A PAUSE TO REFLECT

Since returning from South Africa last Friday, I have been scrambling to catch up with work while fighting jet lag that has me even more turned around than usual. Now that this week's Plato class and graduate seminar are behind me, and I am feeling sort of normal, I thought I would pause just for a moment to reflect on where this blog has taken me. It would seem that in the last year or a bit more, I have posted the equivalent of three or four full length books of material, including my autobiography [which is in three volumes, but only runs 800 pages or so], a 150 page tutorial on the use and abuse of formal methods in political philosophy [on my other blog], extended tutorials on the thought of Karl Marx and how to study society, and hundreds of daily comments on the passing scene. That is a good deal of writing, even for me. There seem to be any where from 700 to 1500 people who check in to this blog on a regular basis -- possibly even more [I do not have the ability to track unique visits and all of that]. It is all somewhat like a grand seminar, done in the best possible way, which is to say voluntarily both by me and by my many commentators and collaborators.

In a few days, I hope to resume my series of posts on the future of the Humanities in higher education. I am continuing to pursue the idea of starting some sort of center or institute devoted to defending the Humanities against its enemies foreign and domestic, and will report any developments on that front. I continue to take great pleasure in the discomfiture of the Republicans, and hope against hope that the revival of progressive populist sentiment, sparked by the anti-union efforts of a number of Governors, betokens the long awaited stirring of the great American progressive beast. [A propos, I trust you all noticed that the newly elected Governor of Maine has chosen to take down a mural depicting the history of working people in that state because it was too heavily biased toward -- working people. Apparently the Republicans have decided that their previous attacks on working people were too subtle, and must be made more overt so that no one misses the point.]

Two idle bits of personal reportage about my odd reading habits. While preparing for my South African trip, I downloaded a Kindle App onto my IPad so that I could access free books [my wife's daughter-in-law told me about them], but the only one I could find that was at all tempting was THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, so I downloaded it to read on the plane. It turned out to be monstrously long [1313 pages in one edition I found on Amazon], and it has taken me forever to finish, but I plowed through it, and thought it was great fun. Meanwhile, a new anniversary edition has appeared of the very first Dr. Seuss book: AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET. I loved that book when I was little, so I bought a fresh new copy, and plan to fly out to California to read it to my grandchildren. There are some benefits to being old!

Oh yes, this morning, for ninety-nine cents, I downloaded the King James version of the Bible to my IPad, so I am prepared for all eventualities. [An English version of the Q'uran is also available for ninety-nine cents.]