Saturday’s New York Times had a column by African American novelist Ishmael Reed attacking those leftists that are excoriating President Obama for his willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts in return for a second stimulus package. What particularly galls Reed is that many of these critics refer to themselves as Obama’s base (as in, […]
Monthly Archives: December 2010
Consolation Prize: Mary, Queen of Heaven,
Spiritual Sunday Today, as a member of my church choir, I participate in our service of Lessons and Carols (an indication that they will let anyone sing, especially if he is a guy). One of our featured songs is a lyric that I teach in my medieval literature survey. “Adam Lay Bound” is a beautifully […]
What to Make of a Diminished Peyton
Sports Saturday “The question that he frames in all but words,” Robert Frost writes in his “Ovenbird” sonnet, “is what to make of a diminished thing.” This poem has always had a special place in my heart.The ovenbird is not a bird that sings when June is bustin’ out all over.Rather, it is a “mid-summer and […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Ovenbird", Football, Peyton Manning, Robert Frost, Sports Comments closed
Five Films that Changed My Life
Film Friday I belong to a film group that every six weeks or so assembles to eat snacks and watch a movie, which we then discuss. We generally watch something out of the mainstream—as our host Jim Bershon (he with the big screen) puts it, “If there’s a line around the block, we don’t want […]
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Essay Grading and the Great Wall of China
At this time of year, I sometimes wonder why I signed up for this gig. Stacks of ungraded essays are strewn “far and wee” across my study, and only the knowledge that I have completed my student essays in the past assures me that I will make it through this batch. In my hour of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged After Apple-Picking, Franz Kafka, Great Wall of China, Robert Frost, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, teaching, William Wordsworth, Work Comments closed
An ABC of Children’s Books
As we enter the holiday season, you can expect a number of posts on children’s books. I have mentioned several times how one of my father’s great joys when we were growing up was reading us the books he had loved as a child. We got extra reading around the Christmas season. Here’s a poem […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "ABC of Books for Christmas", Children, children's books, Christmas, Scott Bates Comments closed
Fantasy Portals to Other Worlds
I have a special place in my heart for The Magician’s Nephew, chronologically the first of the Narnia series. When I was a child, I was especially fascinated by “the wood between the worlds.” This is a quiet forest in which can be found innumerable pools, each of which is the entrance to a world. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged C. S. Lewis, fantasy, Laura Miller, Magician's Book, Magician's Nephew, reading Comments closed
God Calls to Us in the Night
Spiritual Sunday My basketball player who is writing an essay about Henry Vaughan (see my post on him and the poem “Cock Crowing” here) has me thinking about light and dark imagery in the poetry of this 17th century mystical Anglican. Usually Vaughan associates God with light, as in “Cock Crowing” and “The World” (which […]
