Fred Jenkins > Recent Status Updates

Finished vol.1, which covers Turkey, Damascus, and Jerusalem. Focus is on Damascus and Bennett's time with the Sufi shayk Emin Chikou.

vivere tota vita discendum est et, quod magis fortasse miraberis, tota vita discendum mori.

"Practice and not principles are what enable us to live together in peace."

"evaluating stories together is one of the central human ways of learning to align our responses to the world. And that alignment of responses is, in turn, one of the ways we maintain the social fabric, the texture of our relationships."

"I am a philosopher by trade, and philosophers rarely write really useful books."

"We wouldn't recognize a community as human if it had no stories, if its people had no narrative imagination."

I don't usually read self-published books, but I have known the author for close to a quarter century. This includes a fair amount of thinly veiled autobiography. I recognize the living room in his old condo. And where else will you find a Civil War memorial statue (Private George Washington Fair in downtown Dayton OH) compared to Symeon Stylites and his confrères.

"Sleep is for humanity to ease its tragic passing from dreams to waking, and eventually from dreams to death."

"I like when things connect like that: I have a rather Jesuitical predilection for order"

Finished de otio, then moved from Ohio to Wisconsin. Finally returning to de brev vitae.

Back to GR and reading after a 10 day hiatus to move from Ohio to Wisconsin. Mostly finished unpacking and shelving ca. 1,200 books (down from the nearly 5,000 we used to own). Most are in order (if a bit idiosyncratic), some stuck where there was room. My advice: never move!

"We are dwarfs," William admitted, "but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they."

"The life of learning is difficult, and it is difficult to distinguish food from evil. And often the learned men of our time are only dwarfs on the shoulders of dwarfs."

Apparently Eco was a fan of Merton's OTSOG.

Finished de otio and moving on to de brevitate vitae. CGLC series often overdoes the commentary as in this one: 7 pages of Latin get 55 of commentary. The commentary becomes more of an obstruction to reading than a help. μηδὲν ἄγαν!