From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here's what I wrote on the "new user log" when I began editing Wikipedia in a big way (in May 2005):
My primary areas of interest (at least of knowledgeable interest) are
theology and
Church history ,
English literature (up to about 1900),
private-eye stories ,
Romance languages , and various bits of American and European history and culture. I've been using Wikipedia for a few years, and just recently started fixing typos and adding bits of information.
I am a
deacon of the
Eastern Orthodox Church ("Deacon John Saturus"), currently working on an M. A. in theology, and am the King of
Talossa .
Please feel free to
talk with me.
Beliefs, dogmatic and quirky
I believe :
Enthusiams
I am vastly enthusiastic , and frequently bore my friends, about
The glorious all-holy ever-virgin lady
Theotokos more-spacious-than-the-heavens,
Saint Perpetua Martyr and her five companions (including my patron
Saint Saturus ),
Saint Patrick equal-to-the-Apostles, the
Desert Fathers , the Empress
Saint Theodora ; and the
Roman Catholic saints
Saint Francis and
Saint Clare ,
Saint Catherine of Siena ,
Saint Joan of Arc (dearest, sweetest),
Saint Teresa of Ávila ,
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Latin ,
Spanish ,
French ,
Italian ,
Middle English ;
linguistics ,
grammar ,
etymology ; Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd edition, unabridged ;
The Oxford English Dictionary
The Song of Songs
The
Vulgate , the
Church Fathers (especially
Saint Augustine ,
Saint Leo the Great ,
Saint Gregory the Great , Saint
Gregory Palamas );
typology , the (old)
Missale Romanum and
Breviarium Romanum
Saint John Climacus and
The Ladder of Divine Ascent ,
The Philokalia
Geoffrey Chaucer ,
John Gower ,
Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight ,
Le Morte d'Arthur
Dante (the greatest poet), his
Divina Commedia (the greatest poem),
Ludovico Ariosto and
Orlando Furioso ,
Torquato Tasso and
Gerusalemme Liberata
Heraldry
The Book of Common Prayer ,
"William Shakespeare" (the other greatest poet),
Edmund Spenser and
The Faerie Queene , the
King James Bible
De imitatione Christi ,
Le pratique de la présence de Dieu ,
Port-Royal
Charles I the royal martyr,
Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars , the
Cavaliers
The
Dream of the Red Chamber
Dr. Johnson ,
Edmund Burke ,
George Washington (the greatest President, the greatest American),
The Constitution of the United States ,
Fisher Ames
Jane Austen (the greatest novelist),
Anthony Trollope (the other greatest novelist),
Margaret Oliphant , "sensation" novels,
Charlotte Mary Yonge ,
The Princess and the Goblin (the best children's book),
Robert Louis Stevenson ,
"Q" ,
Stanley J. Weyman ,
Rudyard Kipling
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ,
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy ,
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The
Tractarians ,
John Henry Newman
Thomas Babington Macaulay ,
Francis Parkman ,
William Hickling Prescott ,
Henry Adams
Baseball ,
backgammon , "Dirty nasty filthy
hearts ",
Diplomacy ,
Tock
Sandro Botticelli ,
Edward Burne-Jones ,
William Morris ,
John William Waterhouse ,
Evelyn de Morgan ,
William Adolphe Bouguereau
Winnie-the-Pooh ,
G. K. Chesterton ,
Charles Williams ,
J. R. R. Tolkien (whose
The Lord of the Rings is the greatest literary work of the 20th century)
London ,
Los Angeles ,
Firenze ,
Roma ,
Venexia
Gregorian plainsong , Renaissance
polyphony ,
Bach (heaven-inspired to write the
Goldberg Variations , the
Musikalisches Opfer , the Concerto for Two Violins in d minor , and so much more),
Mozart ,
Beethoven ;
Fats Waller ,
Benny Goodman ,
Ella Fitzgerald ;
Dixieland
The Holy Royal Martyrs
Saint Nicholas the Tsar,
Saint Alexandra the Tsarina, the Grand Duchesses
Saint Olga ,
Saint Tatiana ,
Saint Maria , and
Saint Anastasia , and the Tsarevich
Saint Alexei ; also the Holy Martyr
Saint Elizabeth Fyodorovna , Princess and Grand Duchess
Raymond Chandler (the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century),
P. G. Wodehouse ,
Talbot Mundy ,
John D. MacDonald ,
Robertson Davies ,
Patrick O'Brian ,
Tim Powers ,
Lois McMaster Bujold ,
A Song of Ice and Fire ,
hardboiled fiction,
science fiction
Humphrey Bogart (the greatest screen actor),
Grace Kelly (the most beautiful screen actress);
Alfred Hitchcock
Casablanca ,
The Big Sleep ,
film noir
Dr. Russell Kirk
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ,
The Wire ,
Veronica Mars ,
Arrested Development ,
Breaking Bad ,
Game of Thrones
The Kingdom of Talossa
Articles I've started
Articles I've contributed to in ways that strike me as reasonably important