The Five Topics

(Great photo by my very own husband Glenn Marsch!)

It's a perfect storm: a post by my dear friend Renee Mathis (Mrs. Mathis's Classes), who is guest-posting on the blog of another amazing wise friend, Cindy Rollins (Ordo Amoris), covering the instructional ideas of the classically innovative Andrew Kern (The CiRCE Institute), derived from Aristotle (Topics of Invention on Silva Rhetoricae). We can't lose!

Here it is: Lost in Topica: Teaching and the 5 Topics, by Renee Mathis.

What Revision Can Do

Revision is one of the least-appreciated parts of the writing process, but it is so important that every student should be required to revise.  However, revising without guidance is just about as frustrating as getting the favorite old assignment: "Now just take out a piece of paper and write whatever you want to!" Instead, students who need to revise need to know WHAT they need to revise.  A good evaluation can show the way.



I have just posted at Writing Assessment Services a file that will give you a peek into the process I have done with just one student, in just one course, in just this last school year.  Check out the file here, and note that I'm remodeling the site, so it's inconsistently spiffy just now.

Here's a taste of what the file includes.  First the original conclusion, and then the new one.  I think you'll see a great difference!

Original

All in all, soccer is the most entertaining sport there is.   It is suspenseful and ever changing.  There are plenty of other reasons why soccer is well liked, but without a doubt this reason is the most appropriate one. Whether it is the cultural background, or simplicity of rules, soccer is currently favored by numerous individuals.

Revised

In conclusion, it is the rarely made goals, required teamwork, and the ever-changing possession of the ball that makes soccer an entertaining and suspenseful sport for everyone.  When compared to basketball, soccer games do not have as many points flying around.  This makes soccer suspenseful, and easier to follow.  When compared to swimming, soccer is more of a team sport.  This makes soccer a good learning experience for younger player.  Compared to football, soccer is more unpredictable and ever changing.  Yes, hockey games have rarely made goal, baseball is a team sport, and basketball is unpredictable.  Nevertheless, all these aspects together make soccer the best for anyone interested in sports.   

Many thanks to Elizabeth Siddiq for allowing me to share her hard work!


In case you missed it, get the whole file here.

Great Advertisement Language

We surf the Internet.
We swim in magazines.

I saw this ad in a magazine and tore it out, but the online version is more accessible to my students and readers here.

Here you go! 

Isn't this a good extended metaphor?

Discounts for Summer!

Register for a course or evaluation account at Writing Assessment Services by August 1 and enjoy a 20% discount!  I am free to work with students over the summer, too--get a jump start on your school year!

Ask yourself about your home school or even your own writing goals . . .

Do we want to get started in the fundamentals of rhetoric to improve writing, practicing skills as basic as writing a narrative or discussing the meaning of a proverb, or as complex as comparing two heroes or villains or arguing before a legislative body?  Take a look at Proymnasmata Tutorials, Beginning to Advanced.

Do we want a way to enter The Great Conversation by writing about the Great Books we're reading?  Consider your own customized course from among over thirty assignments in Great Books Writing Workshop.

Do we want to experiment with sophisticated writing tasks modeled on the work of writers/speakers like Cicero and Sojourner Truth, Thomas Aquinas and Ernest Hemingway?  Browse the Gregory Roper text, The Writer's Workshop, and the course Apprenticeship Writing Workshop.

Do we want a way to get feedback on the things we're writing in our curriculum through the school year, making history and literature and even science essays become part of a robust writing program? Or are we registered for an online tutorial that does not provide feedback for the essays submitted? Enroll in an Evaluation Account and let me serve you according to your individual needs.

Finally, do we just want access to a lot of great writing material so that we can create our own course of study and evaluate it ourselves?  Register for a Resource Membership in any of the courses offered by Writing Assessment Services.

Visit the website, drop me a line, and let's see how I can help!

A Definition: Creativity

Student Andrew Manning has recently created for my Apprenticeship Writing Workshop a nice definition of Creativity, which I post below.

I created my own definition using the same model, Sojourner Truth's "An't I a Woman?" See my piece and the assignment details here.

It is certain that in today’s fallen world creativity is greatly admired. It is generally celebrated in the artwork of modern artists who grab any passing thought and put it on canvas. They are considered “creative” for their splashes of paint and bold strokes of the brush which politely skip over meaning and evoke emotional responses from the viewers. But is that the essence of creativity?

Some say that creativity is free, easy, and merry; that it soars through the clear skies with nothing to clasp it and bring it down. They say that it touches ideas and then dances on with as much reliability as the wind. I’ve tried to integrate these ideas into my own artwork. I’ve tried to chase after my own fantasies. I’ve tried to abandon reality completely. I’ve tried to become enveloped with giddy illusions. I expected a change in my works and assuredly it did come, but I find no real beauty in them now. All I find is confused ideas, so unclear and distant that they are not even distinguishable from one another. And am I not creative?

Others say that creativity is “getting in touch” with one’s inner self, and unleashing it. We all possess a fantastically creative side but it is found within the deep recesses of one’s being. I have searched. Nearly every possible aspect of my soul have I brought into the light and examined. When confronted with a blank piece of paper I have closed my eyes and sat in the quiet, seeking, searching, probing within. I did not find it. And am I not creative?

Still others say creativity encompasses not only the good, but also the evil, the unproductive and oft destructive. They view dark and morbid intent as a subject of creativity, a thing to dwell in and be moved by. The good, the right, the true; they are forsaken for the pursuit of the wicked, the disparaging, and even the indolent. I also have dipped my fingers in that foul water to test it. What I felt was not the cool refreshing creativity as they called it, but a vile mere that tried to suck me in. I withdrew my hand. And am I not creative?

Even after surfing the wave of fantasies and dreams, and “getting in touch” with my inner self, and languidly waiting for creativity to show up at my door, I found it eluded me. So then, what is creativity and where does it hide? But first: why does creativity exist at all? Is not all our creativity a reflection of God’s creation which he made to be perfectly ordered, and perfectly good? Did not God give us our creativity? True creativity is found in Christ, the original creator, not in any other. Because our inconsequential creative efforts exist only as reflections of Christ’s perfect creativity, we can be creative only if we rightly create as he did: in truth, in beauty, and in goodness.

---Andrew Manning
---Grade 10

Inspiration for Writing Instruction

Thanks to Andrew Kern for the link to the Geneva School (Winter Park, Florida) newsletter, which contains an article, interview, and writing samples from the 7th-8th program in writing. The team approach used at Geneva is similar to what I have done with hybrid courses and evaluation arrangements across the country. The instructors introduce a lesson, grade the students' responses to it, and provide opportunity for the students to receive individualized consultation on the work that they have produced. Evaluation is critical to effective writing instruction, and I am glad for the opportunity to participate in this crucial part of a good education.

Delightful, inspiring.

Really Great Thoughts About Leading Discussion

Jeff Baldwin does a great service for teachers everywhere with his inspiring essay "Iron Sharpening Iron: Why the Socratic Method Matters So Much." Click that link and enjoy!

In a related item, my friend Renee Mathis has a little mantra that I tested nicely this week: "Ask specific students specific questions." I believe she got it from Andrew Kern. He'll have to 'fess up where he got it.

Justifying Literature

This blog post, reviewing a current production of Waiting for Godot, explains a bit of why Christians should experience and study "difficult literature." I had a parent challenge the choice of Frankenstein for an upcoming course, and I should have had a better response than that it explores the nature of creation and the image of God in man. So I'll be working on that soon. :-)

Invention Lunch

I am trimming up a new course I have worked on this year, Apprenticeship Writing Workshop, and I came across this passage on invention I wrote and would like to share. I hope it will pique your interest and you'll enroll for the summer or the next school year!

If you have ever been faced with the horror of a blank page and an invitation to “write about anything at all,” you should appreciate the suggestions in this section. Consider an analogy from non-writing life:

You are a houseguest, perhaps staying overnight with friends-of-friends in a town where you are visiting a prospective college. The woman of the house welcomes you warmly and apologizes for needing to leave for a while, inviting you to “help yourself to lunch.” You’re really hungry, and it will be a long time until dinner. But you don’t know this lady, or where she keeps everything, or what she had in mind for you to make for lunch.

What you really need are materials—for her to set out the things you might make lunch from, so that you know the limits and the extent of what she intends. At the very least she could make a broad sweeping gesture toward the kitchen.

So let’s say she has put out cooked chicken, eggs, cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, tortillas, bread, and a skillet, and she’s opened the herb cabinet, pots/pans cabinet, dishes cabinet, and utensils drawer to show you where those things are. That’s better.

But you also need some guidance on form—does she intend for you to COOK something or to assemble a sandwich? With the things available, you can make all kinds of things—sandwich, salad, quesadilla, omelet, wrap.

So in writing we need to create for ourselves or have provided to us in an assignment an occasion, materials, and form. This is invention—the beginnings part of it.

Jack Lynch, My Hero

I had occasion today to refer to a favorite resource, Jack Lynch's Guide to Grammar and Writing, incorporating "Getting an A on an English Paper," and I am eager to draw it to your attention.

Here's a taste:

Rules: There ain't a rule in the language what can't be broke. The so-called rules of English grammar and style were not spoken by a burning bush; they're just guidelines about what's likely to be effective. If you learn to treat them that way, you'll live a happier life. To that end, read my entry on Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars. . . .

Jack Lynch is a man of good sense, firm principle, and gentle wit, and he says a number of things the way I wish I had said them. Browse his entries and enjoy!

Argument: The Wisdom of Proverbs

In the Progymnasmata exercise Proverb Amplification students are asked to consider carefully the meaning of a particular proverb and go through a series of development points to explain it. In a follow-up assignment, I ask Tutorial students to argue for or against a particular medical or health proverb, like "An apple a day . . ." or "Early to bed . . ." This is a popular one:

A good surgeon must have an eagle's eye, a lion's heart, and a lady's hand.

Most agree with this proverb and do a decent job explaining its wisdom. But then I throw in an additional assignment with a twist: argue the opposite.

The best students should be challenged to argue against their own points. This does not develop hypocrisy but humility, logic, and empathy. For example, a student could argue first that the proverb about the surgeon's qualities is certainly true--he needs skill, courage, and delicacy. But there is an amelioration of each of these: sometimes good sense or the use of good tools can take over and get a better result than detailed knowledge of the minute or perfect eyesight; sometimes courage can become arrogance and needs to be tempered with humility; and sometimes a decisive, radical action is needed to save a patient, rather than a slow gentleness that allows life to ebb away. So in a way one could argue that wisdom and decisiveness overcome perfect coordination and a conservative approach.

In any meaningful argument we should fully understand the other side--in part to sympathize with our opponents even if we hold our own line, and in part to strategize the best arguments for our own side.

Scholastic Argument

In my course Apprenticeship Writing Workshop , Part Two, students are to create a

Scholastic Argument Modeled on Thomas Aquinas's “Just War.”

This is my attempt:

Pro-Life Voting

Question: Whether it is necessary to vote for the most pro-life candidate in an election.

Objection 1: It would seem that it is always necessary for the godly to vote for the most pro-life candidate on a ticket, because God calls us to “defend the fatherless” and our vote is the best way to do that in our government.

Objection 2: Further, whatever endangers “the least of these my brethren,” from the fertilization of an egg on, is contrary to the value of human life, so any candidate who admits of legitimacy of abortifacient drugs, embryonic stem-cell research, or abortion in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mental or physical health of the mother is transgressing that value of life.

Objection 3: Further, any softening of the pro-life stand for an otherwise-acceptable candidate is a betrayal of the value of life. Even if the result of abstaining from voting or voting for a hopeless candidate is that the godly voter sees worse candidates elected, by his drawing away votes from a partially pro-life candidate, that godly voter must content himself with having done the right thing in a symbolic action.

Objection 4: Further, because the pro-life cause is of fundamental importance, it is incumbent upon the godly voter to choose the most pro-life candidate no matter what other positions the candidate holds.

On the contrary, the Lord calls His people to pray for government that allows them to live peaceably, that we should “do good to all men.”

I answer that the godly voter has an amazing privilege in our government, one with scope unheard of in Bible times. Each vote is fairly small in its own impact but nevertheless significant. As rulers in Scripture are called to be wise, and their trials in ruling are there evidenced and cautioned against, so voters must be wise, considering the whole of a “kingdom” or nation or even town in their voting.

Firstly, the voter must acknowledge his whole duty, not just his duty to a single aspect of governance. Even if his passion and interest lead him to focus on “life issues,” he must not ignore the rest of the scope of his “rule,” just as a godly king or governor must consider the whole of his realm.

Secondly, the voter must see that if the nation is taken over by a hostile power, or its infrastructure ruined by a disastrous economy, many lives may be lost of those already born and especially of the sick, old, or disabled.

Thirdly, no candidate for office will be ideal, either in himself or in comparison to the other candidates. One may champion “life issues” while callously downplaying the rights and needs of those already born, while another has promising plans to care for the needy, or at least not hinder our care for the needy, while not understanding well the value of unborn life. In fact, this candidate might even have a strong life ethos but apply it only at a later stage of development, say the traditional Jewish concept of “quickening.” In cases like these the godly life-loving voter must apply great wisdom and discernment, knowing that his decision will help put into office a person who will then require wisdom and discernment in exercising that office.

Fourthly, the voter’s responsibility starts before election day, beginning with identifying the best possible pro-life candidates, supporting these candidates’ campaigns, and seeking to help those candidates and office-holders better solidify their regard of life in all its ramifications. Voters can be counselors and advisors to elected officials and perhaps even live out their convictions by running for office themselves.

Reply to Objection 1: Indeed the godly are to “defend the fatherless,” but this appeal to us to use all our powers in the furtherance of preserving life speaks to the whole of our lives. With wisdom and charity we must steward our powers, recognizing that the aim of protecting life, even in the womb, goes beyond the symbolic power of a vote for a “pro-life”-labeled candidate.

Reply to Objection 2: In the aim of defending and protecting life, a lawmaker may recognize that his constituency does not embrace the full scope of a purist pro-life ethos. For the sake of building a “culture of life” in his term of office, a culture that may well one day bring life-affirming consensus even on the “hard cases,” he may find it necessary not to hold a hard line on those “hard cases” in his governance, even if he holds that line in his private convictions. In this way a candidate fully bent in the direction of life may nevertheless not set forth an intent to abolish abortifacient drugs nor to prohibit abortion in the case of rape, incest, or the endangerment of a woman’s health.

In the case of embryonic stem cell research, the lines are drawn, even by purists, only with great difficulty. Even if experimentation on new embryos is prohibited, is it also against the culture of life to make use of stem cell lines derived from embryos destroyed long ago? And if that, too, is prohibited, what of using vaccines derived decades ago from a culture derived from an unborn child? Even if a lawmaker seeks to cleanse our medical research of any reliance whatever on processes and products derived from the sacrifice of human lives, this cleansing may be a long process and require first that the lawmaker hold office, voted in by those who take the long view on life issues.

Reply to Objection 3: Those who stand alone on the moral high ground, calling others, too, to abstain from voting if no candidate fulfills their purist ethos of life, put themselves in a place of powerlessness to actually save some lives. They remove their influence from our representative government. Queen Esther used her charms to appeal to a pagan king to save her people. If she had from the beginning determined to maintain her purity as a Jew, she might have hidden or disfigured herself to become ineligible for the beauty contest, or purposely set about not to please the king. And so she would have lost her opportunity to make a difference.

So Daniel, if he had flatly refused to eat the king’s delicacies, would have been killed or turned out of the elite school. Instead he took stock of the possibilities, appealed to authority, and made his case in a winsome way.

We as voters can use our power, our influence, to find the best candidates in a field of candidates, analyzing their real potential to win office, and cast our votes in a way that will best actually further a culture of life.

Reply to Objection 4: Catholic and Protestant pro-life advocates often call themselves “co-belligerents,” recognizing that they work for the same ends in most areas of life advocacy, however much they may disagree in other areas, or even in minor points in their beliefs about the beginnings of life and the permissibility of man’s interference via contraception, for example. But sometimes it is unsettling to learn that people of a very different world view hold convictions similar to one’s own. So, for example, a racial purist like Hitler might object to abortion for the favored races and perhaps even for the others, with a view to enslaving the offspring of the lesser. Is such a person really a godlier choice than a typical “pro-choice” candidate? Or what of a simply incompetent, naïve candidate, one who holds a purist life ethos but is certain to stumble in so many other areas that he endangers the stability of our government?

Our votes in support of life may not be so cleanly and clearly discerned as we might hope. In each vote, we must consider that we have come to this opportunity for influence, with this slate of candidates, “for such a time as this.”

~1300 words

Cindy Marsch

www.writingassessment.com

10-8-08

Thanks to "Sir David M." for his comments on my effort and for his own models on his blog!

Meeting the Famous (and a rule for Real Writers)

From the interesting blog Soul Shelter comes a little tale from a writer about meeting a more-famous writer. The famous one has a run-down little structure in which he Writes, but we don't find out about that until the end of the piece, and in that little shelter is a closing piece of wisdom for all writers or aspirers to important things. You'll have to click the link to read it. :-)

This entertaining account reminds me of one of my favorite topics from my teaching days at Auburn University. Students had, in preparation for an end-of-term exam, read a journalist's account of a breakfast in the presence of Abraham Lincoln. The journalist gave a close description of Lincoln's now-familiar odd looks and just the sort of detail we'd want to know about the President in an article such as the journalist wrote. However, the original was edited down significantly, to leave out the "disrespectful" parts (the parts about how unattractive the man was--though the journalist described him with real restraint and awe). That editing itself is an interesting study. But to the assignment . . .

In the exam period, a timed writing, I asked each student to write about a famous person he or she had met. One had been hit in the leg by the erring golf ball of a famous golfer and got a dinner invitation as a result. A good proportion of the tennis team happened to be in the class in which I first gave this assignment, and two different students had met John McEnroe (notorious bad-boy tennis player at the time). For one student McEnroe performed as expected, ranting at reporters outside a locker room. But for the other--female--he was a charming and unrecognized companion in a long line for a soda at a tournament. When they got to the stand, he bought her drink for her and then walked away, and only then did she hear someone nearby say, "Hey--that's John McEnroe!" I had a great time reading those essays!

So I commend to you the assignment for students to write about meeting someone famous. Marlon Brando once offered my mother a stick of gum when she was a teenager. I once had novelist Larry Woiwode to Sunday dinner. . . .

New Course Announcement: Apprenticeship Writing Workshop

NEW!! Apprenticeship Writing Workshop Part One with Criterion^SM Service $175 (Introductory Price)

Designed for more advanced students desirous of working on their writing style and experimenting with creativity and invention. Both parts of this workshop use Gregory Roper’s The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way to Better Writing, which students should purchase on their own. Students and the instructor will complete approximately eighteen assignments of from 50 to 400 words (about 5000 words total in submitted work) and share them with other workshop participants, commenting on one another’s work. “Part One: Foundations” includes exercises using models from Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Dickens, Hemingway, Joyce, Sojourner Truth, Moses, and the Apostle Paul. Writers will consider the effects of small decisions in writing, reflect on Impressionism and Realism, Rhetorical forms, law and morality, authority, and invention.

Letter grades will be assigned to a final portfolio of selected assignments, and I suggest ½ credit for this workshop. Criterion^SM Service is included to give students access to the online workshop space and to provide additional practice with essays through graduate school level.

Please visit my blog at wrasselings.blogspot.com to see my own work on two assignments—July 16 and 17, 2008.

Part Two of the Apprenticeship Writing Workshop will be available by late 2008 to those who have completed Part One. It continues with Roper’s “Part Two: Precision Tools and Finer Crafts” and involves close work with Logic, Argument and Negotiation using models from Aquinas, Cicero, a Pope, and a King. This is Rhetoric in action, a great apprenticeship for aspiring serious writers. This workshop introductory price is $150 and it, too, is approximately ½ credit with assignments totaling about 5000 words.

Please visit my website below to learn more!

Definition Exercise--Creative Imitation, Part Two

See July 16 post for Part One

Exercise 3.6
“Contentment” on the model of Sojourner Truth’s “A’n’t I A Woman?”

(First, I outlined the basic structure of Truth’s argument, then used that structure for my own. Because I do not have the drama to set up the argument, I begin a different way and wind up with a reference to it to tie everything together.)

On Deal or No Deal, now on NBC, or the old Let’s Make a Deal, a contestant comes to a suspense-filled decision, at a point at the top of the roller coaster: Will you keep what you have or cast it away for the unknown Other, the Possibility? What is behind that curtain, what’s in that case?

The one who chooses the modest thing he knows or thinks he knows holds interest for us only if what he passed up is worse, or if we crave seeing his disappointment at what he lost. But the contestant so resolved often crosses his arms against his chest or puts his hand on the case, illustrating with his body language the original meaning of “contentment”—“I’ll hold with this.”

Some say contentment comes with true grit, determination, hard work, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Yes, that satisfaction is a part of contentment, and does come with the knowledge that we’ve worked hard. But how often does that hard work miss the point of contentment and become focused on itself, on the sweat and the clenched fist? Better to hold loosely, easily, what comes of our work.

Others say contentment is just bearing up with What Is, being realistic, not expecting much. But how easily this becomes bitter cynicism, a drafty emptiness. The hands are missing something—half empty rather than enjoying the half full.

Still others suggest that we must be unselfish and not measure our contentment by what we have, even if it’s just a little, but we must give it all away. We must abase ourselves, claim to deserve nothing even to the point of turning away what is offered, in apathy. But what sterility there is in this kind of emptiness—no material for growth, or for sharing with a smile and enjoying something WITH another person.

If these misunderstandings of contentment were put together we’d have tension, emptiness, stagnation. But Spirit-led contentment brings freedom, fullness, and growth, which the fist, the empty hand, and the downturned hand don’t have. The case and the curtain hide secrets, surprises. But the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and every knee will bow to Him, and He sees and cares for the lily and the sparrow. Godliness with contentment brings great gain. I’ll hold with this.

© Cindy Marsch
2008

Definition Exercise--Creative Imitation

I have been reviewing The Writer’s Workshop by Gregory L. Roper for possible course development, and doing the exercises myself. I found a real winner yesterday, and I wanted to share what I have done with it.


Exercise 3.3
Definition of “Contentment” on the model of I Corinthians 13.

The students are asked to do a close reading of the Bible passage, taking notes on its macrostructure and microstructure, then creating a definition of another term using that structure. I found the analysis itself taught me a lot about Paul's original--how "tongues, prophecy, knowledge" are echoed later in the note that these things will fade away, and even in the description of a child's speech and thought compared with those of a mature person. I used the three elements myself to show a contrast to contentment in its counterfeits--hard work, apathy or cynicism, and asceticism.

My Best Version

Though I have true grit, determination, and a good work ethic, if I do not have contentment, in the end I am left only with sweat and a clenched fist.

And though I have a realistic view of the world, expecting little, but have no contentment, I have only bitter emptiness.

And though I humble and abase myself, requiring little, refusing to care, without contentment I cannot grow or enjoy the little I have.

Contentment puts up with a lot and still shares, does not envy others’ good, does not pride itself on being satisfied with a little;

Doesn’t push its way into good fortune or grumble or suspect its neighbors;

Does not feel glee in another’s house fire but in his neighbors’ prizes and raises and prize roses.

Contentment satisfies. Realism, asceticism, even hard work leave emptiness.

For these are slender, futile, pale.

But when the rich fullness comes, these ghosts will flee.

When I started my adulthood, I worked hard, cultivated realism, disciplined myself to do with less. But in the Spirit I see there is so much to enjoy!

For now we feel privation, a tinge of envy, the frustration of a fallen world, but then we will know feasting, fullness, all in all.

And even now in our hearts grow faith, hope, love—and contentment is to rejoice in all of these.

© Cindy Marsch
2008

I highly recommend this kind of exercise! I came up with some other terms that could be profitably defined on this model: mercy, courage, kindness, honor, care, loyalty, faithfulness, patriotism, selflessness (see Lewis on "unselfishness"), justice, cleanliness, purity, honesty, gentleness, self control, piety, trustworthiness, neatness, punctuality, fitness, health, moderation, passion, creativity, consistency, calm, energy, quietness, spunk, liveliness, wit, humor, cleverness, and intelligence. I thought of them in this order, and I'm sure I could go on!

If you're interested in a course of such exercises, stay tuned to my web site!

Elements of Good Fiction

It's been a while since I've posted--must be summer! I have been working on writing myself, though--more later on that.

This morning I read a useful piece I want to park here for myself and others, on the elements of good fiction. The author cites several classic books to make his point, and I like that. Darin Strauss, in PowellsBooks.blog, writes "Notes on Narrative," including the following little blurb:

Theme is the trickiest thing to think about, because it can lead to theme-mongering, or preaching. The beauty of fiction lies not in argument but "in the unconscious self-revelation of people, in the sight of them floundering amid their own words, and performing strange strokes as they swim about, with no visible shore, in their own lives. In art you become familiar with due process," Saul Bellow writes in Ravelstein. "You can't simply write people off or send them to hell." The mistake, as James Wood puts it, is to assume you are too smart for storybooks. Don't, in other words, use fiction to win an argument or to advance a political idea. That's what essays are for.

Enjoy!

Correspondence

I have been reminded in the last week or so of the value of correspondence-- thank-you notes to heirlooms:

• David is graduating from high school, and I'm nagging in advance to keep him on top of the thank-you notes he needs to write for all the generous gifts he is getting. Writing a good thank-you note is a sign that one has successfully arrived at adulthood, I think.
• My folks brought us a bunch of furniture and mementos last week, as they're downsizing, and among the items was a note I wrote my grandmother when I was David's age--mentioning two old boyfriends. With so many years behind me, and yet a different man my husband for the last 22 years, I can be pleased and amused at these old references, and this snapshot of my teenage self.
• My mom carefully packed many family items for us to have here in our own home, and with them she wrote a lot of notes about their history. I will keep these notes for passing things on further in the future, to our own children.
  
• My father-in-law lost my mother-in-law three years ago, and as I was cleaning in preparation for his arrival for our graduation party, I came across a stack of condolence cards our local friends sent us at the time. I sat my father-in-law down with them, so he could see that those who didn't even know her participated in our grief at the time. I think it meant a lot to him to look through those "strange" cards.
• College-age-daughter Abby started a new job yesterday, and at the end of her shift she found a card in her locker, from her manager: "Abigail, Great job on your first day. You really hit the ground running! Keep up the great work! I can tell you will be a perfect fit here at Ann Taylor!" What a great ending to a first day of work!
• To wind up with David again, we gave him a family heirloom for graduation--a gold pocket watch from my maternal grandfather's family, from over 100 years ago. I had to ask about the people represented by the initials inside, but that little correspondence has a story, too, conveying the relationship, the gift, the connection with us so long after: "C.C. to P.C." Those were David's great-great-grandparents, and I know very little about them. I think they died before I was born. But their little correspondence endures in a gold pocket watch this young man is now carrying in his own pocket.

A Lesson in Rhetoric

Our culture surrounds us with rhetoric, and The Story of Stuff is full of it! A charming cartoon, with an earnest narrator and a lot of truth, this twenty-minute sermon contains all manner of material for students of logic and rhetoric. The site includes a transcript for those who would like to really dig in with research--I think a student of Modernity could do a valuable series of research papers and rhetorical analysis papers based on this presentation through the course of a whole school year!

If that's too much with everything else on your plate, just enjoy it. If you're suspicious of some of the claims, good for you--consider how the presentation is steering you to agree. If you are filled with satisfying joy that at last the truth is out, good for you--but consider how the presentation is steering you to congratulate yourself for holding a proper opinion. There's something for everybody! :-)

Thanks to Get Rich Slowly for the link.

A Novel Start

As soon as I posted this morning about not having time to write, I saw Abby's post on Facebook (now on Xanga). She makes me realize how much writing is a lifestyle, and I'm doing it all along! :-)

"Why Do I Still Have This Thing?"
A note from a homeschooling day...