Arizona was a great place to grow up during the 1960s and 1970s. It was there and then that I made my first attempts to understand what it means to be a human being. I was young and often nervous, but I was smart and, most of the time, I paid attention to what was going on around me.

The day after Easter, I was rereading Benedict XVI’s new and brilliant encyclical, Spe Salvi. I have three different copies of this remarkable document, one printed from the Vatican on-line system, one from L’Osservatore Romano, English, and a bound version published by Pauline Books and Media.

As preregistration rolls around next week, it’s worth giving a serious thought or two to the kind of courses you want to take, the kinds of professors you want to learn with, the kinds of ideas you want to wrestle with, the kinds of things you want to learn. In short, it’s a good time to take stock of the education you are getting at Georgetown.

The Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895-1974) spoke on the BBC Welsh Home Service on the 29th of October, 1954. His talk, entitled an “Autobiographical Talk,” was reprinted in his “Epoch and Artist: Selected Writings.” This book was given to me for Christmas. Just recently I began to look at it.

Before anything else, a disclaimer: In this column, I speak for no one but myself. I do not speak for the Jesuit Community. Happily, others bear that weighty burden. I speak for Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J., Georgetown Class of 1982.

Recently, as my patient students know, I was sidelined with a bout of pneumonia.
Relax, I am not going to tell you about how well I suffer, because I don’t, or the details of my illness, of which not even I have the faintest comprehension.

Last week, The Voice and THE HOYA (“GU Investigates Academic Culture,” Aug. 31, 2007, A1) published a link to the report of the Committee on Intellectual Life. That leak has certainly sparked some vigorous thinking and conversation in Hoya circles!

Plato was 40 years old (388 B.C.), as he tells us in his “Seventh Letter.” The Peloponnesian War had ended in 404. The Greek colony of Syracuse on Sicily was in the ascendancy. Along with Sparta, Syracuse was the victor in the infamous war launched by Athens, under the prodding on by the charming and rather unscrupulous Alcibiades.