Derek Brewer

I see from today’s Independent that Derek Brewer died a couple of weeks ago, coincidentally on my birthday. He’s praised there for being a Chaucerian, as, of course, he was, pre-eminently, but my memories of him come from the summer term of my first year at Emmanuel, when he was my supervisor for Shakespeare. He had a room in East Court, and once a week I would walk across the gardens with Dick Landy for our supervision, always with the faint trepidation of the essentially unprepared and the hope, soon to be dashed, that the heat of Brewer’s attention would be directed not at me, but at Dick. That term is pretty much a blur for various reasons, but I have a distinct memory of our supervision on Macbeth. Brewer was in an uncharacteristically gloomy mood that day and, to our relief, seemed less interested in our views of the play than in the suicide of the author and TV presenter Kenneth Allsop. He spoke about the hopelessness and vacuity of middle age, suggesting that both Macbeth and Allsop had fallen prey to it in a way which made it fairly clear to us, callow 19-year-olds though we were, that he saw himself, on that day at least, as similarly afflicted. It was an odd, sobering experience to see him open up – not to us who might as well not have been there – to some darkness, some bitter understanding, in himself. He was 49. I was impressed and disturbed at the time. Now, at 55, I know exactly what he meant and I wonder if it might not have been particularly hard for him, as a Christian, to accept that understanding, which is one that faith can’t usefully bolster, and move on.

Chemical Acorn

I really like this. It comes from a blog called Upset Fruit Bowl, made by David Dingman, “a 19 year old kid living within the soggy depths of Michigan, in the United States.” 

Nid wyf yn…..

Curious? Click here for a great post about translation.

Ditching the bitch

This time PD senator Paola “Mrs Doubtfire” Binetti (see two posts down) really does seem to have gone too far. Following her comment that homosexuals couldn’t control their paedophilic instincts and were therefore disqualified from becoming priests, members of her centre-left party have called for her to be expelled. (Better late than never. If they’d done it two years ago we might, just might, have civil union legislation in place in Italy.) She’s going to be hauled up before an internal commission tomorrow and asked to explain herself. 

Binetti’s used to waffling on uninterrupted, under the assumption that religious bigotry has a sort of authority denied other forms of bullying, and can’t quite see what she’s done wrong. She’s apologised, after all, even though she has used the apology to repeat the slur. She even seems to think there’s some sort of scientific validity in what she says, although it wouldn’t matter if there weren’t because, well, she just know she’s right. She must be. She’s only repeating what the pope says, after all. And he’s always right. Why? Because he says he is. That’s what infallibility’s all about.

Hands-on politics

http://www.youtube.com/v/C0kGc6UEGVc&hl=en&fs=1

An expert speaks

I’ve had occasion in the past to talk about Paola Binetti, Democratic Party (PD) senator here in Italy, and the prime mover in blocking civil union legislation during Prodi’s ill-fated government. Well, after a period of relative silence, during which she was presumably adjusting her self-mortification equipment in the privacy of her own monastic (nunnistic?) cell, she’s back and talking more rot than ever. Commenting on the recent announcement that the Vatican would screen potential priests to exclude those with “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies” (as opposed to the shallow, frivolous, Kylie-loving, Prada-wearing kind), she told yesterday’s Corriere della Sera that “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies presuppose the presence of an instinct that may become uncontrollable. This is where the risk of paedophilia springs from.” She also thinks that heterosexual paedophilia is far less common than the deeply rooted homosexual kind. How much longer is this woman going to be allowed to spew forth such pernicious hate-filled nonsense without being expelled from the PD? Yes, I realise how sadly rhetorical this question is, but if you’d like to make things at least a little hot for her, one thing you can do is join the Facebook group asking for her removal. 

Troublemaker

Isn’t this wonderful! It’s the winning portrait in this year’s Natural History Museum Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award. His name is Troublemaker and he’s a young adult Sulawesi black-crested macaque. The photographer is Stefano Unterthiner of Italy.

(Thanks to Towleroad for this.)

Free delivery

If you’re thinking of ordering a copy of The Scent of Cinnamon online, try the Book Depository here. They’re cheaper than Amazon (currently charging £9.66, compared to Amazon’s £11.49) and they deliver free worldwide, from Tallahassee to Timbuktu. For example. 

And not only The Scent of Cinnamon. They sell other books too. Little Monsters. For example.

Credit crunch

Near the bottom of this blog on the right, you’ll find a widget that tells you how much the blog is ‘worth’. Now, I don’t want to get into just what’s meant by ‘worth’, in this context or any other, but it’s interesting to see that the financial crisis of the last couple of weeks has had its effect. My blog used to be worth $10,161.72. Now it’s plummeted to a mere $9,597.18. What have I been doing wrong? And how do I get my hands on what’s left?

if you want to see how much your blog – or indeed, anybody’s blog – is worth, click here.

Speechless

(Thanks to Towleroad for this.)