Ellicott City - Corodado, CA

September 27, 2025 Peace and Good, I was quite busy these past couple of weeks with spiritual direction appointments. I had missed a week of them when I had covid, and I am going to be away for three weeks giving a parish mission and a workshop at our novitiate in this time. I flew out to San Diego last Friday, and this week (Monday thru Thursday) I have been presenting classes on the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation. I had classes in the morning and evening (same topic). This coming week I will be giving classes on the Gospel of Matthew which we will be using this coming liturgical year. Then I will fly up to San Luis Obispo to give a week workshop to the novices on the Gospels and the Psalms. I have been reading quite a bit on archeology this week because I am about to start a new series of articles on that topic for the Messenger of St. Anthony, the magazine for which I write from Padua, Italy (in English). There are also a couple of other writing projects that I must address as soon as I find time for them. The weather here is wonderful - in the 70's each day with a low humidity. I have been at this parish anumber of times, and I have always found it to be welcoming. I have finished some reading and listening: Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd Peter Ackroyd is a great historian and author concerning things British. I have read a few of his works dealing with the Tudor period. This study of the life and works of Shakespeare is a masterpiece. We do not have as much information about Shakespeare’s life as one would expect, but Ackroyd is able to piece together the scanty documentary information and tie it to events in Shakespeare’s life and the political and economic scene of England in his day. Hadrian’s Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy Goldsworthy is a great historian of ancient times. This book deals with the purpose, construction and history of the wall ordered by the Emperor Hadrian in northern England. He presents it as a means of regulating commerce but also of slowing down raiders from the north until adequate forces could be gathered to fight them. He also presents a study of garrison life in the army camps along the course of the wall. Saint Paul by Michael Grant Michael Grant is a good, popular historian of ancient times. He has specialized on Roman times in the past. This book presents the biography (as much as it is possible) and the writings of St. Paul. Much of the material is very good, but I have to admit that at times the author had the strangest theories that I have ever heard concerning Paul and his teachings and his relationship with the early Christian community. I would not recommend this book. Understanding the New Testament by David Brakke This is a Great Courses presentation of the New Testament in 24 episodes. The professor is good and balanced. There were times when I did not agree with his positions, but they were always points that were and are quite debatable. He gives a good overview of the history and content of the books (and letters) that make up our present New Testament. The Hebrew Bible by Lawrence Schiffman This is a Modern Scholars course on the Hebrew Bible. The presenter goes into the history of its production, its agreement or not with archeological evidence, the content of the books and their relationship to other books, and the use of the Hebrew Bible by associated groups (e.g. Qumran, Christians, etc.). Buried by Jeffery Deaver This is a short novel of a newspaper reporter who is getting ready to retire because of the tendency of the on-line versions of news to play to the market instead of reporting the news. He challenges this tendency by investigating a series of attacks in which the victims are buried underground while the aggressor leaves clues concerning their whereabouts. This story turns out to be a much larger conspiracy than the reporter or anyone first expected. Give me a Fast Ship by Tim McGrath This is the story of the beginning of the Continental navy during the Revolutionary War. It had two aspects, the official vessels and those which had been chartered as privateers (government sanctioned pirates). The book deals with many of the interesting characters who served as captains during the fight and how their personalities and egos clashed. For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose This is a book that describes the efforts of an English botanist, Robert Fortune, to bring tea plants and seeds to India to grow there so that the British Empire might be able to stop depending on tea from China (whose purchase was creating a foreign exchange disaster). It was, of course, illegal to export the plants and expertise from China, but by this time the Chinese Empire was so decrepit that it was unable to stop Fortunes efforts. Crashes and Crises: Lessons from a history of Financial Disasters by Connel Fullenkamp This Great Courses presentation deals with the great market crashes in US history and also with episodes of lack of due diligence that brought on disaster and others of actual fraud. The presentation can become a bit technical when it describes various instruments of investment. Measuring America by Andra Linklater Years ago I read a book about Mason and Dixon who established the line that would become the division between the north and the south. This book is different in that it concentrates on the tools that surveyors used and their importance to the settling of the west (the west in those days, we would consider it the western part of the eastern states). It gets into quite a bit of technical detail that I did not all that interesting. The establishment of units of measure (length, dry weights and wet weights) was a bit more interesting. Russian Urban Legends by Chronicle Press This is a strange mix of stories that come from Russia (and the Soviet Union). Chronicle Press is a source that I found on Kindle that offered free books at their issue date. While I would not say that this book was great, it was interesting. Czar Nicholas II and the End of the Romanov Dynasty by Charles River Editors This is only a short account of the last czar and his family and the revolutionary forces that brought an end to their dynasty. Nicholas is presented as a well-meaning but weak character who was much more interested in preserving the prerogatives of his reign than in helping his nation. Have a good week. Shalom fr. Jude