Category Archive: HISTORY
“I am monarch of all I survey”
(Selkirk on his island c/- Hopea114y)
February 2nd (1709) – Regretful beachcomber Alexander Selkirk is rescued. Selkirk’s sojourn inspired Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first genuine English novel, and the following poem by William Cowper: Alexander Selkirk during his Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms Than reign in this horrible place. I…
Continue Reading →1917: The Year That Shook the World
Reflections on the Bolshevik Adventure After the reverberations of 1905, the Empire of the Czar was listing and ready to fall uno ictu by 1917. As Carlyle observed in The French Revolution, it is singular how long the rotten will last without rougher than usual handling. When in March a rickety parliamentary democracy was formed and Nicholas II abdicated in favour of brother Michael (length of presumed reign: two days), the most pressing business was not domestic, but foreign, i.e., getting out of the not-so Great War. This order of business left the peasants to stew, the soldiers to simmer and…
Continue Reading →Visconti’s Ludwig
(Dir. Luchino Visconti) (1972) Ludwig II of Bavaria led a life of the mind and was a genuine original in a time of puppet kings and jumped-up Germanic principalities. Therefore a period film of his tumultuous life, his reluctant ascension, his shaky romances, his celebrated patronage of Wagner, the night train and sleigh rides to nowhere, his decline into madness, his mysterious death…all sumptuously filmed in situ by the consummate Luchino Visconti, director of masterpieces such as La Terra Trema, Senso, The Leopard, Death in Venice…couldn’t miss, right? Wrong. It looks terrific, and Helmut Berger suggests something of the King’s inner torment,…
Continue Reading →O Happy Day
(image by Kaoz69)
January 26 – Australia Day Invasion Day, Survival Day, Moor-Your-Boat Day – an arbitrary dot on time’s spectrum was chosen as lucky little Australia’s modern, Gregorian, anniversary date. That’s when HMS Supply moored in Sydney Cove one choppy morning in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip and a small crew rowed ashore, and claimed the continent in the name of Mad King George III. There are roughly three camps who pitch their tents on our National Day – those who hold 26/1/1788 sacred; those who hold it as profane, and the great silent majority who view it through the lens of beer and barbeques. The genuine and perhaps…
Continue Reading →Classical Greek at the WEA in 2017.
Image courtesy of The Australian.
Hard to believe that we ten will be entering our fourth year of Greek with Dr Boria at the Adelaide WEA. I still haven’t got a hold of those progressive active participles. We love our lessons. Our books – Athenaze 1 textbook and workbook (yes, we are only now completing book one) – are tattered to various degrees – mine is the worst of all. Perhaps we will start on Athenaze 2 this year? (The Athenaze books are available at Dymocks in the city, or online). More εταιροι και εταιραι* would be welcome ….so please join us! No-one is made to feel stupid for their…
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