A new season of HBO‘s Six Feet Under begins tonight. {I don’t have cable, but a friend tapes it for me.} The Washington Post ran an interview with creator Alan Ball last May.

“The show is about the loss I’ve felt in my life,” Ball says. “The grief I’ve felt over loss, the people I’ve lost, situations [lost] that I’d nurtured.” He rocks back in his metal chair and puts his feet on the desk. He has dark hair, pale skin — a round baby face with a goatee and a laugh that erupts unexpectedly, in great huffing guffaws. “It’s about moving on. About greeting grief, and being able to move past it.”

Tom Shales writes about it in yesterday’s Post, and Virginia Hefferman provides her take on the show for Slate. Meanwhile, over at Salon, Heather Havrilesky weighs in.

To someone who studies literature and culture, the uses to which readers put texts are more than a little interesting.

The Lysistrata Project, Theater Artists Against War

On March 3, 2003, the Lysistrata Project will present worldwide readings of Aristophanes’s bawdy ancient Greek antiwar comedy Lysistrata. To date, 928 play readings are scheduled in 56 countries and in all 50 U.S. states to voice opposition to the war on Iraq; those numbers increase hourly. Readings will raise money for charities working for peace and humanitarian aid in the Middle East and elsewhere.

At least three readings in Kansas City alone (scroll down to find KCMO).

Perseus has the text of the play online in Greek and in English.

At the beginning of the year, Phil Gyford began publishing, in a weblog format, the 17th-century diaries of Samuel Pepys. The text is based on the 1893 edition produced by Henry B. Wheatley. As in the original diary, an entry appears for almost each day. The site is very nicely done, and allows users to contribute annotations to entries with references about which they may have some knowledge.