Mama Squirrel is trying to escape from the cold bleak reality of snow piled deep around the treehouse, by watching movies like "In the Heat of the Night" and reading books about books. In Reading Lists for College Bound Students, by Doug Estell and some other people, Professor Huck Gutman from the University of Vermont says that students should do something before college in addition to reading lots of books. "Go to art museums. My most depressing experience of the past two years has been teaching Robert Lowell's wonderful 'last' poem, 'Epilogue' in which he compares what he does with words to what Vermeer did with paints. In two years, two classes, 60 students, no student knew who Vermeer was!" (p. 338)
Mama Squirrel is sad too, so she's going to make a point of introducing the young squirrels to Vermeer at the earliest possible point.
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Professor Gutman has a website: http://www.uvm.edu/~sgutman/huckspage.htm . And the poem is online too, but every place I've tried there are lots of popups, so I'm not going to post a link.
This made the Deputy Headmistress so sad she took a book on Vermeer to bed with her last night.
Really, I did. What I also did was give a yawp of dismay when I read this blog entry. Two years, sixty students _at a University_ and no student familiar with Vermeer- how can this be possible?
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