Two awesome resources stand out for me when it comes to developing a personal library: the St. John’s College curriculum gives you a jumping off point for a Great Books/ Western classicist self-education, and the “Literature and History Podcast” is an excellent, interesting and comprehensive guide to literature through the ages. Dr. Metzger does approach the Bible as a literary text; as a counterpoint, I’ve mentioned before on the AAN podcast that I enjoy Jen Wilkin’s biblical studies, several of which are available for free online. [Edit Nov 2020: currently loving all the episodes by Dr. Spencer Klavan on his podcast “Young Heretics”- his series on TS Eliot is not to be missed!]

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“…one of my favorite inspiration sources- the creative wonder women of YouTube. Some of the projects they’ve created recently were so jaw-dropping and inventive that I felt compelled to share them here:”

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“…and last but not least, allow me to take you back many many years ago to fifth-grade me: devouring Karen Cushman’s “Midwife’s Apprentice” and wanting SO BADLY to become an herbalist. So much so, in fact, that I spent a Saturday at the library patiently hand-copying the text of a book on herbal medicine into a spiral notebook. Which of course I promptly forgot about. I mostly forgot about my herbalist desire as well, until a few weeks ago when I learned about the podcast “Alba Salix, Royal Physician” and guys …”

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“ ‘…a kind of absence in the moment pictured: the ultimate death of the infant and an intangible menace resisted by his coming.’ Acres made some really interesting points and mentioned lots of little details in religious artworks that hold significant meaning,”

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“ I think in this last point he deceives himself entirely; Eliza’s world is necessarily driven by hard economics. To be a proper lady in a flower shop would give her a sense of worth and self-determination that hawking flowers on the street never could. It’s very much a precursor to the line from A Knight’s Tale of “a man can change his stars”. She’s shrewd, she’s done the cost benefit analysis, and she’s bewitched by the gold coins…”

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But what took three extra months? I had a very steep learning curve for recording these episodes, and believe me, currently the audio is atrocious for this podcast. That’s not a reflection of Reaper audio software or my Rode mic, and hopefully it’ll get better with time and some learning on my part.

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It’s based on a poem by Henri Cazalis, and I really like the imagery of “Death in a cadence/ Striking with his heel a tomb/ Death at midnight plays a dance-tune”.

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But here’s the rub- I really want to learn for myself how to be a good cast iron cook/baker. And you don’t learn anything by giving up after one try. So I will dust off the powdered sugar and start examining where I went wrong with these. And after a few technique tweaks

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The USI Theatre program staged a production of Lope de Vega’s “Dog in the Manger” or “The Gardener’s Dog” over the weekend, and I had a chance to see this play performed live for the first time. It was performed in English, thankfully, since it’s been about 10 years since my exposure to reading Spanish plays in Spanish. (Although now that I have the basic idea of the story, I’d love to see this performed in Spanish. I’d really like to do this while on vacation in Spain, just throwing that wish out to the universe).

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What’s the best way to celebrate the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte? Listen to a performance of Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” of course! The University of Evansville Opera program staged a very modern performance of Bach’s charming coffee cautionary tale. The setting was (naturally) a modern-day Starbucks (or, “Starbach’s” as the new logo declared), and it was really interesting to realize that we’re just as obsessed with coffee in 2018 as Liesgen was in 1735.

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The University of Evansville presented its First Tuesday concert this week, as part of the Debussy 100 Symposium. I love these concerts because they let me discover new music- I very rarely hear something presented with which I’m already familiar. This concert was no exception because I have very little Debussy exposure outside of “Clair de Lune” and “Arabesque No.1”.

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