Happy New Year to everyone.
My New Year's Eve was pleasantly quiet. I returned to NuL, listened to Vaughn Williams and Delius with a glass or two and dozed my way to midnight, when I let off a couple of celebratory fireworks.
Now the business of emptying the house to get it ready for letting before I leave for Sulawesi. It is always surprising to find you have so much stuff. Actually a large part of my stuff is books. Though there is so much available online there is still plenty of information that is still only found in books and I am reluctant to throw them away. At least books pack away easily, furniture is a different problem. I do not have a lot of furniture and some of it can be ditched but what can I do with the pieces I want to keep?
As I write I am listening to the Today Programme guest edited by P J Harvey.
A mixture of poetry, music, news and radical opinion it is a refreshing start to the year. I like these guest editors who often give a new slant or emphasis to the morning news.
Now I am going to pause to listen to Melvyn on The Symposium.
Much it I already knew and there was no time to discuss the characters or philosphy in depth. It has made me want to revisit thelectures I have on Plato by Elizabeth Vandiver.On the subject of philosophy, over the holidays, though most days were extremely lazy, I read and listened to a couple of things by Pat Churchland.
For some reason I had always thought she was British so it was something of a surprise to hear her American accent. I was struck by the huge gap between much contemporary American and Continental Philosophy, it seems as wide as that between the classical and Enlightenment philosophers. It will be interesting to see which side comes out on top and the effect that will have.