Written 6 November 2022 There’s a shrinking number of celebrities in whom we Americans place our collective trust. A very small number, indeed, for whom, no matter the direction toward which our political preferences incline us, there’s near universal veneration. Take, as one example, the late Alex Trebek, whose name was, and yet remains, synonymous …
Use Your Discernment (So Long as You Discern Nothing Different) Read More »
Unlike most of his corpulent countrymen, John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, spent more time at the gambling than at the dinner table. A founding member of the notorious Hellfire Club, to which only the most refined rakes and well-born lechers in England were granted admittance, Montagu was, by any measure, an extraordinary man. …
Louis XVI: C’est une grande révolte! La Rochefoucault-Liancourt: Non, Sire, c’est une grande révolution. Upon learning of the fall of the Bastille in the summer of 1789, Louis XVI—the hapless (and soon to be headless) French king against whom popular opinion in the country had long since turned—responded with one of the great understatements of …
On Revolts and Revolutions: 18th-Century France and Modern China Read More »
And, just like that, Rome’s conquest of Greece was nearly complete. The strong, sturdy, ageless foundation of Hellas, upon which the rest of the civilized world then firmly stood, suddenly began to quake. Those ancient, mighty pillars by which the early Western man was raised, atop which the hundred famous city-states he inhabited were built, …
(From my podcast, Pneuma by Daniel Finneran) Hello all, and welcome to this episode of Pneuma. I’m your humble host, Daniel Finneran, and I’m honored to be joined by you today. The subtitle of a recent episode, “Guided Beach Meditation” contained the following three words: the sand, the sea, and the sublime. For a treatment …
How to Think about the Sublime and Beautiful: Aesthetics for Everyone Read More »
From my sister site, Pneuma. The following is the transcript of my latest “meditation”. Hello my friends, and welcome to Pneuma. I’m your host, Daniel Finneran, and I’m honored to have been invited into your headspace for a little while, into that vast, shifting, tempestuous ocean of fear, hope, love, and doubt, by which your …
Guided Meditation For When You’re On An Airplane Read More »
Lines Written To And Beneath A Full Moon, 18 March 2022 (1) “And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring, from which such copious floods of eloquence have issued? Glory and light of all the tuneful train! May it avail me, that I long with zeal have sought thy volume, and with love immense have …
Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue – A Pagan Poet’s Prophecy of Christ? Read More »
Lines Written To And Beneath A Full Moon, 18 March 2022 (1) White milky ball of alabaster glow Shining borrowed light (2) on the world below;In your brilliance bathing sweet silent dreamsRippling, at a glance, the tides at their seams. Chaste (3) quiet sovereign, nature thy subject broodEnthralled by your beauty, by your strength subdued. …
Lines Written To And Beneath A Full Moon, 18 March 2022 (1) Read More »
Two Saviors In Two Weeks: First Obama, and Now Christ Returns – A Political Poem So said the man who knows not what he says: Cherish the hours, for short are the days‘Till you soldiers of American fameWill be deployed to the heart of Ukraine! “You’ll see when you’re there”, said he to the crowd. …
Off We Go!–To WWIII, Led by Biden’s Inarticulacy– A Political Poem Read More »
Two Saviors In Two Weeks: First Obama, and Now Christ Returns – A Political Poem Of Trump ‘tis said he lacks proper grammar;Of Biden, he suffers an inborn stammer. With his words, the first is carelessly loose—Committing great crimes of verbal abuse. And I don’t just mean insults at foes launchedLanding on Rosie O’Donnell’s large …