The Court of Final Appeal

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”

Why Return to the Greek Myths

This project begins from a simple premise: human nature has not changed. The technologies surrounding us have transformed almost beyond recognition, but the underlying motives that drive human action remain stubbornly familiar. Ambition, envy, loyalty, desire, the longing for recognition, the dread of mortality: these appear in every age, already fully visible in the earliestContinue reading “Why Return to the Greek Myths”

The Golden Fleece

I am not certain if I read too broadly or not concisely enough. In thinking about the Argonauts, I recall the Golden Fleece, a ram’s skin of radiant gold, and immediately think of the golden calf that Moses cast down, and then to scapegoats, Jesus as the lamb. The narratives form a skein that demandsContinue reading “The Golden Fleece”