Red Avengers,

Redbeard is alive and well...but still in port. The liberals are as thick as thieves in the Stanford harbor. Send a raiding party, quick!

All is as usual on The Farm. Princeton's Shapiro has nothing over our Casper, a constitutional scholar who thinks that the free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment doesn't really apply to Stanford Univeristy. Aaaarrrghhh! He speaks out of both sides of his mouth! And while the faculty continually debates the core-curriculum, undergraduates have to discover the Great Books for themselves. Now Redbeard used to lament these things, but now he sees them as an opportunity for that solitary individual in the midst of academic anarchy to discover the living Word for himself (or herself--gotta keep the feminist, inclusive-language folks happy!). After all, Redbeard had Western Culture his freshman year, way back in 1980. Yet he learned practically nothing. Then in his late twenties he began to read good & great books without the help of liberal professors, for his soul longed for the Truth. And his soul still does so.

In that light, thank you for the 222 truths you sent me this week. Thank you also, in advance, for the book & t-shirt I ordered today. (Check's in the mail.) I am sorry that you aren't offering XXL-Tall, for Redbeard is BIG & TALL, very much like Moby-Dick, or perhaps more like G. K. Chesterton.

I know you have plenty to read, like Redbeard, but may I suggest you try ome of Marion Montgomery's works. In him I think you'll discover a kindred spirit. Start with Possum, and Other Receits for the Recovery of "Southen" Being; or perhaps better, The Men I Have Chosen for Fathers. Then there's his magisterial The Prophetic Poet and the Spirit of the Age in three volumes: Why Flannery O'Connor Stayed Home, Why Poe Drank Liquor, and Why Hawthorne Was Melancholy. Enjoy!

And last, and definitely least, the authorship question. Just who wrote the novel and sonnets attributed to Drake Raft? The Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, of course!

Cheers,

James "Redbeard" Harris
The Stanford Gulag

THE CAPTAIN RESPONDS: Avast! The mystery of Drake Raft augments!