Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.

The Masque of Anarchy
1819
Percy Bysshe Shelley

- - -

Grief

QUESTION AUTHORITY

great organic all-purpose cleanser

see: Howard Zinn and A People's History of the United States

one more thing...

with thanks to my daughter


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

thank you

This class has been life-changing -- the works we read, the ideas we encountered, the discussions we shared, the work we did, the every day magic -- an unfolding revelation and joy.

I am so deeply grateful to each and every one of you and to Michael Sexson -- the Wizard, White Knight, Iorek, midwife and more ...

Lach Heim! To Life!

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.


Tao te Ching

v. 41, trans. Stephen Mitchell

______________________________________________________

A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

Connoeisseur of Chaos, Wallace Stevens


______________________________________________________


Death is the mother of beauty

Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens


______________________________________________________

Pullman's Dark Materials is a work of complex beauty to which I know I will eagerly return -- and happily pass on to others. I found it profoundly moving and disturbing in the way writing should be.

I'm also very fond of his willingness to stand up to the prevailing winds of opinion, to fight the good fight for creating complex literature for people, young and old, who now, more than ever, need and deserve it.

two interesting interviews, chosen by Pullman himself
1."Everything that is Dust is the result of the amorous inclinations of matter (Blake: 'Eternity is in love with the productions of Time')."
2. "We're rightly concerned that children should learn to read and to write and to become literate, and so on, but in doing that, we sometimes forget that pictures can also tell stories, can inform us in ways that are not exactly parallel to the ways in which words do. They're different. They work differently. I think it important for us to help young people to gain that sort of literacy as well."
Pullman here also discusses narrative voice and metaphor/allegory and the nourishment stories provide -- fascinating!
"William Blake, of course: 'Show me a world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy' "

Completed blogs due Monday

With special thanks to Taylor for letting me know!:

our completed blogs are due Monday, Dec. 8

How to Measure a Cheshire Grin?
“Lewis Carroll in Numberland”

.

Three degrees of happiness

NY Times: Good Cheer May Spread Itself

"A paper being published Friday in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious -- and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers. [...] a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.

'Happiness is like a stampede [...] Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know.'

...Happiness spread outward by three degrees, to the friends of friends of friends."