May 15: Kevin J. Anderson’s “Building My First Lightsaber”
Please note: the talk is actually on May 15, not May 5.
Please Help: Fundraiser for Elizabeth Hamilton
One of my former Hillsdale students, Elizabeth Hamilton–a lovely and brilliant young woman–is raising $4,500 for a mission trip to South Sudan. Please consider helping her. She’s well worth supporting. PROMISE!
https://secure.seedeffect.org/np/clients/seedeffect/campaign.jsp?campaign=39&fundraiser=8278
Russell Kirk Biography Available for Pre Order
Available now for pre-order; released on November 5, 2015.
A number of you have very kindly asked about my forthcoming biography of Russell Kirk, founder of post-war American conservatism.
I’m extremely happy to report: it’s now available for preorder!
Here’s the link at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Russell-Kirk-Conservative-Bradley-Birzer/dp/0813166187/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1431541545&sr=8-8&keywords=bradley+birzer
And, here’s the writeup at the press: http://kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=3617#.VVOWUdNViko
Thank you, Marillion.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege (I don’t use that word lightly here) of attending Marillion Weekend in Montreal, Canada. For those who aren’t familiar with the weekend conventions, the band play three straight nights, each with a different setlist and theme.
Friday night featured the Anoraknophobia album in full, plus a few extras. There was a well-intentioned attempt to open the weekend with “Montreal,” a love letter to the city and its fans, but a blown fuse in the venue cut the performance short. (Not to worry, we eventually heard it during Sunday’s encores.) Unfazed, the band returned to the stage after a few minutes and launched into “Between You and Me.”
In my experience, Anoraknophobia is an album best enjoyed with headphones on a quiet evening, so it doesn’t exactly make for the best live album. Still, “Separated Out” and “If My Heart Were a Ball” were…
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Rush R40 Lincoln
Following in the wake of an epic May snowstorm, high winds, flooding, and tornados, my two oldest kids—Nathaniel (16) and Gretchen (14)—began our nearly eight-hour journey across the Great Plains about 8:45 yesterday morning. We arrived in Lincoln around 5, checked into our hotel room, and I immediately had an hour-long radio interview with two wonderful women out of Denver.
Scrambling as Kronos devoured the minutes, we headed across town in search of our pilgrimage site, The Pinnacle Arena.
We found it, and we were in our seats by 7:10. The show was supposed to start at 7:30, but it ran about 15 minutes late.
A nearly packed arena revealed a far more gender-balanced Rush audience then I’d ever seen before. Almost certainly because of Beyond the Lighted Stage, wives and girlfriends (it was pretty obvious that most of them were newbies) made up a significant part of the crowd…
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A Prayer for Comprehensive Exams
A Prayer for Students by Thomas Aquinas
Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. I ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Emergence of Dystopian Literature
My piece at The Imaginative Conservative:
The Glories of Interwar Humanism
The world was soon to be set on a course that was proletarian and ruthless; the fire of war was soon to devastate the green shoots that showed above ground in T. S. Eliot’s Criterion, in Tom Burns’ Essays in Order, in the Neo-Thomism of Maritain. The bitter frosts that followed the war were to finish the job. Scientific humanism at a crude level trampled the ground which had been leveled and seeded by philosophers of another sort. Politics ate up the autonomy which the arts had won. None of this did I foresee at the time; but I did see that a turning point had been reached and I knew that for me personally the turn things took was now for the worse. The kind of people who were now to be in the ascendancy would not be the sort of people we liked. We would be, culturally, in opposition. In the middle ages we would have been into exile with the King.
–Harman Grisewood.
Feast, Disney, 2014
This is a truly gorgeous short film. Makes me think of Burke’s “unbought grace of life.”
Testing for Echo: Rush’s Odd but Brilliant 1996 Masterpiece
While I’ve mentioned this in passing, i’ve yet to announce formally that I’m writing a book on the words and ideas of Neil Peart. So, if you’ll permit me, I’ll do it here.
I’m writing a book on Neil Peart.
There. Done. Announced.
And, I’m having a blast, not surprisingly. The book will come out this fall (2015) from WordFire Press under the editorial expertise of Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta.
At the moment, the place-holder title is The Neil Peart Generation. I’m hoping to come up with something better.
In the meantime, here’s an excerpt–a raw, unedited version of my section on Peart and Rush in 1996-1997, just before all of the tragedies hit. I hope you enjoy. This is about 2,000 words of the ca. 40,000 word book. At least as I see it now.–Brad
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Neil Peart, ca. 1987.
Rush 1.3.5
Test for Echo, the…
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Stormfields 