I’ll admit some of them run over a thousand pages. Some are translated from Sumerian on clay tablets. Some are from Spanish, Greek, French, olde English, and quirky as the day is long. Poetry, prose, drama, spoken, written, sung, they have messages for us for how we live our daily lives. I’m reporting to you live from Washington, D.C., fresh from thinking about my students at the Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, and through their eyes, the meaning of classics lights our world, and heals the heart, and gives us hope. Is that all, Dr. B? No, it is not. Through the eyes of our next leaders of society, classic texts are good nutrition, vegan, organic, and gluten free. Thank you joining in!

And our celebration of the news from Congress this week: the funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts have been restored for 2018—it’s your engagement as lovers of radio cultural arts and all things poetry and lively culture, with over 187,000 emails to Congress—so that’s a thumbs up for classical education, and the takeaway is, it matters that we care!

Okay, here are our show’s top ten takeaways this week:

1. YES, YOU ARE INDIGNANT AND HAVE RAGE
2. PEACE IS POSSIBLE
3. WE ARE ALL LOST IN THE WOODS
4. WE ARE ON OUR PATHS ONCE WE KNOW WE ARE LOST
5. THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ITHACA
6. ITHACA, SWEET ITHACA: YOU CAN GET THERE BUT YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT
7. GRAB YOUR SHIELD AND LANCE BECAUSE THERE’S WORK TO BE DONE
8. IT MIGHT BE FOOLISH, IT MIGHT BLIND YOU, IT MIGHT KILL YOU, BUT THAT IS WHAT HEROIC WORK IS
9. THE EPIC POET IS YOUR RX AND SOS AND 911 AND MAGIC MIRROR
10. YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT YOUR NOSE, AND THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS

© Barbara Mossberg 2017

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