Here's to the New Year--

may it be a damn sight better than the last."
--Col. Sherman T. Potter

Actually, my year personally was pretty good--new apartment, new article under way, other developments which are fraught with interest. Mustn't grumble.

But the state of things is not, shall we say, good all round.

The play la Bete (which I saw last night) spoke to me in a way I didn't expect (I really saw it for la Lumley, whose work I've admired since AbFab). But its central point, that nonsense can drive out sense all too easily, and that our society can, in its quest for novelty, prefer nonsense to sense, is one that caught me on the raw. Ever since I read and vehemently disagreed with the policy prescriptions of Collins & Skover's The Death of Discourse, I've shared their concern with the drowning out of thought by noise. La Bete addresses a part of the same syndrome, but places it in a more personal, small-group struggle for place. Brilliantly acted, and terribly timely.

You can catch a glimpse here:

Normal Service

Has been disrupted because I'm hard at work on a scholarly piece, involving Henry II, Thomas Becket and John Henry Newman. I'll be back soon. Promise.

In the meantime....