Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, Uniquely Translating the Circe Episode in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’)

“The goddess, rising, asks her guests to stay,
Who blindly follow where she leads the way.
Eurylochus alone of all the band,
Suspecting fraud, more prudently remain’d.
On thrones around with downy coverings graced,
With semblance fair, the unhappy men she placed.
Milk newly press’d, the sacred flour of wheat,
And honey fresh, and Pramnian wines the treat:
But venom’d was the bread, and mix’d the bowl,
With drugs of force to darken all the soul:
Soon in the luscious feast themselves they lost,
And drank oblivion of their native coast.
Instant her circling wand the goddess waves,
To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives.
No more was seen the human form divine;
Head, face, and members, bristle into swine:
Still cursed with sense, their minds remain alone,
And their own voice affrights them when they groan.
Meanwhile the goddess in disdain bestows
The mast and acorn, brutal food! and strows
The fruits and cornel, as their feast, around;
Now prone and grovelling on unsavoury ground.”—English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), translation of Homer’s The Odyssey (1726)
 
I’ve had one inquiry so far about whether I’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey and if so, what I thought of it. So, here goes:
 
Yes, I saw it over the weekend and don’t regret doing so. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 the highest, I gave it 7 1/2 to 8 stars. The visuals and special effects were superb, as was much of the acting.
 
But at least 30 minutes could have been cut, and much of the dialogue was muffled by the ambient noise in the environment around the characters. Maureen Dowd’s column on Sunday was correct about all its deviations from the original.
 
Still, Hollywood has done far worse in adapting classics, and it wasn’t as painful for me to experience as Richmond Lattimore’s translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey in my college Literary Humanities course. (Achilles in his tent didn’t pout half so much as I at the prospect of enduring Homer’s endless repetitions, rendered by Lattimore with teeth-gnashing fidelity.)
 
With Hollywood’s latest attempt at Homer, the 2017 translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson has attracted the lion's share of attention, with retrospective respect given previous ones by Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles.
 
Virtually nobody has talked about Alexander Pope’s, published in five volumes in 1725 and 1726 (with the help of two collaborators), though it was celebrated as a literary masterpiece, and an improvement on prior translations) in its time. With the poet’s characteristic rhyming couplets, the cliché is that it’s far more Pope than Homer.
 
Though Lattimore’s translation is supposed to be extremely faithful to the original Greek, with its hexameter meter and repeated use of epithets, I found the passage from Pope of one of the most famous episodes from the book (and one of the most memorable scenes from the Nolan film) powerful—perhaps because the couplets exert tremendous compact force. 

It’s difficult to top, for instance, these lines about the sorceress Circe: “Instant her circling wand the goddess waves,/To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives.”
 
Pope’s Homer translations were not covered in the English Restoration literature class I took in college, nor in the university’s Literary Humanities curriculum. But based on the passage above, at least, they can still be read with great pleasure.
 
(The image accompanying this post shows Samantha Morton as Circe in Christopher Nolan’s film.)

Quote of the Day (Jimmy Breslin, on the Original Mets as Lovable Losers)

“You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a t-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American columnist and novelist Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017), Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets' First Year (1963)

In the late 1970s, when Jimmy Breslin accepted an award from my college newspaper, he described the astounding experience of covering the 1962 New York Mets, or, as he called them, “the worst baseball team in the history of the universe.”

As the above paragraph indicates, that version of the Amazin’s acquired a certain cachet as classic underdogs. Nothing could help them, as they staggered to a 40-120 record, 10^th and last in the National League, and so far from first place (60½ games!!!!) that they could have used a telescope to find it.

As this year’s major league baseball trade deadline approaches, the 2026 squad doesn’t remotely approach it in ineptitude, but it doesn’t come near it in lovability, either. 

As I type this, their record stands at 44-62, placing them last in the National League East, 18½ games behind their divisional rivals, the Atlanta Braves. With hyperexpensive (signed to a 15-year, $765 million) right fielder Juan Soto going on the injured list for a second time this season, the squad is extremely unlikely to make a late-season run for anything except the exit ramp.

Owner Steve Cohen must be gnashing his teeth over his dismal return on investment. Their sorry mid-season mark comes for a franchise that, at $367.9 million, ranks second only to the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers as having the highest payroll in major league baseball, even surpassing that of their hated crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees.

The 1992 Mets season was so disappointing (a $45 million payroll combined with a 72-90 record) that few people could argue with the title that sportswriters Bob Klapisch and John Harper came up with the following year for their account: The Worst Team Money Could Buy. One hates to think of the title for any prospective postmortem of this year.

Photo of the Day: Fireworks Display, PNC Park, Pittsburgh PA

I took the image accompanying this post a little over two weeks ago, while visiting a close relative in Pittsburgh. Several times before, I had been impressed by the exterior of the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, PNC Park.

With its setting along the Allegheny River, statues paying tribute to several Hall of Famers with the club, and easy access to multiple points in the Smoky City, the ballpark, which opened in spring 2001, struck me as a picturesque throwback to old-time baseball venues, much like Baltimore’s Camden Yards.

Yet I had yet to see a game there, until a few days after the Fourth of July, when the Pirates were to square off against the Milwaukee Brewers, ahead of them by a dozen games in the National League Central Division. 

It promised to be a pivotal series, with any hope for the home team making the playoffs, even as a wild-card contender, starting here. To underscore the dramatics involved, there would even be a fireworks display at the ballpark.

So much for the best-laid plans of mice and men.

By mid-afternoon, the Pittsburgh area was drenched in a thunderstorm that didn’t dissipate until  6:30. Fans still poured into the stands, optimistic that at the end of the hour-long rain delay would  eventually lead to the cry, “Play ball!”

That hope lasted until the announcer’s voice came on the loudspeaker: “The good news is that the planned fireworks display will take place in 10 minutes….”

The fans who had patiently sat through the rain delay already sensed what the rest of the announcement would be—“But tonight’s game will be rescheduled”—and promptly began booing. They had waited long enough, and could see on the weather apps on their cell phones that it was unlikely more rain would follow. They were not happy.

That game was to be my first attending a Pirates game. Now, with me heading out of town the next morning, it would have to wait a while longer—perhaps next season.

Well, sometimes in life you have to endure disappointments—like rainouts—and sometimes there are compensations—like the gorgeous multi-color display seen here on a warm summer night over one of America’s great rivers.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Dr. Michael Chan, on Moses, Truth, and National Memory)

“The future of a people depends on the truthfulness of their memory. A forgetful nation is a fragile nation. Moses urged the people to remember the good, the bad and the ugly. Moses said that remembrance precedes promise. We have our own Jordan to cross. We need to reconnect with all our history to see how we got here. There is so much to celebrate, to repair and to be done.” —Dr. Michael Chan, executive director for faith and learning at Concordia College, in an address at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, July 12, 2026, quoted by Mary Lee Talbot, “Quality of Our Future Dependson the Quality of Our Memory, Says Michael Chan,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 13, 2026

Theater Review: ‘Mean Girls’ (The Musical), From the Pittsburgh CLO

It’s hard to believe that the film comedy Mean Girls is two decades old now. Somehow, it had escaped my attention that screenwriter Tina Fey had also written the “book” for a musical adaptation that premiered on Broadway in 2018.

Maybe because it came out in January 2024, when audience attention traditionally turns to Oscar hopefuls, but not many people paid much mind when the musical itself became a big-screen vehicle. It did decent but not great business. 

Critics noted sourly that Fey’s original tart observations were now more likely to become lost in the musical collaborators’ heavy-handed moralizing about wicked high-school cliques.

I wasn’t really prepared, then, when earlier this month, I saw the high-energy production mounted by the Pittsburgh CLO as part of its summer season. (The other Broadway imports were Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and Snuffs.)

It’s not necessarily remarkable that, Mean Girls, like the other two shows, was put together in only about a week. But it is astounding that a production with roughly 20 speaking parts and vigorous choreography was produced with none of the seams showing. So much credit goes to director Mara Newbery Greer.

The main character, Cady (adeptly played by Abigail Isom), is a home-schooled transfer from Kenya, but nothing she has seen in Africa with her parents prepares her for the jungle that is American high-school life. (One of the show’s tongue-in-cheek props is a lion’s head, a stand-in for the school’s athletic nickname.)

A fish out of water, Cady is initially courted by a pair of school misfits, Damian (Jack Haroutunian) and Janis (Lyda Jade Harlan), but at their urging begins spying on a clique of popular girls, the Plastics—until she becomes every bit as bad as this trio of “shiny, fake, and hard” teen tormenters.

As Regina, the “Apex Predator” of the Plastics, Landry Champlin was a formidable presence, lording it over her hangers-on and seething with resentment—at the parent who desperately styles herself a “cool mom,” at a boyfriend whose affection she squandered, and at the clique kingdom from which she finds herself exiled through an embarrassing incident aired on social media. She turned her big solo, “World Burn,” into a sizzling revenge tale.

Sydni Moon endowed Regina acolyte Gretchen with an aching desire to belong and matter in her number, “What’s Wrong With Me?” Rounding out the original Plastics trio, Kaley Bender took Karen from mere shallowness to an avatar of the Blonde Bimbo.

Harlan and Haroutunian may have played characters who didn’t fit into the school’s fabric, but this show certainly provided the actors with multiple opportunities to shine, with the show’s intro number, “Mean,” and Janis’ defiant assertion of self-respect, “I’d Rather Be Me”—and Haroutunian, under the guidance of choreographer Dana Solimando, displaying quite a talent for tap.

The show I attended featured a post-show “talk-back” with cast members and other creative talent. One highlight was cast member Jennifer Lybarger, who, though she took on three adult adult roles in the show—Mrs. George, Mrs. Herron, and Ms. Norbury—could have been forgiven for identifying the most with the last of these figures, the teacher who serves in effect as Ms. Fey’s mouthpiece.

Ms. Lybarger, it turns out, spent the last several years directing at the Pittsburgh CLO Academy—and was justifiably proud that five of her former students found spots on this expertly executed production.

Quote of the Day (Elliot Ackerman, on ‘The Stories We Tell About War’)

“The stories we tell about war are really important to the decisions we make around war.”—American Marine veteran-turned-novelist Elliot Ackerman, quoted by Emily Bobrow, “Weekend Confidential: Elliot Ackerman,’” The Wall Street Journal, May 20-21, 2021

What stories did Donald Trump hear about war that led him to commit American forces to Iran? What made him think the outcome would be better than the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that he criticized in his Presidential campaigns?

The image accompanying this post, of Elliot Ackerman at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken on Oct. 18, 2015, by Larry D. Moore.

Photo of the Day: Two Kinds of Toxic Environment

I took the image accompanying this post a week ago while I was still on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution, a lovely enclosed upstate New York community with numerous Victorian cottages that have helped make this picturesque place a National Historic Landmark.

As much as its cultural and intellectual atmosphere, habitual visitors glory in its physical environment. For the 30-odd years that I have come up here, I have made it a point, as long as the rain is holding off, to take daily brisk walks by Chautauqua Lake.

Until the last three days of this vacation, that is.

In the background, a particle-laden, milky uniformity had replaced sunlight streaks of the morning horizon. Never mind a wide view of what lay upon the waters: as you can observe in this image, nothing could be seen beyond the boats lined up at the marina.

Probably at no time, I suspect, since the height of COVID-19 up here, masks were being distributed and gratefully worn by many visitors on the grounds.

The first day of the wildfire, the designation was “Dangerous for Certain Groups”; the following day, the label became simply “Dangerous”: and by the third, the bad air quality had turned sufficiently dreadful to earn the term “Hazardous.”

This photo renders in literal terms a toxic physical environment. But it symbolizes what has increasingly become a toxic diplomatic one, as well.

At this moment, Donald Trump has chosen to do what he does best: make a bad situation worse. He’s taking literally the satirical South Park song “Blame Canada,” but without an iota of logic. Our nation up north is responsible for not maintaining its forests properly, he claims.

That’s pretty rich, coming from a President who has already laid off thousands of U.S. Forest Service workers and whose 2027 budget includes cuts of more than 70% to the agency. But his rationale would be hideous in any case because he refuses to accept the reality of human-caused climate change.

Super-hot temperatures in the areas around the wildfires, together with dry vegetation, resulted in “functioned like a chimney, a super long chimney shooting smoke into the upper atmosphere and then the jet stream” and then found its way to the US, according to Ava Berger’s NPR report last week.

This is a situation that calls for international cooperation to address causes, not finger-pointing—unless you’re Trump. Then he tells citizens of a country that he has not-so-jokingly called to be annexed into the U.S. that he’s going to levy “a big tariff” on their nation for the wildfires crossing the border.

Trump has turned the Ugly American stereotype of the Vietnam War era into an actuality. His default reflex—to blow smoke every time he finds himself in a difficult situation—has become literal this time, and it’s losing the U.S. a neighbor and friend it could always count on.

The smoky air has cleared from beautiful Chautauqua Lake, as well as other areas affected in the northern part of the U.S. last week. But before the end of this second Trump term, you can count on it coming back, perhaps at more hazardous levels.

And Americans had better accept that it’s going to take longer before the effects of Trump’s careless, toxic rhetoric dissipate.

From now on, traditional allies like Canada are entitled to wonder what got into Americans that they put in the White House a charlatan like Trump twice—and whether the Republican Party he has remolded in his image will nominate as his successor someone equally wedded to his agenda of environmental callousness and diplomatic exploitation.