Ladydale Diary
Saint Eleutherius 2024
I’m sitting on our back deck. It’s a little after 1pm on Friday afternoon. Low humidity. High seventies. A perfect late summer’s afternoon. I’ve been home alone with Leo all morning. He’s on the swing set below. Evangeline has just this moment returned from the homeschool coop she attends every Friday morning. Susannah is out of town, visiting friends in Michigan. I drove her to the airport yesterday. She returns on Monday. I hope she has a great time. She deserves a break and a rest.
Let’s backtrack to the beginning of the week that was.
Last Friday evening, as with every Friday evening for the coming semester, I taught an online graduate-level course on Shakespeare for Memoria College. We began our discussion of Romeo and Juliet, which we’ll conclude this evening. Throughout the week I’ve been engaged in, and grading, the students’ online discussion of the play. I’m also enjoying the live discussion during the class itself. These are a great group of students!
The highlight of the week was on Saturday when Evangeline tested for her second-degree black belt in taekwondo. Watching her board breaking routine was truly astonishing. She’s come a long way since she began taekwo0ndo as an eleven-year-old, five years ago.
On Sunday evening we went to a friend’s home for dinner. We’ve known her for almost twenty years but don’t get together as often as we like. She makes a first-rate old-fashioned!
Monday was Labor Day which I celebrated by labouring! With the exception of Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, I tend to ignore public “holidays”, choosing to continue working in the vineyard. Monday and Tuesday were spent (almost) catching up on the backlog of work that built up during my recent travels to New England and Old England.
Wednesday morning was the only time I could set aside for writing, using it to write my weekly offering to the Imaginative Conservative. It’s titled “Shakespeare and Classical Education” and is the second in a three-part series of essays on “Great Literature and Classical Education”.
On Wednesday I began teaching a course for Homeschool Connections on “Bede and Beowulf”, which enables me to spend time in Anglo-Saxon England, one of my favourite times and places. Yesterday evening we continued studying The Iliad in my course on “Classical Epic and Tragedy” for Rosary College and this evening, as already noted, I’m teaching Shakespeare for Memoria College. I seem to be covering all the academic bases. Pre-Christian literature for undergraduates; Old English literature for highschoolers; and Early Modern literature for graduate students. If versatility is a virtue, I’m in good shape!
It’s now 2pm, an hour after I commenced this week’s diary entry. The writing has been interspersed with bringing Leo in from the swing and giving him his lunch. I’ve also grabbed a quick bite myself.
As soon as I’ve finished, Evangeline will be put on Leo watch, or Leo duty, so that I can go to my office to record this week’s “Poem of the Week” and “Revisiting Old Favourites” podcasts. The latest video podcast on Tolkien’s Catholic vision in Middle-earth has already been posted. I hope my friends in the Inner Sanctum are enjoying this new exclusive video content, which adds a new dimension to our weekly offerings.
With time pressing, I’d better sign off. I’ll conclude, however, with a word on the two photographs which illustrate this week’s diary. They were taken a year ago because this time last year I was leading a “Tolkien on the Camino” pilgrimage in the company of Dan and Stephanie Burke and a dozen or so other intrepid hobbits.
Wishing my dear friends in the Inner Sanctum a blessed week.
