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publicly recommitting to the muse

November 1, 2017 / / 0 Comments

It’s that time again–when the dog days of summer have finally ended and you want to put on some socks and sit at your computer with a nice cup of hot tea. I’m talking about National Novel Writing Month! In November, many writers spur each other on to complete a novel in thirty days with local and virtual write-ins and events. I have participated two other times, but have yet to come out the other side with an honest-to-goodness complete novel, or even one I cared to keep working on beyond November 30th. This year I have a much more solid plan for the first in a series of young adult novels that I’m very excited to write.

My long-term plan, in a nutshell, is to create books and book-related products for children and parents who want more from their children’s education so they can:

  • foster a love of reading,
  • learn not to be afraid of big ideas,
  • think critically, and
  • dive deeper into important primary texts.

This introductory novel is the first of many things to come within that mission. In each subsequent book in this series, our heroine will resurrect a great thinker from history who will help her piece together truths about how to overcome tyranny, what makes a just society, how to be an ideal citizen of the world, and how to start rebuilding the world she lives in.

Here’s a brief synopsis of what I’ll be working on for NaNoWriMo:

A young girl lives in a police state in which books no longer exist. Her parents were the last of a generation of people who knew how to farm the traditional way, with soil and seeds. And they were the last of the literates. They secretly passed down to their daughter the knowledge of every book they could remember by telling stories connected to animal characters that they had crocheted.

Her mom was killed in the resistance, and her dad tries to teach the girl everything he knows before the year’s end, before they’re caught, and before his daughter starts to remember that he was killed in the resistance, too.

You see, the little girl has the power to resurrect one person from the dead for one year. She had wished for them to come back, but didn’t know her own gift. Now she must make the most of her power. Now that her parents are truly gone, who can she bring back? Who can guide her? Who can help bring about the change her world desperately needs?

It sounds cheezy to condense it down like that, but there’s a whole world left to unpack. I’m excited to see what unfolds when I commit to writing an average of 1,660 words per day over the next thirty days. In the words of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, “This is it. Don’t get scared now.”

educational coloring, continued

October 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

F is for Freud

“Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.”

Austrian neurologist (1856–1939). Father of psychoanalysis, a method of uncovering internal conflicts based on the patient’s dreams and free associations. Considered himself as primarily a scientist more than a doctor, pursuing an understanding of human knowledge and experience. Worked with Josef Breuer, which led him to believe that neuroses stem from childhood traumas that could be cured by unburying them from the unconscious mind and dealing with them intellectually and emotionally.

G is for Goethe

“Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.”

German playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theater director, critic, & amateur artist (1749-1842). A central representative of the Romantic movement in Europe. Best known for his long poem/play Faust about a half-legendary figure who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Prominent member of the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement, which sought to overthrow the Enlightenment “cult of Rationalism” in favor of individualism, feeling, and nature.

deep roots make strong trees

October 11, 2017 / / 0 Comments

We live in a world of instant information. Now more than ever we can access data that confirms our own beliefs; it has never been easier to live in an echo chamber. We compound our confirmation bias by simultaneously broadening our social circle to global and limiting our intake to only that with which we agree. We can have a thousand “friends” and choose to listen to only a fraction of them. Even though there’s more information than there has ever been before, we can still choose to insulate ourselves.

The instant nature of this information also means that much of it will be unfounded. It’s harder to verify. There’s little at stake when data can be made global at the click of a button the moment a thought has been had.

Anonymity also lowers the stakes of sending thoughts into the world. A twitter war with a faceless entity can make us feel entitled to express our opinions without consequence. And each side will be “right,” justified in their opinions. Divisive language happens when there is anonymous emoting (because what more can we call it when no common ground or intellectual growth is sought?)

We have to do better. We have to dig deeper. We have to be open to learning that we are wrong.

An education worth having must begin with humility. It’s important to recognize bad rhetoric; there’s a lot of it out there. A voracious reader will begin to make himself less easily duped by false or manipulative talk. Exposing oneself to a broad range of thought will make for a better thinker, a more discerning human being, and therefore a better citizen of the world.

We can’t expect to be good judges of our present if we are unwilling to zoom out and consider the wider context.

Reading great works from those who came before us gives us roots. The ideas of past geniuses broaden our own network of ideas. When a strong wind of someone disagreeing with us comes along, we can take that view into consideration without fear that it will uproot our entire system of beliefs. The roots are deep enough and broad enough to take on new ideas and weigh them against existing ones. We needn’t be threatened by new ideas because we are equipped to look at them critically and with an open mind. More importantly, we have trained ourselves to learn from everything with humility.

educational coloring

October 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

For those of you who have been so kind as to follow my “junior Great Books” project, I thank you! Here is what I have been working on lately, ramping up to my first book series. I want to first write some books for little ones, maybe ages 3-6, introducing key authors and concepts.

I may do characters to go along with my animal plushies in another iteration, but for now I thought it would be fun to do alphabet coloring pages. Instant gratification!

So I will be posting them here as they are completed so anyone can download and print them as they please. At the end of the series, I will compile them into a complete book (both PDF and print) at the end of the series.

I hope you enjoy! As always, feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, struggles, suggestions, requests, or just want to talk. 🙂

 

 

A is for Augustine

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

St. Augustine of Hippo, known best for writing City of God, was quite the ladies man in his youth. It wasn’t until he saw the wrong in habitually stealing pears off of someone’s tree (for kicks, he didn’t even eat the pears) that he recognized the nature of sin, which prompted him to turn his life around and write Confessions.

B is for Bronte

“Conventionality is not morality.” –Charlotte Brontë

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.” –Emily Brontë

“But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.” –Anne Brontë

The Brontë sisters each wrote well-received works in their lifetimes under male pseudonyms, Emily for Wuthering Heights, Charlotte for Jane Eyre, and Anne for Agnes Grey. They employed “Byronic heroes” in their novels–arrogant, passionate, yet magnetic male figures with dark hearts (see Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester). As children, they had very vivid imaginations and created matchbook-sizes novels to bolster the morale of British soldiers.

C is for Cicero

Credite amori vera dicenti: “believe love speaking the truth.”
Docendo discitar: “by teaching one learns.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a politician during the decline and fall of the Roman Republic. He wrote to keep his mind sharp and drown his sorrows when he lost interest in serving the government under the rule of Caesar. He believed that greed is evil, and that repayment of debt is as important as national security. He believed that the only way to gain power is by mobilizing goodwill. “Freedom suppressed and then regained bites more sharply than if it had never been in peril.”
Gaining true friends and a good reputation requires goodwill (doing or willing to do one a service), confidence (intelligent and regarded as just/good), and respect of the kind that gets one promoted to high office. If a man is just, all three requirements are in the bag. You must genuinely be the kind of person you wish others to see you as. “Nothing counterfeit has any staying power.”
  • Wisdom: the ability to distinguish truth from falsity and to understand the relationships between them and the consequences of each.
  • Temperance: ability to restrain passions (pathe) and to make the appetites (hormai) amenable to reason.
  • Justice: capacity to behave considerately and understandingly in associations with other people.
Qualities of a just person include moderation, loyalty/devotion to family, eloquence, kindness and liberality (both money and services), lenient in demands of others, avoid offending anyone. True friendship is wanting the best for another with no motives other than that person attaining what is best (requires that both parties are just).

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.”

 Dante Alighieri was from Florence, Italy. He famously wrote the epic poem The Divine Comedy, an allegorical journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. It was released in Italian instead of the typical Latin or Greek, thus reaching a broader audience and enhancing global literacy. He is credited with inventing the poetry rhyme scheme known as terza rima.
He studied painting, music, and poetry, and was influenced by a contemporary group of Italian poets–who wrote about personal & political passions–as well as Homer, Dante, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Cicero’s De Amicitia.
He worked as a pharmacist and was involved in public affairs before turning to philosophy. He fought with those who were wary of the Pope’s political influence in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict in 1289 and was consequently exiled from Florence for life.

 

 

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