Gypsy Scholar
Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Gypsy Scholar Receives Visit from Intrepid Tripper
Caught in a moment of intrepid sitting, the tripper (Vitasta Raina) ponders her next move, while I (Gypsy Scholar, aka Horace Jeffery Hodges) am grateful for the brief respite.
For more on our writings, see Carter Kaplan's publications blog, specifically, the blog entry International Authors in Seoul.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Time just gets away from us (True Grit)
Ever read those "Today in History" columns that purport to tell us what happened TODAY in HISTORY? They don't.
Ah, the aimlessness of youth . . .
Sportswriter Jim Bulley informs us: "Hwang Hee-chan goes 22 games without a goal!" Bulley then helpfully adds: "The Bull" has lost his bite, but can he get it back again?"
One might well also wonder if "The Bull" has polished off any china closets lately . . .
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Sunday, October 02, 2022
A Wail of a Tale had to be Told
My blog got spammed, and the price for getting it despammed was the loss of several blog entries. Sorry about that.
Horace Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Saturday, September 24, 2022
Incensed Deity
Brother James would say that, but he never had to pay the price demanded by incensed deity.
Horace Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Friday, September 23, 2022
It's the thought that counts
An anti-hunger scam stole 240 million dollars from the US government "by billing the government for meals they did not serve to children who did not exist." (David A. Fahrenthold, "Dozens are charged in theft of hunger aid," The New York Times, September 22, 2022)
Sunday, August 21, 2022
No One Feels Death
I wrote this religious poem about a month ago.
No One Feels Death
No one feels death, but Jesus,
who reckons my every stroke,
the forty minus one
of which the rabbis spoke.
No one seeks death, but Jesus,
who counters every blow
and bears our every sorrow
because he loves us so.
But how in the Hell do we know? (This query is not part of the poem.)
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Fame is Dangerous
Father: It's dangerous to be famous.
Son: Why?
Father: Famous people die more frequently.
Son: What!
Father: It's true! Every day, I read the papers, and the people who've died are almost always famous.
Tuesday, August 09, 2022
My True Ancestry
My True Ancestry sent me an email with emphasis upon the following: "Upload Your Raw DNA Data."
I hadn't been planning on uploading any DNA data at all, but I'll make a note that it should be uncooked if I ever do decide to use their services.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Such Subtle Sapience!
I read an interesting statistic in the "Korea Herald" for Monday June 27th (2022):
"Majority of Americans hold Trump culpable for 1/6 riot."
I wonder who is held responsible for the other 5/6.
Saturday, June 18, 2022
It knocked some sense into this hee-yar boy's haid!
About a week ago, I fell out of bed. I don't know I did it, but the feat must have been a magnificent acrobatic one, for I met the floor in a full frontal position -- as though I'd been dropped from heaven face-first into the arms a lovely lass, except that I'd hit the floor instead. My wife jumped out of bed in alarm. I groaned, "That really hurt." I had a bump on my head and something like a scratch on the bump and stuff that felt like blood on the scratch, and something like a crust forming on the blood. Kind of like that old song that starts out with a hole in the bottom of the sea. From there, it's to infinity, and beyond!
And oddly enough, for about week from that accident, my Parkinson's symptoms were gone!
I called it "my little miracle."
But it went away.
"Thanks a lot, God. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Indian-giver be the name of the Lord."
Tuesday, June 07, 2022
Riddle
What do you call the actions of the male offspring of a forest, given that the offspring have betrayed the forest through those actions?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Friday, June 03, 2022
Taking Responsability
In his new book on teaching, Kevin Kim draws attention to me and my influence, and he thanks me for my insights into homeschooling. In private, he says that my ideas can be found scattered throughout the book.
In other words, if the book fails, well, it was mostly Jeff's stupid stuff anyway.
Friday, May 27, 2022
A Klein word on Christianity
The writer Ezra Klein offers an essay on Christianity in the NYT International on April 3rd, 2022:
"Christianity . . . is a religion that insists on the dignity of all people and centers the poor and the marginalized. . . . What I, as an outsider to Christianity, have always found most beautiful about it is how strange it is. Here is a worldview built on a foundation of universal sin and insufficiency, an equality that bleeds out of the recognition that we are all broken, rather than that we must all be great. I've always envied the practice of confession, not least for its recognition that there will always be more to confess and so there must always be more opportunities to be forgiven."
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Carter Kaplan wants you:
to do what Mack Hassler and Cara Gilgenbach did: Emanations for Special Collections.
Monday, May 16, 2022
The Subtle Line Between Merely Bad and Absolutely Terrible
"I think, therefore I am," quod he to me.
Wednesday, May 04, 2022
Fictionalism
Scott Herschovitz wrote in a recent NYT issue (May 3, 2022) of an interesting question posed by his four-year-old son: "Is God real?"
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Wittgenstein: Silence and Confession
The NYT International Edition recently (April 13, 2022) ran a somewhat garbled piece (cf. paragraph eight) on Ludwig Wittgenstein, who experienced his writing as a burden, and "sexuality as a burden, too, writing "frankly (and frequently) about his masturbation (or lack thereof), an activity he associated with not getting enough exercise. Sometimes commentary on work and sex would run together: "--Will I find the redemptive thought? Will it come to me??!!--Yesterday & today I masturbated."
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Divide and Put Difference (Revision):
Leviticus 10:10. And that ye may put difference (וּֽלֲהַבְדִּיל) (בְדִּיל)
Note the context given in Genesis 1:1-3, namely, that God's initial act was to create the heavens and the earth. The earth at this point was formless and empty, a very odd statement, hard to grasp. Also, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
heavens/earth
I'm making a scholarly inference here that these two opposing pairs reveal the correct way for arranging creation.
Wednesday, April 06, 2022
Loss of Emails Late March, Early April, 2022
If you have been expecting a reply to an email that you recently sent to me, your email may have gone missing in a virus-induced loss of emails, and if you think that this may have happened, then send your email again.
Sunday, April 03, 2022
Forehead to Keyboard
I nodded off while trying to type something:
D3qw Th
What in the world was I thinking?
Thursday, March 31, 2022
When we were young . . .
Who said this?
Old age is when we find out what happened to us when we were young.
Thursday, March 03, 2022
Divide and Put Difference
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Oceankind CEO Raises Alarm, But Why Not Louder?
Kim Yong-kyu warns of the danger posed by the massive trash-disposal problem created by the extra medical litter polluting Korea's beaches as a consequence of the ongoing pandemic.
Although Kim doesn't emphasize this point, I note that this pandemic is not just littering Korea's beaches, it's changing the behavioral habits of aquatic creatures.
In a recent Korea Herald interview (February 23), Kim mentions: "I once saw a fish that got stuck in a single-use plastic glove while scuba diving."
This is actually rather alarming and deserves more attention, for if the sea's pollution problem is so dire (e.g., limited vision, limited oxygen) that fish themselves need to use scuba gear when swimming, then we are far gone indeed.
Monday, February 14, 2022
Romantic Meal
On this Valentine's Day, February 14, 2022, I surprised my wife with toast-hearts in bed. I had attempted to cut some toast-bread into hearts, then toast the hearts till they were crisp and fresh. The heart shapes, however, were not consistently in the shape of hearts. Perhaps they could be considered misshapen hearts, hearts battered about by the slings of outrageous fortune. Be that as it may, my wife scarcely recognized the heart shapes and didn't cotton on to why she was receiving them till I reminded her of the meaning behind today's most secular of Christian holidays. She then laughed, broke off a large chamber of one of the hearts, and she did eat . . .
Friday, January 21, 2022
Derrida: Leviticus 10:10
Poking around in leftover thoughts scavaged on by the vultures of my intellect, I came upon this doctoral thesis by Adrian Platts:
Jacques Derrida, the Sacred Other and Seventh-day Adventism: Stumbling on the Creative Play of Différance in Genesis.
What Derrida means when he uses the word "sacred" is not immediately evident nor is it necessarily consistent. The French - sacré - clearly sharing a common root with the English, provides no obvious additional insight. In a biblical context, one stumbles on the word "holy" - the Hebrew root being transliterated qdsh. Whether in the verbal form (qadash) or as a noun (qodesh), the idea of holiness or the sacred is denoted - including the idea of being separated or set apart. Hence, the sacred stands in direct contrast to that which is "common or profane" as in Leviticus 10:10: "You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean" (NIV). Here "qodesh occurs as the antithesis of hol ('profane,' 'common')." (p. 36, ft. 144) (Platts adds another antithesis: blessing, curse. p. 36)
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Make a distinction . . .
Derrida speaks of difference, of distinction between this and that, and somewhere that the sacred and the profane are distinguished as of between clean and unclean, which reminds us of the original act of separation between light and darkness, but why meaningless separations such as those demanded in Leviticus?
Or has Derrida said nothing of the sort?
Wittgenstein said that in the presence of that before which we cannot speak, we usst remmust werg emsinrem . . .
Sunday, January 09, 2022
A wordy world? A worldly word?
Language GamesI. Pour Derrida:This word is strictly aboutwhatever this word keeps out.II. Für Wittgenstein:This world is solely withinwhatever this world keeps in.
Friday, January 07, 2022
Is this Game Serious?
Language GamesI. Pour Derrida:This word is strictly aboutwhatever the word it leaves out.II. Für Wittgenstein:This world is solely withinwhatever the world it leaves in.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
Worldly Word
Hermeneutics of SuspicionI. Pour Derrida:This poem is strictly aboutwhatever in word it leaves out . . .II. Für Wittgenstein:The world is solely aboutwhatever in case it leaves out . . .