A colleague, a teacher of Spanish, asked about the origin of the word “septentrion,” which in both English and Spanish means “the north.”
Articles from August 2021
Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash
John Tenniel's illustration of Alice meeting Tweedledum and Tweedledee
A very strange place, indeed
“Goodness,” thought Alice to herself, “what a very strange place this is.”
Abandoned Bahamian house • Photo by Trish Hartmann (CC BY 2.0)
Study this world, love this world
Recently, on the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas, I came upon a small abandoned house in the woods not far from where I was staying. A tangle of sea grape made the place almost inaccessible — like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
“The School of Athens” by Raphael (ca. 1510)
Fleeing from freedom
It is almost a cliche to say that Western civilization was created by the Greeks. Our government, law, art, music, architecture, literature, drama, historiography, science, and mathematics are largely Greek inventions.
Photo by Carlos Esteves on Unsplash
Deeper Blue handicaps the match
In a little over a month [in 1997], chess champion Garry Kasparov will play a rematch with his IBM computer opponent Deep Blue. Or rather I should say Deeper Blue, for the machine Kasparov meets on May 3 is a new version of the one that gave him such trouble a year ago.
Bahama woodstar • Photo by Mike's Birds (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Lili left hummingbirds down, but not out
Our previous visits to this island have been graced with hummingbirds: Bahama woodstars, no bigger than your thumb, caped in iridescent green, with amethyst faces, white breasts and soda-straw bills.
16th-century depiction of a ward in Hôtel-Dieu
When managed care was divine
My generation of Americans lived in fear of a shibboleth called “socialized medicine.”
“Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk” by Leonardo da Vinci (ca. 1510)
The last lament of a renaissance man
I had come a long way to see him, across half of France, to the Castle of Cloux, near Amboise, in the valley of the Loire. He had been living there since 1516, at the invitation of Francis I, king of France.
The Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light • Photo by Luis Argerich (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Whirled away on a river of light
One recent evening, walking home in the pitch-dark Bahamian night from drinks at the local bar, we suddenly felt ourselves whirled into infinity. And it wasn’t the drink.
Detail from ”Saint Francis in Meditation“ by Caravaggio (ca. 1610)
Who was the real St. Francis?
I watched a truly awful movie the other night. Franco Zeffirelli’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” a life of St. Francis of Assisi made in 1973, perhaps the silliest movie ever made by a major director.