In a universe more and more abstract . . .

Quoted in Clive James' Cultural Amnesia.

In a universe more and more abstract, it is up to us to make sure that the human voice does not cease to be heard. - Witold Gombrowicz, Journal

A Klondike wilderness

This passage from David Perkins' The Eureka Effect made me think of the challenge facing parents in finding the books that they most want their children to read and which their children are most likely to enjoy. Perkins is speaking of breakthrough thinking and its constituent components.

The first challenge of finding anything worthwhile in a Klondike wilderness is that there is just so much of it! Our conventional image of a breakthrough involves leaps of the imagination, a matter to be looked at more closely a little later. However, all too often there is no natural path even for imagination to follow. One just has to rove through the wilderness to see what turns up. And, if the wilderness is big, one has to rove with reasonable efficiency.

25-35,000 new children's titles are published each year in the US alone.

"You never say farewell to courage."

From James C. Humes' Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln.

In August 1964, Sir Winston Churchill lay dying in London's King Edward VII Hospital. General Eisenhower, who had just attended the twentieth anniversary of the D day invasion in France, visited his bedside. The venerable statesman, then in his ninetieth year, did not speak when Eisenhower entered his suite but instead reached out a frail pink hand to clasp Eisenhower's. The two hands joined on the bedside table.

No words were spoken - just two partners sharing silently the memories of their struggles in war and peace for the principles they both cherished. Ten minutes passed in silence. Two nations, two leaders, and two friends. Then Churchill unclasped his right hand and slowly moved it in a "vee for victory" sign!

Eisenhower, his eyes moist, left the room and told an aide:

I just said good-bye to Winston, but you never say farewell to courage.

Richard Henry Dana's nostalgia

I have nearly finished Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. An interesting story that it took a long time to getting around to read. Not a critical text in a reading life but one that has been worth the while. An unexpected pleasure has been the addendum to the original publication. Nearly a quarter of a century after his time as a laboring sailor on the coast of California, Dana returns as a prosperous, established, mature citizen to revisit the scenes of his youth. It is an interesting addendum on many levels; for the history of California, for social commentary, etc.

Not least is it interesting for Dana's marked nostalgia for a time and experience that while seminal to his development was also demonstrably challenging, hard and frequently unpleasant. The whole addendum is enfused with this sort of conflicted nostalgia as captured in this passage.

But evening is drawing on, and our boat sails to-night. So, refusing a horse or carriage, I walk down, not unwilling to be a little early, that I may pace up and down the beach, looking off to the islands and the points, and watching the roaring, tumbling billows. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear,--the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates. Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing from the vulgar, wearisome toil of uninteresting, forced manual labour.

"I wish you had read more books."

From Peter Martin's A Life of James Boswell. James Boswell has confessed to Samuel Johnson that "I don't talk much from books; but there is a very good reason for it. I have not read many books." To which Johnson replies, foreshadowing the plea of many reading researchers today that the more one reads the more one knows and the more one knows, the more one reads:

I wish you had read more books. The foundation must be laid by reading. General principles must be had from books. But they must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation, you never get a system.

Boswell was well aware of his deficiencies in systematic learning.

There is an imperfection, a superficialness, in all my notions. I understand nothing clearly, nothing to the bottom. I pick up fragments, but never have in my memory a mass of any size. I wonder really if it be possible for me to acquire any one part of knowledge fully.

For all that this was a serious issue for him, Boswell also recognized his true talent as a catalyst.

I am a quick fire, a taper, which can light up a great and lasting fire though itself is soon extinguished.

For all that self-knowledge, Boswell was ever a slave to his appetites and distractions. Wine, women and song were ever present hurdles to the course of action he knew he ought to pursue. Samuel Johnson decided to assist Boswell. "He is to buy for me a chest of books of his choosing off stalls, and I am to read more and drink less. That was his counsel."

Johnson did buy those books and had them delivered to Boswell but apparently they sat untended on shelves. There is also no evidence that Boswell ever drank less.

I wonder just which books those might have been to be so estimated by the author of the first English dictionary?

How did that happen?

I like to think of myself as a person that stays reasonably current on news and world events. I read a couple of newspapers each day, subscribe to several general news and science magazines, visit news and commentary sites, etc. It is true that there are periods of days and sometimes weeks when the press of business means I am not as thorough as usual but still, I think I am pretty well on top of things.

So how on earth did I miss a completely new rift system emerging in Ethiopia four years ago? And this isn't just some obscure deep earth geological survey. This is a right-out-in-the-open, 20 foot wide, 35 mile long rift that formed in a matter of days. Seems like it would be hard to miss that event. But apparently miss it I did.

I guess the lesson is: We never know as much as we think we know.

Talking and Conversing

I came across this via The Long Boy and Others by B.L. Reid but is actually from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson

Though his usual phrase for conversation was talk, yet he made a distinction; for when he once told me that he dined the day before at a friend's house, with 'a very pretty company;' and I asked him if there was good conversation, he answered, 'No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation; there was nothing discussed.'

I wonder if the distinction between societies and communities is that members of a society talk with one another, where members of a community converse?

The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. An early mystery novel but a deeply contemplative and even philosophical one and studded with memorable lines.

"The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all."

Ooph!

One of the reasons we started Through the Magic Door was to give parents a resource where they might find not just good books but books that are somewhat more affirming and positive than many of the titles deemed appropriate by more refined tastes. This need for something a little more leavening was reaffirmed while perusing a catalogue I received a couple of days ago. This is a supplier of books to teachers for classroom libraries. The following are snippets of the synopses of the first twenty recommended titles.

Death, drug dealing, smuggling, prison, abuse, abandonment, lying, premeditated murder, juvenile detention, illegal immigration, homelessness, bullying, depression, revenge, and handicaps. Who would inflict this kind of fare on kids? More to the point, what teacher would consider this appropriate? Despite what I might think, there clearly is a healthy business to be had catering to such a dark world view.

Poignant tale of five handicapped boys at a summer camp.

Donnie has always ignored the bullies. He lives under the radar, sailing through classes and working on his graphic novel. Then a...

Hakeem and his family must relocate to Detroit where he quickly becomes enemies with a former childhood friend, who also happens to...

Feeling alienated from everyone around her, Los Angeles high school senior Victoria hides behind the identity of a favorite movie...

After Martin's little brother, is killed, all Martin can think about is revenge. When a new teacher reaches out to him and he meets...

In the picture, Aunt Donna is very, very pregnant. My mother is not. I look at my mom and she is crying silently, her hand over her...

After being tormented by a bully at his new school for months, Darrell is faced with the decision to keep running away, or find a...

Tired of being hungry, cold, and dirty from living on the streets of New York City with other homeless teenagers, dying one by one,...

Orca Soundings series. For mature readers.

Fifteen-year-old Victor Flores journeys north in a desperate attempt to cross the Arizona border and find work in the United States...

Just when she thinks she knows who she is, Hope falls in love and her world is turned upside down. Orca Soundings series. For mature...

Remy has just been released from juvenile detention, there because he assaulted a guy who insulted his immigrant girlfriend. Remy...

In 1962 England, despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, as well as enduring abuse...

Fifteen-year-old Zits has been tossed around the foster child system since he was six years old. When he decides to gun people down...

When 16-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke...

When Hannah gets stung, she rises out of her body, where she's greeted by her dead boyfriend, Logan, and a loving but unseen...

When Anna, Emma, and Mariah concoct a story about why they are late getting home one Friday night. Their lie has unimaginable...

With gritty details of drug use and prison violence, the author relates how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler,...

Kate is in the dumps. She's tired of her tomboy image and she misses her best friend. Opportunity knocks when fly-girl Naleejah...

New in town, Casey is desperate to fit in and make friends. Her parents leave for the weekend, so she has a party. The living room...

I dwell in a lonely house I know

Ghost House
by Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me -
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad, -
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.