I didn’t want to force the matter, put any undo pressure on him.

Well, this weekend, when I ran into him in Williamstown, I did come out to him, having read in an e-mail on the college’s gay and lesbian alumni listserv that he had come out.  He was surprised to learn I was gay — and wished I had said as much in that 2007 e-mail.

And now, having learned that his freshman year was also difficult, I realize that perhaps I erred and should have come out.  Then, perhaps, he might have been better able to turn to me, an older gay man who was concerned about his well-being.  Having that support might have made his first year away from home far less difficult than it was.

For if Tyler Clementi had had such a friend, he might be alive today.

Sonicfrog‘s comment to my post on the Tyler Clementi suicide merits a post of its own:

Concerning the suicide and aftermath? I think it’s a waste of time and money to press any hate crime charges against the two. Kids, especially those in college, do stupid things without thinking ahead to the possible consequences. There doesn’t seem to be any real malice involved. They, or more likely Rutgers, will get sued by the parents. But, more than that, these two are going to have to carry with them for the rest of their lives that their unthinking actions cause another human being to take his own life. That is a pain that to me would be unbearable. That is a pain for which there is no relief.

Those who recorded him did indeed do stupid things.  But, did they intend to hurt?  Did they even know the harm they were caused?  Sometimes people cause pain without meaning it.  And Tyler Clementi’s pain was greater than any of us can fully imagine — at a particularly vulnerable time in his life.  It’s never easy being a college freshman, starting in a new environment, concerned about fitting in, finding your place.

These two may not have intended to hurt the young man, merely sought to share in the sport of mockery, as if they were watching an actor portraying a human being rather than a human being himself.  That said, as Sonic notes, they are going to have to live with his suicide on their consciences for their entire life.  I believe it was Dostoyevsky who wrote about the real punishment they’re about to endure.

What really makes me wince is the amount of sympathy generated for the young man after his death.  If only he had known how much good will there is out there for individuals in his situation, in a situation many of us once found ourselves.

We always wonder about those who spend so much time on our blog while telling us just how clueless and self-hating we are.  If they don’t like what we have to say and believe we have profound self-esteem issues, then why not leave well enough alone?

Which brings me to Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell who has recently “taken a voluntary leave of absence after generating national attention over a controversial blog that ridicules and denounces the University of Michigan’s student body president.”

You see that President Chris Armstrong is a, well, he’s a homosexual. Yes, friends, he prefers to express his sexual and emotional intimacy with members of his own sex. Horrors! And Shirvell, an alumnus of that Big Ten school, will have none of it.

On his off-hours, for nearly six months, he has blogged about Armstrong, “using the online moniker ‘Concerned Michigan Alumnus.’”

Among other things, Shirvell has published blog posts that accuse Armstrong of going back on a campaign promise he made to minority students; engaging in “flagrant sexual promiscuity” with another male member of the student government; sexually seducing and influencing “a previously conservative [male] student” so much so that the student, according to Shirvell, “morphed into a proponent of the radical homosexual agenda;” hosting a gay orgy in his dorm room in October 2009; and trying to recruit incoming first-year students “to join the homosexual ‘lifestyle.’”

My, my, my.  He does seem concerned.  More than concerned.  He really sounds obsessed.  Wonder why that is.

Shirvell would do well to leave well enough alone, lest people get suspicious about his real motives.

There are few things more despicable than individuals who, for personal gain or sport or merely their own edification, would make public the private lives of others.  They take advantage of others for a laugh, or maybe a bet or for their own sense of self-righteousness, to show how much “better” than they are than others.

They don’t think about the human being whose private life they invade and exploit.

Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi “leaped to his death after his roommate allegedly secretly filmed him during a ‘sexual encounter’ with a man and posted it live on the Internet.”  Why would this one young man want to make public the private life of his roommate?  Did he think people would like him more if he streamed live footage of a young gay man’s private sexual activities on the web?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gets it

As the father of a 17-year-old…I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today, I can’t. You send your son to school to get an education with great hopes and aspirations, and I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today. . . .  There might be some people who can take that type of treatment and deal with it, and there might be others, as this young man obviously was, who was much more greatly affected by it. . . .  I have to tell you, I don’t know how those two folks are going to sleep at night, knowing that they contributed to driving that young man to that alternative.

Exactly.  Exactly.

These two probably just thought they were pulling a prank, but they didn’t consider consider the feelings of Clementi.  He was so young and while ready to act out his feeling for men, not yet ready to have his sexuality made public.  It takes time to deal with the public ramifications of our difference.  Not just that, even when we are comfortable with our sexuality, our private life is just that, private life.  Many of us, not just a 18-year-old just coming to terms with his difference, would be embarrassed if strangers, friends even, witnessed our sexual activity.  It is the most private, the most personal of things. (more…)

On Monday, in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote about how Oliver Stone’s film South of the Border, “which lauds Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez as the nation’s messiah, has flopped spectacularly in, of all places, Venezuela”

To be fair, the film is about more than Mr. Chávez. It also praises the region’s latest crop of left-wing authoritarians, from Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Mr. Stone’s favorite Latin bad boy, Fidel Castro. In Mr. Stone’s mind, however, none is more unjustly maligned than Mr. Chávez. The director pulls no punches in his admiration for the Bolivarian bully. “I think he is an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure,” he told the press last year. “He is open and good-hearted, as well as a fascinating personality.”

And this got me wondering why so many liberals in America’s cultural élite, particularly self-described intellectuals. have become so fascinated with despotic rulers like Chávez and Castro.  (I doubt their views would change if they talked to some of the refugees from those tyrannical paradises, including a number of gay people of my acquaintance.)

For such cultural élitists, a critique of Western society has become admiration for, if not adoration of, its enemies, no matter how diabolical their ideas or record (in office).  These tyrants may preside over systems far worse than those the élite criticize, but so long as they oppose such systems, they are (to the élite at least) by definition, worthy of adulation.

——–

*and other demagogues.

As I was revising the conclusion to the chapter of my dissertation that I sent out earlier today to my committee chair, I wondered if I needed cite some of the observations I made in those final pages.  Once I had completed the body of the chapter, I set my books aside (save for two quotations I wished to use at the end), cleared my desk and just wrote, using primarily notes I had scribbled (i.e., independent observations I had made) during the course of my research.

Yet, as I wrote I found that I was occasionally expressing certain ideas and interpretations that very likely would not have come to me had I not read some of the secondary material I had consulted.  That said, the idea was there in my head.  I wondered if maybe I needed go back and find the book (or article) which allowed me to offer the observation that I had.  To be sure, in that particular case, the notion of the Phaeacians as the “most civilized” people in the Odyssey, I recalled that several scholars had made that or a similar observation.

Which brings me to blogging.

Whenever another blogger links an article or blog post, I strive to tip my hat to him (either with “h/t” or “via”).   Sometimes I may forego those expressions, but link the blogger so as to indicate my gratitude to him for tracking down the post.

But, there are times when I am blogging, similar to my experience writing the conclusion to this latest chapter, where I find myself reporting a fact or offering an opinion that I know I had encountered somewhere else, but can no longer remember where.  Sometimes, I can find it by searching the history on my browser, other times, a google search will yield the source.  In many cases though (usually with facts), I am able to find a source to confirm the fact, while uncertain that it was my original source.

In short, sometimes you can’t always cite your original source.

And one more thing.  Every now and again (particularly  now when I have less time to read blogs than I normally do), I find one blogger links a post on another blog I often check, but had not yet checked (and may be intending to check that very day).  And I wonder if I need hat tip someone who alerts me to a post I would have almost certainly found on my own.

Last week, I finished up what may well have been the most difficult chapter of my dissertation where I wrote about the goddess Athene’s role in the Iliad where that owl-eyed Olympian is, well, not the most attractive of figures. She does have her moments, particularly at the beginning where she restrains Achilles from rash action, but on the whole, she’s pretty ruthless, wanting to destroy the city of Troy, largely because its prince found her sister Aphrodite to be fairer than she.

Difficult the chapter was because the goddess is not as appealing as I would like her to be, but I did enjoy the research, appreciating the epic much more than I ever had and agreeing, against my own wishes, that is it is better than the Odyssey, long one of my favorite books in all literature.

Almost immediately after sending that chapter in, I plunged into the final stages of research for the next chapter, one that much happier epic, the chapter I have most wanted to write since the idea for this project came to me. In this epic, that of Odysseus’ homecoming and his son’s coming of age, Athene is a far more appealing figure, helping that young man, Telemachus, shed his youthful insecurities, find his father and stand up for himself while guiding the hero home.

Anyway, all this work (but enjoyable work it is) coupled with tax season has, alas, prevented me from blogging at the pace I have been in recent weeks. Do expect to get back up to speed in a couple of days, once I have reached the point in my research where I am ready to continue writing the chapter. I say, “continue,” because I have already started writing the chapter, indeed, its introduction was the first part of the paper I wrote since I drafted my “Concept Paper” while still taking classes.

(H/t:  The Corner.)