John Hope Franklin, 1915 – 2009: A life of learning

“The very essence of the life of the mind is the freedom to inquire, to examine, and to criticize. But that freedom has the same restraints abroad that it has at home: to state one’s position, if impelled by personal conviction, with clarity, reason, and sobriety, always mindful of the point that the scholar recognizes [...]

Filched

The one thing that jumped out at me from the recent AP article by William Kates on the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style was the following sentence,
Strunk’s “Elements of Style” probably would have vanished for good had not someone stolen one of the two copies in the Cornell library in 1957 [...]

National Poetry Month 2009: Essential Pleasures

Poetry is like peace on earth, good will toward men.  It’s something we should read and enjoy year-round, not just in spring and all, but for many of us, without the extra effort of a special day or month, it gets rather lost of the shuffle of daily living.
National Poetry Month is celebrated both in [...]

New and very good

We just finished reading and heartily recommend the newish Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial by Jen Bryant (no relation, I believe, to William Jennings…), published by Knopf in February 2008, a novel in verse for older children about the Scopes Monkey Trial.  Jen Bryant has written the book from the perspective of those [...]

Tentative high school science plans

I’ve been working for the past few weeks on what I’m going to do for science with Laura from grades 9-12; she’ll be starting 7th grade this fall, but like many home schoolers I feel more comfortable starting to plan sooner rather than later.  Of all three children, Laura, the eldest, has struggled the most [...]

Poetry Friday: Is it truth you want?

More Phyllis McGinley, from her collection, A Pocketful of Wry (1940). This is a poem she wrote in response to a news item, which nowadays is nowhere to be found online. I can’t find any mention of the American Library Survey Report she mentions, which I suspect may have been an American Library Association [...]

How not to save money with home dentistry

More words of wisdom about managing money, from reporter Joe Nocera at The New York Times:
At a panel a month ago, put together by Portfolio magazine, [Elie] Wiesel expressed, better than I’ve ever heard it, why people gave Mr. Madoff their money. “I remember that it was a myth that he created around him,” Mr. [...]

In like a lion

Though I’m sure he’d succumb: the temperature so far today, at 9:23 am, is -35.7 Celsius, which unlike the recent snow squalls is very unusual here for this time of year.
Unusual and unwanted.

“Listen to some words of wisdom…

…Metrotone reports a talk between Mr. Courage and Mr. Fear in which you’ll be interested”
From Hearst Metrotone News, 1930.  I suppose it’s not too cynical to suggest that William Randolph Hearst had a vested interest in the general moviegoing public throwing in their lot with Mr. Courage. Crackers and milk, anyone?

Letting the sun in through the cellophane

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable [...]

Poetry Friday: Down the human road

I don’t know what made this poem jump into my head this week. It’s one of Phyllis McGinley’s most powerful, I think, and I have no idea whether she was inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous quotation, “I have seen gross intolerance shewn in support of toleration” from his 1817 essay, “Blessed are ye [...]

You don’t say

– The New York Times discovers after 75 years that in hard times, people “just want to hide in a very dark place”, particularly a movie theater.
– Researchers have discovered the shocking news that children learn better if they’re allowed to have recess, and “other research suggests that all children, not just those with attention [...]