Here we go again

Football season is here again, a weekly drama more distracting than any TV show for yours truly. Brett Favre played as usual and led the Jets, oddly enough, to victory. The Patriots proved their defense and running game are still there, as well as some promising talent from Matt Cassell. Yeah. Matt Cassell. Tom boy got turned into our very Gimper today; some clumsy (or malicious/paid off) Kansas City oaf did a number on his knee. Looked ugly, but we won't find out until Wednesday how serious it is.

Edvard Radzinsky

If you aren't interested in Russian history, you might want to look in to Edvard Radzinsky's historical works. If you are, like me, deeply interested in Russian history, Radzinksky's books on Nicholas II, Rasputin, Stalin, and Alexander II are must reads. He combines masterful historical research with sweeping dramatic prose and at times apocolyptic Biblical references that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He also has an uncanny ability to make the characters in his books seem as real as people you really know. Names, dates, and events lose any dusty dryness they might have had and take on the intensity and drama of action movies and spy thrillers. From the heartbreaking fate of The Last Tsar and his family, to the frightening enigma of Grigory Rasputin, to the dark and menacing presence of Josef Stalin, Radzinsky never fails to deliver heartpounding prose and amaze the reader with his meticulous and in depth research. (The man is never happy unless he talks to someone who was actually there or reads first hand accounts in diaries or personal correspondence.) I'm just starting his biography of Alexander II, and recently finished his work on Stalin. The Stalin biography was without a doubt the best biography I've ever read and one of the most powerfully written books I've read as well.

And while we're at it...

I'd like to use this unexpected explosion of new posts to say happy birthday to our fearless contributor Catherine. She always looks like this.

Flannery!

Here's something you won't hear every day. Flannery O'Connor, a year before her death at 39 from Lupus disease, gave a lecture at Notre Dame. It consisted of a short talk on some aspects of the grotesque in southern fiction (along with some insightful remarks on what it means to be a Catholic writer) and a reading of her short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find. I went looking for a recording of the talk, and found that the only place it was available was if you ordered a copy from ND's archives, which was way too expensive. After a bit of researching, I found an obscure internet radio station that had obtained a copy and had broadcasted it a while back. I streamed the radio episode from their website with Realplayer, recorded the lecture with an audio capture program, converted the .wav file to .wma (mp3 was too lossy) and uploaded it to the internet.

Anyway, for those of you interested, here's The Morning Oil exclusive of one of Catholicism's best writers ever reading her own work (you've got to love that accent).

Note: The files have been re-uploaded as of January 15, 2010

1. Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction
2. A Good Man is Hard to Find

Also, check out the recording of Chesterton here.

Kodak Moments

So, I've been really into photography lately and consequently I've been scouring the internet for cool blogs and websites. These are two of my latest finds: The Ones We Love and Show + Tell.

This Is Ivy League

So, for the next bit, I'm going to be posting music videos of new bands I'm finding. One of the most interesting and engaging has been This is Ivy League, who sound remarkably similar to the Beach Boys, but with more thought out lyrics. I'd recommend you also go to hypem.com and search for their spectacular covers of The Magnetic Fields' "You and me and the Moon" and Arcade Fire's "Crown of Love."

19

Hey, this little blog has been around for over two years with more or less continuous posting. Go us! Right now I really feel like complaining about Classical Latin. It's disgusting. At the convocation, Dr. Whelan stated Hillsdale's motto "Virtus Tentamine Gaudet" the way it should be pronounced, with a V, and then smiled and said "I know I just hurt some of you Classical Latinists when I pronounced it with a v, that some small, cramped part of your soul just went 'ouch!'" I laughed and continue to laugh whenever I run into someone who actually thinks that Caesar said "Weni, widi, wiki." Really? You think that's what would have come out of the mouth of a general who galloped around wasting barbarians? I think not.