A visit to my cousins’ hard apple cider processing plant showed me that making the beverage has changed markedly since the days of John Keats and Robert Frost.
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Tag Archives: Robert Frost
Not Your Father’s Apple Cider
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ode to Autumn", After Apple-Picking, apples, farming, hard apple cider, John Keats Comments closed
This Is the Way the World Ends
Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” reflects upon how the world will end. Recent news of melting Antarctic glaciers says we can expect fire and ice to both play a role.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fire and Ice", C. S. Lewis, climate change, global warming, Last Battle, melting Antarctic ice, melting glaciers Comments closed
Captain Nemo Invades New England
Snowstorm Nemo set in conjunction with Joyce’s “The Dead” leads to some interesting reflections.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Stopping by Woods on a Winter Evening", Dead, James Joyce, Nemo, snow, weather Comments closed
Growing More Liberal as We Age
Frost may allude to the belief that we become more conservative as we age, but his own poetry refutes the claim.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I Never Dared Be Radical When Young", Aging, Birches, racism, tolerance Comments closed
Meaning Is the Meaning of the Liberal Arts
When Frost’s tree falls in front of us, it can mean two things (at least). Literally, it’s a hassle. To the unexamined life, that’s all it will ever be. Get down and clear it away. On the other hand, there’s that question of meaning and where it comes from. Human beings do their best when their actions are invested with significance. That’s why we have ceremonies, like this one, to compel us to stop (because time itself doesn’t do so on its own), take some time, reflect on the significance of what is happening to us.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "On a Tree Fallen across the Road", Education, Joseph Urgo, Liberal Arts Comments closed
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 […]
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 Also tagged After Apple-Picking, Franz Kafka, Great Wall of China, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, teaching, William Wordsworth, Work Comments closed