Against the erasure.
As foreseen in blog postings when the winter was trying to land its last blows, the struggle has certainly shifted to the geist, and the social forms, ennervated with the warmth of the season. The Jewish Passover was a springtime holiday -- perhaps those conversations with Peter and others on the long road to Jerusalem had something to do with the weather.
Interesting to read the context of early Hegelianism in America -- in its undiluted form, a creature of the west, associated with the German emigrants (and American civil war heroes), and their associated sodalities and restaurants. Amusing anecdotes about Alcott and Emerson coming for a visit and being put outside their texts by the finely honed minds of the laborers.
The past, as Dewey said, is to be found in the present. Acting nobly, and with self-possession, and studying philosophies and personalities closely, will likely cause people to call you old-fashioned. But whatever that word might mean to them, they are characterizing something in and of the present.
Ascension. Solemn observation of the departure of God. It's just us now, men of Galilee. But that which we are, we are.
As my mind keeps drifting back to southern Europe, I have to check myself from pining for the fleshpots (or, to be specific, pans filled with vegetables, pasta, and cheese and a bit of panem et vino on the side). The point of being there was the discovery and the work, and I subordinated the creature comforts to those things, rather ruthlessly on occasion, so I can take my own testimony from then as a sort of justification as to my motives. The understanding, and the work. These are the things that I am attempting to preserve against the adversity. And, over the years, I have come to strongly suspect that this adversity is directed precisely against those with the capacity to understand, and work, and discover.
That said, some work of noble note may yet be done.
Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta!