David Beckett's Blog
December 16, 2020
Merry Christmas!
"...A thrill of hope -- the weary world rejoices!!
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, o night, when Christ was born;
Truly He taught us to love another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our BROTHER! And in His name, all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus raise we, With all our hearts, we praise His holy name.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born; O night, divine!
O night, o night divine!
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, o night, when Christ was born;
Truly He taught us to love another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our BROTHER! And in His name, all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus raise we, With all our hearts, we praise His holy name.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born; O night, divine!
O night, o night divine!
May 22, 2020
Thank You, San Francisco!
Very belated thanks for a positive review in the San Francisco Chronicle, which calls me the creator of "inspired adventure novels." I recall reading the Chronicle throughout the 1980s, back when Hunter Thompson contributed the occasional hilarious column.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertain...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertain...
January 19, 2020
Jan 19, 2020
Praying to the Almighty for PEACE tomorrow. Let's unite to celebrate Dr. King's legacy.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
September 16, 2019
First Folio
When Milton met Shakespeare: poet's notes on Bard appear to have been found
Hailed as one of the most significant archival discoveries of modern times -- text seems to show the Paradise Lost poet making careful annotations on his edition of Shakespeare’s plays
Alison Flood (The Guardian)
"Almost 400 years after the first folio of Shakespeare was published in 1623, scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout.
The astonishing find, which academics say could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times, was made by Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren when he was reading an article about the anonymous annotator by Pennsylvania State University English professor Claire Bourne. Bourne’s study of this copy, which has been housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944, dated the annotator to the mid-17th century, finding them alive to “the sense, accuracy, and interpretative possibility of the dialogue”. She also provided many images of the handwritten notes, which struck Scott-Warren as looking oddly similar to Milton’s hand. “But I always think ‘I recognise that handwriting,’” Scott-Warren said. “I go and check and normally I’m wrong. This time I thought: ‘The case is getting stronger and stronger’.”
As evidence stacked up, he said he became “quite trembly … You’re gathering evidence with your heart in your mouth.”
The first folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death. Without it, 18 plays including Macbeth and The Tempest might have been lost to history. Around 750 first folios were printed, with 233 known to survive. They command huge sums at auction, with one selling for £1.87m three years ago.
Scott-Warren has made a detailed comparison of the annotator’s handwriting with the Paradise Lost poet’s. He also believes that the work the annotator did to improve the text of the folio – suggesting corrections and supplying additional material such as the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, along with cross-references to other works – is similar to work Milton did in other books that survive from his library, including his copy of Boccaccio’s Life of Dante.
The scholar tentatively suggested in a blog post that he might have identified John Milton’s copy of the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623, admitting that, “in this as in other cases, there’s usually a lot of wishful thinking, plus copious spinning of the evidence to make it seem plausible, and elision of anything that doesn’t seem to fit”.
But he soon found that other scholars were agreeing with him. “Not only does this hand look like Milton’s, but it behaves like Milton’s writing elsewhere does, doing exactly the things Milton does when he annotates books, and using exactly the same marks,” said Dr Will Poole at New College Oxford. “Shakespeare is our most famous writer, and the poet John Milton was his most famous younger contemporary. It was, until a few days ago, simply too much to hope that Milton’s own copy of Shakespeare might have survived — and yet the evidence here so far is persuasive. This may be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times.”
“Everyone’s been weighing in, every day someone suggests a new similarity,” Scott-Warren said. “I feel 100% sure, but there are still people out there who remain to be convinced. I guess there is a question of if other people could have very similar handwriting.”
As well as numerous textual annotations, the folio also contains a host of line markings, showing the annotator’s engagement with, particularly, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry IV, As You Like It and King Lear. Scott-Warren believes these can be traced to Milton’s own work.
“The book is absolutely covered with lines in the margin of passages and when you’re reading those thinking the annotator is Milton they become really interesting,” he said. “It’s how they echo with his work, the sense that the volume offers you the opportunity to read Shakespeare through Milton’s eyes. Because the lines in the margin don’t give you any verbal content, you don’t know why he’s singled out a passage for attention, but it forces you to think your way into Milton’s head and it does really chime with a lot of what goes on in his poetry, so you can see him constructing himself through Shakespeare.”
One highlighted section in The Tempest is the song: “Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands: / Courtsied when you have and kiss’d / The wild waves whist.” The unusual rhyme, of “kiss’d” and “whist”, is echoed in Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity: “The winds with wonder whist, / Smoothly the waters kist.”
“We would already have known about that allusion, they are the only two writers who used that rhyme, but you can see him marking it in the text and responding to it,” said Scott-Warren. “It gives you a sense of his sensitivity and alertness to Shakespeare. What’s quite remarkable as well is that he’s singled out for attention lots of the passages that have become incredibly famous – he goes through and marks out some of the most celebrated Shakespearean speeches.”
It has always been known that Shakespeare was a huge influence on Milton – in his poem On Shakespeare, Milton calls him a “son of Memory” and “great heir of fame”, writing of how “Thou in our wonder and astonishment / Hast built thyself a live-long monument.”
“But this allows us to see the encounter happening,” said Scott-Warren. “It shows you the firsthand encounter between two great writers, which you don’t often get to see, especially in this period. A lot of that kind of evidence is lost, so that’s really exciting.”
He is now intending to collaborate with Bourne on a series of articles about the find. “Having these annotations might allow us to identify further books that have been annotated by Milton,” he said. “This is evidence of how digital technology and the opening up of libraries [could] transform our knowledge of this period.”
Hailed as one of the most significant archival discoveries of modern times -- text seems to show the Paradise Lost poet making careful annotations on his edition of Shakespeare’s plays
Alison Flood (The Guardian)
"Almost 400 years after the first folio of Shakespeare was published in 1623, scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout.
The astonishing find, which academics say could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times, was made by Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren when he was reading an article about the anonymous annotator by Pennsylvania State University English professor Claire Bourne. Bourne’s study of this copy, which has been housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944, dated the annotator to the mid-17th century, finding them alive to “the sense, accuracy, and interpretative possibility of the dialogue”. She also provided many images of the handwritten notes, which struck Scott-Warren as looking oddly similar to Milton’s hand. “But I always think ‘I recognise that handwriting,’” Scott-Warren said. “I go and check and normally I’m wrong. This time I thought: ‘The case is getting stronger and stronger’.”
As evidence stacked up, he said he became “quite trembly … You’re gathering evidence with your heart in your mouth.”
The first folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death. Without it, 18 plays including Macbeth and The Tempest might have been lost to history. Around 750 first folios were printed, with 233 known to survive. They command huge sums at auction, with one selling for £1.87m three years ago.
Scott-Warren has made a detailed comparison of the annotator’s handwriting with the Paradise Lost poet’s. He also believes that the work the annotator did to improve the text of the folio – suggesting corrections and supplying additional material such as the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, along with cross-references to other works – is similar to work Milton did in other books that survive from his library, including his copy of Boccaccio’s Life of Dante.
The scholar tentatively suggested in a blog post that he might have identified John Milton’s copy of the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623, admitting that, “in this as in other cases, there’s usually a lot of wishful thinking, plus copious spinning of the evidence to make it seem plausible, and elision of anything that doesn’t seem to fit”.
But he soon found that other scholars were agreeing with him. “Not only does this hand look like Milton’s, but it behaves like Milton’s writing elsewhere does, doing exactly the things Milton does when he annotates books, and using exactly the same marks,” said Dr Will Poole at New College Oxford. “Shakespeare is our most famous writer, and the poet John Milton was his most famous younger contemporary. It was, until a few days ago, simply too much to hope that Milton’s own copy of Shakespeare might have survived — and yet the evidence here so far is persuasive. This may be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times.”
“Everyone’s been weighing in, every day someone suggests a new similarity,” Scott-Warren said. “I feel 100% sure, but there are still people out there who remain to be convinced. I guess there is a question of if other people could have very similar handwriting.”
As well as numerous textual annotations, the folio also contains a host of line markings, showing the annotator’s engagement with, particularly, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry IV, As You Like It and King Lear. Scott-Warren believes these can be traced to Milton’s own work.
“The book is absolutely covered with lines in the margin of passages and when you’re reading those thinking the annotator is Milton they become really interesting,” he said. “It’s how they echo with his work, the sense that the volume offers you the opportunity to read Shakespeare through Milton’s eyes. Because the lines in the margin don’t give you any verbal content, you don’t know why he’s singled out a passage for attention, but it forces you to think your way into Milton’s head and it does really chime with a lot of what goes on in his poetry, so you can see him constructing himself through Shakespeare.”
One highlighted section in The Tempest is the song: “Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands: / Courtsied when you have and kiss’d / The wild waves whist.” The unusual rhyme, of “kiss’d” and “whist”, is echoed in Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity: “The winds with wonder whist, / Smoothly the waters kist.”
“We would already have known about that allusion, they are the only two writers who used that rhyme, but you can see him marking it in the text and responding to it,” said Scott-Warren. “It gives you a sense of his sensitivity and alertness to Shakespeare. What’s quite remarkable as well is that he’s singled out for attention lots of the passages that have become incredibly famous – he goes through and marks out some of the most celebrated Shakespearean speeches.”
It has always been known that Shakespeare was a huge influence on Milton – in his poem On Shakespeare, Milton calls him a “son of Memory” and “great heir of fame”, writing of how “Thou in our wonder and astonishment / Hast built thyself a live-long monument.”
“But this allows us to see the encounter happening,” said Scott-Warren. “It shows you the firsthand encounter between two great writers, which you don’t often get to see, especially in this period. A lot of that kind of evidence is lost, so that’s really exciting.”
He is now intending to collaborate with Bourne on a series of articles about the find. “Having these annotations might allow us to identify further books that have been annotated by Milton,” he said. “This is evidence of how digital technology and the opening up of libraries [could] transform our knowledge of this period.”
September 12, 2019
For those in Paris:
Per (AFP) "Leonardo da Vinci's famous mechanical lion is on display for a month, in a tribute to the Renaissance master 500 years after his death.
The lion, which is two metres (six feet, seven inches) high and three metres long and made of wood with a metal mechanism, is a reconstruction based on a sketch left by da Vinci.
The original automaton, long since lost, was designed by da Vinci on a commission from Pope Leo X to amuse French king Francois I.
Da Vinci studied the flight of birds and how understanding the mechanism could lead to the creation of a human flying machine.
His lion is on display at the Italian Cultural Institue."
The lion, which is two metres (six feet, seven inches) high and three metres long and made of wood with a metal mechanism, is a reconstruction based on a sketch left by da Vinci.
The original automaton, long since lost, was designed by da Vinci on a commission from Pope Leo X to amuse French king Francois I.
Da Vinci studied the flight of birds and how understanding the mechanism could lead to the creation of a human flying machine.
His lion is on display at the Italian Cultural Institue."
July 6, 2019
Fascinating New Research
From NYT: “Combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it — to 750,000. “Wars have profound economic, demographic and social costs,” he went on. Dr. Hacker’s data suggests that 650,000 to 850,000 men died as a result of the war; he chose the midpoint as his estimate. “We’re seeing at least 37,000 more widows, and 90,000 more orphans. That’s a profound social impact, and it’s our duty to get it right.”
The new figure is winning scholars’ acceptance. Civil War History, the journal that published Dr. Hacker’s paper, called it “among the most consequential pieces ever to appear” in its pages. And a pre-eminent authority on the era, Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said: “It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”
The old (1870) figure was compiled by two Union Army veterans who were passionate amateur historians: William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. But their work undercounted the number of immigrants killed as well as the number of soldiers dying from disease.
Published census data from the era did not differentiate between native-born Americans and immigrants; about 500,000 foreign-born soldiers served in the Union Army alone. And because the Union had better medical care, food, and shelter, especially in the war’s final years, Southern losses to disease were, proportionally, much higher.
The new figure is winning scholars’ acceptance. Civil War History, the journal that published Dr. Hacker’s paper, called it “among the most consequential pieces ever to appear” in its pages. And a pre-eminent authority on the era, Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said: “It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”
The old (1870) figure was compiled by two Union Army veterans who were passionate amateur historians: William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. But their work undercounted the number of immigrants killed as well as the number of soldiers dying from disease.
Published census data from the era did not differentiate between native-born Americans and immigrants; about 500,000 foreign-born soldiers served in the Union Army alone. And because the Union had better medical care, food, and shelter, especially in the war’s final years, Southern losses to disease were, proportionally, much higher.
May 27, 2019
Baseball
Congratulations to the O'Gorman Knights, 2019 State Champs. Wonderful to witness your strong camaraderie & esprit de corps. Moreover, I'm very grateful for the kindness you showed my young son. Christopher enjoyed a marvelous afternoon; he'll long treasure his special baseball and the memory it represents.
Arlington
Massive "Thank You" to Arlington National Cemetary and to Patton Hall (at Fort Myers) for hosting us. It was an honor to attend & a day we'll never forget.
March 19, 2019
Burger Alert!
Hungry? Culver's will donate 10% of today's sales to a great cause: Midwest Honor Flight.
"We're extremely thankful and grateful. This will get 280 Veterans to Washington, D.C. at no cost to them,” said Midwest Honor Flight VP Cory Van Slote.
Chad Pearson, Ops Manager for Sioux Falls Culver's, said Vets come into the restaurant weekly, thanking employees for supporting Midwest Honor Flight. You can help out by grabbing supper at one of Culver's participating locations; you might even catch S.D. Governor Kristi Noem there. Helping vets while enjoying a burger (and a shake!) is a win-win.
"We're extremely thankful and grateful. This will get 280 Veterans to Washington, D.C. at no cost to them,” said Midwest Honor Flight VP Cory Van Slote.
Chad Pearson, Ops Manager for Sioux Falls Culver's, said Vets come into the restaurant weekly, thanking employees for supporting Midwest Honor Flight. You can help out by grabbing supper at one of Culver's participating locations; you might even catch S.D. Governor Kristi Noem there. Helping vets while enjoying a burger (and a shake!) is a win-win.
November 11, 2018
Thanks Veterans
Thanks to all Military Vets & Active Duty, including my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my Godfather, my uncles, my cousins, and all my dear friends. Gardez Bein!
Belated thanks, also, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and its terrific new Mayor Paul TenHaken for welcoming us last month. A great & patriotic city! So beautiful in autumn!
http://www.siouxfalls.org/news/2018/O...
Belated thanks, also, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and its terrific new Mayor Paul TenHaken for welcoming us last month. A great & patriotic city! So beautiful in autumn!
http://www.siouxfalls.org/news/2018/O...
