The Intentional thrifter: not so commonplace

I took a big bagful of stuff to the thrift store, but I also picked up three books and a top.

I think this wrap top is an awesome find. It's mostly lyocell, which is a nice-feeling fabric (and biodegradable). It's one of my favourite shades of purple. It has dolman sleeves, which don't show up so well here. It's even reversible.

Frontwards, which leaves the back sort of open and looks more like you've turned it backwards.

Backwards, with the bottom knotted.  Unknotted leaves it hanging a bit open, but that would be okay over a tank top.

Books to pack and read at the new place: Wendell Berry's The Art of the Commonplace, Mortimer J. Adler's The Great Ideas, and A Novelist's Commonplace Book, which is more of a mini-dictionary of writing terms, as defined by Michael Crawley.

From the archives: Old habits and diehards

First posted August 2015. Edited slightly.

I like it when good things turn up in strange places.

The final Brother Cadfael novel centers around his making a very hard decision. For complicated reasons, he chooses to go AWOL so that he can help someone he cares about. He knows that if he does this, he may never be allowed back in the monastery. The identity he has shaped for years can be torn away by a quick decision. At an earlier point in his life, remaining in the cloister would have meant everything to him, might have been the right choice; but now an act of love is more important than hanging on to position and approval. In the end (spoiler), all is resolved and he is, happily, welcomed back. But even if he hadn't been, we get the impression that it would have been okay either way. He was who he was, whether he had his hair tonsured and wore a habit, or not.

I've been working through William Zinsser's Writing to Learn, and last night I got to his chapter "Man, Woman and Child," about writing in the social sciences. All through the book Zinsser includes examples of good writing in each academic area; but in this chapter, he tells about how his own interest in anthropology began. In the 1950's, he was working as a journalist and was required to attend Broadway performances as part of his job. (What a hard-knock life.) One night he saw a performance by some Balinese dancers, and he was so fascinated that he decided to take his next vacation in Bali. This is what he found:

"...I made my way up into the hills to the village of Pliatan. The musicians and dancers who had conquered Broadway had long since come home and were back at their everyday jobs in the rice fields. That's how I found out that the Balinese have almost no concept of 'art.' What I had assumed was their art turned out to be organic to their life...Art, life and religion were intertwined. Children and chickens were everywhere...That was my first view of a unified culture, and I remember how resentful I felt that my own culture didn't have such an enviable wholeness."

 Zinsser says his point (as he sees it) is that we can't take any culture as just "quaint," and that writing about anthropology is serious business. Unfortunately, that leads in to a skippable "cultural" example about evil spirits, but we'll let that go; I'm more interested in his story about Bali.

That word "organic" has popped up more than once over the last couple of years, and not in a health-food sense; it means a wholeness of life, and (to put it in educational terms), a unity of knowledge and thought. I've said this before, but it's why homeschool "retirees" don't stop thinking about learning, whether we're surrounded by Balinese dancers, children and chickens, or by just keeping up with the laundry and our young-adult offspring. Brother Lawrence had the right idea--prayer functions in the midst of bustle and clatter...and also in the quiet times. Our lives are as real in the supermarket and in a chance to talk with the neighbours, as on the stage, in the monastery, or (for some of us) in or out of the schoolroom. None of it is perfect, but it is all what we are given to do.

Quote for the day: When insight is the harder task

"There is nothing abstract, or even subtle, about what happens when the writer attempts to apply a prejudice where only an insight will do.

"Proceeding blindly toward his preconceived conclusions, he asks his character (whether real or imaginary) the wrong questions: compounding the error, he twists the answer to make it match what he would prefer to hear. His goal immutably fixed in his mind, he ignores clues that would lead him to the unacceptable truth.

"The stories the young writer produces in such ecstasies of self-assurance are as unpalatable as green persimmons."  ~~ Jon Franklin, Writing for Story

The Intentional Thrifter: reading writing before writing

My spring-term course has wound up, and I now have the rest of the summer to work on writing projects.

But I need help and inspiration, so I brought some home.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, by Renni Browne and Dave King

The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, by David L. Ulin

Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner, by Jon Franklin

Quote for the day: Commitment to fish

"It doesn't matter what the subject is; I want an ichthyologist to be as committed to fish as [A. Hyatt] Mayor is to prints--to make me think there's nothing more important to him...if we care about the writer we'll follow him into subjects that we could have sworn we never wanted to know about." ~~ William Zinsser, Writing to Learn

Quote for the day: sometimes ideas are there and not there

 

"Ideas are everywhere, in the words and, so to speak, behind the words, present because they are literally present and present even if they appear to be absent. A writer may despise the idea of zoos and communicate that hatred by writing a book about animals in the bush, never mentioning zoos, never alluding to zoos or dropping a hint about zoos. Because of the way the mind works, we get the message...A book about the ethical nature of Christ may in fact be an argument against Christ's divinity. A book of recipes for winter soups made by cloistered monks may really be an argument against the modern world...If you picture a page of writing as three-dimensional, with the words hovering a half-inch or so above the paper, then you begin to see where the ideas are: behind the words, between the words, really everywhere." ~~ Eric Maisel, Deep Writing

Quote for the day: the democratic right to grammar

"Since we live in a competitive society in which the struggle for survival is primary, power exists, and power will have its symbols. Literacy is a far better tool and symbol of empowerment than any other, even money...However much you may hate grammar, think how much better a system ours is in which even the lowest peasant can achieve literary equality by learning rules of writing, spelling, grammar, and diction that are available equally to all and that apply equally to all." ~~ David R. Williams, Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper

Four book finds

Recent thrift store book finds:

Sounding the Seasons: 70 Sonnets for the Christian Year, by Malcolm Guite

That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, by Wendell Berry

Deep Writing, by Eric Maisel

An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, by Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight

Quote for the day: you make it sound easy

"It's harder to begin a sentence well than to end it well. As we'll see later, to end a sentence well, we need only decide which of our ideas is the newest, probably the most complex, and then imagine that complex idea at the end of its own sentence. The problem is merely to get there gracefully." ~~ Joseph M. Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace

Quote for the day: we all need someone to talk to

"[Language] lets us know, in fact, why we are together. Most of our human functions are singular: we don't require others to breathe, walk, eat, or sleep. But we require others to speak and to reflect back to us what we say. Language...is a form of loving others." ~~ Alberto Manguel, The City of Words

Quote for the Day: They can stop sneering now

"Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon’s Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire’s Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim’s Progress." ~~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, "The Pilgrim's Progress and John Bunyan"

(It's a great essay. You can read the whole thing at that link--just scroll down and click to view it.) 

Proofreading Plutarch

The newest Plutarch study guide will be out soon!

Quote for the day: Not born free?

"When God Himself gave His ten commandments to the children of Israel, He did not impose an arbitrary rule. Drawing on the principle of propriety, He expressed ten laws that, if they followed them, would lead them to treat things as they ought to be treated (Worship the Lord, honor your parents, leave the neighbors stuff alone, etc.) and, since that is how reality is structured, they could be free. Not just free from Egypt, but free to be His people who knew them and what led to their flourishing." ~~ Andrew Kern, "Writing as a Liberating Art," Circe Institute blog

Quote for the Day: Stick with Words

"Modern society keeps drifting away from words, relying instead on images and graphics. There’s even an emoji Bible that translates verses into emoticons (http://www.bibleemoji.com/). I won’t make that shift. I’m sticking with words."

Philip Yancey, "Why I Write"

Quote for the day: don't write clerkly

"But in my fancy, the ambition and contention to write or to speak more clerkly than others, sheweth always a base envious mind, like a scholar full of his school points." ~~ Plutarch's Life of Nicias, translated by Thomas North

Quote for the day, on the writing of sentences

"What does preoccupy me is the plain declarative sentence. How have we managed to hide it from so much of the population?...Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly--about any subject at all...by breaking the ideas down into logical units, called sentences, and putting one sentence after another." ~~ Willliam Zinsser, Writing to Learn

The Book, and a new website

(In which I shed my Mama Squirrel fur, for any of you who don't know my Human identity.)

When I finished the posts (earlier this year) on Herbartian Education, I just kept writing.

Fueled by banana chips (you thought I was going to say coffee?), I put some long-percolating thoughts together on Charlotte Mason's "Way of the Will" and "Way of the Reason," and they turned into a book. I have also been exploring the ins and outs of self-publishing, which is to say that Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason will be available in print and e-book formats later this summer.

To keep all that organized, I've started a new website. Come on over and visit. (One of the grownup Squirrelings has created a free printable surprise to go with the book cover.)

There's also a blog at the new site, which I'm just starting. I'm not sure yet how that's going to change Dewey's Treehouse; maybe the treehouse will become more of our vacation home!

In a lovely twist of fate, this is the week that the praying mantis oothecas (from last year's L'Harmas retreat) seem to be hatching. Mine is in the garden with the lettuce and spinach, and I'm watching it carefully.

Book Binge: The Indie Author Guide, The Winds of War

Currently reading and almost done: The Indie Author Guide, by April L. Hamilton. Very practical and hands-on.

Also reading: The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk. Big fat bestsellers are not my "usual," but Wouk talked a lot about his War books in The Language God Talks, so I checked this one out of the library.

Some good blog stuff to pass on

A couple of blog posts you really shouldn't miss this week:

The Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room has started a series about the Charlotte Mason approach to composition. This is not just theory; the DHM has a whole lot of years of experience with this, both ups and downs.

The latest Seven Quick Takes post on Afterthoughts has a couple of good links to challenging articles. Plus a cute baby goat.

That's all for now! (Really, there's enough in there to keep anybody busy for awhile.)

Quote for the day: on words and writing

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." -- Mark Twain.