Blogtrotter

(B)logrolling Bo's Blatant Beast

The Celticist Bo over at the blog you can link to at right, "The Expulsion of the Blatant Beast," kindly numbered me (this?) among seven bloggers he recommended. Under the entry Metabloggerie Bo summarized "Blogtrotter" well:

Wise, humane and witty chroniclings of life in Los Angeles by a medievalist with strong Irish interests and an indefatiguable appetite for writing incisive book reviews, amid touches of Buddhism and assorted Judaica.

Bo lists in his blog's "About Me" blurb: "I'm a 28-year old medievalist, currently a Junior Research Fellow in Cambridge, but formerly at Oxford. This is a site for my assorted ravings, with frequent forays into spirituality, Medieval Studies, literature, art and music."

I could not condense his own erudite entries into one sentence, but this newly minted Oxford Ph.D. in Celtic Studies offers pithy explanations of the excitement of medieval Welsh, reports from the treacherously plumbed realms of Ye Olde Keltic Tymes, and regales with cautionary tales of neo-pagan excess. He keeps a sharp eye for scholarship grounded in linguistics, prosody, and art; he carefully studies poetry; he has refined tastes in intelligent music; he reads the better class of authors incessantly; he castigates charlatans of the pulpit, lectern, and keyboard; he researches medieval astrology; he shares with us forays into "the mad world of gay."

Here's a representative piece, which I recommended to my wife as a sample of his range. He tells of his teenaged friendship with one of those he labels in his blog under "Mad Old Women." Also under "Religion" and "Aspects of Life in General," a fine Celtic triad. Bethan June Phelps (24 March 2008)

I learn a lot from him. He shares a sense of elegant humor. If he raves, he does so with passion, wit, and concision. He also paints icons of considerable merit that he appears to be shy about, unreasonably. And, who else could you google-- besides his quondam donnish subfusc predecessor JRRT-- able to compose verse in Sindarin?

Photo: Speaking of wise, he and I both like owls, I guess. Layne and him like Goldfrapp, I surmise. I tried to illustrate his blog's "raison d'être" thusly, but the panoply of images he uses changes constantly, even for his masthead. "Blender" magazine had a caption for this very promo shot: "Alison Goldfrapp and the Wise Potato Chip Owl make their relationship public." See if you can do better on an intern's (lack of) salary.: Goldfrapp & the Autumn Equinox. 15 April 2008.