A Quote to Remember

Just ask yourself how I could keep my eyes dry when, close by, I saw the image of our human form so twisted.

~ Dante, Inferno

New Blog Policy

I've decided to begin a new policy. You know the "New Year's Resolutions" that everyone forms right around December 31? Mine never seem to materialize. So, here's my new deal. I'm going to put in a new resolution each month. I'll then see how well I do each month and report back to cyberspace in the next month's resolution.

So, for May I'm going to try to use British vocabulary like "petrol" and "lovely" which are much more pleasant and elegant than the American "gas" and "pretty" or "nice".

Let's see how I do!

It's Just So......Overrated

Styles differ, it's true. People are unique, so they cannot be expected to agree on everything. Yet there are some trends which can be counted as pretty far-stretching, pretty universal. These opinions and tastes form a sort of cultural majority, defining what it is the culture will be remembered as liking and disliking.

Let's put it this way: I'm a cultural minority. With many popular fads, I'm really at a loss. I find myself wondering, "Ok, so this has its good sides. But why is everyone making such a big deal out of it?" Here's a far from definitive list of things I think are overrated in our culture.

1. Country Music. (One or two songs are cute, but beyond that...)

2. Volunteer Hours. (They really AREN'T as important for your college application as people make it sound, and they don't "teach you leadership skills")

3. Certain Movies (The Matrix, Braveheart, and The Phantom of the Opera among them). 

4. Finding a clique, though it doesn't always go by that name. I mean that "special group of people" everyone is supposed to need so very badly. Though such groups do form, it's the "finding" of them which I think so overrated.
5. Movie Ratings. (Honestly, do they really tell us much?)
6. Computer skills. (Once again, it's useful to know how to use a computer, but people emphasize it WAY too much.)
7. Prom. (Youths should learn how to dance, but prom is now taken way too seriously.)
8. Driving and cars. (I have a neighbor who is this short of putting a tarp around his car every night to ensure its safety. He washes it almost everyday. What can I do but shake my head?)
9. Youth group. (I like John Stonestreet's term for youth groups. He says, "they're Christian junkies, moving from emotional high to emotional high")
10. Self-esteem. (Just pause and look at that word for a minute. Are the words "pride", "arrogance", and "conceit" ringing a bell?)

Here's a Thought from Dante

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

diro de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

~Inferno

It means: "But if I would show the good that came of it/I must talk about things other than the good."

Perhaps It's Not What We Think

I was sitting here on our creaking couch, when a thought occurred to me. The biggest academic issue in the homeschool world today is English, and to be more specific, writing. Parents fumble around, desperately trying to teach their students coherent thought and expression.

This is reflected in the many homeschool curricula that try to teach students how to write. Go to any homeschool convention. A great many of the talks will be variations of "Teaching Your Student to Write - Guaranteed!" and "The Subject We All Hate Most - How to Teach Writing". Yet though there are lots and lots of people who claim to understand the art of using words, the facts belie their assertions. The inability to write permeates our society, and homeschooled students are on average no better than public schooled students.

If you glance into these numerous curricula and books, you'll find mostly the same material. They tell how to doctor up your sentences. Add conjunctions here, turn this into a gerund, use more adverbs. They show transition strategies and essay organizations. And though this is all very well and good, I have to say, none of the profuse works on writing seem to be making much of a difference. Even when students do all of the doctoring, expanding, and transitioning that is required in their exercises and essays, their work still seems mediocre and out of place. They seem uncomfortable in the words, phrases, and organization they use.

Now, let me ask a question. What if what makes a good writer is not using these components of good writing but thinking them? Could it be that the good writer is the one who thinks grammatically correct sentences, thinks organized essays and flowing thoughts, not the one who simply fixes his composition? That good writing comes from being comfortable in these (for you Strunk & White fans out there) elements of style?

Let me explain. Anyone can doctor up a piece of work. It's like putting a bandage over a wound, like covering a coffee stain on the floor with a desk. But the result is never as satisfactory as if the wound had never been received, as if the coffee had never been spilled. I am here suggesting that it is the writer who thinks stylistically, grammatically and fluently whose work is truly good. It's the difference between who you are and what you wear. What you wear may fit you or not, but it is not your actual self.

Not that this cannot be learned; on the contrary, it must be. No one is born feeling comfortable in great style. It is merely that you must learn to think great style, not just copy it. I believe that it is not enough just to "fix" your writing. Though all writing will always need to be reworked, you must begin to think in terms of the tools you use.

Perhaps, then, all the curricula and guide books are wrong. Maybe we ought not to teach students how to use tools, but how to be them. Quality should not be a mask we put on, something we use to hide who we really are. It ought to become a very part of our being, the very essence of our souls.

Don't be content with cover-up. Have your students become the style that at first they only emulate.

There's Nothing Like a Sassy Greek

This selection is from the Apology of Plato. Socrates has been condemned and he must now, as was Athenian custom at the time, suggest a counter penalty to that suggested by his accuser, death. Socrates says:

εἰ οὖν δεῖ με κατὰ τὸ δίκαιον τῆς ἀξίας τιμᾶσθαι, τούτου τιμῶμαι, ἐν πρυτανείῳ σιτήσεως.

It means, "Therefore if I must propose a penalty according to the justice of my deserts, I propose the penalty of eating at the city hall. "

Essentially, "Going on what I deserve, I suggest you put me on welfare."

Talk about cheeky, huh? :-)

Another Story

But here begins a new account, the account of a man's gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. It might make the subject of a new story - but our present story is ended.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky is brilliant. It's as simple as that.

You've Gotta Love Dean Martin

Good Mornin', Life!

I have always been a girl who shunned things associated with girls. I vehemently avoid anything that scents of perfume, that hints of fashion, that whispers of a perm. Guns and swords, not barbies and mommy's high heels, are the toys of my childhood memories. And though I accept in theory feminine things which are good, I still have a natural aversion to them in practice. With that said, I have a confession to make.

I love this stuff called hairspray.

Who could imagine that a few small sprays of something could raise lifeless hair from the dead? My hair, with the body of spaghetti drenched in olive oil, sighed with relief as these giant's hands upheld it throughout a long day yesterday. With hairspray providing momentum, my hair boldly vanquished the forces of grease, which are the normal victors after a two hour span.

Sweet hairspray, how glorious 'twas to awake with hair still shapely and formed! Be forever present in my life, pungent giver of hope to the despairing!

From Truth Springs All Things

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.

~C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

It is an established fact (a truth universally acknowledged for Austen fans out there) that men must have some sort of a battle to fight. Every boy has his bow and arrow and his stock of guns. Look into any book and watch any movie. Examine the boys in your neighborhood closely and you'll see it. It's a built-in need to struggle against something, anything. Boys share this with their fathers, and between them women often find themselves exasperated with the perpetual wars which go on.

I believe this is where the sports phenomenon springs from. Men congregate together, living each moment of these mock melees. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer. They all have one thing in common: competition and combat. It's the same with video games. In the virtual worlds before them, men get the combative equivalent of a sugar rush. They feel that triumph that comes with victory, that despair that accompanies defeat.

Now, let me ask the question. What happens when a man doesn't watch or play sports or play video or any other sort of games?

He battles the elements.

How do I know this, you may ask? Such a man is my father, Mr. Phileas Fogg. He is of a phlegmatic disposition, and not at all inclined to typical outlets of male warfare-lust. Yet, being a man, he too requires a vent. So when winter comes with several feet of snow, and all sane persons remain at home, my father ploughs the road by hand to get to work. He drives in pouring (and I mean POURING) rain, peering through his bottle cap glasses to see what is invisible to those with good eyes. He drives broken down trucks which couldn't pass safety measures, defying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to do its worst. And it gives him a strange sort of satisfaction to feel that he's defeating the forces of nature.

An anecdote to prove my story: Some months ago, my father's door broke partially and wouldn't close on its own. He had to hold it with one hand while driving - while driving a stick shift, no less! Instead of taking it to a mechanic, as we repeatedly suggested, he simply locked it into position and held it with his arm. Sitting in the car next to him, you'd see his left hand tensed, holding the door, and his right caught between turning the wheel and changing shifts, looking like a pioneer driving a wagon while shooting his Colt at vengeful Indians. When someone called him on the phone, he'd have to hold his neck askew to keep it in place. Occasionally he'd say, "Sorry, turn coming, I've got to put the phone down." (For the record, when he took the car into the shop, it took approximately 30 minutes and very little money to fix.)

Strange creatures, men.

From Aquinas's Summa Theologica

The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Why Man is not God

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself...Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

This is something that separates us from God. He can truly make something where there was nothing before; we cannot. Everything we do is simply an ordering of what was already there. This then begs the question: what today can we order, what today can we shape? Everything takes on a new meaning when you think of it as something which is in chaos which needs order.

Cleaning your room takes on a whole new depth when you think of it as invention.

Thoughts from Daniel Webster

We are among the sepulchers of our fathers.

The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Now are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us also a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.

Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and a habitual feeling that these...states are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.

~From Daniel Webster's Dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument

To What Can Lewis Be Compared?

C. S. Lewis truly is a marvel. He has no match for profound simplicity. Here is a sample of this giant's writing.

Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Beautiful, Simply Beautiful

On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read of heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a life would be accomplished. And now she had learned that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

False Humility

What a thought! How often do we think of something we do as a virtue which is merely a vice by another name?

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

~Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters

If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your masters;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can think with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breath a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

~Rudyard Kipling

She Was a Phantom of Delight

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;

Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful dawn;

A dancing shape, an image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A spirit, yet a woman too!

Her household motions light and free,

And step of virgin liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet;

A creature not too bright or good

For human nature's daily food,

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A being breathing thoughtful breath,

A traveler between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect woman, nobly planned

To warn, to comfort, to command;

And yet a spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.

~William Wordsworth

How few women today aspire to be such a suggestion of something magical beyond the here-and-now!

The Hand May be a Little Child's

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.

~George Eliot, Silas Marner

Let us pause today and let these words sink in. The babe yelping for a midday snack, the child tugging on your sleeve for attention, the saucy tree-climber - such innocence and inexperience are founders of good in us.

Now remember the film Children of Men. A world without children is a world without laughter. There is no color, no decency, no hope. Memory fades and the pleasurable monster of self comes to fill the vast emptiness left by it's tiny former occupant when a life has no toothing dependent.

Oh, I thank God for the many little ones who, when I think I lead, are in fact leading me!

Opportunity

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: -

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel -

That blue blade that the king's son bears - but this

Blunt thing!" - he snapped and flung it from his hand.

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broke sword,

Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout

Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

~Edward R. Sill

What opportunities do we pass up every day?

A Warning to Myself

I thought this quote an apt beginning to my endeavor.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

~Samuel Johnson

I dare say if Dr. Johnson believed it, such a maxim is good enough for me. May I always live up to such a standard!