We’re already three days into the new month, so I’m a little bit behind with getting this monthly newsletter out to all of you. As the subtitle mentions, July is a long month, so there’s extra time for getting things done. There’s also a lot I have in mind to get done - more about all that below. But it’s also going to be a rather crazy month here. And by “here”, I mean first of all Milwaukee, and second and more specifically, my neighborhood, Westown, here in Milwaukee.
Why is that, you might ask? As many of you may know, the Republican National Convention is taking place in Milwaukee from the 15th to the 18th of July. And as it so happens, the south end of the buildings it will be happening in is less than a block from our apartment building. So, we’re right on the border between what the Secret Service has designated as the “hard zone” (where the RNC people, volunteers, press, and local officials will be able to go) and the “soft zone” (where everyone else will be allowed to go, with a heavy police presence).
We likely won’t be able to get our car out of our parking garage, and we can expect not just sizable crowds, but also quite a few people who are armed, unhinged, or both. There will be a lot of organized protestors on both sides of the political spectrum, most likely. The security restrictions start officially on Sunday, but the police will start setting up checkpoints, steel fences, barriers, and the like the week before. My wife and I are going to hole up in our place for the most part, and see what we can get done, work-wise. I might not be able to do any recording over that period, given how noisy things might be. But there’s plenty of other work to do as well.
So all that said, on to the updates!
Online Classes
We’re now in the fourth week of my online class, Rene Descartes’ Meditations, Objections, and Replies, which is going quite well, I’m happy to say. Later on this month, I’ll start making some official announcements about the next online class that I’m planning to offer, which will focus on two of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. That will be another synchronous class, that is, meeting for regular class sessions on Saturdays, running for 8 weeks total in August to October.
This month, I’ll also be opening a new asynchronous online course in the Study With Sadler Academy. This one will be focused specifically on one text of Plato’s of absolutely major importance, the Symposium. It being an asynchronous class means that there are no class sessions, and students can work through the course resources on their own time, whenever they would like (and multiple times as well, if they like, since they get lifetime access to the class).
Online Events
We’ve got quite a few online events coming up, which you might be interested in attending and participating in. As it happens, they all have the same starting time this month, namely 12 PM Central Time. Here they are:
Saturday, July 6 AMA (Ask Me Anything Session) - YouTube live event in my channel. Got questions for me? Ask away and I’ll do my best to answer them - https://youtube.com/live/YiLqV3UapE0
Thursday, July 11 Storytime With Gregory Sadler: H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Call Of Cthulhu” - livestreaming of me reading one of my favorite short stories, then discussing it with participants - https://youtube.com/live/xhNoYvRX_Ts
Saturday, July 13 Worlds of Speculative Fiction: Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné Novels - YouTube video premiere in my channel with live chat, followed by Zoom videoconferencing - link will be posted after video is produced
Saturday, July 20 Classic Metal Class Session 29: Interviewing Professor Rob Colter About Philosophy and Heavy Metal - Zoom videoconferencing for students enrolled in the free class (they get the Zoom link there) - https://reasonio.teachable.com/p/classic-metal-class
Saturday, July 27 Understanding Anger 2.0 Class Session 12: Seneca's On Anger book 2 - study of ancient philosophical, literary, and religious viewpoints on the emotion of anger, continuing our study of Seneca’s classic work On Anger, moving on now to book 2 - https://youtube.com/live/Phg0TpGNZHQ
Video And Podcast Production
I’ll be resuming production of the Mind & Desire podcast episodes for my paid subscribers here (released later on to the public). There are quite a few ideas that I’d like to work through and set down in that form this month.
In my other, much more long-established podcast, Sadler’s Lectures, the plans for this month are to produce and release episodes on:
Ursula K. Leguin’s novel, Tehanu
Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion
Cicero’s On The Nature Of The Gods book 1
You can find all 1,100+ Sadler’s Lectures episodes released so far in this resource page with links to all the playlists of the downloadable episodes.
There are some big plans ahead for video production in my main YouTube channel. They include:
Core Concept videos on Seneca’s treatise, On The Happy Life
Speculative Fiction Studies videos on Jorge Luis Borges short stories
Ideas That Matter interview videos
Sadler’s Honest Book Reviews videos
at least one Non-Alcoholic Beer Review video (I’ll need to come up with a snappy title for that series)
Sadler’s Stories videos about memories and past experiences
a Sadler’s Soapbox “rant” video about a topic I’ve got stuck in my craw
A Few Other Personal Matters
As many of you know, I’m a volunteer at a local cat shelter here in Milwaukee, Almost Home Cat Rescue. I’m in there at least once a week, sometimes just to visit with the cats and kittens and to chat with the other volunteers, and sometimes to do a scheduled Open House shift or cleaning and feeding shift. We have gotten a litter of five especially bold, cuddly, and playful kittens as new arrivals last month, and I’ve been very much enjoying time with them. There are two particularly friendly older cats at the rescue as well, Marla and Lolly, who I give a lot of attention to. I’ll be going in for a cleaning and feeding shift tomorrow night, which offers me the opportunity to hang out with the cats and kittens for as long as I’d like after I’ve done the requisite chores.
My child, Cat, who finished college in May, is now working two jobs (a doggie daycare and a restaurant), living in a sublet, and doing several gigs connected to their craft, theater. One of those is being part of a large puppetry troupe at Summerfest (the worlds largest music festival, which we have here in Milwaukee), controlling the tail of a Chinese dragon. The other, which is much more involved, is a play about the January 6 coup, which will run during the Republican Convention.
It’s a lovely time of year here in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin, with all sorts of cultivated and wild flowers in bloom all over the place. It hasn’t got too hot or humid yet, and there’s often cool winds coming off the lake. I get out and about for walks, often going along the Hank Aaron trail, portions of which were planted years back with an array of native flowering plants.
Those are all the updates for the present. If you’d like to know more, or you’re particularly excited, about any of these things going on, feel free to leave a comment!