Robin Bates

“Is this a dagger I see before me?” - same

A comic have a kid trick or treating dressed up as a book. Caption, I'm that book you've been meaning to read

👻📚

For Halloween, check out the poems by Emily Dickinson. She’s even scarier than Poe betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/for-hallowee...

Musk is Saruman to Trump’s Sauron betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trump-musk-s...

ICE’s boondoggles—an inept and badly trained force—suggest that Shakespeare’s Falstaff must be in charge of recruitment betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/ice-agents-a...

The East Wing demolition got me thinking of literary collapses: House of Usher, the Buendia house in 100 Years of Solitude, and the whole kingdom in MacDonald’s Princess and Curdie. Similar symbolism at work as the White House destruction. Others? betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/imploding-ed...

I’d say the great comic novel about WWII is Catch 22. But yes, Waugh is up there

Théoden-Aragorn is a great reference betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/oct-18-arise...

Shelley’s “Mask of Anarchy” essentially calls for No Kings rallies to counter Trumpian anarchy. The poem inspired Gandhi and King and can now inspire us betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/trumps-anarc...

"that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival..." - Tolkien, Two Towers

At least your dad is on your wavelength

Vitally important

In other words, the king of kings was all about no kings

Wait til you get to Father Zosima's 50-page sermon. Which for me was one of the high points so I wanted it to keep going on and on. Brothers K is by far my favorite novel of all time

He probably read Julius Caesar in high school junior year

200 No Kings marchers showed up in ruby red Winchester TN. Victoria Broderick, running again the execrable "abortions for my wife and my mistress but not for thee" Scott Desjarlais, gave a feisty talk. Wonderful spirit

The thugs they send around to collect ask really difficult questions

Which, after all, is what they want

Don't underestimate Episcopalians. When they get off the fence, you know things have gotten serious

Who knew that Browning's dramatic monologue "Andrea del Sarto captures both the Trump family and the current turmoil betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/a-browning-p...

I don’t think a long book is even primarily about plot, or character, or any of the patterned information on its pages. A long book is practicing over time a way of being in the world. Reading even a very good summary is not the same as giving over some portion of your own life to that practice.

If we see Miller as a Wormtongue pouring poison into a demented ruler's ear, we can also think of America as Théoden rising from his torpor and calling upon his troops to assemble--say, this coming Saturday for the No King's Day marches betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/oct-18-arise...

The subtext becomes text

You're teaching all these works in your Time Travel course?

Wonderful quote! So true

"It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions."

—The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Ooh, an Orwell allusion!

"Let us, however, never forget that this country belongs to us even more than to those who lynch, disenfranchise, and segregate."

W.E.B. DuBois.

The Babe Ruth of calling her shot on coming back from the dead