Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
Red sky at morning,
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 7:17 AM
4 comments
I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."
4 Comments:
I've heard the proverb before, but with the "delight" part coming first. That makes more rhetorical sense to me: the second half of any utterance tends to be the more impactful, significant part, so putting the warning at the end strikes me as sensible if your purpose is a cautionary one.
Red sky at night: sailors' delight.
Red sky in morning: sailors take warning.
A quick Google search reveals the different ways in which the second part is worded: "red sky at morning," "red sky in morning," "red sky in the morning," etc. Also: Scientific American weighs in on the validity of the proverb.
And as you know, the word shepherd often stands in for sailor.
I don't think I've heard the shepherd version, and how odd that I know only the sequence "warning," then "delight." Or maybe I've just forgotten these things.
Jeffery Hodges
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Hesiod's version (sort of):
And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
and plunge into the misty deep
and all the gusty winds are raging,
then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea
but, as I bid you, remember to work the land.
When it's hard to plow the seas . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
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