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The Odyssey

by | Jul 16, 2026 | 0 comments

The award-winning director Christopher Nolan will release his latest film, “The Odyssey,” this Friday, July 17. Already critics are praising the film, and expect it to win Nolan additional Academy Awards. “Oppenheimer,” won Nolan seven Oscars at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Matt Damon plays the title role of Odysseus, Anne Hathaway his wife Penelope, Tom Holland their son Telemachus. Charlize Theron plays the role of Calypso, and Samantha Morton is Circe.

About 700 B.C., at the very beginning of Western Civilization’s literary output, an author named Homer collected the Greek’s oft-repeated oral stories about the war against Troy and wrote them down in two books: first “The Iliad” and then “The Odyssey.”

Scholars speculate that Homer may have written the latter perhaps thirty years after the first.

In both epics, Homer relied upon a poetic style called dactylic hexameter. That refers to six feet per line, and each foot includes an initial stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, for a total of eighteen syllables per line of a standard ancient Greek text.

A note: certain English words are dactylic: poetry, difficult, mockingbird, and alphabet.

Homer composed 15,693 lines for “The Iliad,” 12,110 lines for “The Odyssey.” Each book he divided into twenty-four books, that corresponded to twenty-four papyrus scrolls.

In 2018, a British scholar, Emily Wilson, published an English translation of “The Odyssey,” but she used a different poetic style, that of iambic pentameter, only ten syllables per line and each line she divided into five pairs, one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Here is a line of an English translation from “The Odyssey,” written in dactylic hexameter.

“But when he had bathed all, and anointed himself with olive oil.” (VI, 227)

Here is Emily Wilson’s translation of the same passage written in iambic pentameter:

“But when he was all clean and richly oiled.”

Note that Wilson’s translation is shorter, less wordy.

“The Iliad” is a story of war, of the Greeks who sailed across the Aegean Sea to Troy, a city on the western coast of Asia Minor, to besiege that city for ten hard years.

“It covers a few crucial weeks during the tenth and final year of that war. It does not include the inciting cause of the war, the abduction of Helen, nor does it include the Greeks’ means of defeating Troy, by a gift of a wooden horse that contained Greek warriors hidden within.”

“The Odyssey” is a story of a single man, Odysseus, who fought in that Trojan War, but then was forced to struggle for an additional ten years to return to his kingdom in Ithaca, in Greece, and reunite with his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus.

Odysseus’s adversaries included: Poseidon, the god of the sea, who places a curse upon Odysseus. There is a Cyclops, a giant one-eyed monster, whom Odysseus blinds. There is Calypso, a sea nymph who falls in love with Odysseus and holds him captive for seven years.

There is a Greek sorceress, Circe, who transforms Odysseus’s crew into pigs, and there is Charybdis, a ship-destroying whirlpool.

Yet, Odysseus survives all the obstacles that the gods pitch at him and presses toward home.

What does Homer teach us in his two books? That it is hard to vanquish an enemy in a war in a foreign country, and that is as hard to find a path to return home to wife and son.

Emily Wilson begins Book 1, Line 1: “Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life.”

Gettysburg and Vicksburg

by | Jul 2, 2026 | 0 comments

In Gettysburg, a small town in Pennsylvania, population 2,400 in 1863, General Robert E. Lee failed a second time to win a crucial battle by leading his troops north, and invading a Union state. If he had won that battle, he could have next attacked Philadelphia or Washington.

After three days of fighting—July 1, 2, and 3—the battle at Gettysburg subsided. It had been fierce, ferocious. One soldier described the scene, “The air was all murderous iron.”

On the evening of July 3, Confederate General Robert E. Lee reflected on his men’s brave actions that day, and cried out in deep frustration, “Too bad! Too bad! Oh—too bad!”

On July 4, Lee turned his army south and retreated. His troops could not fight on the fourth.

In Vicksburg, a small town on the river in Mississippi, population 4,500, Confederate General John Pemberton waved a white flag and and asked for terms of surrender, on July 3, 1863.

After 46 days and 45 nights of an ever-tightening siege, Pemberton had reason to believe that Union forces would attack the city the next day, and that his troops had not the strength to fight. For six weeks they had been locked inside the town, living on half and quarter food rations.

Pemberton believed he could extract better terms on July 4, than any other day of the year.

The Union General Ulysses S. Grant replied, “The useless effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended at any time you may choose, by the unconditional surrender of the city and garrison.” Henceforth, U. S. Grant was known as Unconditional Surrender Grant.

After some discussion, Grant allowed the Union army to parole the Confederate soldiers out of the Confederate army the next day, rather than seize the 30,000 rebels, transport them north to Cairo, in Illinois, and hold them there as prisoners, awaiting an exchange.

In Grant’s “Personal Memoirs,” he described what happened the next day, July 4.

“At the 4th, at the appointed hour, the garrison of Vicksburg marched out of their works, and formed a line in front, stacked arms, and marched back in good order. Our whole army present witnessed this scene without cheering.”

In other words, the Confederate soldiers stacked their rifles, retained their sidearms, received larger food rations, and were free to return to their homes, once paroled from the Confederate army. Most did. Some headed north to escape any further potential enlistment.

In Gettysburg, Lee retreated and would fight for almost two more years, but at Vicksburg, Pemberton surrendered.

Lee had invaded into the north twice. The first was at Antietam, in Maryland, a slave state, but retained within the Union, and the second was at Gettysburg, a Union state. Because both invasions had failed, Robert E. Lee was forced to fight a defensive civil war thereafter.

Whereas Lee’s invasion into Union territory had failed, Grant’s invasion into Confederate territory, all the way south to Vicksburg, had succeeded. Henceforth, the Southern people called America’s Civil War “the War of Northern Aggression.”

Grant had demonstrated that Union resources applied relentlessly would bring victory.

Four months later, in November, Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg. He said, “These dead shall not have died in vain, but this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” He may have referred to the unleashing of the economic, political, and intellectual potential of the enslaved.

Indeed, our nation, our people, our government needs more new births, a successive number of “new births of freedom,” repeated each generation, a core essence of America.

A quote by the journalist George Will years ago, “The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of America is justice and securing the blessings of liberty.”

Have a blessed and enjoyable Independence Day, July 4. Ponder on our shared liberties.

Battle of Breeds and Bunker Hill

by | Jun 18, 2026 | 0 comments

In the year 1775, two peninsulas jutted into Boston’s Harbor. Each was connected to the Massachusetts mainland by a narrow isthmus.

The first peninsula jutted due north, looked like a thumb, and upon it sat the city of Boston. The second jutted due east, looked like a hand, and upon it sat the city of Charlestown. The distance between the two cities, north across Boston’s harbor, was perhaps two or three miles.

British red-coats, an army of 6000 regulars, were stationed inside Boston.

In mid-June, they learned that New England’s colonial militias, some 15,000 New England men, had dug dirt fortifications into that northern peninsula, on its two hills, Breeds and Bunker.

From those heights, the militias could lob cannon balls into Boston or sink British warships in the harbor. In essence, the colonial militiamen now laid siege over Boston, trapping the British.

The British General, Thomas Gage, decided that his army must drive out the militia men from the two hills. He ordered Major General William Howe to cross Boston’s harbor, march up Breeds Hill and Bunker Hill, and take possession of that northern peninsula.

At 1:00 p.m., on June 17, 1775, boats ferried the armed British redcoats north across the harbor to the Charlestown peninsula. At 3:00 p.m., the British began their march up Breeds Hill.

The colonial militias held the higher ground and repelled the first British charge. A second time the redcoats tried to storm Breeds Hill, but then were halted and forced to retreat.

After all, the colonial militia men were protected behind fences and earthworks, and poured a devastating, close-range fire straight into the British ranks as they advanced. “Hundreds of red-coated regulars fell. Some British units lost half their men or more.”

On the third attempt the redcoats succeeded, because the militia men had run out of ammunition. The American defenders retreated to the mainland by way of that narrow isthmus.

Although defeated at Breeds and Bunker hills, the American men felt exhilarated that they had fought so bravely. Although victorious, the British redcoats felt sobered. They learned that day that the colonial militiamen, despite their lack of discipline and arms, were determined fighters.

It was civil war, the English from England fighting the English from the American colonies.

Historians consider Breeds and Bunker Hill the bloodiest single-day battle of the American Revolutionary War. Casualties were devastating.

The British suffered 1,000 casualties, more than 200 killed and 800 wounded. The Americans suffered 400 to 450 casualties, some 115 killed and 305 wounded.

The battle boosted American morale, caused the British army to adopt a more cautious military strategy throughout the war, and prompted the Americans to create a unified army.

Two days before the battle, on June 15, delegates to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, appointed the proud, 43-year-old Virginian, George Washington, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, by a unanimous vote.

Washington wanted the job. He had appeared in Philadelphia, dressed in a blue and buff military uniform that he had designed. The delegates knew his intention to lead troops.

George Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, outside Boston, on July 2, 1775, assumed command of the Continental Army on July 3, and continued to lay siege upon Boston. However, his army’s condition appalled him.

He believed he was the general of “an exceeding dirty and nasty people.” Their camps were sloppy. They demonstrated little deference to their superior officers, they were disorganized, and they displayed poor sanitation procedures.

Washington knew he must shape this first American army into a disciplined fighting force if he hoped to defeat the superior British army and win the revolution. So the war began.

July 4 Speeches

by | Jun 4, 2026 | 0 comments

In 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson, lecturer and essayist, moved to Concord, Massachusetts. The following year he bought a home in the town of 2000 residents, where he remained for all his remaining days, with his wife Lidian and their children.

     Concord lies thirty-three miles north and west of Boston. Small town life suited Emerson. 

     The town’s claim to fame is that on April 19, 1775, its local farmers took up arms to defy red-coated British soldiers dispatched from Boston to Concord to seize arms. The pitched battles at first Lexington and then Concord were the first major battles of the American Revolution. 

     For the Independence Day celebration in 1837, Concord’s Battle Monument Committee asked Emerson to write a hymn for the dedication of an obelisk monument at the site of the Old North Bridge where the battle at Concord was fought sixty-two years before.

     Emerson obliged and wrote, “Concord Hymn.” He composed sixteen lines, divided into four stanzas of four lines each. The first stanza included one of his most memorable sentences.

    “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, / Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, / Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”

     Indeed, it was Concord’s farmers who first dared to defy King George III and his red-coated soldiers. They dared to take up arms against a king. They dared to initiate an insurrection. The news of their daring defiance traveled throughout the world. 

     Emerson did not attend Concord’s July 4 celebration in 1837, because he had reason to be in Plymouth. If he had attended, he would have heard his hymn sung by a Concord choir.

     Also, Emerson would have heard the Honorable Congressman Samuel Hoar give a speech. Yet, “the exact duration and full text of Hoar’s speech that day has been lost to history.”

     This week, on June 2, 2026, publishers will release a new book, “The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776.” Its author, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, is professor of history at the University of Southern California.

     Years ago, Perl-Rosenthal set upon a monumental research task. He searched for, found, and read 2500 of the extant July 4 celebration speeches given, out of more than 100,000, over the next century. He noted the changes in attitudes, as that century unfolded.

     There were those who spoke up because they did not share in the ideals that Jefferson stated in the Declaration: women, slaves, freed blacks, and Native Americans. Others spoke up and insisted that Americans are those who are born on American soil or who migrated here.

     It is common for human beings to believe that a given circumstance is inevitable. For example, for centuries kings insisted they had a divine right to rule over a land and its people. 

     Thomas Paine disagreed. In “Common Sense,” published in January 1776, Paine wrote, 

     “A French [guy] landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it.” Rid your thoughts of divine right, and a path to independence opens.

     In late June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson picked up a quill pen and wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

     The biographer, Walter Isaacson, has declared that sentence perhaps the greatest ever written.        

     People read Jefferson’s sentence and clamored to get to America, where they could live a new life, one blessed with rights and liberty, where they could pursue joy and happiness.

To Prepare for the University

by | May 20, 2026 | 0 comments

Dave Ramsey, host of the popular call-in radio show, helps listeners pry themselves free from debt by a series of “Baby Steps.” That debt often stems from houses, vehicles, or college.

Ramsey ridicules the idea that high school graduates should embark upon an expensive university course toward a degree that has little chance of generating income.

His most often-cited example is “German polka dancing.” Such a course may exist, but one knows it is not worthwhile. Another scapegoat is “basketweaving.” Another I heard years ago is to study the works of the Spanish poet and playwright, Lope de Vega.

Yes, there are courses of study at the university considered soft, with little potential.

Some courses considered difficult but with far greater potential include: Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Business Law, Medicine, and Accounting. Some considered of medium difficulty include: Music, History, English, Geography, Political Science.

Yet, most all courses at the university level demand hours of study, lots of exams, and stress.

Before enrolling at a university, students should consider a course’s level of difficulty, their preferences, skills, intelligence, and whether that degree will translate into paid employment.

Nat King Cole started as a jazz pianist in the late 1930’s, but he transitioned into a solo vocalist career and enjoyed remarkable success in the 1950’s. He explained, “singing had greater commercial appeal than did the piano.” Few can forget his signature song, “Unforgettable.”

In mid-twentieth century, one college student dared to approach the wildly successful novelist James Michener and ask for an interview. The two met. Michener told the student,

“Nothing that I studied in college has been of use to me in my various jobs. But what I did learn was how to learn, how to organize, how to write term papers.”

Indeed, Michener wins the prize for the hardest working novelist. He said that to write a 500,000 word book, like “Hawaii,” he had to type some 3 million words and then cut most of the rough draft pages.

He consulted several thousand research books. He conducted 200 personal interviews. He told the student, “When I was finally ready to write, I rented a bare-wall, no-telephone Waikiki room and stuck at my typewriter every morning for eighteen months, seven days a week.”

Michener admonished college students. “They fail to realize that men and women who wish to accomplish anything must apply themselves to tasks of tremendous magnitude. The good work of the world is accomplished by people who dedicate themselves to the big tasks at hand.

“Adults who are unwilling to reeducate themselves are doomed to mediocrity. The best a college can do is to inspire a student with the urge to reeducate him or herself constantly.”

I say all knowledge has some value, even if modest. Two examples follow.

On May 5, 1809, President James Madison signed a patent to Mary Kies, the first American woman to receive a patent, for her straw-and-silk weaving technique to create hats, not baskets.

Jonathan Bate ended his 1997 book, “The Genius of Shakespeare,” with a nod to Lope de Vega. Bate wrote, “Lope de Vega was the Mozart of Literature.”

“Shakespeare wrote between 30 and 40 plays. Lope de Vega—who lived concurrent with Shakespeare, but in Spain—wrote between 500 and 1800, although only 300 survive.”

To acquire knowledge on any subject is not a bad thing, but one should consider, “Will it provide me with employment and income?” Another question, “Will I enjoy the work once I have the education and training?” A final question, “How much debt will I incur?”

I wish for those students university-bound the best luck. College is page-by-page, or one baby step after another. I envy you.

Learning Methods

by | May 18, 2026 | 0 comments

May is for graduations, for ceremonies and parties. Some high school graduates will give up on further formal education and instead will enter straight into the work force. Others will pursue a challenging course of study at a university: mathematics, science, history, English, or business.

Whichever course a young person chooses, learning should be and can be a life-long process.

In recent days, I came across a 2016 book, by Anders Ericsson, “Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.” In it, Ericsson, tells the story of how Benjamin Franklin played chess all his life, and yet he never became very good, even though he played thousands of hours.

Ericsson wrote, “This failing was a source of great frustration to Franklin, but he had no idea why he couldn’t get better.” Ericsson explained, “He never pushed himself, never got out of his comfort zone, never put in the hours of ‘deliberate practice’ it would take to improve.”

A search reveals the following for would-be top chess players. Learn to play a series of moves in response to however your opponent opens. Control the center. Develop your pieces. Castle in the first ten moves. Learn an end game with just a rook and a pawn.

Ericsson said that top players recognize patterns of chess pieces at a glance. “They are old friends. These positions are called ‘chunks,’ that they hold in reserve in long-term memory.”

In addition, Franklin often read a daily magazine called the “Spectator,” that Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele wrote. Because Franklin admired those two writers’ literary skills, he set for himself a course of deliberate practice.

On paper he copied down their sentences, broke them apart, mixed up the words, turned them into verse, into poetry, and then re-assembled them. He then compared his sentences with theirs.

Whereas Franklin failed to make much headway with chess, he became a first-rate writer.

A question: Why is it that Asian students win the top awards in mathematics competitions?

A search reveals certain reasons. First, those students spend weeks and even months re-learning the basic fundamentals of fractions, multiplication tables, and long division.

Teachers insist that students solve a problem three ways. For example, to solve a quadratic equation, they will use factorization, the quadratic formula, and completing the square.

Teacher insist that their students keep a mathematics notebook where they solve their assigned problems, rather than on random sheets of paper. They call errors “feedback,” rather than “mistakes,” and they note those mistakes in a special section inside their notebook.

Asian students have frequent timed practices, fifteen questions in ten minutes. Teachers allow Asian students to teach others in the classroom. Because they study mathematics every day, the Asian students’ minds are directed to think often in terms of numbers, processes, solutions.

In a 1989 scholarly article, that Allan Collins, John Seely Brown, and Susan E. Brown wrote, “Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Crafts of Reading, Writing, and Mathematics,” its three authors presented six methods for an effective apprenticeship.

First is “modeling.” Students watch an expert perform a skill. Second is “coaching.” The expert offers hints and challenges, as the students replicate that skill. Third is “scaffolding.” The expert provides formulas, steps, or equations that guide the students.

Fourth is “articulation.” The students explain their thoughts about the skill. Fifth is “reflection.” The students compare their understanding with those of the expert. Sixth is “exploration.” The students seek out more problems to solve.

The goal is to highlight a practical thinking process.

Best wishes to this year’s crop of graduates. You have choices: deliberate practice and the science of expertise, or cognitive apprenticeship.