|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| 
I homeschooled for over a decade and here is some evidence. I wanted to take a pic before I threw it away . . . we are cleaning out the room where I had it all stored. (My 18- and 19-year old daughters are turning that room into a college dorm room while they attend community college.)
You Christian homeschoolers out there will recognize a plethora of Abeka workbooks. Abeka was good for math, but I would go a different route for everything else if I could do it over. I did use a lot of other curricula besides Abeka; they're just not showing up in the photo. (Sonlight was a good curriculum; I am keeping all the readers and historical fiction from that one.)
| | |
| At my daughter's classical school she was told to start a Commonplace Book this year, as a way to collect and keep quotations that you hope to use in your future thinking/speaking/writing. I finally got around to doing a little research on this topic and it turns out that commonplacing (which is actually for collecting far more than just quotations) is a rich old tradition -- and I've been doing this all along with my spiral notebooks (which I thought were weird, because I didn't notice anyone else in my life constantly taking notes).
What was especially interesting was that one description of how literary people used to read (and then write in their commonplace), is exactly how I read:
"It [commonplacing] involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality." (From "Extraordinary Commonplaces," The New York Review of Books, 12/21/00)
I almost always only read parts of books, and I always am reading (parts of) several books at once. I love the reason for it in the snippet above: " . . . for the world was full of signs."
My commonplace books are also full of things that are not very scholarly. Little reminders to myself ("Tell Lynn I like all the sticky notes she put on the books she gave me,") shopping lists, phone numbers, song titles, store hours, gift lists, vacation planning and research. In fact, a lot of it is mundane and daily. But the thing is, I discovered that I had to have it all in one place (the quotations, the book thoughts, and the shopping lists), or I would either never write down -- or write down and lose -- the gems that I really want to keep.
| | |
| Yesterday I was enchanted by his 1965 video, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," the famous one where he holds up the cue cards. It's so genuine, so nostalgic, and Bob Dylan is so young and adorable in it, that it pained my heart to watch it -- the good kind of heart-ache, where you recognize something full of soul. (Then I had to laugh and marvel at the very well done parody by Weird Al Yankovich.)
From what I can tell, Bob Dylan cared more about being a poet than singing, playing, or performing. Is this Dylan song below, good poetry? I can tell that the wordsmithing is good. But does it say anything? Is poetry supposed to say anything, or does it count as good poetry if the words are chosen and crafted with skill? Poetry has always been frustrating to me, and I have always felt a little bit resentful towards poets and their purposely hidden meanings. I feel that poets can easily fool us by crafting words with such skill that it seems profound, but actually says nothing.
Love Minus Zero/No Limit - by Bob DylanMy love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can't buy her. In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all. The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge. The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers' nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing. | | |
| I am at home on vacation this week and I am having a fascinating time every evening looking up different musicians from the 1960s. I have a list of musicians from the 1960s in one tab, wikipedia in the next tab, and youtube in the next, and I look at old video footage from the 1960s of one band or musician and then read about them on wikipedia.
Since I was about 10 years old I have loved this one song called No Time by the Guess Who. So it's been 38 years and I've heard this song a zillion times but never seen it performed -- never seen the band members. So last night, after 38 years, I finally see them -- I see this footage from a concert in 1969, and there's this psychadelic green and pink painted back-drop for the stage, and there is Burton Cummings with this glorious long brown hippy hair and strong cleft chin singing this song I had always loved but it had always only been an auditory experience, not visual.
I was so moved to be able to see him. 1969 looks incredibly delicious. All the nuances of the era seem awesome and precious when I look at these old videos. The clothes, the hair, the attitudes, oh it is just so interesting.
I have also looked at The Mamas and The Papas, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison. These last 3 especially are considered really, really great. I kept looking at their old concert videos, and reading about them, trying to understand why they are great. I guess The Beach Boys have really good harmonies ("vocals"), and just all around high quality songs. Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison are little more quirky . . . they have unique voices and unique styles. Both a little bit odd, really. I think with both Dylan and Roy Orbison, when you first watch them perform, you think, hmm . . . little bit weird.
But I think trying to understand why they are great is a worthwhile investigation. What is the shape and source of their genius?
| | |
| It took me awhile to remember how to add a "weblog" entry, it's been so long since I've written anything here. I told Gail that since it's Palm Sunday, if she didn't get a palm, she could wave the inside of her hand, because that's a palm.
| | |
|
