Italian Reflections (Cont.): The Platypus Travels Part XXI

Europe has so many beautiful churches and so little use for them. No one wants to bulldoze a work or art but, then again, not many feel the need to go to church anymore. So what do you do with all the buildings? Many urban centers in the United States have this problem too. I've seen churches turned into art galleries and night clubs -this particular church in Venice has been converted into a museum of stringed instruments. Note that the central image has been removed and that the lamps of the presence are out. I'll let you make of it what you will.

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The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article. In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North. In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10. Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts. They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness. They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease. Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels. Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment. I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother. Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men. In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain. Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage. The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose. If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...

Platypus of Truth

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