SubscribeStar Saturday: Western Caribbean Cruise Review

18 July 202616 July 2026 The Portly Politico2 Comments

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Today Dr. Wife and I will be returning from a week-long Royal Caribbean cruise through the Western Caribbean. The cruise left from Tampa on Saturday, 11 July 2026 and returns this morning (Saturday, 18 July 2026). Along the way, we made stops in Costa Playa, Mexico; Roatán, Honduras; Belize City, Belize; and Cozumel, Mexico. It was a jam-packed itinerary with plenty of time for rest—and celebratory gluttony.

Before diving into the details, here were my favorite stops, from most favorite to least favorite:

1.) Roatán, Honduras – they have Bojangle’s! It’s also just a beautiful place with super friendly people.

2.) Cozumel, Mexico – we only saw the touristy area just off of the cruise ship, but you can buy stuff like azithromycin over-the-counter, which is wild.

3.) Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico – we saw Mayan ruins here and drove through a village called “Pineapple Town.”

4.) Belize City – I really wanted to like Belize City, hoping it’d be some kind of Anglo-Caribbean wonderland nestled in Central American. Instead, it was like the rest of Central America and the Caribbean, but somehow worse. I thought British imperialism would have left a bit more of a positive mark on this damp, effluvial city.

This cruise was only my second, but it cemented for me that I am a cruise person.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part IV: Poetry

11 July 20269 July 2026 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post includes Amazon Affiliate links to the books referenced. I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. If a book is linked, it is an Amazon Affiliate link. —TPP

After some delays and enjoying America’s 250th anniversary, yours portly is back with some reading, now featuring a once-great literary form: poetry.

Poetry gets a bad rap, likely because the former has largely devolved into the latter. It’s pretty easy to write prose and then chop it up into sentence fragments with some white space and indents and call it poetry.

Here’s that last sentence as “poetry”:

Poetry gets a bad
rap, likely because the former
has largely
Devolved
into the latter.  It's pretty
easy to write
Prose and then
chop
it
up
into sentence frag
ments with some

     white space      and
          indents
and call it
Poetry.

Well, you can see the problem right away. It’s obvious that this style isn’t really poetry at all. A humorous example of this phenomenon is the gag book The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump, 2009-2019, which Dr. Wife (then Dr. Girlfriend) got me for my fortieth birthday. The “poetry” consists of our president’s tweets formatted into various blends of shapes and white space akin to my example above. It’s fun and a big, beautiful addition to my collection, but part of the joke is that it’s not poetry (although there is a poetic quality to President Trump’s tweets, at time).

That said, one needn’t harken back to the days of yore to find good poetry. All of today’s examples are from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Naturally, there’s tons of great poetry from the first half of the twentieth century (apologies to W. B. Yeats for not making the list this time; you will soon!), but the twenty-first century tends to be moms writing lengthy odes to their children on Facebook. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, but the efforts are rarely “poetic” in the truest sense of the word.

But poetry is vitally important, as is the ability to read and analyze it. Consider that large chunks of the Bible consist of poetry. The Book of Psalms is a collection of poems and song lyrics. Song of Solomon is a sensual love poem that depicts both the intense passion of a groom for his bride while also echoing the intense love of The Groom (Jesus Christ) for His Bride (us, the Church).

All that preamble aside, here are four works of poetry and/or collections you should add to your home library:

Robert Frost, Robert Frost’s Poems – This collection of poetry from one of the most popular and enduring poets of the twentieth century is well-worth having at hand. Frost’s ability to evoke the Beauty of God’s Creation through verse is nourishing food for the soul.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets – This collection is on my “to-read” list. I remember reading The Wasteland in high school English class, and I loved Eliot’s obtuse thicket of classical allusions. I’m likely taking this slim volume on the cruise.
Jeremy Miles, A Year of Thursday Nights (and the more affordable greyscale edition) –
Rachel Fulton Brown and Dragon Common Room, Centrism Games: A Modern Dunciad –

You can pick up all of these in paperback on Amazon for between $36.88 and $51.88 (Jeremy Miles’s—God Rest his soul—collection in full color is $30, but the greyscale edition is half the price). Centrism Games is the best value at just $5.57, and I highly recommend it.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part III: More Fiction

27 June 202626 June 2026 The Portly Politico5 Comments

It’s summertime, so it’s a great time to do some reading, especially the reading of fiction!

I was hoping to highlight some worthwhile poetry this week, but we’ll save that for next time. I’m out of town at the time of writing and don’t have immediate access to my books. However, I did recently purchase three books and I want to feature them.

Some of these will fall under “Short Fiction“; I defined that category in the first post in this series as “both short story collections and shorter novels/novellas” at fewer than or equal to 250 pages in length. Some of these probably come in a bit over that (admittedly generous) page length. Regardless, they’re all books I plan to read this summer, and I’ve already made substantial progress in one of them.

You can reader Parts I & II here and here, respectively. Part I looked at short fiction; Part II looked at non-fiction.

Here are three books I purchased earlier this week, and which I am currently reading:

Richard Matheson, I Am Legend – I’m currently reading this classic of 1950s horror. I recently watched the film adaptation starring Vincent Price, and realized it was high time I grabbed a copy of this book. The book is a harrowing study of the protagonist Robert Neville’s struggle against demons, both real (the vampires attacking his home) and psychic (his own tortured, alcoholic realization that he’s the last man on Earth). This version also comes with a collection of Matheson’s other stories and novellas.
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes – I wrote a review of the film adaptation last October, and I love the flick. I cannot remember if I purchased a copy of the paperback at that point, because it feels like I remember reading it last fall; now, however, I can’t remember, so I may have just blown cash purchasing another copy. Regardless, I’m looking forward to reading—perhaps re-reading—this book.
Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz – Canticle has been on my list to read for awhile. Apparently, it’s one of the inspirations for the Fallout video game series. The concept is that a group of monks in the Utah deserts piece together bits of the past from some Jewish guy’s shopping list. Naturally, all of this occurs after a nuclear war of devastating proportions (I Am Legend also happens after a less devastating war in which—it is implied—atomic bombs fell in the United States).

More on I Am Legend below the punch. I’ve nearly read the entire novella (it’s around 170 pages). That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and if you’re a fan of dystopian, horror, and weird fiction, you can scoop them all up for under $35.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Tales of a Hedge Pianist: Playing Piano at the Presbyterian Church

20 June 202620 June 2026 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Last summer I served as the fill-in pianist for the local United Methodist Church in what became our new town. You can read about that here. Two Sundays ago I was invited to play for the local Presbyterian Church for their annual camp service.

What is a “hedge pianist”? Essentially, it’s a term I’ve coined for a freelance/unaffiliated pianist-for-hire. The “hedge” comes from the concept of a “hedge knight“; the hedge knight is a landless, traveling knight who takes work where he can, hoping his skills will land him in the retinue of some great lord, with all the benefits that come with it. With just his horse, armor, and arms, the hedge knight seeks to prove his skill in tournaments and small conflicts.

Similarly, a “hedge pianist” is a masterless pianist traveling about, taking gigs where they come, with a possible interest in gaining enough renown to land a cushy weekly church gig, or playing Friday nights at an upscale eatery. It’s also just a nerdy (or cool?) way of making playing as a fill-in pianist at local churches sound like I’m some kind of musical ronin roaming about the countryside looking for a piano to play.

Regardless, I had the opportunity to play that role two Sundays back for the local Presbyterian Church. The church has a “camp” service every year in preparation for their Vacation Bible School, and the pastor asked if I could play some hymns and all the usual pieces for High Church Protestant services, namely “Doxology” and the “Gloria Patri.” Naturally, I agreed.

The service was held at a campsite owned and maintained by the Southern Baptist church that Dr. Wife and I attend. It’s a beautiful little spot about twenty minutes outside of town, tucked away among the pine trees. The grounds and buildings are very well-maintained. I had some trepidation that the service would take place outdoors, which would present two inconveniences: the intense South Carolina summer heat, and the wind blowing my music everywhere.

Fortunately, the camp has a commodious (and air-conditioned) chapel, where a responsive Yamaha digital piano waited for me. There was also a delectable fried chicken lunch on the other side of the service.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part II: Non-Fiction

13 June 202612 June 2026 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

See Part I here, and read the full post here. —TPP

I’m back with Part II of The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, with a focus on non-fiction. As a history teacher and a writer primarily focused on non-fiction, I possess a particular interest in non-fiction writing of every stripe. While I do love reading history, I enjoy reading broadly, so today’s list will have works of non-fiction from multiple genres.

Typically I leave the full list behind the paywall for paid subscribers; however, as several of these authors are indie/self-published and/or newer authors, I would like to boost their works more broadly (and, naturally, gain access to those sweet, sweet affiliate clicks). So, here are four books I’ve read and/or am currently reading that I highly recommend you order:

Nicholas R. Ochs, Age of Rot: A Right Wing Dissident’s Prison Dispatches from a Torn America – Nicholas Ochs was arrested following the Epiphany Protests for covering the events as an independent journalist. His association with the Proud Boys made him an easy target for Biden’s Justice Department, and he ended up with a four-year sentence (!) in a maximum security prison in Butler, North Carolina, where he faced a number of abuses (including an arbitrary stint in solitary confinement in winter without a mattress or blanket for his cot; he burned so many calories trying to stay warm that he became dangerously emaciated). This book is his collected prison writings, and it is a stark window into the political persecution and prosecutions that faced so many patriots in 2021.
Landis Brown, Life Under the Shadow of the Almighty: A Journey Through Psalm 91 – My pastor while I was living down in Lamar wrote this book. Pastor Dana, as we call him (his middle name is “Dana”), had an issue while preparing his manuscript: his editor backed out of the project. Pastor Dana contacted me and asked if I could edit the last four chapters, which I did last spring. I finally ordered a physical copy earlier this week, so I am excited to read the first two chapters (and re-read the four I edited). It’s an interesting blend of scholarly work and devotional.
H.H. Scullard and A.A.M. van der Heyden, Shorter Atlas of the Classical World – I picked up this delightful little survey of the classical world, which focuses on ancient Greece and Rome, when I was a teenager. I devoured it, cover-to-cover, and I love all the maps and the lithographic plates.
Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults: An Analysis of the Major Cult Systems in the Present Christian Era – I borrowed—and never returned, gulp!—a copy of this book from my Aunt Cheryl some years ago. It is the “textbook” on the various cults of the twentieth century from the perspective of an Evangelical Protestant Christian theologian and historian. Martin gives detailed historical information about the foundation of a number of cults, including the Nation of Islam and Mormonism, and offers Christians useful theological and historical grounds for arguing against these movements. My (well, my aunt’s) edition is from the twenty-fourth printing in 1977, and it certainly reflects the cultic activity of the time (some of the movements are now just footnotes in religious history, while others are still thriving).

More below the punch. That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and you can scoop them all up for under $70.71 at the time of writing.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Minecraft Camp 2026

6 June 20265 June 2026 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Part II of The Portly Political Summer Reading List 2026 will be out next week! If you missed Part I, read it here. —TPP

Minecraft Camp was this past Monday through Thursday, and it was another fun week of crafting and King’s Hawaiian Rolls. I can never quite remember when the first Minecraft Camp was, but it was likely either the summer of 2013 or 2014, which means the camp has been going on for over a decade.

When it began, a former colleague of mine got us setup with this gloriously old version of MinecraftEDU, based on Minecraft 1.7.10. That ancient version, one of my knowledgeable counselors informed me, was right before a number of major updates to the game. It’s fun seeing kids come in each year and trying to figure out why their preferred building material and/or mechanic isn’t available (no dolphins, sorry). That said, they all come to adapt to the older version; indeed, many of the veterans insist that we keep it.

Our version is also based on an old Java install that exists on a handful of USB sticks and a backup hard drive. Microsoft purchased Minecraft and MinecraftEDU some years ago, but our school computers at the time lacked the proper version of Windows to run it (I think we needed Windows 10 and our computers were running Windows 7). I’ve kept using this version out of inertia and, again, due to popular demand. I just did a search, and it seems it is available for download, so if you want to try the version we play, download and give it a shot.

All technical talk aside, let’s get into the heart of this year’s camp.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part I: Short Fiction

30 May 202630 May 2026 The Portly Politico2 Comments

It’s summertime! That means yours portly is getting in a ton of reading, especially in my favorite format: short fiction.

“Short fiction” here is a catch-all for both short story collections and shorter novels/novellas. Two of the works on today’s list are technically novels, but they’re both 250 pages or fewer (in the case of Jake Barter’s The Sniper, the book is exactly 250 pages). 250 pages might seem generous, but these are works that can be read over the course of several evenings, and are paced briskly enough that they won’t be piled on your nightstand for months or even years.

Typically I leave the full list behind the paywall for paid subscribers; however, as several of these authors are indie/self-published, I would like to boost their works more broadly (and, naturally, gain access to those sweet, sweet affiliate clicks). So, here are four books I’ve read and/or am currently reading that I highly recommend you order:

Jake Barter, The Sniper – “Jake Barter” is the nom de plume of blogger photog, proprietor of the excellent blog Orion’s Cold Fire. As far as I can tell, this book is his first outing. It’s the next on my “to-read” list after the next entry, but knowing photog’s writing, I can already recommend it. He’s been working on this book for years, and it’s not a hastily slapped-together book like one of mine.
Erang, Midnight Under the Monsters’ Mask – “Erang” is the nom de plume of, well, Erang, a mysterious, masked French musician who is among the pioneers of dungeon synth. I’ve just started reading Midnight in the English translation, and the stories so far are delightfully creepy. It’s a mix of horror and weird fiction that really shows Erang’s early exposure to horror flicks as a kid in the 1980s. Erang’s whole schtick is championing imagination over all else, and he creates in his music entire fantasy realms. Having listened to his music for years—over a decade, at this point—I can “hear” it in his writing.
Various authors, Amelia: Counterrevolution (the second anthology from authors of the “Lemurverse“) – this collection of short stories and poems found inspiration in Amelia, the viral, pro-British, pro-nationalist, anti-immigration character of a government-sanctioned video “game” that was intended to spook teens away from online “radicalization” (basically, becoming right-wing). The fatal flaw, however, is that the game designers made Amelia into a cute goth chick with a chic aesthetic and, well, commonsense arguments against flooding Britain with unassimilable invaders. It’s a fun collection and priced right at just $5.99 in paperback. Note that it does use AI-generated images, but not writing, as illustrations between stories, so if that cuts against your principles, be forewarned. However, the writing is 100% human!
John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids – a classic of 1950s British sci-fi, Triffids is a chilling tale of a world in which everyone is blind—and giant, carnivorous plants called “triffids” shuffle around killing people. But there’s way more to it than that; the work is post-apocalyptic, but it’s quaint in how “high-trust” post-apocalyptic Britain is portrayed—a stark reminder of how much that once-great nation has changed. I read Wyndham’s Foul Play Suspected earlier this year and can heartily recommend it as a tense crime thriller with an appropriately English sense of restraint and pacing.

More on Amelia and Triffids below the punch. I’ve read both of those in their entirety. That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and if you’re a fan of short stories or shorter novels/novellas, you can scoop them all up for under $50.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Yet Another Round of Dubious Graduation Wisdom

23 May 202622 May 2026 The Portly Politico2 Comments

It’s that time of year again: Graduation Day. At least, it’s graduation for my students, and my last graduation as a full-time teacher. Apparently, the graduating class is so large, and seats are so limited, the admin was encouraging teachers not to attend, but I’d like to be there, so I’m going.

Our graduation ceremony is blessedly short on speechifying. The honor graduate (“third in class”), salutatorian, and valedictorian each give a very brief speech, and there are some general platitudes from the headmaster. They announce a couple of teaching awards, and the kids process across the stage with little video montages they put together. If it weren’t for those videos, it would be lightning quick; as it is, it’s still pretty fast.

Of course, every year I roleplay the alternative: what if there were more speechifying, and I was asked to deliver the keynote address? Well, here’s another round of dubious graduation wisdom from yours portly:

Write Every Day

Most of you will not pursue writing as a career—nor should you, as it’s an oversaturated market that not only competes against real people, but now robots, too. But all of you should write something—anything—everyday. Most of you will through your work; even police officers have to write up fairly descriptive reports of arrests, for example.

Indeed, writing is inescapable. The problem is that very few people do it well, with any degree of competency. The only way to do it well it to practice doing it well. When you send a text message, for example, don’t (as a rule) just type, “k” in response to a message; instead, reply in at least a clear, complete sentence: subject, verb, predicate/direct object. “Okay, that sounds great”; “I will see you at the theater at 6 PM.”

And, yes, use punctuation, especially periods. Look, no one really knows how to use commas; just plop them in whenever it feels like there should be a pause for a breathe. Don’t do that thing that some people do where they end a sentence with an entire string of “…………..” or “,,,,,,,,,,,”—it doesn’t make any sense and it makes you look stupid. It is also really, really annoying.

But I digress. Even if you don’t nail all the grammatical rules, try to write in a way that is clear and precise. Yes, some of us are wordy, verbose writers, addicted to parenthetical asides and em dashes—which are now apparently taboo because AI uses them (don’t let the robots take good things from you)—but you have to learn to walk before you can ascend into a cloud of subjunctive clauses.

Of course, in order you write well, you must…

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Baccalaureate Service 2026

16 May 202615 May 2026 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Tomorrow night I will give the sermon for my school’s baccalaureate service. This church service is for the graduating seniors, the Class of 2026. After hearing a sermon based on Romans 12:9-21 this past Sunday, I thought the passage could prove fruitful as a “blueprint,” of sorts, for graduating seniors (and all others in attendance). Here is the text of the sermon I’ll deliver tomorrow:

Good evening families, faculty, staff, and graduates of the Class of 2026. You are sitting here this evening at a threshold, a moment in your lives when you will soon pass from the world you know into a different one. As you cross this threshold of graduation, a great deal is going to change: your surroundings, your friends, your goals. It is an exciting and even scary process, as you are experiencing both a world in flux and flux in yourself.

The temptation will be great, therefore, to cast aside those things that are most essential, the “first things” that are always steadfast, in favor of the siren song of fleeting experiences and pleasures. The world will tell you, “do this thing and it will make you happy and bring you fulfillment”—and then it will sell some other “thing” next month, and the month after that. That road leads to emptiness and wasted potential.

So what should we do? How do we take this moment, lingering at the threshold, to prepare our hearts and minds for the changes ahead? The answer is love, love reflected through Christ’s Love for us.

Romans 12:9-21 (NKJV) offers some insights:

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. 10 Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; 11 not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; 13 distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. 16 Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things [or, “Do not be proud,” GNB], but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.

17 Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. 18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. 19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 Therefore

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The Word of the Lord—Thanks Be to God. Let us pray.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Renaissance

9 May 20268 May 2026 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

To finish out the school year, I put together a three-day mini-unit for my World History students to familiarize them with some of the major movements in Europe between circa 1300-1600. The idea is to bridge the gap between the High Middle Ages (specifically, the end of The Hundred Years’ War and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453) and the Age of Exploration. That will allow them to start United States History in August with a broad, albeit brief, sense of the context for European colonization of the New World, which is where the US History course begins (along with some history about pre-Columbian native tribes and civilizations).

My “three-day mini-unit” really worked out to be about three-and-a-half days, as I’m attempting to cover some huge changes in European society and faith. The mini-unit covers the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation (and the Catholic Counterreformation), and European exploration and colonization (the last of which is a very cursory introduction).

Readers should be able to access the slides here. They primarily pull information from McDougal Littell’s World History: Patterns of Interaction (2005; that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), supplemented in my lectures with my own insights, pulled from various sources. I add quite a bit about the Reformation, for example, in my lectures, and we look at a good bit more Renaissance art than appears in the slides.

Indeed, the Renaissance constitutes over one-third of the slides, because it’s such a transformative movement in its own right. Literally meaning “rebirth,” the Renaissance represented a fundamental shift in the medieval mind. Rather than creating art and literature primarily for the glorification of God, the humanism of the Renaissance sought to better understand and to celebrate humanity itself. The movement’s interest in classical Greece and Rome sought to move beyond mining insights into Christian theology from those pre-Christian sources, but to understand the values of the ancient Greeks and Romans on their own terms. That represented a shift away from the Aquinian scholastic project of reconciling pre-Christian (and pagan) Greco-Roman philosophy with Christian theology and the revealed Truth of the Bible towards a more historical approach.

That said, the Renaissance was not dominated by atheists. Indeed, Renaissance humanism was very Christian in nature. While the emphasis of art shifted to the human, it was in a context of the human as a reflection of God; after all, we are made in His Image. Michelangelo’s famous painting “The Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel demonstrates that God Is firmly Sovereign. Adam reclines, his hand extended somewhat limply, while God, surrounded by a heavenly host of angels, extends forward, His Finger extended in the act of creation:

“The Creation of Adam”; Image Source: https://www.pickpik.com/sistine-chapel-vatican-michelangelo-museum-rome-143433, accessed 8 May 2026 (image is in the public domain)

Indeed, God’s entire Body is in action, almost Moving towards His Creation. While Adam’s form is certainly idealized, he is clearly the recipient of the creative act, not the initiator.

The Catholic Church was a major sponsor of the Renaissance, sometimes to its detriment: one source of complaints from the Protestant reformers was the extreme luxury and decadence of the popes and cardinals. Many popes embraced the earthier sides of the Renaissance, with its celebration of good food along with good art, and engaged in all manner of sinful activities. But God Uses even wicked men to His Ends, and in its corruption and venality the Catholic Church of the Renaissance patronized the creation of numerous devotional works of exquisite quality. In music, for example, a Reformation-chastened papacy would shift away from the garish theatricality of late medieval sacred music and re-embrace the ethereal beauty of composers like Palestrina, whose Pope Marcellus mass is a masterpiece of choral writing.

The humanist genie was out of its bottle, however, and did much to fertilize the soil from which the Reformation would spring.

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The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: SubscribeStar Saturday