Alabama bans Cycles Gladiator wine

[Crankin]

Thread drift: Shootingstar, your comment about questioning why you were part of a literature program that used a lot of religious/biblical allusions brought back a memory of a course I took in the 80s. After I got my master's in special ed, I took some summer courses to get certified in English. One was in American lit before 1850. I swear, I didn't get half the stuff the professor was discussing because it was all New Testament allusion. Although I wasn't an English major, I did have a minor in the subject, and I felt prepared when I started. One day, during a break I was feeling miserable and struck up a conversation with another student, and I discovered she also was not Christian and felt the same way.
Of course, this was the professor who thought I was a "19 year old single, pregnant student," when I was a 29 year old pregnant, married teacher with a graduate degree and several years of teaching experience. Yes, I looked young, but really.
I guess I know what values he had.

[shootingstar]

Thread drift: Shootingstar, your comment about questioning why you were part of a literature program that used a lot of religious/biblical allusions brought back a memory of a course I took in the 80s. After I got my master's in special ed, I took some summer courses to get certified in English. One was in American lit before 1850. I swear, I didn't get half the stuff the professor was discussing because it was all New Testament allusion. Although I wasn't an English major, I did have a minor in the subject, and I felt prepared when I started. One day, during a break I was feeling miserable and struck up a conversation with another student, and I discovered she also was not Christian and felt the same way.

Wish I had taken the time to seek out a fellow classmate in same boat of shared misery, but our English lit. classes were sufficiently large and overwhelmed with reading assignments, etc., I just didn't bother making the effort. I even tried to consider treating the bible what one of the English lit. profs. Northrop Frye lectured on and did write as a scholarly work, "Bible as Literature" . To read and analyze the Bible purely as a series of interconnected stories. I gave up somewhere after Genesis. After all, so many other required texts to conquer for courses.

Hence, Milton's "Paradise Lost" didn't pack the same powerful impact on me as I'm sure for others who knew their Bible well. Had I not gone to Sunday school classes for 4 years as a child, I would have been truly lost.

If discussion on the Bible seems so esoteric...just look at all the great English language literary works pre-Victorian and all the Western art (which I love looking at), great music prior to Romanticism, how much biblical allusions there are. To appreciate some of the stuff, one needs to understand abit of cultural background.

Ok. There is a connection to cycling. If there were times I felt I was one of the rare cyclists at work, that is absolutely pale in terms of feeling marginalized, compared to other life situations.

[Crankin]

I get it....