Personal

  • Lydia in­vented the char­ac­ter and song, “Booty Dickinson”
  • Closed on the house!

My Thoughts

  • Strong opin­ions loosely held: “strong” means be de­ci­sive, “loosely” means be hum­ble and not trapped by ide­ol­ogy.
  • Barn owl is the creepy owl
  • What does it mean that the dom­i­nant American pop cul­ture genre has shifted from west­ern to su­per­hero?

Writing, Links, Podcasts

Notes

  • Angelina Stanford
    • Charlotte Mason said don’t put ed­u­ca­tional de­vices like work­sheets be­tween stu­dents and books.
    • The teacher is not the ar­biter of all knowl­edge and should­n’t make all the con­nec­tions for the child.
    • The teacher should lead the child to the stream and let them drink, not pour wa­ter into their mouth through a fun­nel.
    • But: some things you must teach, like phon­ics. Reading aloud is “putting your­self be­tween the child and a book”.
    • An ex­pert teacher is a liv­ing book. They should in­cite cu­ri­ousity and lead them to make con­nec­tions. The teacher can also learn with this method.
    • Don’t teach mas­tery of a book, ex­pect­ing the stu­dent to give you back in­for­ma­tion ver­ba­tim. Model the big ideas.
    • Remove ob­sta­cles be­tween child and book: cul­tural as­sump­tions, ig­no­rance of form, etc.
  • Wes Callihan
    • Starting with Homer, every epic has a bee sim­ile.
    • Read aloud. Move your lips as you read. Until the Middle Ages, no one read silently.
    • Men are made in the im­age of God. Even un­re­gen­er­ate men have some truth, beauty, and good­ness. Lies work when mixed with truth. “Plundering the Egyptians” is sep­a­rat­ing the truth from the lies.
    • It’s not ad hominem to dis­trust an ar­gu­ment made by a moral ar­gu­ment.
    • Reading fic­tion is emo­tional boot camp.
    • Qualities a teacher should have
      1. Love - for knowl­edge, sub­ject, stu­dents
      2. Growth - read books, ex­change ideas
      3. Curiousity - en­gine dri­ving growth
      4. Diversity of in­ter­ests - in­tel­lec­tual, phys­i­cal, skilled
      5. Direction - short- and long-term goals
      6. Humility - al­lows learn­ing more, debt to tra­di­tion
      7. Perspective - God is ul­ti­mate goal, te­los
      8. Praying
  • Bishop Robert Barron
    • Theme of scrip­ture is or­tho­doxy: right wor­ship
    • Sin is bad praise - Cain, priests of Baal
    • When you are lib­er­ated from wor­ship­ping plea­sures, you can re­ally en­joy them. - Chesterton
  • Doug Wilson
    • Trumpkin knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween giv­ing ad­vice and tak­ing or­ders. He also vowed to leave if ogres were in­vited to join the army.
    • Feudal lords pro­tected vas­sals in ex­change for loy­alty.
    • King George did­n’t pro­tect colonies from abuses of Parliament. He broke covenant and the colonies were legally jus­ti­fied in de­clar­ing in­de­pen­dence.
  • Martin Cothran
    • Hardest part of writ­ing a story: set­ting. The best writ­ing is re­gional, au­thors who know a place and the plants and an­i­mals of that place.
    • A good writer know the most ex­cit­ing place is “here”.
    • The Western is America’s great myth, to us what Homer was to the Greeks and Virgil was to the Romans.
  • Scholé Sisters
    • Clement of Alexandria said phi­los­o­phy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Jews. All wis­dom leads to God and we need not fear it.
    • Amusement and en­ter­tain­ment is a re­fresh­ment. A good tran­si­tion from work to scholé.
  • Kelly Cumbee
    • Reads of the Divine Comedy:
      1. Listen while read­ing along to 3 can­tos at a time of Clive James’s trans­la­tion
      2. Read 1 canto at a time of Sayers’s trans­la­tion: in­tro note, end notes, canto
      3. Anthony Esolen’s trans­la­tion
      4. Longfellow’s trans­la­tion
  • During the Napoleonic Era, you could buy your rank in the British army, but not the navy.
  • We know noth­ing about the ar­chi­tect of the Chartres cathe­dral.
  • “A man of let­ters” = read the great books
  • “Lit” = let­ter (Latin)
  • “Gram” = let­ter (Greek)

Quotes

  • “The de­tec­tive story dif­fers from every other story in this: that the reader is only happy if he feels a fool.” — G. K. Chesterton, “The Ideal Detective Story”

Words

  • Anthology: gar­land or bou­quet (anthos = flower, lo­gos = gather), col­lec­tion of flow­ers of lit­er­a­ture (beautiful pas­sages)
  • Chancellor: di­rec­tor of chancery. Originally Roman em­per­or’s chief scribe or sec­re­tary, gained ju­di­cial power, be­came a bish­op’s chief judge, be­came a high of­fi­cer of a European state, “keeper of the great seal of the king­dom”.
  • Chancery: English high­est court next to Parliament, ju­ris­dic­tion mostly eq­uity; US court of eq­uity
  • Goosecap: silly per­son
  • Scholé: leisurely, cre­ative work, not done for profit
  • Sebaceous: per­tain­ing to fat
  • Vizard: vi­sor