The Blinded Eye

I just submitted my first book to the publisher, a new verse translation of the Latin epic Civil War by Lucan. It took several years and feels very good to be done.

I’ve been watching a real civil war, the revolution that is brewing in Iran, over at Citizen Tube, with videos sent to YouTube from people, some of them wounded by gunfire, on the streets there.

We were watching the Daily Show last night, and Jason Jones in Iran visiting with an Iranian family, who seemed just like us, the kids playing video games, the dad playing a silly electronic keyboard while the family danced and had fun. It made me think that we are all, everywhere, in captivity to evil people (who are in turn enslaved to narrow ideologies that justify repression, hatred, and violence).

This is awesome! Be sure to zoom in all the way.

I just found a fascinating website that I had to break my work-crunch blogging moratorium to post here: the Farlang Jewelry Online Rare Book Library. A page from one of their texts popped up as I was searching for “eagle-stones” (aetites) to annonate one of Lucan’s lines, and I was uber-impressed with their library of books on gem lore, from Agricola to Theophrastus. 

I’m still not sure what they are–geodes, I think–since google images so far has turned up nothing; I guess eagles don’t produce(?) or find them anymore…

UPDATE:

From Pliny’s descrip, they are actually a kind of friable river stone. But still no pics.