“Samson’s supposed spiritual regeneration seems compromised by the intensely physical and destructive form it takes.  The greatest problem, however, is the sheer lack of any alternative, reconstructive forms of religious worship, which may be related to the absence of any positive role for the feminine in this configuration of true worship.  The expulsion of the feminine leaves a barren world.  In marked contrast to Paradise Lost, where Eve has a crucial if problematic role in human worship there is in Samson Agonistes no representation of what true worship might might be other than iconoclasm.  [. . .] In contrast to the egalatarian pronouncements of Christ in the New Testament, Milton’s hero contemptuously refers to the people as merely

. . . a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Thing vulgar

Not only for the Son but for Milton, the regaining of paradise is eminently lonely.  The intimate, spiritual connection between the individual and an invisible God, while clearly a blessing, is offset by a loss of communal or social bonds that surely was painful for a poet who imagined his Adam as, from the first, needing more than the company of God.”

Could it all have been different?

Some of the best, (and only) anti-war clips I’ve seen on the web have been produced by 15 year old Ava Lowery.

Her website, Peace Takes Courage, is loaded with simple flash-based messages about where we, are, how we got here, and what to do about it.

The clips.

I started a thread on Lowery over at Meta-Filter.

So I went and picked up my car from the Germans yesterday.  As you’ll recall, I put a deposit down on the car a month ago, when these Germans decided to sell it a month before they were to actually leave the country.

Yesterday it turned out that they had not fled the country, after-all.  In fact, my new (used) Ford Escort was sitting, parked, outside the garage, all cleaned up and new-looking.  I went inside and said hi to the Germans, who walked right outside with me, took out the title, and signed it.  I asked, “So has this car had any mechanical problems since I last saw it?”  “Nope,” replied the male German, “it’s running fine.”  Which was a little odd since I hadn’t really asked about how it was running.

Anyhow, I handed over a money order for the amount I still owed them (I’d given them a deposit for part of the cost earlier), hopped in, and drove off.  It all went so quickly!

Driving home, I glanced at the odometer.  The “93,000 mile” Escort advertised last month had become a 97,000 Escort, in the space of a month, the Germans having set out, apparently, on an epic journey to discover America as soon as I put down my deposit.

There’s not much to be done.  We’d written up a little contract dealing with what would happen if the car broke, etc..  And I sorta figured they’d put a lot of mileage on it in the last month.  But still, 3,500+ miles?  Plain sleezy.

Further, I swear that this car had keyless entry on the drivers side when I looked at it (as is common for the model).  It now doesn’t—having instead a suspiciouly loose drivers side interior panel near where one would remove a keyless entry module.  But maybe I’m misremembering this?  I wasn’t exactly obsessing on the keyless entry thing when I test drove the car months ago. 

There’s not much to be done about all this.  The Germans leave the country in a few days, and I’m basically still happy enough with the car, with its snappy engine, ample headroom, and brutally effective air conditioning and sound system.  It should last a couple of years, at least.  (The Escort win praise from Consumer Reports for its reliability, and this history of the Escort praises the ‘97 as the model’s best year.)

And, ok, one other thing:  I used my ‘97 Escort to buzz down to the bookbindery to pick up my latest rebound stuff.  I wasn’t exactly ecstatic with the results this time ’round, so the guy there suddenly tells me that he’ll redo ‘em but doesn’t want rebind any more stuff for me.  I hadn’t even *asked* him to redo anything.  But well then, ok.

Sheesh.

Don’t miss it.

(Also, this is what you get for being blue on the coasts).

I’ve been pretty busy latey, but I must interrupt my industrious silence to complain a little about a recent injustice visited upon poor Mark Van Doren.  Van Doren, who grew up in Urbana and (contra the NYRB) received his BA and MA from UIUC, was a Pulitzer-prize winning poet (and teacher of Allan Ginsberg and Thomas Merton), and one of the big mid-century public intellectuals.  Paul Scofield played him as a latter-day Thomas More in Robert Redford’s 1994 Quiz Show.  He’s got a street and a dorm (I think) named after him here in town.

But none of that was enough to save his picture from getting pulled down from the Illini Union’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni and put into storage to make room for pictures of more recent—and more financially generous—distinguished alumni.  I noticed it was removed from its place lately, just after some pictures of Roger Ebert and a few others were put up.

So, today I was walking through the union and double-checked this absence, and called the Alumni Association.  They told me that, yes, they had indeed taken down some pictures recently.  Older ones to make room for newer ones, the representative said.  These older images would eventually be viewable on an internet kiosk put somewhere in the union (or on the web “from anywhere”).

I’m writing now from downtown Urbana, but when I take the bus back to Champaign, I think I’ll stop by the Union to see just how systematic the removal of old pictures has been.  If they’re removing pictures chronologically, then I should not be able to find in the hallway a picture of, for example, Arnold Beckman, who was awarded his place on the wall four years earlier than Van Doren.

Alright then. I’m off to see about that.

[Update: Of course Mr. Beckman’s portrait is still there, accompanied by pictures of other luminaries, such as Robert L. Latzer, Chairman of the Pet Milk Company in 1960.] 

Amibimb sends me a link to a blog that may exceed even Modern Mechanix in sheer beauty and coolness. BibliOdyssey features images, mostly from old books, but sometimes from newer ones, and occasionally from talented artists like Brian McKenzie.

I can’t help feeling a little guilty when I look at this this website however.  It does remind me a little of those horrible persons who cut pages from old books to mount them and sell them as wall decorations.  All these lovely images, shorne of the words in which they were nestled, and which they were meant to illustrate and explain. It’s a little disturbing, and I feel for the poor absent words.

Is your moral compass becoming demagnetized?

Re-orient yourself over at The Brick Testament.

I want a Nixie Clock.

. . . they’re here.

Sorry to have disappeared for a while.  I was in a distant Northern Land.  Washburn county, as it happens.  This was a brief and somewhat miserable anti-vacation, which my parents prevailed upon me to endure.  Mostly we prepared our little northwoods cottage to be used as a rental property, since it doesn’t really make sense for this small lake cottage to sit empty the entire summer as it now does.  So I was used to chop, paint, lay carpet, rototill, and move various heavy objects over the long memorial day weekend.

It was sort of pleasant, in a way.  It did after-all cause me to entirely forget about my teaching and dissertation for a few days, which is no mean feat.  At the same time, I accomplished zero work on the diss, which is somewhat worrying.  Now that I’m back, I’m needing to work quickly and in earnest on my dissertation, which I need to have substantially complete by the end of the summer.  This requires me to write-up a conclusion for chapter 4 and to write a complete fifth chapter. 

Did I mention that my car died?  I wanted to skip this, seeing as tdq has in the past contained far too many “car trouble” posts.  But a couple months ago my well-beloved little Colt threw its timing belt, resulting in engine damage that I would have been foolish to pay to repair.  So I’ve signed an agreement with a German grad student who’s leaving the US on June 20, saying that on that date I’ll buy from her her 1997 Ford Escort (want a picture?).  In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying driving a Ford Taurus kindly loaned to me by V.  This Taurus has 286,000 miles on it and looks (and sounds) like something out of The Road Warrior.  Which makes it great fun to drive, imho.  Would you have supposed it was even possible to put 286,000 miles on a Ford Taurus?

Well, ok, apologies for this chatty “what I’ve been up to” sort of post.  I’m gonna go write a bit and then waste some time at the Virgina theater today, where it’s entirely possible that I’ll watch both Grapes of Wrath and The Wrong Man, perched in the upper balcony.