Nothing Clever Comes to Mind

Reading the Bible with Children

jamiecain — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:58:06 +0000

Just came across David Murray’s Bible reading plan for children. Stunning for its straightforward simplicity.

Harper Lee on books and reading

jamiecain — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:50:22 +0000

I have long loved Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, even though I read it later in life. I have also appreciated Lee’s occasional commentary on the state of books and reading. This letter Lee wrote to Oprah’s O magazine really got me on a couple levels, not least because I finally broke down and [...]

“The good teacher will…”

jamiecain — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:47:38 +0000

"...the good teacher will almost in the same breath translate a great poetic sentence, bring out its relations to the whole of which it is a part, make its musical rhythm felt by appropriate declamation, explain a historical or an antiquarian allusion, call attention to a dialectic form, put a question about a peculiar use of the optative, compare the imagery with similar figures of speech in ancient and modern poetry, and use the whole as a text for a little discourse on the difference between the classical and the modern or romantic spirit; so that you shall not know whether he is teaching science or art, language or literature, grammar, rhetoric, psychology, or sociology, because he is really teaching the elements and indispensable prerequisites of all."

Paul Shorey, "The Case for Classics," in Frank Kelsey's Latin and Greek in American Education, 1927.

H/T: Center for Western Studies

Poems to Memorize

jamiecain — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:07:08 +0000

The list of 101 poems worth memorizing that Ted Hughes published as By Heart. Thinking about putting some of these on my memory to-do list for 2012, thanks to the encouragement of reading Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein. Two down by Frost, memorized earlier this year. William Shakespeare: ›The Witches’ Song‹ from Macbeth Alfred, Lord [...]

Jimmy Fallon wants traditional liturgy

jamiecain — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:04:12 +0000

In an interview on Fresh Air, Jimmy Fallon told host Terry Gross: I want the old way. I want to hang out with the, you know, with the nuns, you know, that was my favorite type of Mass, and the grotto, and just like straight up, just Mass Mass. H/T: First Things blog

Asking the right questions about technology

jamiecain — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:25:57 +0000

“The Bruderhof community … noticed that after using television for a year, their children had stopped singing the community songs and spiritual hymns they used to sing on the playground. So the decision was not over the question, “Is television good or bad?” The question became, “Which do we value more: good television or singing [...]

More “Chaplains,” Fewer “Leaders”

jamiecain — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:58:57 +0000

Mark Galli writes about the need for “chaplain” pastors. : I’ve been a parishioner in many churches over many years. In each church, the pastor has been tempted, as I was, to become the great leader, to shape himself in our culture’s image of success. To be sure, the modern pastor does have to “run [...]

Happy birthday, Jack!

jamiecain — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:46:28 +0000

When I read this article from GOOD, I immediately thought of C.S. Lewis, born on this day in 1898. From the article, which reviews a study that says the dropout rate might connected to the a 6th grade “cataclysmic shift,” from elementary to middle school. Students in the study experienced a “sharp drop” in math [...]

Peterson on Vocational Living

jamiecain — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:15:12 +0000

To live vocationally is not a once-for-all achievement. Vocations can be lost or distorted or deferred. Going through the fish’s belly does not guarantee the identity. Jonah had no sooner begun to live vocationally than he dropped out and had to start all over again. (Eugene Peterson)

The Cure for Cultural Blindness

jamiecain — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:26:54 +0000

More readers will soon get a chance to read Huckleberry Finn. That’s the good news. Twain’s book was the 5th most challenged book of the ’90s, according to the American Library Association, and 14th in the first decade of the 21st century. The bad news? The new readers might not be reading Mark Twain’s version. [...]