Platypus of Truth

Knowing There are so many ways of Knowing: Oedipus cut out his eyes and placed them on a table so he could see himself. "Know Thyself," the Oracle commands, and The Socrates knew he was the wisest man for knowing nothing. Is cutting out one's eyes a confession of not knowing? if thine eye offend...? what if thy head offend? O Galilean Teacher who healed the blind, do you bid us pluck out our eyes that we might see?

Second Snow Day 2018 There is a poetry of Depression, But not all days are sad. Sometimes the Universe upends and sends Sudden snowfall on Houston. Even gloomy Aeschylus At Marathon or Salamis Broke into mock hexameter When Xerxes turned his posterior And fled. Just so, some Yankee farmer As Yorktown's disarm-er Told a passing redcoat As a side-note That he liked their band's selection. It's true that many times we lose But we can choose To endure Till God sends snow On Houston.

Jane Eyre Before Mother was Mother she hid with Bewick's Birds behind the curtain and was glad there could be no possability of a walk to Friendly's I learned to hide like her, though for different reasons, and Jane sat with me behind the curtain that shut the World out. Mother, I met Helen Burns at camp. Her hair had fallen out, but her face was glad, and she turned to books for consolation. Resurgam I plowed the field of thorns and if I was no good as ploughman at least I had a tongue inside my head to furiously insist that I am me. "Oh why am I always to be sent away! At least here I have not been trampled, and if I was as beautiful as a Northern European I would make it as hard for you to leave me as it is for me to leave!" I tried to tell them that at the party where we buried our hopes and dreams in the ashes of a haunted mansion. Resurgam I am as much a Man as you and will defend my right to be the self that G...

Alien Covenant I've been pouring over pieces of this one as well as trailers, additional content, and fan fights since it came out this summer. Even after watching the film for the first time at Thanksgiving, I've gone back and watched specific scenes for closer study. So what have I found? The opening scene tells us right off the bat that Ridley Scott wants to have a serious conversation about Creation (just like he wanted to talk seriously about the corporate dehumanization of American workers when he shot Alien ). Each item in Mr. Weyland's collection is a creative masterpiece. This is the beginning of the film's world as it is the beginning of connecting character David's world. I've had the privileged over the years of encountering almost all of the creative pieces on display (Wagner's Das Rheingold  in performance at HGO, a Buggati throne at the MFAH, a concert Steinway at the Forsche Studio, and the David in Florence -if I saw Paolo Francesca'...

I was too busy to see this one in the theater when it came out and it seemed so very far from Herodotus' account that it didn't seem worth it. That was a lost opportunity as my students did go see it and, as with its predecessor , they were ready talk about the Persians and the Greeks. To begin, I've used clips from both 300 movies in class to generate discussion on Herodotus to great effect (the fact that the students thought our admin looked like Artemisia aside ... not sure how that works...). Even when Hollywood is grossly inaccurate, there is often useful material that can throw students back into the text with a keener eye for detail. Hollywood's preoccupations with gender performance, violence, and orientalism also ensure that concerns at the core of the Greek world picture are front and center. Both 300 movies keep the connection between invasion, masculinity, and rape (explicit in Herodotus' narrative) at the forefront of the drama. The problem with 300...

Ghosts I believe in ghosts; Banquo appears at my dinner parties. He smiles, lips and throat. I didn't kill him, and knowing who did makes little difference. Do you miss the dead? They are all around us. Half of those who ever lived are dead, while the half that live are always dying. I loved the dead from an early age. Their houses are like home to me. I'd pick a tombstone in New Haven sooner than a condo in L.A. My vacations are in cemeteries. Why do I disclose to you what will not make a difference? You know the place where You are going and I fear it as much as you. Maybe there is some hope in strangeness that is shown. We need not all be like Macbeth and think that thoughts of Death betray a guilty conscience.