It’s Tuesday, I’ll digest a bit, but know that life has changed. Everyone is home, around all the time, and my introvert brain is in shock, although it has no right to be. We knew this was coming. This is life from now on – for the next few years, with a break of people going to camp or something every once in a while. I’m going to have to force some changes – as in, using the early hours of the day to actually work. We’ll see.
Reading: I started Framely Parsonage by Trollope, but now I can’t find the silly book. I saw it on the floor yesterday, and now it’s gone. Where is it?
Also, for trip prep, reading The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise.
I started reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and did a lot of nodding during the 
first chapter. I had picked it up because even from the little I knew about it, I suspected that his take on modern life and faith might help me articulate my own inchoate intuitions. As I said, I did a lot of nodding and marking, but then I read this article in First Things and don’t know if I’ll do more than skim the rest. It’s not that I don’t want to confront different ideas – it’s that doing so for 600 pages involves a chunk of life and life is short. We’ll see. I just wish I could find that Trollope.
Also, Movie Son on what makes an “Important” movie.
Watching: No, no – I didn’t watch Game of Thrones. I’ve never watched an episode, and wasn’t going to start now.
I did watch three episodes of Fosse/Verdon, which was interesting and impressive for Michelle Williams’ amazing performance as Gwen Verdon. I liked the time-jumping structure as well. I’m all for non-linearity in storytelling because that’s how I experience reality and consciousness, truly. I’m not sure if I’m in for eight total episodes, though. I’ll probably watch some more of it tonight.
Listening:
In Our Time:
Excellent episodes on Frankenstein and A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Is Shakespeare History? The Romans. Also good (of course), and I was particularly interested in the observations of one scholar, Patrick Gray, who suggested that the ways in which Shakespeare adapted his sources reflect a conversation, as it were, with the Christian mystery play tradition.
I found a paper he’d written on the subject. Here’s part of his conclusion:
The critical problem of the “two Caesars” is not, then, an inconsistency to be explained away; still less, a product of ignorance; but instead, a revealing expression of a choice of allegiance. Shakespeare departs from classical sources such as Plutarch’s Lives in order to tap into the vernacular tradition of the mystery plays. Like the contrast between Christ and Caesar in the Gospels, or between Christ and a stage tyrant in a Corpus Christi pageant, his characterization of Julius Caesar is designed to foreground the contrast between divine power and human vulnerability. This gulf between God and man is reconciled and overcome in the person of Christ; for all others, however, human weakness is an insurmountable limit, dangerous to ignore. Differences between the two most developed extant versions of the medieval stage Caesar, the Chester and the Towneley, hinge upon their grasp of this fundamental truth about their own human nature: the fact that human “flesh and blood” falls short of divine omnipotence. Cox describes the medieval dramaturgical tradition as keenly interested in what St. Augustine calls potentia humilitatis: “the power of humility.” In their typology of Antichrist, however, medieval mystery plays also present what might be called humiliatio potentatuum: “the humbling of the powerful.” This dynamic is what Shakespeare moves to capture in his vision of the fall of Julius Caesar.
Start the Week – on Medical Controversies.
Mostly taking on issues related to sex and racial bias in medical practice and research. Worth a listen in order to contemplate, yet one more time, how this type of conversation is going to run up hard, against RightThink on trans issues. For the conversation emphasized the distinctions between man and woman “down to the cellular level” and 
the failures of medicine to take them into account.
But…but…
Attending: Two more graduations! Eight grade and high school – done and done. That’s three graduations (including the law school daughter) in the past two weeks, with a pre-K graduation to come this week in Charleston (unfortunately we can’t make it!). Photos at Instagram.
