Steve Blanco

How likely is it, asked a well-known commentator on this site, that a 16th century Englishman could be the greatest writer ever? There weren't nearly as many people alive then as there are now, he said. His analysis was entirely probabilistic, showing no awareness of the cultural foundations of great art. Instead we should notice that in fact the greatest writer of all time WAS Shakespeare. As Eliot said, "Shakespeare and Dante divide the world between them; there is no third." We may take issue with the particulars of what Eliot said, and insist that Homer is the third, not covered by the span of what Shakespeare and Dante surveyed and rendered into immortal poetry, but the point is well taken. Our question then should be, given that we have NOT produced a Shakespeare or a Dante in our time, why have we not? Nor is this failure peculiar to drama and poetry. We do not produce a Bach or a Handel. We do not produce a Michelangelo or a Caravaggio. To set our sights a little lower and closer to home, we do not produce even the composers of art songs or folk songs, such as Stephen Foster. Similarly, it isn't just that we don't build Salisbury Cathedral. The skills in stone, plaster, wood, ceramics, and glass that are evident in a town hall or courthouse or convent or schoolhouse built 150 years ago are mostly gone. So why don't we have a Shakespeare? I can think of many reasons, but I'll mention just one here. For whom would such a person write? Certainly not for that well-known scoffer, who is too proud and too impatient or too narrow in the soul to grasp how great Shakespeare was. He himself, then, is one of the reasons. Great art is for, and springs from, people who have a love for it, who are patient and humble enough to wait upon it, to submit to it, to learn from it. Even to do the plaster-work you will see in old rectories or churches or rich men's homes, you require both the skill in the workman's hands and the love of beauty that animates both him and the people he imagines will look upon his work. Artist and audience, craftsman and the common man, must somehow be at one. And this is what we lack. The ugly violence that such sites as Spark Notes do to Shakespeare is evidence of the divide. We do not have great art, because we no longer have the souls for it. And that is why a school like Thales College, where I'm going to be, is so desperately needed now.

So there's a great Thai restaurant in my neighborhood called Kiin. Yesterday, I searched for their website to order some takeout. Here's the Google result.

Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. Then in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d rescued, now adults. I like to remember this every Jan 27th.