Re-Discoveries of Ancient Texts

Someone just posted a comment asking if I could write about "how they're looking for lost texts."

First of all, thanks for the comment. It's always nice to hear from a reader. It hasn't happened enough yet that it's even beginning to get old.

But, to be honest, I can't really say much that I haven't said in other posts. And the most important thing I have to say is: ask an expert. I'm not an expert. If you're interested in ancient Jewish texts or early Christian texts, then ask a Professor who specializes in biblical studies, or early Christianity, or biblical archaeology, or some related field. If you're interested in ancient, non-Christian Greek or Latin, ask a professor of Classics.

I should ask these professors more questions myself.

If there's anyone out there who's read all of the posts in this blog -- first of all, thank you -- and also, the following will be somewhat repetitive for you.

My especial interest is in Latin, and I know less about ancient texts in other languages than I know about Latin. Most of the recent discoveries of ancient texts, as far as I know (check with an expert!) have been in Greek, Coptic, Aramaic, and Hebrew.

The biggest thing that's happening these days in re-discovering ancient texts, the biggest just in terms of sheer volume of texts, is the project concerning the tremendous number of scraps of papyri found by Oxford professors Bernard Grenville and Arthur Hunt around the turn of the 20th century at Oxyrhynchus, the site of an ancient city in Egypt.

These papyri, ironically, have been found in garbage dumps. What people threw away in Oxyrhynchus between the 3rd century BC and the 6th century AD is precious treasure to us today. Grenville and Hunt found so many pieces of papyrus at Oxyrhynchus that, to this day, more than a century later, scholars are still editing and publishing them, and have still only published a small fraction of the entire find. Almost all of the Oxyrhynchus papyri are written in Greek, but there are also some written in Latin, Coptic and other languages. They include Bible passages and other Christian writings, Classical Greek literature (and a tiny amount of Classical Latin), personal letters, official government documents and more. Most of the ancient texts being re-discovered these days are in Greek.

Next, after Oxyrhynchus, I suppose, would be the numerous pieces of papyrus and parchment which turn up here and there at random in the Middle East, both at archaeological digs and at antiquities markets. Some of the texts which appear at these markets are modern forgeries, unfortunately, but many are genuine.

Then there are palimpsests. A palimpsest occurs when a piece of writing is scraped off of a parchment and something else is written on it. The palimpsest is the identations left by the earlier writing. And scholars have found ways to read those texts, even thought the ink is now gone.

Then there is cartonnage: papyrus which was made into a material sort of like cardboard and made into the coverings of mummies or book covers. Some very clever scholars have found ways to take this material back apart into the original papyrus and read what is written on it.

There is a large amount of Medieval Latin writing contained in archives in Europe. Medieval scholars are going through these archives, preserving as much as they can. Some have expressed the concerned that they may not be able preserve everything before the parchments rot away.

And every now and then -- say, every few years or so -- a lost ancient Latin text is re-discovered by some means which doesn't fit into any of the above categories.

That sums up what I know, but, again, the people to ask would be professors of Classsical Greek and Latin, biblical scholars, archaeologists and so forth.

Dream Log: Suspicion of Mayhem on Wall Street

Last night I dreamed that my brother and I went to work for a financial institution on Wall Street. "On Wall Street" is usually just a euphemism geographically, but our offices were located in a new skyscraper which was actually fairly close to Wall Street in the southern tip of Manhattan. As are many fictional buildings I dream about, this skyscraper was unrealistically large, a half-mile high or so. While it is the case in real life that very many very tall buildings have gone up in New York City in the past 20 years, this one was even taller than life.

It was September 2019 in my dream, the building had been opened for business in 2018, I was my actual age, 58, but my brother was in his early 20's, as were most of our new co-workers. In real life my brother is 56. I was worried, going in on our first day on our new jobs, that I might be somewhat ostracized because of my age, but everyone was perfectly pleasant to me.

However, almost right away my brother and I both became concerned that some of the other people in the skyscraper, perhaps in our firm, perhaps in other firms, might be mass murderers.

Our firm occupied several stories in the building between floor 55 and 60. I went up and down the stairs a lot, and the floor number was on a small brass plaque on every floor. The stairwells weren't shut off from the main areas of activity as in many tall buildings, and the stairs were attractively carpeted. There were plenty of elevators; still, it seemed the architects wanted to encourage people to take the stairs if they could.

Besides my age, I had also been worried that my complete lack of qualifications as a Wall Street stock broker might cause friction with my co-workers, but it soon became clear that they valued me for things which had nothing to do with finance.

Back to the suspicions of mass murder: my brother and I were never sure whether or not such violence was actually going on in the skyscraper, or who might have been involved in it and who was an innocent potential victim. The signs we saw constantly contradicted each other. For example: at one point I was in a room which contained two hospital-style cots, when two men wearing what looked like Haz-Mat suits came in, carrying medical-looking containers. At once I thought that there might be a severed head in each of those boxes; and sure enough, soon the men opened the boxes and I saw a head in each one.

But then I remembered that, besides financial firms, there was a company in the building which specialized in making objects for horror movies. Such as realistic-looking severed heads made of rubber and plastic.

Back and forth, back and forth my brother and I went: horror and fear of violence, and then a perfectly reasonable, non-violent explanation for what had been frightening us. Back and forth.

For the whole dream, my brother and I never left the enormous building, although we did roam all over it. Some of the floors had enormously high ceilings. There were some absolutely huge rooms in the building which were practically empty. In one of these rooms the walls were covered with some sort of glittering gold-colored fabric. It seemed as if their primary purpose of these huge rooms was to flaunt how extravagantly expensive this piece of real estate was.

At the very top of the building, floor 134, walkways surrounded a tremendous atrium. I was on this floor, looking down into this atrium, when a group of employees from a Chinese firm spilled out of the elevators, celebrating some holiday. One of them threw an inflated clear transparent rubber ball back and forth with me, until one of us accidentally threw it into the atrium. Then we stood side by side, smiling, and watched the ball fall down and down and down.

At one point, seized by a sudden terror of the possibly-existent murderers, I began to run. I was going to run out of the building and run far away. But before I had gone ten yards, my brother stopped me, physically tackled me in mid-stride, and, whispering, pointed out to me that if there were mass murderers among us, they might be watching us, and might attack if they saw that we were fleeing. The safest thing to do, he said, was to act as if everything was okay.

As time went by, my brother and I became less worried about the possible mass murder, and more convinced that we had just been misunderstanding things. Everyone was being really nice to me. Moreover, no-one seemed to expect me to actually do any work, which was a good thing, because I had no idea how to buy or sell securities on behalf of a client. Or perhaps they saw my primary role in the company as socializing with the young people and raising team spirits. Which I was more than happy to do. And then I woke up.

The "Heartland" Vote

Democrats have been trying for a long time to take the "heartland" vote away from the GOP. But what exactly is the "heartland" vote? Is it anything more than just code for the racist vote, the xenophobic vote, the Islamophobic vote, the homophobic vote, the sexist vote, in short: the stupid vote? The GOP keeps winning that fight. Why wouldn't they? The stupid vote is their natural constituency. How about if we drop that fight and go hard 180 degrees away from it? Go openly and honestly for the anti-stupid vote: the anti-racist, anti-sexist, gay-friendly, xenophile, one-world, well-educated, eco, vegan, anti-conspiracy-theory vote -- in short: the anti-stupid vote? We could even call it that. Or we could call it something like, for example: Warren/Booker 2020.

Call the deplorables deplorable. Why are we trying to hide? Every single poll for 2 1/2 years, Trump's unfavorable rating has been over 50%. In other words: the anti-stupid vote is most of the people in the US. Go right straight for it. No more BS. And as for the dumb-asses, they'll benefit from rational policy just like everyone else, and some of them might actually learn things.

And how about if we stop making these drastic geographical over-simplifications such as speaking about "the heartland" as if it as if it were entirely Republican and urban America were entirely Democratic? Neither assertion is true. Geography might influence political orientation, but it doesn't determine it. People are free to be who they are. How about some respect for Democrats in places which have been mostly red lately? Oh, that's right: the Electoral College, that proud 18th-century institution. We have to deal with Trump first, then we can deal with other things like modernizing the Constitution, and in the meantime, Democrats in places like Wyoming, where it takes a bit more guts to be a Democrat than it does in NYC or LA, will continue to be unfairly boned in terms of national recognition. It's not fair at all. Oh well. Wyoming Democrats: hang in there. Not all of us have forgotten you!

And as for Joe Biden, the great "heartland vote" candidate: how about if we let him just join the GOP, toward which he's been drifting for over 40 years? He could be the new Joe Lieberman -- or is he already the new Joe Lieberman?

Am I as Bad a Writer as Norman Mailer at His Worst?

Quite a horrifying thought.

I've been writing brilliant stuff for well over 40 years. I just want widespread recognition and fame and billions of dollars for it, what's the problem?

Unless the reason I haven't gotten widespread recognition is that I'm actually not a brilliant writer.

I don't really believe I'm not brilliant, but I worry that I might be brilliant only part of the time, and really, really stupid a lot of the rest of the time, like Norman Mailer. (OMG, was Norman autistic?) I'm not violent like Norman was. But I wonder whether what I once wrote about him, about how he "veers sharply from the sublime to the ridiculous from book to book, page to page, from one word to the next," doesn't apply every bit as much to myself.

Last night I saw a video of almost a half hour's worth of Norman at somewhere near his worst. I tell you truthfully, his attitude here is as grotesque as his hairstyle (Is he drunk? In the middle of the afternoon on a nationwide talk-show? That would not have been entirely unlike him). Finally, about 19:05, he briefly becomes coherent enough to state what is on his mind. The problem is, he's defending one of his worst books, perhaps the most atrocious one of them all, The Prisoner of Sex, his uncomprehending reaction to the Women's Lib movement, and he's reacting quite badly (to put it mildly) to good, constructive criticism from Gore. Granted, it was not flattering when Gore made a connection between Norman and Henry Miller on the one hand and Charles Manson on the other. But the way to refute the thesis that you bear no resemblance to a violent psychopath is not to behave like a violent psychopath. Don't feel obliged to subject yourself to this video if you don't have an especial interest in the literary feuds of mid-20th-century Murrkin literature.



Here's a much more impressive, much more rational performance by Norman, not particularly painful to watch at all, on the contrary, here Norman is rather charming, and promoting one of his better books, Armies of the Night, although unfortunately the man he's talking to is an insufferable weasel.



In both pieces Norman expresses his deep admiration for Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was Norman's hero, his primary role model, and Norman shared this with countless other writers -- my God, there still may exist some writers who idolize that sheer jackass Hemingway. Hemingway may have damaged more potentially-good writers in more deep ways than anyone since Hegel, maybe even since Rousseau. The deaths by overindulgence in alcohol alone, which can be laid at Hemingway's feet... Before one even begins to consider the damage done to what could have been so very many very fine books. How many of those low, low points in both Norman's books and in his public behavior go back directly to this inexplicable admiration for that jackass Hemingway?

The 2019 MacArthur Genius Grants Will Be Awarded the Day After Tomorrow

Once again, I'm in great suspense. (Please don't ask, "You? A genius grant, Steven? For what?" Please just don't.)

Donald Trump insists that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but that the selection process is rigged against him.

Which one of the two of us is more of a sad, apelike dude? Which one of us is less like Theodore Roosevelt (won the Nobel Peace Prize, may have been considered for the Literature Prize as well)?

I've posted more than 1,790 posts on the blog over the past 10 years. In addition, I've written 2 unpublished novels, an unpublished play, several published short stories (you've never heard of the periodicals there were published in, which today are probably defunct), many more unpublished short stories, drafts of several more, unfinished novels and a buncha miscellaneous stuff.

Trump compiled a list of of his accomplishments as President earlier this year in which the word "accomplishments" was misspelled. He has breathed tremendous new life into feminism, environmentalism, stand-up comedy and political journalism -- all unintentionally. He has been known to pose as his own nauseatingly fawning publicist. He quite recently claimed to weigh 239 pounds. He claims to have huge hands and to draw record-size crowds. Trump university. Trump Steaks. Trump commemorative plates.

I'm comparing myself to this guy. I guess I'm having severe doubts about myself and whatever it is I do.

Economics: Beyond Quantity

As I've mentioned several times already on this blog, there appear to me to be (at least) two different kinds of socialists: those whose primary enemy are wealthy people, who want to eradicate great personal fortunes; and then those like me, who would much rather eliminate poverty, and do not believe that eliminating wealth and eliminating poverty are one and the same thing.

It also occurs to me that there are (at least) two different kinds of entrepreneurs: those who feel that the way to become rich is to squeeze whatever money is left in the possession of poor people out of them; and those who do not. It could well be that the first kind of socialist is only able, for some reason, to perceive the first kind of entrepreneur. Michael Brooks, for example,

a left-wing American radio news-talk guy who often and flatly states his belief that billionaires are evil, and that the quantitative category of billionaire must be eradicated, may, for some reason, only be able to perceive billionaires to the extent that they resemble Donald Trump. Brooks lives in New York City, so if he wanted to, he could look around himself and see rich people doing all sorts of un-Trump-like things, from leaving decent tips to giving to charity to raising money for the Democratic Party... Maybe Brooks sees all of this every day, and he doesn't consider those people to be actually rich unless they're actually billionaires. I don't know, I don't know how Brooks thinks, except that I suspect he doesn't think very deeply or in great detail, at least not when it might contradict certain flatly-held beliefs. (You gotta hold those flatly-held beliefs way down low, out of the wind, they might get knocked over and you'd actually notice something for once.)

Conversely, some people, some of whom have studied Adam Smith and then ceased to think about economics (although in many cases continuing to write about it and win Nobel Prizes in economics), believe that rich people are morally better than poor people, and that everything entrepreneurs do is a blessing for mankind in general. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone can read Smith and not perceive that the world has changed beyond all recognition since he published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, but, quite obviously, for many businesspeople, Smith is still quite literally the last word. Just as, for many Medieval people, beyond a few miles from the coasts the oceans were full of dragons and death, so, for many economists right up to the present day, beyond Smith lies Marx, who is pure evil and has nothing to give to mankind except agony.

Although I believe it is possible for someone to become wealthy and to benefit mankind at the same time, ironically, the economics of Smith, who believed that to become wealthy was to benefit mankind and vice versa, have given ideological cover to entrepreneurs who thrive while behaving in ways which are utterly predatory, and much worse than useless for the common good.

Also, and this is very important in any meaningful discussion of economics: there are (at least) two different ways of measuring someone's well-being: the first simply adds up the monetary value of everything that person owns; and the second one, the one I use, recognizes that life is not nearly that simple: well-being is a matter of your health, where you live, the air you breathe, what you eat, what opportunities you have, and so forth. And these things are not always strictly measurable in monetary terms. Comparable good things can cost much more for one person than for another; or they can be free in some cases; or, in other cases, they may not be available for any amount of money. (I just mentioned the common good: quick now, what is the common good worth in dollars and cents?)

Economic discussions often focus much too narrowly on quantities of currency, and not nearly enough on qualities of existence. The latter, the quality, is really the only thing that matters. The only reason that the quantities of currency matter is that they can sometimes affect those qualities.

Quantities of currency can affect people's lives very much. You can improve people's lives very much by giving them cash, and, there's no doubt at all, you can kill a lot of people by depriving them of cash. But it isn't the actual cash or lack of it which helps or hurts someone, it's the things which cash can buy. And cash can't buy everything. It can buy exactly what a buyer and seller agree that it can buy. That's exactly how much it has always been able to buy. If someone owns a house and is calculating how much they might save buy installing solar panels, and they're really not thinking about saving human life on Earth, then their economic calculations are appallingly primitive. So, how much would you pay to save human life? Hopefully you can see how absurd the question is. We can't buy a clean atmosphere. We're going to have to actually clean it up, and cleaning it up may well involve putting much less emphasis and worth on quantities of cash, and much more on things like qualities of substances and of behaviors. It may be environmentalism which will finally force many people to confront the fact that money isn't really reality, it's just a tool we've been using for a while, which we can set down whenever we choose, and pick up a new one.

So, to Michael Brooks, I say (ha ha, just kidding, I know damn well Michael Brooks isn't listening to anyone saying anything resembling any of this), focus on the effect people have, and not on the size of their stack. No doubt, in many cases, billionaires actually are complete bastards, just like you say they are. So, in those cases, tell us, news-talk guy, tell us specifically, what bad things they are doing. If you happen to know what those bad things are. If not, maybe you should do some research before the next time you open your mouth. Be careful, though! Research, when diligently and earnestly done, has been known to upset long-cherished beliefs!

My Sunday: XXXL T-Shirts, a Great Burrito, Solving a Car Problem

I had been putting off getting new T-shirts and briefs and shorts and a belt for... well, years, to be honest. The washing machine door getting stuck with a full load of laundry in it 3 days ago gave me added incentive to go get that stuff. And then this afternoon the power went out, and that got me to go to the local large store which carries clothes I like in sizes that fit me, but which are cheap. XXXL T-shirts for example.

I love new T-shirts! Although to be honest, I'd rather have 4-XL. (Yes, I'm a big'un.) But 4-XL and up are very rare unless you shop online, and if you're not there in person you don't always know exactly what kind of a T-shirt you're getting. A fabric which is soft, which breathes, is very important to me in my $8.99 T-shirts marked down to $4.99. You can go to a man's big and tall store. Big & tall stores are fantastic, but they're also very pricy from my perspective. And that large store (Meijer's) happens to be near a Pancheros Mexican restaurant. So today, besides T-shirts and briefs and a belt (couldn't find suitable shorts), I got my 2nd Pancheros burrito in my life. Oh my goodness. I'm not the sort of person who says, "I shouldn't eat that whole thing" (You see the cause-and-effect with the XXXL and 4-XL T-shirts? It's there, if you look), but that burrito, under $8 out the door, was so big that I said, "I shouldn't eat that whole thing." But it was so delicious. And Pancheros has a fresh tortilla press, which I've never seen anywhere else.

I'm not the kind of guy who posts photographs of his lunch on Facebook and recommends dining establishments. Mostly because I realize that my palate is not sophisticated. I'm bred from centuries' worth of Central European Protestants who felt too guilty to allow themselves to enjoy food. (Which certainly didn't prevent a lot of them from being overweight.) I've only been able to partly un-do that psychological damage during my lifetime. So maybe my amazement over Pancheros doesn't really mean anything, to real foodies. Still, if you've never seen a fresh tortilla press... You order a burrito, they take a lump of dough, 2 seconds later it's the size of a tortilla, then they fry it a little bit on the grill, then they ask you what you want on your burrito.

Okay, maybe you foodies have each seen a bazillion fresh tortilla presses, what do I know.

When I got back home the power was back on. I haven't heard anything more yet about my Federal Disability case. I'm trying not to worry about it. Trying and failing.

An employee at Meijer's made me feel physically small. Very few people ever make me feel that way. He had to be at least seven-foot six. I'm not exaggerating. In the parking lot between Meijer's and Pancheros, the key stuck in the ignition of my Saturn. Wouldn't turn, wouldn't come back out either. After panicking for a few minutes, I remembered that I had solved this problem before. I didn't remember exactly what to do, but I remember that the fix was in the owner's manual. What you do is, you turn the steering wheel hard left and right, even if it's frozen, and while you're tugging on the wheel, you turn the key, and boom shaka-laka, your Saturn Ion starts right up.

Dream Log: Trying to Flee a Mob Hotel

I dreamed that I was working against my will at a hotel owned and operated by organized crime. It was a huge rambling structure out in the country, only a few stories high.

All of the employees at the hotel were being held there against their will and forced to work. The mob intentionally kept it unclear who was in the mob and who was an employee/forced laborer, in order to keep employees from try to get organized for the purposes of, for example, escape. However, the mob themselves were more than a little bit disorganized. I was able two convince the two men who, everybody knew, were in the mob and who were in charge of the hotel, that I had a job called "fit and fixture," which required me to roam all of the hotel by myself. The hotel was very new, barely finished, and, supposedly, my "fit and fixture" job required me to run all over the place by myself, checking to see that things had been built properly and were ready to be seen by hotel guests. I have no idea whether there is any real job which resembles this "fit and fixture" position.

I convinced the bosses that I had this job because I wanted to roam all over the building and look for a way to escape. I went down into the basement looking for tunnels. I went up onto the roof because, earlier, I had since a restaurant adjacent to the hotel, not run by the mobsters, and close enough to the hotel that I could jump from the hotel's roof to the restaurant's roof. However, when I got onto the roof this time, all I could see was new construction going up amid bare earth, much too far below for a jump to be possible.

Next I tried the parking lot, looking for a car I could steal. I figured with a place as upscale as this, there had to be some sort of valet service. I scoured the entire property but I couldn't find it. There was a fence around the property, ostensibly to keep thieves and other intruders out.

A beautiful woman about my age had taken me into her confidence, so that we could escape together. It seemed she was in charge of some maintenance worker and had quite a few keys. She said that she had just gotten the raise and been handed these keys and was still figuring out exactly what they unlocked. I really couldn't decide which was more likely: that she really was a forced laborer like me, looking to escape, or that she was a gangster pretending to be a laborer, all the better to keep an eye on me.

I took a break and went to the men's room, and even in there, I was sure that some of the guys in the stalls were gangsters pretending to be workers, making small talk as they allegedly relived themselves, trying to uncover escape plans.

Then I woke up.

Well, That Washing Machine Door is Stuck!

It's an Electrolux front-loader.

The problem with the door sticking has been getting worse for over a year. Right now, there's a washed load in it, and please believe me when I tell you that I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I pulled so hard that I pulled the washing machine off of the ground, that I nearly broke the door and nearly dislocated my shoulder trying to pull it open.

Also, I don't know how to find a repair company who won't rip me off. Autistic people are not good at that.

I looked at YouTube videos. Seems this is not an unusual problem. Several of the videos say that a stuck door like this can sometimes be opened with string. But I can't find any string.

Oh, but that's right, I can actually go to a store and buy string.

All of the videos agree that a stuck door can be the result of one of several different problems. Sometimes a part or parts must be replaced.

What do you do with a load of laundry that's been sealed tight inside a washer for -- who knows how long it will be? Days, I'm guessing. Do you just do another rinse cycle and you're good to go? That seems about right but I'm not sure.

I'm in counting-my-blessings mode: I HAVE a washing machine, even if I am not currently able to open it, even if it is going to need a repair. I have a roof over my head, I am not homeless and destitute and unable to wash nor garment nor self. I am not going hungry. I have several days' worth of clean clothes OUTSIDE of the stuck washing machine. There's really no need to melt down about this. And hey, main thing -- I thought of something else to blog about! Lemonade from lemons! Focus constantly on the career!

Dream Log: Jazz Against Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Hunters

I dreamed that a Jurassic Park-type situation had occurred: huge carnivorous dinosaurs had been cloned, had escaped confinement and were now rampaging all over the world, eating not just humans but also every other type of modern animal, up to and including elephants and whales. Governments of some countries had taken a very drastic step, sending military, mercenaries and hunters, who all together became known as dinosaur hunters, or just hunters for short, to eradicate the dinosaurs by eradicating their environment, leaving nothing but scorched earth over large area of the Earth. Environmentalists protested that this solution was worse than the problem it was designed to solve, but these countries were going ahead with it.

And so there was a counter-plan: jazz musicians would be sent in to capture both the dinosaurs and the dinosaur hunters. The reasoning was: jazz musicians are much more sophisticated, as musicians, than rock and pop musicians, and the hunters were the latter; therefore, it was reasoned, the jazz musicians would easily be able to round up all of the dinosaurs and all of the hunters with a minimum of casualties, using large vehicles typically used in construction, mining and earth-moving.

I thought this was a bad idea, because I didn't believe that the jazz musicians' higher level of sophistication in music would automatically lead to a high level of skill in operating heavy machinery. I then I was put in the position of leading the charge in a huge excavation vehicle. I thought this was a doubly bad idea, as I was both totally inexperienced in operating heavy machinery, and not a jazz musician at all. I'm barely a pop musician, I could understand if pop musicians felt insulted if I were counted as one of them. I protested to the young woman in a business suit carrying a clipboard who was overseeing the operation that I was the wrong man for this job. I told her there was no particular reason to assume that I was more musically sophisticated than most of the hunters. She did not seem worried in the least, and told me that I was being overly modestly, and to go climb into my vehicle and start it up. After a while it seemed clear that I was not going to make my point with her about my lack of musical skill -- let alone getting to my doubts that actual jazz musicianship would qualify anyone for this mission -- and I thought that maybe, in view of the extreme emergency of the situation, and what seemed to be severely limited choices, I would do the least damage by just going along and hoping for the best.

And so, a long column of heavy machinery rolled out, with me in the earth-mover up front, and we headed to the area where the hunters were battling the dinosaurs. We could see that many hunters and many dinosaurs were being killed. I prepared to launch a net over some of the dinosaurs. I continued to be very pessimistic about accomplishing anything, but I kept going, telling myself that if I at least tried, there was a chance that I would get something done. The landscape was filled with red flames and black smoke. And then I woke up, with my fists clenched, my heart pounding, soaked in sweat.

Juggling

I'm not good at remembering when things happened in my life -- you know, just this minute it occurred to me to wonder: is my weakness when it comes to knowing even approximate dates of events in my own life related to my great fondness for learning and memorizing historical dates going back thousands of years? Is it nothing more than a clear-cut case of overcompensation? But that's not what I came here to talk about today.

I remember that I started juggling at age 8, in the 3rd grade. I started because I saw a stand-up comedian on TV who juggled while he made jokes, mostly jokes about juggling. I know it was the 3rd grade because shortly after I saw the juggler on TV, my 3rd-grade class had a circus, and my act was juggling 2 balls. 2 balls with both hands. At the time, even for an 8-year-old, juggling 2 balls felt sort of lame. Soon after that -- how soon? I really don't know -- I could juggle 3 balls, or 2 balls with one hand. This is a picture of someone else, not of me as a young child, but it kind of gives you a sense of it:

And that's pretty much as far as I've gotten with juggling in the last 50 years. Except that I can juggle 3 balls for a long time without stopping or dropping a ball. But that's not really a crowd-pleaser, because to appreciate it, someone would have to stay there and watch me closely for a long time, and frankly, most people have better things to do.

For most jugglers, the next step after learning to juggle 3 balls is to learn to juggle 5 balls. I've attempted 5 balls, but I've never really done it. That is to say, none of my attempts at juggling 5 balls has lasted long enough that I feel it would be honest to claim that I've juggled 5 balls at all. Same with juggling 3 clubs, another popular next step after learning to juggle 3 balls.

Maybe this is a character failing on my part. Maybe I should have tried and tried and tried until I could juggle 5 balls. Or maybe I correctly sensed that I had an ability to juggle 3 balls, and no ability to juggle 5.

In any case, where it might have been more usual to try to move from 3 balls to 5, I concentrated on juggling 3 balls for longer and longer periods of time without a pause or a drop. My personal record for continuously juggling three balls is 90 minutes. I did that in 1988 or 1989, I think. Could've been 1987. At the time, the world record was 3 hours, 14 minutes and some seconds. I was close enough to that record that I seriously thought about trying to set a new record. And it was just about at that time that the new annual Guinness Book of World Records came out, and someone had set a new world record: over 11 hours. And I didn't even want to try to compete with that.

So, that's a useless skill I have. Except that juggling 3 balls for a long time gives you an aerobic workout. 30 minutes juggling 3 balls is not entirely unlike 30 minutes on a treadmill.

As a small child, I read an article in Scientific American about juggling. The author said that lacrosse balls have a good size, weight and bounciness for juggling. I have found this to be true.

Dream Log: HER Again

Last night, for the third time in a little over a week, I dreamed about a woman I knew thirty years ago. In the first of these three dreams, she was an actress on Broadway. In the second dream she was a small-town Midwestern civil servant. It last night's dream she was a secret agent like the ones in campy shows like the Jame Bond movies, or "Alias," the TV series starring Jennifer Garner which ran on ABC from 2001 to 2006. She resembled Sidney Bristow, the character played by Garner on the show, in many ways, but not in the many elaborate disguises Bristow wore. Instead she mostly wore black jackets and black pants, a laborer's clothes. Like Sydney Bristow, she was able to beat up just about anybody in the world, if necessary. However, she lacked Bristow's nightmarish background and constant smoldering anger. Unlike Bristow, she rarely came to blows with anyone.

The secret agent and I were in our 20's. At the same time, she and I were both our actual selves, at our actual ages, in our late 50's. And at the same time, she and I were both figures in paintings.

From the inside of my home, I have some close-up views of some large old elm trees. Often, sunlight hits the nearer leaves of these elms in such a way as to give them a silvery appearance -- especially if I'm half-awake, coming out of a nap. The paintings in my dream, pictures of the woman I used to know and myself, had silvery highlights similar to these trees, and similar to some of the paintings of Gustav Klimt:

I had a date with the secret agent. Her house, which she shared with some co-workers, had yellow borders painted on the windows and the front staircase. Yellow delivery vans were driving by on the street nearby.

I had driven there in a Mercedes-Benz. She asked if I wanted to go to the back seat of my car. The car opened up in back and a large carpet rolled out onto the ground. After we had been on the blanket for a while, a large group of her secret-agent co-workers had surrounded us. They followed us silently as we walked to a dock which was otherwise deserted. They stood around watching us expectantly. I wasn't sure exactly why they were there. I told her I would be more comfortable if they left. She shouted, "Danger zone!" and they all vanished.

We stood on the dock and held each other for a little while, and then I woke up.

Explaining Jack Daniel's to an Irish Friend

About the Mississippi River: as you said, my friend, it runs through OR ALONG several states including Tennessee. The river runs ALONG the extreme western EDGE of Tennessee, making, in fact, the western border of the state, with Missouri and Arkansas across the river. Down in the very southwestern corner of Tennessee, right up against Arkansas and right up against the STATE of Mississippi, is Memphis (pronounced "mah-AYEM-fus" by the locals), where, as every schoolchild knows, rhythm n blues was stolen by white people who played it ineptly, called it rock n roll and claimed it was something new. Despite this legacy of shame and despite the startling accent of the locals, Memphis is the home of some fine barbecue.

Jack Daniels is made in Lynchberg, Tennessee, in CENTRAL Tennessee, quite some ways away from the Mississippi and mah-AYEM-fus, not very far from Nashville. Tennessee is very short from north to south and very long from east to west, so that mah-AYEM-fus in the west and Knoxville in the east might as well be in two separate worlds. Last I heard, Lynchberg was still dry: that is, they can make whisky but they can't legally DRINK it. Yes, the home of old Jack is dry (or at least was until very recently), amazing but true.

You might like Tennessee, my friend: many, ay, maybe most of its people trace their descent back to Ireland or Scotland. Or you might hate it: you might say, "*****, I traveled thousands of miles to try to get AWAY from these people and their ******* fiddles and clogging!" How am I to know what you might like?

Searching for Lost Ancient Latin Texts

A great many Classical ancient Latin texts went missing in the middle of the Dark Ages; that is: until the late sixth or early seventh centuries, we have evidence that people still read them, and then we have no more evidence that they were familiar to anyone later than that, and they are still missing. So we need to scour the Dark Ages to learn more about how and when and where the texts disappeared from our present-day view. We must learn all we can about these Dark Age people who mention, or, in more fortunate cases, quote the now-missing texts. If the lost ancient texts are mentioned or quoted in letters, as is very often the case, we must learn all we can about the people to whom the letters were addressed.

Encyclopaediac works (that's our word for them today) written in the ancient world and Dark Ages are tresure-troves of these mentions and quotes: works by Flavius Maximus, Gellius, Octavian, Servius, Isidore. We must know these encyclopaediac works thoroughly for clues about what happened to those texts, when and where and how they went missing, to gain clues about where and how we might find then again.

It's assumed that many Classical Latin texts were lost in Dark Age wars, when Germanic tribes and Huns invaded the late Western Roman Empire and carved it up into empires of their own, Visigoth and Ostrogoth and Frankish and Lombard realms. We must know all we can about those wars, in order to imagine as exactly as possible what happened to those lost texts -- were they hidden from the invaders and their fire? Where would they be hidden? Are some of them still in those hiding places, having been lost track of by those who hid them?

We must shake off a prejudice toward thinking of these Germanic conquerors as illiterate; literacy rates may have decreased compared to those of the Roman Empire, but much scholarship was supported by Dark Age Goths and other tribes. They did not completely despise scholarship, far from it. Benedict, Cassidorius, Isidore, justly celebrated as preservers as ancient Latin literature, as bright lights in the darkness, they all thrived under the rule of these "barbarian" tribes.

We do not know for certain how much ancient literature was lost by the violence of Dark Age wars. We do know that many ancient manuscripts were re-used in the Dark and Middle Ages, the Classical works scraped off and Christian works written where they had been. We know this because we have found the Classical works on those ancient pieces of papyrus, we have found ways in which we can still read then even though they were scraped away so long ago. We can read the indentations left by the ancient pens, they're called palimpsests. We have found many of these ancient Latin palimpsests, we must find the rest!

This is not the only way in which ancient parchment was re-used; it was also made into a material called cartonnage, which resembles cardboard in appearance and hardness, and was used to make book covers and to wrap mummies. By methods which are far over my head, modern wizards have recovered many of the ancient texts preserved in these pieces of cartonnage. We must find the rest.

Vast amounts of of previously-lost ancient Greek texts are being re-discovered in ancient pieces of papyrus, and occasionally of parchment or other materials, in the Mideast, mostly in Egypt. Now and then among these bits and pieces, amongst vast amounts of ancient Greek, an ancient object written in some other language is found. We Latinists get lucky now and then this way.

Medieval Western European archives are full of records written in Latin; Medievalists are hurrying to preserve and record as much of it as they can, and are worried that much of the material, written on parchment, will rot away before they can get to it. They want more students to become Medievalists! Among these Latin records of the business of Medieval communities, here and there, now and then, all sort of others written artifacts turn up.

Ancient inscriptions keep being found. Most of them are not what we would call literature; rather, they are things like brief memorials on tombstones, and brief boasts of long-forgotten statesmen. But now and then they contain more.

And there are public libraries and private collections which contain manuscripts which have been very, very carefully searched through in some cases, and less thoroughly in others.

Please tell me what I've missed and what other places we can look for lost ancient Latin texts!

People Being Hurt By the Trump Administration

In case you've been fortunate enough not to have been adversely affected by the Trump administration's policies slashing funding for social safety-net programs, and wondering whether anyone you know personally is feeling the effects --

-- well, for example, there's me. My food stamps have been discontinued and then continued again, back and forth a couple of times. Currently they've been cut off for a few months. And now the Social Security Administration informs me that they intend to discontinue my disability benefits as of next month. My Medicaid would be gone, and I might owe the government some money for years' worth of benefits they are now alleging that I was not eligible for.

A paralegal at the legal firm which represents me says that the threat to drop me from Disability and Medicaid is a simple mix-up and will be straightened out without too much trouble, internally, within Social Security, without having to take my case to court, and I shouldn't worry. I'm trying not to worry. As far as my food stamps are concerned, they're not sure whether or not those will be continued. They're looking into it.

And I'm doing a lot better than many disability recipients in that I have a lawyer. I can picture someone getting letters like the ones I've been getting from Social Security and having no idea what they mean (I had no idea what they meant, the paralegal had to explain them to me) or what to do about it.

I'm pretty sure I know what the Trump administration would like us to do about it -- die in the streets like dogs, after they've seized everything we have. That's what they'd like us to do.

Like I said, I'm trying not to worry. I hope that paralegal knows what she's talking about. I'm hoping I'm wrong when it feels to me that is Trump appointees coming after me and everything I own (it's not much), and that it's very, very personal.

Dream Log: Unsuccsessful Love; Heroic Surfing With Blue Oyster Cult

I dreamed that I was re-united with the same woman I dreamed about a few nights ago, the woman I knew 30 years ago in real life. In the last dream she was an actor starring in a Broadway play, and she got me a role in the play; in this dream, we were civil servants working in a small-town Midwestern community center, a building with a rustic stone exterior and exposed beams in the ceiling of the lobby, an architectural style reminiscent of buildings in National Parks.

In the previous dream we were in love. In this dream her affection for me faded very quickly. I kept losing things such as my shoes and my jacket, and she seemed very disinclined to be with someone with that level of gross clumsiness. She didn't tell me with words that she was breaking up with me or to stop touching her, but her non-verbal body language was very clear.

Then I was outdoors by myself, in an area which was very grey and cloudy and windy. I had found my shoes and my jacket, at least, but I was very sad over the break-up.

Then I told myself to stop feeling sorry for myself, and to do something positive instead.

I walked to a nearby beach, where there was huge surf. The members of the rock band Blue Oyster Cult were surfing out there, and they were also playing their songs.



They had their instruments with them on the surfboards, and everything was apparently being amplified by some wireless method. They were fully dressed in street clothes on the surfboards; no swimsuits or wetsuits. Besides surfing and playing music, they were also rescuing people. Not people in the ocean, but people on land whom they could see while they were surfing: people in accidents, people being attacked or having one sort of health incident or another, etc. They would spot someone in trouble, stop playing, rush to the person's aid, stay with them until EMS or other appropriate help arrived, then went back to surfing, playing music and watching for people who needed help. Once, we retrieved a kitten from a tree and returned it to its distraught owner.

I joined the band right away. I'm not saying that I started jamming with them: I became a member of Blue Oyster Cult, right away. I had my own surfboard and my own guitar, and I played and sang along and watched for people in trouble on the shore, and rushed to their aid as soon as one of us saw someone who needed help. We went into an extended jam on the main rhythm-guitar riff in "Godzilla," Then I woke up.