There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

I highly recommend you read The Divine Comedy, though I don’t know that I would suggest you try to do so by yourself. If you start reading it, you really need to finish it. Dante himself issues this caution to readers in the middle of the poem. If you abandon the poem half way through, you will end up with a skewed image of justice and a distorted view of reality. And that distorted view of reality can be haunting.

If you can actually make it through the entire poem on your own, do it. Many first-time readers falter, though, because the Inferno is grotesque and grows tedious in the end, or because the Purgatorio seems too similar to the Inferno, or because the Paradiso lacks the drama and compelling images of the first two. I’ve lost count of the people who have told me they “didn’t finish the Comedy.”

If you’d like help reading (and finishing) the Comedy, let me help.

Starting September 3, I am teaching The Divine Comedy for Beginners through Gibbs Classical. The class runs for fourteen weeks, there’s relatively little reading to do each week, and the class is aimed at novices, not pros. Sign up for the Auditor Level of the class and you’ll received the week’s lecture via email every Wednesday and have access to two Q&A sessions that are for auditors only.

Imagine being able to tell your friends, family, and coworkers (at Christmas time) that you read the greatest poem of the last millennium this year. Or keep that information to yourself and just let everyone wonder why you seem so much deeper than you did at this time last year.

There is always going to be room for a fresh round of cultural pundits who tell young men to “make their beds.” It strikes young ears as profound, invigorating. It’s simple. It’s doable.

However, the make-your-bed people always marry that message with something else. It never stands entirely on its own. “Make your bed and do this other thing.”

It’s always the other thing that’s the real message.

A skull tattoo

A duck tattoo

A dog urinating on a fire hydrant

In the rain

Inked images

As invisible as words

To the illiterate

“One of the reasons American Christians have lost any real concern for beauty is because they do not know how to connect beauty with salvation, and so they believe there is no connection. This belief is entirely quixotic, though, because very few Christians have ever heard a real proposal about what the connection might be. Nonetheless, we are certain that any attempt at explaining the connection must either be snobbery or legalism. Salvation is exclusively to be understood as a divine-legal judgment and every honest court of law must be indifferent to beauty. In fact, a court aims to move beyond mere appearances and get to the truth. Besides, “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart,” “Beauty is only skin deep,” “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” and “Beauty is fleeting, but a woman who honors the Lord deserves to be praised.” So quit your pretentious whining about how bad Thomas Kinkade’s art is. Turn up that Kid Rock album and bust out the Yellowtail Shiraz. I like an ice cube with mine. Not refined, just forgiven.”

-the rest of my latest article for The Classical Teaching Institute is available here

I’m slowly sampling Boise’s culinary scene. Yesterday, I went to The Basque Market and bought a bunch of conservas. The smoked sardines were quite good.

The Apotheosis of the Renaissance by Mihály Munkácsy (Hungarian, 1888)

I find this astounding.

The fourth season of Stranger Things, but instead of “Running Up That Hill,” it’s “Like A Surgeon” by Weird Al.

“It’s my hope that A Parley with Youth will give parents a new perspective on the role that teachers can and should play for students, and that teachers also see this role as an agreeable possibility. Of all my accomplishments as a teacher, the one I’m most proud of is the significant number of former students with whom I remain in contact, some from the very beginning of my career. Students rightly determine that teachers who flatter them aren’t worth staying in touch with—it’s not the teachers who say, “So, I think there’s some interesting things going on in Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling,’ but tell me what you like about this song,” that students come back to see after they head off to college. When the temptations of the world fall heavy on nineteen-year-olds, and their own moral failures begin to accrue interest, it’s the teachers who told them, “Drake sucks, man,” that students return to for advice.”

-my latest for CiRCE is about A Parley with Youth, my latest book

“While the lines of competition are drawn between nations, watching the Olympic Games tends to produce a remarkable balance between love of one’s own people and love of others. The first sort of love seems to easily segue into the second. When watching, I intuitively pull for the United States, but I find myself easily won over to charismatic athletes from other countries. In distinguishing athletes by nation, the Games ask us to humbly marvel at the fact that people unlike ourselves are capable of besting us. What is more (what is wonderful), the Games often invite us to relish the fact others can best us. The athletes themselves lead viewers in this. When competition is properly framed, even losers feel they have contributed to the revelation of something transcendent, profitable; this revelation helps calm the tumult which attends loss.”

-read more here