I dropped by the downtown Saturday morning to spend a few minutes browsing in the used book store. When I arrived, all the windows were papered up and there was a “For Lease” sign on the door. Redlands has never had much in the way of book stores. When I was a kid, we had […]

Here is another character sketch by the early Burke, this one on the so-called Wise Man—though he is more what Kierkegaard calls sagacious. He is the bourgeois man so despised by later ages. In many ways he is the opposite of the gentleman.
These sketches interest me because each reveals the strengths and weaknesses of its […]

A couple years ago I was traveling with a friend in Israel. We hired a guide to take us to Jericho, and along the way we picked up a young fellow from Britain named Nick, someone we met on the bus. Our first stop was the Monastery of St. George of Koziba, up the Wadi […]

The other day I came across this quotation from Le Morte D’Arthur 2.16:
And King Pellam lay so, many years sore wounded, and might never be whole till Galahad the haut prince healed him in the quest of the Sangreal, for in that place was part of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, that Joseph […]

Most of my roses died a few weeks ago. Their tiny leaves turned brown and shriveled up. I guess they didn’t get enough water, although I also noticed that after all that time they still hadn’t rooted. The red rose died, too. But the one that sprouted leaves last fall endured, and now it’s got […]

A few days ago I finished reading Historia Regium Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and now I’m starting Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Since I came home to California, it has been a year of medieval literature, with reading (or rereading) Beowulf, Grendel (heh), the Song of Roland, Tristan and Iseult (Bedier’s version), […]

My birthday was on Pascha this year. I haven’t thought much about turning thirty, though I feel slightly obligated to. Here is one thing I’ve observed lately, which I suppose relates to getting older: the last six months or so, I’ve found myself expressing my opinions much more strongly than I’m accustomed to. I open […]