In Brief: Veterans Day Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Frederick Ahl, professor at Cornell, spent 14 years creating a new English translation of Virgil's Aeneid. In dactylic hexameter. Within 5% of the syllable count of the original and preserving many of the Latin's sound effects. Must. Have. It. [The Cranky Professor]


• Wow, Bob Shingleton has something nice to say about the United States. The Kresge Foundation has given some big-time American dollars to the Aldeburgh Music Festival to build its new creative campus. That makes one proud to be an American. [On an Overgrown Path]
  
  UPDATE:
  Judging by the end of this post, Bob is apparently miffed at my joke about him having something nice to say about the United States. For the record, I was not saying that I do not agree with Bob's anti-American statements. Just noting that the Kresge donation is something to feel good about.


• Fun with headlines in the Washington Post. [Wonkette]


• The recommendations of Anne Sofie von Otter's CD of Terezín songs continue to come our way. Norman Lebrecht has written an incredible profile of von Otter and the story of her father's time as a diplomat in Nazi Germany. Looking forward to hearing that CD! [La Scena Musicale]


• Why do journalists rarely report on real research in the arts with significant findings? Why do they always over-report the crackpot bunk? In La Musica Celata, Giovanni Maria Pala claims that if you superimpose a five-line staff on the table of Leonardo's Last Supper, you get actual music: "It sounds like a requiem. It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus." It sounds like The Da Vinci Code. [Associated Press]


• Norman Mailer died yesterday. He was certainly an American literary giant, who created a memorable language in his varied body of work. Our own Todd Babcock reminded me yesterday of a favorite line in Mailer's screenplay Tough Guys Don't Dance ("I'm gonna go deep-six two heads"). However, Mailer is not an author who affected me all that much, so I will leave the tribute to someone else. [Soho the Dog]