If it weren’t for Louie Palmer, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Over six decades ago, Louie called me into his office at the end of my junior year at Muskingum. I had completed a ten-hour required class called The Arts. Everyone had to take that class in their junior or senior year. Fortunately, I took it in my junior year.

It didn’t take Louie long to explain why he wanted to talk to me. He offered me to become his teaching assistant during my senior year. As a senior, I taught several weekly subsections and wrote and graded the midterms and finals in both semesters. Talk about a eureka moment. Louie saw something in me that would make me a good teaching assistant.

My senior year changed my life. I loved teaching. The Arts was for half of the students, something that they enjoyed. The others were taking the class because it was required. For those students, I had to personalize when we were discussing the PowerPoint slides.

For example, this painting was done by Caravaggio during the late Italian Renaissance. Caravaggio used the Greek story of Narcissus. Interestingly, his mother took him to the seer Tiresias as an infant to find out her child’s future. Tiresias said that he would live a long life but never know himself.

Narcissus

Caravaggio’s painting shows Narcissus admiring his reflection in a pool of water. My grandmother wrote this one-liner, “I love me, I think I’m grand when I go to heaven, I’ll hold my hand.” It was designed as a painting parable. Caravaggio was attempting to show that Narcissus was a fool.

In the past three decades, I have taught many art history classes. I don’t recall what examples I used to explain Caravaggio’s painting of the self-centered Narcissus. Nonetheless, I have a perfect example of a present-day Narcissus...Trump. What is fascinating is that Trump verbally explains his problem.

Trump talked about testing for COVID. He went to Walter Reed because he had COVID. He never took the test, but he had a COVID shot, which he took as he left the White House after losing to Biden.

What Trump forgot to mention was that we rank #1 with around 112 million cases and 12 million deaths.

Rumor has it that Trump invited Xi Jinping from China and Victor Orbán from Hungary. What about Kim Jong-un from N. Korea or Vladimir Putin from Russia?

Today’s Caravaggio painting

I happened to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live several years ago.

In closing, remember that narcissism is similar to alcoholism. The more one uses it, the more one needs it. It is addictive.