The American State of the Union address is, I think, a somewhat unique feature of governmental procedure in world history. Kings, emperors, and conquering generals have addressed their councils, senates, and advisors for thousands of years. But how many leaders were constitutionally required to report on the state of their states to a co-governing body before the United States constitution was put into place?…
I’m not sure I want every post here to be a “I did this! I did that!” kind of post, but cool things do happen to each of us occasionally and you want to shout it out to the world.
So, last year I was exercising the usual diligence and scanning the Internet for unauthorized copies of Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, 3rd Edition (technically, I look for all editions but the eBook is pirated the most).…
I have two phone numbers. I suppose most of us do, now. I almost never answer the land line, and never expect to have anything but fun when I do answer it. Everyone who knows how to reach me calls my cell phone.
Well, last week the land line started ringing at the same time every evening. I thought, “That’s one persistent telemarketer”.…
I’m sort of all written out. I just finished a long commentary on the fourteenth section of “Beowulf” for the Endor discussion list. We’re going through the poem from start to finish. I suppose it’s mostly me going through it at this point. Someone on the list proposed a study of “Beowulf” last summer. I think we finally started it in the Fall, and I’ve been struggling to find time to stay with it through the holidays.…
I spent an hour scouring old CD archives of Xenite.Org and my earlier Web sites (yes, I actually had other Web sites before I settled on the Xenite domain). I was looking for a Web page that hasn’t been available since at least 1997, I’m guessing. Maybe it stayed up longer than a year. Why? Because the memory fades, names become garbled, and I just don’t always have that encyclopedic recall for which I am so famous (ironically, I never had it — but only my friends, family, and co-workers would know to tell you that).…
