surjree 4 munkee

On July 13, 2 weeks ago, I went to the emergency room with an unknown ailment. 3 Days later, July 16, I was released, still sick, the cause unknown. Finally, yesterday, July 25, I felt 100% again. I feel very healthy right now, very strong and vital, the way people sometimes feel after recovering from an illness.

However, in the hospital, while trying to figure out what was making me feel sick, one of the tests they did found something completely unrelated: a CT scan of my abdomen revealed a tumor in my right kidney. In fact, my right kidney is now more tumor than kidney. The tumor shows all of the signs of being cancer.

The good news is, there is no sign of cancer anywhere else in my body. On August 1st, I will go back to the hospital for surgery, to have the kidney removed. The hope is that once the kidney is removed, I will be completely cancer-free.

Still, I am under no illusion about the fact that I may die soon: the surgery will be pretty major, with all of the risks of any major surgery. And maybe the cancer has already spread beyond my kidney.

But, to my surprise, I'm not afraid of dying. I had often pictured being confronted with a potentially fatal medical condition, and the thought had always frightened me. Now that I actually know that I have cancer and am going to have a kidney removed, I'm not afraid. I'm going to do the best I can to follow all of the medical advice, and hope for a complete recovery and a long life after that, but if things don't turn out that way, well then, they don't.

Again, let me emphasize: the hope -- no, the expectation is that this surgery will leave me cancer-free. Also, the surgeon, when he and I looked at the CT scan together, said that my left kidney is "perfect. This is exactly what we want to see." His exact words. So, you know, things could be a lot worse.

I'm expected to stay one or two nights in the hospital after the surgery. When I'm back home, Meals on Wheels will look in on me. I just got off the phone with the insurance company, arranging transportation to and from the hospital. I think I got all the details pretty much handled. I'm ready to go and do this thing and get it over with. The main thing that's bothering me now is them telling me that after surgery, I'm not supposed to lift 10 pounds for 6 weeks.

I may be a Great Big Fat Guy -- in fact, there's no maybe about it -- but a lot of that fat is muscle, and I tend to absentmindedly pick up objects weighing 100 pounds or more, carrying them around and stacking and un-stacking them and so forth, without really thinking about it, the way that some people stretch and yawn. The thought of 6 weeks without doing even 1 rep of 1/10 of that is disturbing.

Imagine if your doctor told you that you were going to have to go for 6 weeks without stretching and yawning.

Oh well. I gotta do what I gotta do cause that's what I'm gonna do cause I gotta and I yam what I yam. If I don't make it through the surgery, go out and stomp the living crap out of the Republicans in the November mid-terms in my name. Avenge me! #HugeBlueTsunami If I do come through the surgery just fine, which is very likely, of course, I may have some interesting things to tell you about surgery.

mee r sik munkee

I went into the ER Friday morning, was moved to another ward on Saturday, and discharged Monday afternoon, yesterday. What's wrong with me? They don't know, exactly. The leading theory is that it's an unknown virus, and the hope is that I'll recover within a few more days, as one would normally do from the flu. I was discharged because the hospital didn't know how to treat me, since they haven't yet figured out what's wrong (they will do more tests and keep trying to figure it out), and also because of the concern that I could get additional infection in the hospital and get worse.

I'm concerned that my home environment may have made me sick, and may make me sicker now that I'm back home, and finally, in the hospital, I started telling people about that concern, and I've been put in touch with some people who may be about to evaluate my living space and offer advice about what needs to be done. I've seen homes that were cleaner, and I've seen homes that were dirtier and the residents didn't seem to care. (Maybe they just hadn't admitted yet, like I didn't admit until I was hospitalized, that they were overwhelmed and didn't know what to do and is there anybody who can help?)

I don't want to get into the more gross details about my home here on the blog. I just don't. You're welcome. I just want to say: I wish I had mentioned to someone that I was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do a while ago. Despite what the libertarians say, nobody ever gets through life all on their own, and there's no shame in admitting you need help.

One thing the hospital visit made very clear, although I already knew it, is that I need to be around people more. There were hospital staff around 24 hours a day, and many of them were very friendly, and some of them I liked very much, and now here I am back at home alone except for the Internet. I need to get well and then get out of the house and mix it up. Probably in that order.

A Timeline of Giving Up on Latin

during the 13th century -- French replaces Latin as the official language of England.

ca 1302-1305 -- Dante defends writing in the vernacular in his (Latin) treatise De vulgari eloquentia.

between 1490 and 1539 -- French becomes the official language of France.

1773 -- Latin loses its status as one of the official languages of education in Poland-Lithuania.

1784 -- German replaces Latin as the official language of the Holy Roman Empire.

1794 -- Tom Paine publishes The Age of Reason, in which he states, "as there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages [Paine was referring to Latin and Greek -SB], all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is wasted."

1844 -- Hungarian replaces Latin as the official language of Hungary.

1847 -- Latin ceases to be the official language of the Sabor, the Croation parliament.

after 1920 -- In the Soviet Union, Latin is associated with the ancien regime and its study declines drastically at all levels of education.

1931 -- Yale drops its Latin requirement for admission. (The most I've been able to discover about Latin entrance requirements at other US universities is the frequent assertion that "many other universities later followed Yale's example.")

1960 -- Oxford drops its Latin requirement for admission.

1963 -- The Catholic mass is no longer celebrated exclusively in Latin.

1968 -- Latin courses are no longer required in middle school in France.

1972 -- Latin is no longer required for graduation from Gymnasiums in West Germany.

2012 -- The International Botanical Congress no longer requires that newly-discovered plants species be described in Latin.

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is proposing to drop the scholarship exam in Latin (for final year pupils) in 2019.

The Continuity of the Classical Tradition

Joel and Ethan Coen have famously said that neither of them has ever read Homer's Odyssey, and implied that the credits to their film O Brother Where Art Thou?, which say that their screenplay is "based on Homer's Odyssey," should be taken with a chuckle. And yet, even if the credits had not mentioned Homer, anyone with a passing familiarity with the plot of the Odyssey could've seen the big obvious parallels, from the protagonist being named Ulysses, to the many adventures suffered by Ulysses and his companions on their way home, to the characters clearly based on the Sirens and the Cyclops, to Ulysses' having to to defeat a suitor to win back his bride once he's home, to name but a few.

Some might see it as a sign of the collapse of Western civilization that Joel and Ethan Coen, two of the most well-respected artists in contemporary culture, have not read Homer -- but look at it another way: Homer is still so much a part of our culture that they didn't need to read the Odyssey in order to make a great film based upon it.

In 1997 Charles Frazier published his first novel, Cold Mountain, the story of a man who deserts the Confederate Army near the end of the American Civil War and embarks on a long and hazardous journey to return to the love of his life -- a novel based on the Odyssey, and perhaps the best-reviewed American novel of the past 25 years. Since then, many books based on the Odyssey have been published, notably Margaret Atwood's novel The Penelopiad, which re-tells the story from the point of view of Odysseus' Penelope. In 1922 James Joyce published Ulysses, one of the most highly-regarded novels of the 20th century, and one very self-consciously and minutely following the plot of the Odyssey.

And those are just a few of the most prominent imitations of the poem. Just to name every well-received novel, poem, film, play, ballet and other work of art made in the 20th or 21st century based on the Odyssey would fill up a longish blog post, even if I stuck to just the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, whose 20th- and 21st-century culture I happen to know somewhat better than that of the rest of the world. I'm not well-acquainted with the literature of the Caribbean, but I do know that the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, of Saint Lucia, wrote a book-length poem, Omeros, which is based on the Iliad.

Looking at the cream of recent Western culture, it would seem that the continuity of the Classical tradition is mightily strong indeed. (And by the way: in the abundance of re-tellings of Homer, recent Western civilization resembles every single earlier epoch.) But some might say that it has declined drastically, and point to academia, always closely related to ambitious fiction and poetry, but never identical to them, to make that case. But I am not so sure. It's a matter of how you look.

Up until about a century ago, Western academia was with very few exceptions the preserve of affluent white men, a fairly small club which saw itself as the inheritors and preservers of, among other things, ancient Greek and Latin literature. Since then, much greater numbers of people have been going to college, primarily from groups which had been mostly excluded from it before: women, ethnic minorities and people who aren't quite so rich. Understandably, not everyone in these groups new to academia shares all of the same opinions about what is important as the traditional core of rich white guys. Some lament a decline of the study of the Classics, and compared to academia as a whole, there's no doubt that Classics have a smaller place than they had a century ago. But in terms of the actual numbers of people studying ancient Greek and Latin, writing books about it, teaching it to others and editing Classical texts -- well, there, I don't know how the actual total numbers today compared to those of a century ago, and I don't know whether anyone else knows either. If you know, please tell me! If you think you know, well, don't feel compelled to share your opinions. I have my opinions and am familiar with those of some other people. What I don't have are actual numbers.

It may well be that there is one huge advantage enjoyed by Classical Studies today compared to a century ago: it may be that the general level of enthusiasm in Classical departments is much higher today -- when no study of the Classics is required in most universities, meaning that the Classics departments are filled with students who have chosen to be there -- than a century ago, when a certain amount of Classical study was required of every single rich white guy, in college and before college, and to many of them, perhaps most, the Classics were a loathsome chore, to be endured and then, if possible, forgotten.

Facebook Pet Peeve #1

Pet peeve: people who post a picture or a link with the words: "no words." "No words" is not no words: it's two words. It's perfectly permissable to actually post a picture or a link on Facebook with no words. People do it all the time. If you're sharing another person's post, Facebook actually offers you a shortcut to share it right away, with no words from you added. Saying "no words" doesn't make you seem more sensitive or witty or whatever: trying to draw attention to how sensitive or witty or whatever you are only makes you seem less sensitive or witty or whatever.

If you actually are sensitive or witty or whatever, don't worry: people will notice!

If you don't agree with this Facebook pet peeve of mine, don't worry about that either: I've got plenty more.

Because We Need Swing-Voters Too...

Trump BAD! Democrat stop Trump! Yay Democrat! Democrat BLUE! Blue GOOD! VOTE DEMOCRAT! VOTE DEMOCRAT! Yay Democrat! Yeah Blue! Yaaaaaaay!

Whom Can You Trust? Sources of Ancient History

There is not a lot of ancient written material to be considered, certainly not in comparison to modern written material. For the entirety of ancient Rome, almost a thousand years of history, most of it encompassing a huge area and millions of people, the works of only a handful of historians survive. I should say: part of the works of those historians has survived, part is missing. Other historians who wrote in and about ancient Rome are known by name, but there are not many of them, either.

And not everyone who used to be considered an ancient historian is still thought of that way: the Augustan Histories, formally regarded as the work of six different authors writing around AD 300 and covering the reigns of the Roman Emperors from 117 to 284, is coming more and more to be regarded as the work of one author, writing around 400 and pretending to be six different earlier writers. And more and more, it is thought to have been written as something other than history -- as a satire of historical writing, perhaps. So what we used to think happened in the Roman Empire between 117 and 284 has to be re-considered to a very great extent. This agonizing re-appraisal is going on right now.

Not that the actual ancient historians are trusted completely. Far from it. They're regarded as themselves being entirely too trusting of written accounts of events of which they themselves were not eyewitnesses; they're suspected of twisting their historical accounts to serve their political agendas (perhaps contemporary historians are not suspected of this as much as they should be), and much of what they write is what we today would call historical fiction: for example, speeches and conversations with which the authors would have no way of being familiar are written out word-for-word, clearly invented by the authors, for what we would call dramatic purposes.

Because of the small amount and suspicious nature of the ancient historical writings, historians have no choice but to turn to other sources: ancient authors of non-historical works, including fictional and legendary works, are combed through for whatever tidbits of history reality they may contain; ancient coins and inscriptions are studied; the few surviving legal works and official versions of speeches of emperors are inspected.

And since the 19th century, the papyri from the eastern part of which have been unearthed, mostly written in Greek, found above all at Oxyrhynchus, besides ancient copies of Biblical and literary texts, some of which had been previously lost, have also added everyday items like personal letters, petitions, shopping lists and so forth.

However, the major sources remain those written by ancient historians. And besides wondering how far these historians themselves are to be trusted, there is the question of how accurately manuscripts of ancient authors reflect what those authors actually wrote. The attempt to re-construct as closely as possible what authors originally wrote is called textual criticism, and textual criticism is a very large and endlessly fascinating part of Classical Studies. In the case of Classical Greek, the above-mentioned discoveries of papyri have added a great deal of evidence with which textual critics can work. In the case of ancient Latin, recent discoveries have come much more seldom. In the case of most ancient Latin authors, there are no existing manuscripts older than the 9th century (Charlemagne, God bless him, instigated a huge revival of the study of ancient Latin). In some cases, there are no known manuscripts older than the 15th century (when printing began to replace manuscripts), and in the case of some authors, there are no manuscripts left at all: we have printed editions, but the manuscripts from which the earliest printed versions were made are gone. It is to be assumed, in the course of hundreds or thousands of years of copying and re-copying, some alterations to the texts were made.

And so, in the discussions which revolve around the textual criticism of ancient historians, there are debates which may look to the untrained observer as if they are debates about what exactly happened at a certain place and time, when actually they revolve around what a certain historian wrote, completely apart from the extent to which it is historically accurate. I saw these sorts of misunderstandings often in online discussions of Biblical texts, because, generally speaking, laypeople are much more interesting in discussing the Bible than in discussing any Classical authors: scholars, all atheists, none of whom believe in anything miraculous or otherwise supernatural, might be discussing, or trying to discuss, the best possible Hebrew or Greek version of a Bible passage, the version as close as possible to what the author actually wrote, while at the same virtual time and place, New Atheists and fundamentalists argue over whether or not the miracle describe in that passage actually occurred, and mostly ignore my attempts to tell them that the scholars were discussing, or trying to discuss, something entirely different.

Similarly, scholars might be discussing Vulgate manuscripts online, talking about whether the text of a particular manuscript showed that it was a copy, or a copy of a copy, of a manuscript made in a certain place and time, while constantly being interrupted by people asserting and disputing the literal historical accuracy of the Vulgate.

If you want to join a discussion, it's good to have a clue about what the people there are discussing: are they talking about what happened in a certain ancient time and place? Or what an ancient historian said about what happened in that time and place, or what we can infer from an ancient non-historical author? Or about what chance there is that the surviving manuscripts accurately record what that historian (or other author) wrote? Or about what he or she may have written instead of what is in the manuscripts? Or about what the pattern of mistakes in manuscript A say about where and when the now-lost manuscript α was made, from which manuscript A was copied, or from which another now-lost manuscript, β, was copied, from which B was copied? Or one of many other topics which are not what happened at a certain time and place, but which may be a vital part of constructing a more accurate idea of what may have happened at that time and place?