In 1862, at twenty-one, my great-great-grandfather John Hodges Wadhams left Goshen, Connecticut, to seek his fortune in the West. In 1992, almost exactly 130 years later, I began keeping seriously the journal of my own early adulthood. John was the son of an old Connecticut farming family. Church, town, party, father and Civil War suppliedContinue reading “The Court of Final Appeal”
Author Archives: protectivearts
The DiGiovanni Lineage
When my Uncle Tony first met Heidi, then my fiancée, he quipped with his particular brand of sardonic judgment, “She will improve the Barker gene pool.” Tony was a University of Chicago-trained lawyer, and brevity was part of the joke. There was no accompanying argument. None was necessary. He knew the Barkers. Viewed objectively, theContinue reading “The DiGiovanni Lineage”
The Odyssey
Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον… “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns…” (Odyssey 1.1) In the hall of Alcinous, a blind man takes up the lyre. Demodocus sings of Troy: first the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus, then the wooden horse, the city opened from within, the night filled with bronze and fire.Continue reading “The Odyssey”
Protective Arts 