B List: Interlude
C List: Plutarch--The Age of Alexander...……………………….204/443
Nothing disruptive in this group, though in these uncer--well, nothing much is likely to disrupt my approach at this point in time, anyway. I am taking my time getting through the White. Hopefully this will be his last appearance in the monthly reckoning. It improved a little in the middle when the romances were at full throttle, but for the most part I just can't get into it. Honestly, I have never cared much for books about the Arthurian legends. The subject is not alive for me. For me Shakespeare has always filled that role of creating the mythical ur-England with its flowers and castles and troubadours and rivers and the Arthur stories do not add anything to that for me.
The Penguin Classics division broke up its publication of Plutarch's Lives into I believe 5 volumes, grouping the subjects by the historic periods they are primarily associated with (The Rise and Fall of Athens, The Makers of Rome, etc). This one contains 9 biographies spanning the period in Greek history from the end of the Peloponnesian War until the Pyrrhic war, approximately 405-270 B.C. I did read the whole book twenty or twenty-five years ago, and it was very great, though I am a bit dismayed at how many of the subjects I had forgotten, especially among those figures who have not been prominently characterized in poems and other classic literature. Of the nine lives in this book, I could only really remember who exactly Demosthenes, Alexander of course, and Pyrrhus were in any great detail. Epaminondas (whose own Life has been lost) and Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse appear so much throughout this book that I have always remembered them as well. But Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Dion, Timoleon, Phocion, and Demetrius--I drew a complete blank on them. Hopefully after this I can retain some idea of who they are. Agesilaus was a longtime king of Sparta after the Peloponnesion War. Its power and fabled military culture were in decline by the end of his reign. Pelopidas was a Theban and associate of Epaminondas in the period of that city's brief ascension in the 370s and 60s B.C. Dion led the fight to liberate Syracuse from the tyranny of Dionysius II, but was murdered by other conspirators shortly after driving the tyrant from the city. Timoleon was a Corinthian who also became involved in the never ending turmoil in Sicily and eventually prevailed and established something of a democratic government in Syracuse, though this peace and prosperity only lasted about twenty years before the tyranny reasserted itself, though Timoleon had died by that time. I haven't gotten to Phocion and Demetrius yet.
I had to break quarantine a couple of weeks ago to go to Philadelphia, or at least the inner ring suburb of it from which my family hails, because my sister died. She did not have the virus, but suffered a stroke, which likely resulted from a number of long term health issues that she had and was never able to get control of. While it was a shock that she died suddenly and at this particular time, no one had really expected that she would live to an old age. Though she was my full sister, she was only six when I left home, and I never returned to live there again after that, so I did not really know her all that well. She had a troubled, even somewhat frightening life to a person like me who likes tranquility and avoiding the court system, etc, as much as possible. The family turmoil that I was more or less able to bail on as a teenager she had to grow up in, and she never was able to achieve any stability or regular mode of life as an adult. I do feel some guilt about not being able to have been more of a help to her in her life, though in my twenties I had plenty of my own issues, albeit milder ones than she had, to work through, and by the time she was in her twenties she was more or less incorrigible and could barely be kept in check by the power of the state itself, which was more than I, with a houseful of small children who was wondering what had become of my own life at the time, was able to take on in addition.
Anyway, on one of the days in Pennsylvania I took a walk around the old neighborhood and took some pictures. Note that the trees were already in flower, which they have still not quite managed to do here, though it is now May 10th.
These little brick box style apartments are found in quite a few places in the area where my family is from. I have been told that they were built quickly in the aftermath of World War II to house returning servicemen, especially those who were newly wed.
De rigueur coronavirus statement picture.
Since I was not in any terrific hurry to get back home after the small ceremony at the funeral home, I drove back to New Hampshire on U.S. route 202, which I picked up in Doylestown, about half an hour north of where I was staying, and which goes all the way to Main Street in Concord (actually it continues on I believe all the way to Bangor, Maine, which is probably about another 7-8 hours). It took me around 10 hours to get home. If it were not for my apprehensions about the virus I would have gotten a hotel room in Connecticut when it got dark and continued home the next day, because once the sun went down it was a dark and gloomy ride through Western New England, which is largely uninhabited, especially at night during a pandemic. This is a rather strange highway in that is a thousand miles long yet goes through very few towns of any size--Concord is one of the two or three biggest municipalities through which it passes--and is a two lane country highway for most of its length, and this despite passing through the periphery of the Philadelphia and New York metro areas. One highlight was going across the Hudson on the Bear Mountain Bridge near Peekskill, which is an old-fashioned bridge that even had an old-fashioned toll booth ($1.50) with an actual semi-old-fashioned youngish girl with a mask on sitting in it, the only living toll booth worker I saw on the entire trip. It has always been a wish of my to take some road trips on these older non-interstate highways, but I have to remind myself that the thrill only lasts for so many hours a day, and while the sun is up. For I was quite tired by the time I got to northern Connecticut and I still had several hours to go at that point.
I've written more about Plutarch and my ride home than I have about my sister, I know.
