What Is The Point, Indeed

“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job, aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Volume One in the Trilogy of Five. London: Pan Books, 2016. p. 145.

Great Ideas: Man, Wisdom, God, Knowledge

The first time a read this book, generative A.I. was not the perpetual topic of discussion that it is today. But when I gave it another read this Summer, I saw several points where A.I. could easily be considered as part of the joke. Here, I thought it most humorous because Adams seems to be skewering both sides of a debate that didn’t even exist when he wrote it. But he does seem to have a knack for caricaturing both sides in the current moment. What I find most interesting here is that Majikthise thinks the machine might actually find God, which is not why I see most anti-A.I. folks raising objections.

What If Memory Is Lost?

“Memory lives longer than what it remembers,” Taliesin said. “And all men share the memories and wisdom of all others. Below this chamber lie even richer troves.” He smiled. “Like poetry itself, the greater part is the more deeply hidden.”

Lloyd Alexander, The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain, Book #5). New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books, 1990. p. 140.

Great ideas: Poetry, Memory & Imagination, Wealth, Monarchy

I read this with my third son, though it had been so long since I’d read the series that much of it lingered in a fog of memory. Still, the book moved me near tears on multiple occasions, which I think is a testimony to the strength of Alexander’s storytelling. I actually bought these for my boys on the recommendation of and I have been glad to have them. They are themselves rich, seemingly embodying the wisdom of Taliesin here. If you have not yet dove into the world of Prydain, I cannot recommend it enough.

Farmers Who Can Read

In this old island of ice, we are fond of study! There’s not a farmer or a fisherman who cannot read and doesn’t read. We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Translated by Frederick Amadeus Malleson. Edited by Ursula K. Heise. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005. p. 55.

Great Ideas: Knowledge, Education, Dialectic, Citizen

I like to keep a classic work of fiction going in addition to whatever else I’m reading, if for no other reason than they are often such fun to read. I’ve read little of Verne, and given my great affection for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Journey seemed the most logical place to go. There is little doubt that Verne is a master of backstory. Much like Around the World in 80 Days, he spends a rather large amount of time building characters before the adventure even gets underway (Burroughs, by contrast, often threw his protagonist into the adventure and let the backstory fill in over time, if at all). I’m enjoying it quite a bit and I’m making lots of notes for future work as I go.

The Fortunate Writer

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten. Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

Ernest Hemingway, “Banquet Speech,” in Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967. Edited by Horst Frenz. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1969. p. 501.

Great Ideas: Poetry, Form, Memory & Imagination, Time

This Summer has been, well, insanely busy. As a result, I’m way behind on my reading schedule. This is an older commonplace that I often return to when I’m thinking about what makes a writer great. Hemingway goes on to say more about the writing life here, but the immediate juxtaposition of the writing life about being remembered and also as a lonely vocation strike me as worth pondering further. There is often a tension for great artists who desire fame (or to leave a legacy) and the kind of social lives they lead. Hemingway was sometimes a perfect example of this, though he often could demonstrate how this tension wasn’t always a necessity.

Good Medicine Is Often Difficult

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see: and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.

Livy, The Early History of Rome, Books I-V. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1960. 1.1 [p. 13].

Great Ideas: History, Life & Death, Custom & Convention, Sin

This is another oldie, but also a goodie. When I taught Livy for the first, this little thesis slapped me in the face in a way that few pieces of writing ever have. I cannot count the number of times I’ve returned to this in my own writing, in my research, in my teaching, and even just in my own meandering thoughts. Livy hits on a fundamental truth here that I don’t think can be overemphasized. And there are certainly a lot of folks who are online way too much who could do to better understand what Livy’s talking about here.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, ed. Seán Hemingway. New York: Scribner’s, 2009. 256 pp.

Over the years, Hemingway’s works such as The Green Hills of Africa and Death in the Afternoon have been tentatively referred to as non-fiction. Drawing the line between what happened versus how Hemingway retold the story has never been easy. Truth, it seemed, was sacrificed to the needs of Hemingway’s art. A Moveable Feast is no exception to Hemingway’s penchant for reconstructing history to his own ends.

But the 2009 publication of the Hemingway’s posthumous work in a Restored Edition, edited by Ernest’s grandson Seán, evokes a different kind of argument. The differences found between Mary Hemingway’s original edit of the memoir and Seán Hemingway’s “un-edit” of it represents a problem created by Ernest through his writing style. It becomes hard to determine which edition is truer, particularly when the author is not known for living up to his name. And it isn’t the only text to face such hurdles. When it came out in 2005, Under Kilimanjaro presented similar problems when compared to 1999’s True at First Light, with many of the questions of editorial efforts and “restorations” manifesting.

Yet just as Hemingway sought to write a “true book” with Green Hills of Africa, Papa Hemingway was after something substantial with his final “Paris Sketches.”1 Hemingway’s ultimate goal, I believe, was to turn the downtrodden into heroes; to atone for his past sins against people who had loved him very much. Of these people, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hadley Hemingway play the most important roles (although Hemingway attempts briefly to redeem Gertrude Stein as well).

In a letter to Fitzgerald in 1934, Hemingway told his friend that when an author is at his best, what he writes would eventually become truth. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway attempted to make this a reality. As his final shot at persuading public opinion on people he cared for a great deal, Hemingway devoted the last years of his life trying to put his Paris memoir together. His constant praise of Ezra Pound and his tragic depictions of Fitzgerald show a sympathetic side to Hemingway that was not stereotypical of his non-fiction writing. Perhaps most surprising was Hemingway’s treatment of Hadley, whom he claimed in his letters was the true heroine of the book. In the intimate moments where Hemingway invited his readers into his truly happy marriage, there is always the notion of something self-destructive in the same breath.

Seán Hemingway’s edition of the book seeks to bring this side of Ernest to light and demonstrate a nobler vision of who the great author truly was. Charles Scribner III would argue that Mary Hemingway’s edition rings truer because, as “Sussmayer’s completion of his master’s [Mozart] masterpiece has the ring of truth – and beauty, perhaps the same? – for he worked with Mozart up to his death, and knew how Mozart wanted the piece finished,” Mary also knew her husband’s ultimate goal.2

The argument could be supported either way, but there is no doubt that the Restored Edition is significantly different from the original. Perhaps best capturing the issue at hand, Hemingway’s oldest son Patrick concluded his foreword to the new edition with what he considered his father’s “real epigraph” to the book:

This book contains memories from the remises of my memory and my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with, and the other does not exist.

Such is the dichotomy of A Moveable Feast. It may never be truly clear if Mary Hemingway’s edition “tampered with” the memories that Ernest was trying to preserve, but it can be said that if Papa Hemingway had any heart left, Seán Hemingway has paid it a great tribute.

On Living

One of the biggest changes in my life this past few weeks has been the birth of our fifth child. This little girl is basically perfect, and all of her siblings agree (which is saying something given how they talk about each other). Having another child at 42 has reminded me of a few things that come with the territory of having a newborn in the house. It has impressed me that some habits are like riding a bicycle and come back quickly. Others, well . . .I am old.

But, in order to make sure that I didn’t become complacent, we also moved from Pensacola to Tallahassee three weeks after Girl #2 was born. The move went well, even though all moves are inherently stressful. We had fantastic help both with loading the truck (thanks to Providence Church and our family), but also when we unloaded in Tallahassee (thanks to the IGC and to Christ Classical). We’re almost unpacked at this stage, and every major piece of furniture has found its spot in the house.

I still have a stack of books to get through, though right now that do little more than gather dust and make me feel guilty. But, once everything finds a rhythm here over the next few weeks, I’m sure I’ll be right back at it.

On Researching & Publishing

Between having a baby and moving, reading and researching have not been a plentiful as they might normally be for me in the Summer. I have done some work on a Hemingway essay, along with prepping for a seminar on the Declaration of Independence and another on commonplace journals. But the big news is that I have a new chapter out in a book published on July 30. Ray Bradbury: A Companion is edited by Kevin Wetmore, and it looks like a fantastic volume. I am fortunate to know a couple of the other contributors to this book, so I can promise you that it is worth your time even if you skip my essay!

The next immediate project on the horizon is my final paper for my final course at the University of Birmingham’s Character Education program. This last course is on leadership and character ed, and it is not what I would typically consider my cup of tea. But the readings have been interesting (much more so than I anticipated), and the seminars were great. After this, it is dissertations all the way down.

On Traveling & Laboring

Despite the many things going on at home, July and August were busy for traveling as well. I started off the month at a teacher training event hosted by the IGC. It was a whirlwind two-day event, wherein the speakers got very little down time. But it was full of good teachers interested in talking about ways to teach the Declaration of Independence. I did my part to help draw out connections between the Declaration and some of its classical sources, particularly Cicero.

I was supposed to next travel for a conference in Toronto, but ended up having to cancel the trip at the last minute. Between some health concerns for the baby and the general chaos of trying to pack / move, I just couldn’t pull away for the 48 hours I needed for the conference. Still, I do hope the paper will see the light of day in time.

This week, on Friday in fact, I will head to Raleigh for the third consecutive year to take part in the Southeastern Consortium Conference. It’s fun to be there with , , , and others. The theme for this year’s event is “Sources of Joy” and I will be leading a seminar on the joys of commonplacing. Like last year, I will do the same session two times. If you’re in the area and have an interest in classical education, you should definitely come join us! You can register at this link.

Fortunately, that is the only trip I have planned for the month of August, but the rest of the Fall is shaping up to be jam-packed.

On Listening

and I have been longtime fans of the Paradise shows on the BBC. Death in Paradise reminds us of our time in the Caribbean. Beyond Paradise actually reminds me of the surprising number of Australians I’ve called friends over the years. But only Beyond Paradise has a soundtrack that sticks in my brain for weeks after a watch. This one is from the most recent season, and is a lot of fun.

Plato’s Ion offers a nice intro to a perennial debate. Is Socrates being genuine when he says “here, let me ask you some questions”? Or is this always kind of a pedagogical tool where Socrates is really saying, “let me lead you somewhere”? That argument somewhat revolves around the question of whether or not we should think of such things as though they are Plato’s writings or if we should think of it as the strict recapitulation of Socrates’ words. The Ion is great for this because he has a clear disagreement going on with his primary discussant, the rhapsode Ion.

In brief, Ion claims to be a gifted rhapsode who loves to recite and interpret the works of Homer wherever he goes. But when asked to engage other poets, like Hesiod, he finds himself falling asleep at how “uninspired” these other poets are. Socrates presses Ion to explain why he is only interested in a singular poet, suggesting that Ion is something of a moron throughout dialogue. The conversation pushes towards the idea that art might stem from the artist, but that really important art stems from the divine.

In a roundabout (read Socratic) way, Ion and Socrates are arguing about the proper mode for interpreting literature. A rhapsode, for some context, was someone who traveled from town to town in ancient Greece. For those of you who are addicted to your smartphone, you could think about it like having Netflix in your pocket. Rhapsodes, and Ion specifically, provided live, local entertainment. Implicit in Socrates line of thinking is that performance is always interpretive. We may not think of it that way by default, but it’s something to think about when you read the Ion.

So, all that being said, according to Socrates, is there space for learning the art of poetry, or are there disciplines apart from supernatural inspiration? Or does he simply mean that each discipline has an ultimate cause that is objective and is therefore beyond human learning?

I think it might be helpful here to elaborate on a couple of Platonic ideas that are significant. First of all, Plato is very big on the idea of specialization (which is covered thoroughly in his Republic). In short, Plato seems to think of this primarily in vocational terms. So, if you are a really good Carpenter, you should invest in becoming the best Carpenter you can. You shouldn't, according to Plato, be a good Carpenter and also a good Shoemaker. This strikes him as a waste of time and resources, and possibly a bit impious.

This is why the rhapsode is kind of under fire in The Ion; what is it that the rhapsode is actually doing? He's interpreting, but what is he interpreting? A variety of things, one might say. He's interpreting medical elements within the text. He's interpreting prophetic elements within the text. He’s commenting on agrarian concepts. But this is also why Ion disdains Hesiod and Archilochus. Their level of knowledge of agriculture goes beyond what Ion understands, leading him to be dismissive rather than curious. And this is what Socrates is pushing back on in this dialogue. Socrates is asking, if being a poet is an art, what is the rhapsode’s art? Is interpretation really an art of the same kind? Or is something else happening when the interpreter speaks?

This connects back to Plato’s theory of the Ideas. When we conjecture about a horse, just the imaginings of it, how does that work? From whence does our notion of a horse come from? For Plato, it stems directly from the mind of God. Along these lines, the Greks thought Homer had somehow managed to tap into the mind of God; Homer is expressing ideas that stem directly from the divine. So, we return to the question, what exactly is Ion doing? Interpreting an interpretation? If Plato is right, and Homer has done something divine, then Ion is also interpreting the mind of God.

Is this the same thing that modern readers and critics do when they interpret a work of literature? I’m not sure. But perhaps Ion can help us. What is Socrates problem with Ion? I’d say that it's not that he interprets poetry. It's that he says he can only interpret Homer. If Ion had said, “Oh yes, no, I can equally understand Hesiod and Archilochus and all these other great poets,” then maybe Plato’s Socrates wouldn't think him such a moron. But instead, Ion says, “Oh no, I only understand Homer, the most divine of all the poets. These other guys, they're hacks.” That seems to be what has prompted Socrates.

It might be most helpful to bring Plato’s frustration back to his theory of specialization. If a cobbler, the very best at his trade, only knows how to make a left shoe, he is useless as a cobbler. He can't make a variety of pairs of shoes, shoes for different contexts and different situations. Plato seems to be saying something similar about the hyper specialization that Ion takes such pride in. “Someone mentions Hesiod, I start falling asleep. But you mention Homer, bam, I'm awake.” That's a problem because, like Socrates, I've read Hesiod and he’s well worth your time.

Throughout, I relied on the Loeb Classical Library edition of Plato’s Ion.

A Nation of Rowdies

They were a pair of rascals. What a surprise. No one ever expects the English to be rascals (compare Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Chinese). No, the English, who have no use for God, are the most decent people on earth. Why? Because they got rid of God. They got rid of God two hundred years ago and became extraordinarily decent to prove they didn’t need him. Compare Merrie England of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A nation of rowdies.

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins. New York: Picador, 1999. p. 226.

Great Ideas: Citizen, World, God, Constitution

Working on my dissertation, I wrestled a lot with the distinction between poet and prophet. The words have a tangled history, which I might write about here someday. There are not many modern authors to whom I might consider the label prophet appropriate, but Walker Percy is certainly one of them. This line could have been something written only in the last few weeks, watching the English government seemingly suggest to her citizens that they are not worth preserving. The speaker, here, Dr. Tom More, is not always a reliable voice. But here, I think his criticism might ring louder today than it did in the 1970s. May the good Lord revive the “nation of rowdies” that once made England the land of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.

Bringing Healing

So many knights just draw their swords
to shed blood on the land.
They lust for might and mastery,
they only prate of courtesy,
and keep a code of chivalry
they scarcely understand.

But when the sword of destiny
is holden in your hand,
then you will not bring violence
but healing on the land.

Malcolm Guite, Galahad and the Grail, Nashville, TN: Rabbit Room Press, 2026. 1.1.109-118 [p. 12].

Great ideas: Fate, Duty, Pain & Pleasure, Custom & Convention

Speaking of the English, I am quite enjoying Guite’s first part to his Arthurian epic. It strikes me as the kind of thing that might indeed renew the appropriately “rowdie” nature of the English people, from whom Galahad springs. Guite’s poetry simply flows; I can envision many classical schools adopting these texts in the near future (though I’m not yet sure if this will be the right thing). I hope to meet Guite one day, but until then, I shall enjoy his marvelous expansion of the legend of Arthur.

Discovering Virtues

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s respectfulness to his mother was enlarged upon. Various virtues were discovered in him. People talked with approbation of the learning he had acquired in the four years he had spent in German universities.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005. p. 297-298.

Great Ideas: Virtue & Vice, Education, Mind, Experience

I’ve been committed to the Pevear translations of Dostoevsky for a long time now. I have read of their shortcomings many times, but I know next to nothing about Russian and have found so much good in the Pevear translations that I see no reason to trash them. Still, so many of the authors I study (i.e. Hemingway, Sylvester) read the Garnett translations and referenced them in their own work. So, when the opportunity arose to read The Possessed (or The Demons depending on your translator), I decided to go with Garnett’s translation. It has been a wild ride thus far, and I can see why people call it his most overtly political novel. At least, it seems true of the one’s I’ve read. I hope to have more to say on this one in the future.

The Existence of Virtue

But is not enough to possess virtue, as if it were an art of some sort, unless you make use of it. Though it is true that an art, even if you never use it can still remain in your possession by the very fact of your knowledge of it, yet the existence of virtue depends entirely upon its use.

Cicero, The Republic, in De Re Publica & De Legibus. Translated by Clinton Walker Keyes. Vol. 16. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. I.i.1-2 [p. 15].

Great Ideas: Virtue & Vice, Art, Experience, Quality

Last week, I was in Tallahassee for a teacher training event at FSU’s Institute for Governance and Civics. The sessions I led were my own attempt to demonstrate how to discuss The Declaration of Independence, through the use of Cicero’s two works which exerted the most direct influence. What should not surprise anyone is how essential the virtues are to Cicero’s conception of the State and the Citizen. This is one of my favorite lives from his Republic, particularly because of his argument delineating between art and action. I think an inverse argument might likewise hold true.

A Likeness Between Man and God

Virtue exists in man and God alike, but in no other creature besides; virtue, however, is nothing else than Nature perfected and developed to its highest point; therefor there is a likeness between man and God. As this is true, what relationship could be closer or clearer than this?

Cicero, The Laws, in De Re Publica & De Legibus. Translated by Clinton Walker Keyes. Vol. 16. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. I.viii.24-25 [p. 325].

Great Ideas: Virtue & Vice, God, Nature, Relation

Even though these are technically in the same bound volume, they’re fundamentally two separate books. Here, Cicero’s invocation of man’s relationship to God is important for the way society functions, and also for the way individuals understand where they stand in life. I can see why Dante had such high praise for Cicero in Canto 4 of The Inferno. He may have been a pagan, dead before our Lord was incarnate, but he seems to me more and more to be the best of what the pagan world had to offer.

Note: After I wrote this, but before it was published, Plough published a follow up piece where argued for Longfellow as America’s Homer. Good. I still think what I’m saying here goes beyond Beacom’s case, and is worth consideration.

Starting with the balderdash: I have long been a fan of Tracy Chapman and even promoted her work here on this Substack. But to think she is America’s Homer? I can imagine this being a joke on Emily Wilson’s part, which would possibly give me hope for reading her translations of Homer in a similarly ironic fashion (though this is doubtful). Equally bizarre is the claim that William Carlos Williams might fill Homer’s shoes. If we’re reading Homer in light of being self-aggrandizing and obscure, then I guess an argument can be made? Some of the additional names added to this argument over on Twitter can be added to this Clavin-esque listing, but I don’t see any way to take such claims seriously. They seem to be provocative more than a firmly grounded argument. And if this is true, then mission accomplished.

The overblown claims, by contrast, are meant in complete earnest. I’m never surprised when the Walt Whitman and Herman Melville fanboys and fangirls emerge to support their endless #TeamWalt and #TeamHerman debate. And whenever a question like this comes up, there is a 100% guarantee that these folks will pop up to say Moby Dick is the Great American Novel™ or that Leaves of Grass is incomparable in American poetry, ideas that they will assert with an air of superiority that will make you think they’re part of the British class system. While I love Melville’s contributions to literature, I simply don’t see any reasonable way to make this argument.2 Moby Dick and Billy Budd can’t compete with the Iliad and Odyssey in terms of breadth and depth, and the rest of Melville’s work is a bit of a letdown.3 Whitman, as well, hardly lives up to the standard after revising the same book of poetry nine times.4 Don’t believe me? Try teaching it (courtesy of ).

While Plough had some criteria they offered, the fact that such a list could still produce wildly opposing views suggests that a bit more might be helpful. So, I propose to tackle this question by expanding the criteria, which will result in a narrower list of possible responses. I’ve given this some thought, having been a classical teacher for many years, and whenever I think about this question, I always turn to Quintilian:

I shall, I think, be right in following the principle laid down by Aratus in the line, “With Jove let us begin,” and in beginning with Homer. He is like his own conception of Ocean, which he describes as the source of every stream and river.5

Of course, Quintilian goes on to specifically explore the rhetorical power of Homer’s writing, but I think this first bit gets at something that was widely held prior to the twentieth century. Homer’s work is more than literature; from it, all one might need to have a foundation in education exists. J. P. Mahaffy has a perfect summary of Homer’s influence:

He was universally considered to be a moral teacher, whose characters were drawn with a moral intent, and for the purpose of example or avoidance. In Plato’s Ion we distinctly find something supernatural, some distinct inspiration by the muse, asserted of Homer . . . the Iliad and Odyssey were supposed to contain all that was useful, not only for godliness, but for life. All the arts and sciences were to be derived (by interpretation) from these sacred texts.6

To be Homer, then, is not merely to embody a national character nor to be a great writer but is also to provide a foundation for cultural knowledge and education broadly.7 A quick look at the names that Plough lists as examples, Italy’s Dante or England’s Shakespeare, and we see a similar pattern. One could spend a lifetime with nothing more than the complete works of Shakespeare, and it would suffice for a foundational education and a clear understanding of the English people. Shakespeare would easily stand alongside Dante and Virgil on Mt. Parnassus, with Homer still leading the way.

All of this means that an American Homer would need to be a master of the craft of poetry (Quintilian), able to embody the ideals of a civilization broadly (Plough), and contain enough breadth and depth that to possess only their collected works would suffice to provide a foundational education (Mahaffy). Walt Whitman and Herman Melville do not meet such a standard. But there is an American author who does: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

If you’ve read Nicholas Basbanes’s biography Cross of Snow or Christoph Irmscher’s Longfellow Redux, then you already have some sense of Longfellow’s immense popularity and continued cultural relevance. And if you haven’t, well, what are you waiting for? For the sake of argument and time, let’s assume you’re skeptical of this claim because you think Longfellow’s writing is “insert stereotypical claim here” and therefore irrelevant. I think it is demonstrably true that Longfellow’s reach is long and persistent. Bugs Bunny clearly read him. As did Charles Schulz. I’d wager there are far more schools learning about Paul Revere thanks to Longfellow than there are those learning about Abraham Lincoln because of Whitman. Longfellow’s ability to shape the American imagination is frankly unparalleled.

Additionally, Longfellow saw himself in the train of previous poets, just as Virgil and Chaucer and Milton before him has understood they stood on the should of giants. Dante first comes to American shores thanks to Longfellow’s beautiful translation. And nowhere is this recognition of the poetic tradition more apparent than in Evangeline, which also continues to have cultural influence. Longfellow crafted this work in dactylic hexameter, a clear homage to Homer as his predecessor, and considers themes which undoubtedly were needed in 1839. Primeval, yet concerned with the present. Old, while yet young. The opening lines do much more to capture the American experience than the exhortation to “celebrate myself” might do.

Paul Revere. Hiawatha. Miles Standish. And that’s just the most obvious examples. Once you include Longfellow’s full body of poetry and prose, I would argue that indeed you’d have the only things needed to give a foundational education in the same pattern as Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. And unlike those fellow poets, it would be a thoroughly American education. There will always be debates on this question, I have no doubt. But I also have no doubt that anyone who reads the totality of Longfellow could fail to come to any other conclusion: Longfellow is indeed America’s Homer.

James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, in Two Novels of the American Revolution, ed. Alan Taylor. Library of America no. 312. New York: Library of America, 2019. 874 pp.

I’ve not previously reviewed a work of fiction in this space, though I’ve review plenty of movies which share affinities. But given the upcoming 250th celebration, I’d like to share some thoughts on a book which was important in the early stages of my doctoral work. When I first entered the classical classroom, I was assigned James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer to teach in a class of 11th graders. The students were of wildly differing reading competencies, and I had not yet adopted a communal reading approach which meant they had to do the bulk of the work outside of class. The only way I could get them interested in the book was to read Mark Twain’s blistering critique of the novel, which probably only served to make them hate it more. I regret much of my work in those early classes. But I am also grateful for the introduction to Cooper.

Flash forward to my PhD work, and I was prompted to return to Cooper after reading Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. I read a handful of his non-fiction works upon Kirk’s recommendation and found that my earlier experience with The Deerslayer was a poor one. This wasn’t Cooper’s fault, but rather the fault of my inability to read him trustingly. I might write more sometime, but reflecting on that earlier reading of Natty Bumppo’s first story changed how I approach reading more broadly and renewed in me a skepticism of ironic or uncharitable approaches to a text. The novel that really gave me a love for Cooper, though, was The Spy.

It has become somewhat commonplace in the writing of espionage literature to treat “the spy” as someone overwhelmed with skepticism, willfully ignorant of a common human dignity. Jason Bourne, James Bond, and Ethan Hunt, whether on the page or screen, manage to portray individuals of torn loyalties. Just as the State dehumanizes the spy, they likewise find themselves seeing others as disposable. But Cooper’s novel, the first American tale of government spying, presents a fully human cast of characters, who consider life and liberty things of immense value.

Cooper’s novel follows the actions of it characters primarily within a space called “The Neutral Ground,” which existed in reality during the Revolutionary War. The area was itself a place of raids and borderline anarchy.1 There is a fascinating history behind this space, but Cooper’s choice of the Neutral Ground for the setting heightens the tension behind the tale of Harvey Birch. He lives in this ungovernable land, adding to the sense that something is somewhat off about Birch and his companions. The Loyalist family, the Whartons, find themselves caught between the British soldiers who are making in-roads on American soil and the growing group of ruffians who inhabit “The Locusts,” their home and a central location of the story.

One of the key elements that Cooper nails is the ambiguity of the question: who is the spy? There are obvious and less obvious answers, which showcases Cooper’s craft already in this early novel. Harvey Birch is clearly a spy, but he is not the only one and the number of characters in disguise raise the stakes. Add to that the constant mysteries that slowly unravel around these characters and their loves, such as Major Dunwoodie’s connection to Isabella Singleton, add to the growing suspense. And this is perhaps one of the very best things that Cooper accomplishes in his fiction. Even though some mysteries are revealed early on, Cooper expertly layers how the revelations work towards the end of the story. The reader seems to know what’s going by the end of chapter 4, but revelations keep coming through to the climactic wedding scene in chapter 22.

It’s difficult to summarize the novel, considering the numerous characters and the complex plot, but it is easier to discuss in brief one of the most important themes of the novel: love and loyalty. The two terms are themselves somewhat synonymous, though with different focal points in the story. Harvey Birch, pursued by the Continental Army at every turn, has to consider his ailing father and the Wharton family, who have been kind to him. How do his actions affect these loved ones? And ultimately to whom do his loyalties really belong? What of the British Captain Wellmere and his affection for Sarah Wharton? These questions remind the reader that life presses on in the midst of war, that people are not always what they seem, and that love is worth fighting for.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the twists and turns of the novel, because they are essential to Cooper’s excellent story-telling. But for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I cannot recommend enough that you read this early novel of the Revolution. The Spy serves as a strong reminder that the birth of our nation was not abstract, untethered from the world but anchored to principles. Rather, the actions of individuals and communities mattered in measurable ways, and those principles had concrete outcomes. As it turned out, the fight for freedom on the American shore mattered only insofar as it preserved the freedoms of the people who lived here.

Plus, it’s a ripping-good yarn.

On Reading & Researching & Writing

I finally finished my review of Michelle Brown’s Illumino and sent if off to the editor. I’m still working on my review of Chesterton and the Philosophers, which requires a slightly different style than I’m used to writing. I’ll be sure to link to those when they are published.

I’m continuing in my slow read of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, which is even better on this second time through. And I have, like so many others, begun Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail. It is proving a marvelous read thus far, and I’m glad to say I’ve already pre-ordered The Coming of Arthur. I’ve not read a ton of Guite, but I can clearly see the appeal.

I have two presentations in the works, plus my final course paper for the University of Birmingham. The first presentation coming up in early July is on teaching The Declaration of Independence using classical pedagogies. The second one, which is in late July, is part of a larger project looking at political motivations and considerations behind film adaptations of Hemingway’s work. The paper for Birmingham will be on theories of character-based leadership in schools. July will be a bit crazy in the Hadley household.

On Traveling & Other Things

Of course, normally, June is the busy month for us. We travel to Jubilate Deo in Monroe, LA as well as to the annual Repairing the Ruins conference. But this year, we did not go to either (though my oldest is at RTR for the ACCS Honors Choir). This is because we’re preparing for a new baby (due July 7, at this stage) and our move to Tallahassee. So, we’ve got plenty going on.

has been a trooper, handling much of this while dealing with the aches and pains of pregnancy. The low-key aspect of June has been a boon for packing, etc. We cannot wait to welcome this new little one into our home!

We’re a movie going family, and we like to do that with friends and family. This is a big Summer for theatre trips. It is definitely shaping up to be the most movies I’ll see in theatres in a single Summer in a long time. Masters of the Universe was fun but lacked coherency. If they had just leaned into mocking the HR-conflict-resolution concept, instead of vacillating on it, I think it could have been a home run.

On Listening

1996 was a good year for music. The Colour and the Shape by the Foo Fighters was definitely one of the best albums that released that year. “Walking After Your” has had multiple lives, being re-recorded in 1998 with a full band. But I’ve always been partial to that simpler, original. This is the song that made me think of Grohl beyond Nirvana, which I think was true for a lot of people.1

If you’ve been in classical education circles for long enough, you’re aware that we have some terminology issues. My own experience of fifteen years suggests that as classical education continues to grow, such a problem is only going to get worse. When I first discovered the classical education renewal movement was in 2010, just after the birth of my first son. When he had reached the tender age of six weeks old, I told my wife we needed to homeschool this child, and that I thought a classical model was the way to go. My first full time teaching gig at a classical-adjacent school began in 2012, and I transitioned in 2014 to a full-fledged ACCS accredited classical Christian school. I had no clue that I was entering a world where the only truly defining characteristic of the movement was its emphasis on personal shibboleths. I expected the classical school movement to be united behind a family of pedagogies or a focus on virtue, which were the things that drew me to this model of education, but I learned pretty quickly that idiosyncratic debates and internecine disagreements had a greater claim. If you’ve never worked in a classical school, then this probably strikes you as strange or even overblown. I promise you, it’s not. You can tell a lot about a teacher, an administrator, or a consultant by the timbre of their voice when they ask something like “does your school teach Latin or Greek?” Do they emphasize the conjunction or? Do they add the preposition in just before Latin? Or maybe they add “in which grades” before the question? This is only one example of such shibboleths, and I promise that trying to parse it (and all the others) in a conversation can make a person feel much like the Ephraimites trying to cross the Jordan River, though the consequence is likely derision rather than being slain with the sword (one hopes, anyways).

One of my earliest experiences with this came when I interviewed for a teaching position with a school which opened with what seemed an innocuous question, “can you describe the Liberal Arts?” What I did not know was that this was the question that would determine if I was a “good fit” or not (and this school was not taking 42 for an answer). It didn’t actually matter if what I said were historically accurate (which it was) or could be supported by arguments from sources like Plato and Aristotle (which it could), what mattered was where I fell on the “Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric” debate. Were these stages of education, acting as a kind of classical revision of elementary, middle, and high school? Were these specific disciplines that should be taught as discrete subjects? And most importantly of all, what did I think of Dorothy L. Sayer’s role in this discussion? My responses to these implied questions meant that I was clearly still wandering around Dante’s sixth circle of Hell with the other heretics (if not actually already arrived in circle nine with the traitors).

While I am of the mind that most of these discussions about the Trivium, the Quadrivium, Languages, pedagogies, etc., are a necessary part of the movement, and that indeed there is room for a whole host of opinions on these topics, if I’m being perfectly honest, I find the Liberal Arts discussion the most tedious. It often serves as a kind of “gotcha” moment where one side identifies the pedagogical maturity of the other, with both primary perspectives (Trivium as categories, Trivium as arts) thinking the other the immature one. I don’t propose to resolve this debate today (or even this decade), but I do think Classical education needs a better approach to these ideas if there is going to be sustained success when school choice inevitably falls out of favor again. To that end, I want to offer some thoughts on how rethinking the Liberal Arts in light of the modern Elective system can help classical schools navigate to a better education and end for our students.

I doubt I can improve much on the case made by Christ Schlect in his 2022 essay, “What is a Liberal Art?” So I won’t muster an attempt. I will offer some summary thoughts here for context, but it is much better for you to simply go to the Principia website and read his article. Below you will see how the arts have been categorized by some of the most essential writers on the topic over the course of 2500 years:

What seems obvious from the historical record is that it is the Christian era that latches on to a firm argument for seven liberal arts, and Augustine leads the charge. This remains consistent into the high Middle Ages, even when there are disagreements over the specific arts. Hugh of St. Victor throws a wrench into things with his twenty arts, but before a sustained debate can take place between he and John of Salisbury, the Renaissance shifts the conversation in a completely different direction. It is important to understand that by the 1500s, under John Colet, there were calls to reform education and reclaim the heritage that had been established under Alcuin. Colet’s St. Paul’s school made attempts in that direction, but in the 1640s, John Milton was still calling for needed reforms which had apparently been lackluster at best.

In 1869, Charles Norton Eliot introduced the elective system at Harvard University, and the period that followed is best described by Kathleen Peterson as “heralding a time of curricular chaos on most campuses.” Eliot’s ideas were influenced by changes happening in the Prussian Empire, and was seen as a surefire way to enhance the scientific advancements of colleges in the U. S. That goal was not directly achieved, however. To combat the problems introduced by Eliot’s electives, John Hopkins introduced the college major in 1910, which sought to harmonize the focus on the cohesive liberal arts education which had come before with the new entrenched idea that students should determine what they study. This wrought an uneasy truce that always seemed ready to fall apart until the 1960s when colleges began actively turning electives and majors into direct career pathways. A throughline is easily perceived from Eliot’s original reforms to the proliferation of Gender Studies majors which weigh down college curriculums today.

Part of the problem with the elective model is that it unintentionally reduces the value and purpose of any education received. Ask parents and students what the primary purpose of a college education is, and they will overwhelmingly respond “job preparation.”1 But notice the shift, this perception only gains a majority view amidst the public after the elective system is deployed across the country (with occasional holdouts or exceptions). This raises interesting questions about what is meant by career prep? Do most college students work in the field that they studied in college? Given the difficulty of getting alumni of any school to complete surveys, the jury is still out. But of the attempts to measure this, most studies find that between 30-40% of grads work in a field related (even tangentially) to their college major. This percent is higher amongst STEM majors (49%) but considerably lower for Humanities majors (26%). Some employers surveyed offered their own reasoning for this as treating a college degree as proof that a worker can complete something. Do a quick Google search on the purpose of college (or DuckDuckGo for you rebels out there), and you’ll find a plethora of voices asking this question, offering varying responses which tend towards some variation of getting a person ready for adulthood and job training. My contention is that this is the wrong way to view education. Period. Job training, I would argue, should happen on the job. Growth into adulthood should happen as you get older.

What then is the aim of education? I find the best straightforward definition to come from John Milton:

The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.

A tall order indeed. But this is precisely why the Ancient and Medieval Christian educators locked their sights on the Seven Liberal Arts, continuing the pagan idea that a certain approach to education makes a man (or woman) free. What could be more free than to be free from the bondage of sin? And Augustine, Boethius, and the rest identified the study of the Trivium and the Quadrivium as essential steps that orient the soul to God, regardless of one’s vocation, job, or personal study interests. The point here is that the Elective model assumes a different end of education, rightly or wrongly, and as such steers the curriculum away from the pursuit of anything Transcendental. Make no mistake, wherever the Elective system is deployed, the study of the Metaphysical will soon be destroyed.

Classical education offers an appropriate antidote to this inanity. To be part of a Classical school is to fundamentally believes that the Tradition of the Seven Liberal Arts ought to form the basis of modern education. The question that bears on my mind is this: are classical schools teaching the Liberal Arts? Fortunately, the Heritage Foundation commissioned a study of this question in a way that can serve as an excellent jumping off point. Rachel Alexander Cambre’s A Movement of Hope project is worth your time and contains pages upon pages of data points drawn from classical school across the United States. Her primary contribution to my thought here hangs upon the way she measured classical pedagogy. Since school leaders are often too busy to visit their own classrooms, there is perhaps a 1% chance that someone might be able to get them to fill out a survey on what their school teaches and how. Cambre relies upon school websites then to fill in the question of the how the Liberal Arts shape classical K-12 schools. In Cambre’s findings, around 85% of classical schools teach the Liberal Arts (perhaps a surprising number). But even this should be qualified since her measurements depend on school self-reporting. Cambre separates general references to the Trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—from specific mentions of Logic, Formal Logic, and Rhetoric as specific courses offered. She also separates general mentions of the Quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—specific references to Euclid’s Elements in geometry, music theory, and astronomy. Got that? Below is a brief break down using these details:

Only six percent of schools that describe themselves as classical also advertise that they are teaching Astronomy, the capstone of the Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages. I’ve made some attempts to fill in some of this data by looking in places outside of websites, to see if there is more accurate information available (and had very limited success in convincing schools to fill out a survey that would fill these gaps). And while initial work suggests there are more schools teaching Euclid and Music Theory than originally counted, thus far the numbers haven’t changed much for Astronomy.

You might ask, “so what? Is Astronomy all that important?” My point here is less about which of the Liberal Arts are being specifically taught, but rather I want to wonder aloud: what has replaced them? Because this is the real question that every classical school has to ponder. A quick review of websites will tell you. Robotics. Typing. Statistics (and other more “practical” sciences and maths). And of course, Coding. Now, I want to emphasize I’m not saying these are bad things to study or teach. But notice what has happened; the liberal arts that once lifted men up into freedom from vice have been replaced by skills and trainings that will place men under bureaucratic authorities who run corporations.

This might be called extreme or alarmist. Fair enough. But as someone who works with schools who primarily have less than 200 students and less than 20 full-time faculty, I can confirm that there is a pragmatism at work which will push the Liberal Arts out of the door in exchange for electives that keep “butts in seats.” It is one thing to say, “We teach in the Classical tradition” to parents who see that Mr. Jones teaches Latin to seventh graders, but another thing entirely to persuade teachers, students, board members, and parents that the purpose of learning is not mere job training. One of the benefits of the Classical Education pedagogy is that it imposes natural limits on what is taught as a part of the general educational process. This is an important corrective to the trickle-down effect that has resulted from Charles Eliot’s reforms at Harvard, which by my estimation has been an abject failure in its attempts to improve the educational outcomes in the United States. While I do think reform to the collegiate elective system is needed, I think it is far more important that classical secondary schools take seriously the charge that the seven liberal arts are essential to their mission.

To Learn and Mark

Let him who fails to learn and mark
Three thousand years still stay,
Void of experience, in the dark,
And live from day to day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Rendsch Nameh: The Book of Ill Humours, Poem XV, Stanza 4” in West-Eastern Divan, in Twelve Books. Translated by Edward Dowden. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1914. p. 74-75.

Great Ideas: Experience, Custom & Convention, Wisdom, Time

I have not read a lot of Goethe, though he continually sits amongst my “To Read” pile. I saw a different translation of this passage making its way across Substack Notes, which prompted me to do some digging. It struck me as too convenient of a quote and I’m naturally skeptical of quotes circulating the internet without sources. In this case, the quote turned out to be genuine, though I couldn’t find the exact translation. This led me to a research-rabbit trail, learning some things about Goethe that I did not know. I read a big chunk of West-Eastern Divan as well, though this is the section that still captivated me.

The Unfairness of It All

Ransom was sitting with his fingers locked so tightly that his knuckles were white. The unfairness of it all was wounding him like barbed wire. Unfair . . . unfair. How could Maleldil expect him to fight against this, to fight with every weapon taken from him, forbidden to lie and yet brought to places where truth seemed fatal? It was unfair!

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, New York: HarperCollins, 2012. p. 127.

Great ideas: Justice, Rhetoric, Logic, Truth

Even though I finished this one recently, I’m reading it again because the book club I’m in selected it for June. I had not noticed previously how well Lewis sets up the final confrontation between Ransom and the Unman from as early as the first chapter of the book. There is a constant focus on Ransom’s strengths from the outset, which turn out to be of no avail to him in the end. Lewis’s skill as a fiction writer is really underappreciated, I think. Though Till We Have Faces did make ’s recent list of the best novels, so there’s always hope for a proper reassessment.

The Canonization of Scientists

If the truth be known, scientists are neither more nor less vain than other people. It is rather that their vanity is the more striking as it appears side by side with their well-known objectivity. The layman is scandalized, but the scandal is not so much the fault of the scientist as it is the layman’s canonization of scientists, which the latter never asked for.

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins. New York: Picador, 1999. p. 13.

Great Ideas: Virtues & Vices, Science, Hypothesis, Same & Other

It has been a few years since I last read Love in the Ruins, but it still proving just as hilarious. I’m going through it as a Summer Slow Read with some other Percy readers and I find this a refreshing practice every year. One of the things about Percy which always strikes me is just how prescient he seems. If Love in the Ruins is speculative fiction, it is one of those which seems to anticipate what is to come with almost prophetic force. The many reflections on science and scientists in the novel were true when Percy wrote them, but they have accelerated and grown far beyond what he describes.

The Thousand External Circumstances

A national literature, in the widest signification of the words, embraces every mental effort made by the inhabitants of a country, through the medium of the press. Every book written by a citizen of a country belongs to its national literature. But the term has also a more peculiar and appropriate definition: for when we say that the literature of a country is national, we mean that it bears upon it the stamp of national character. We refer to those distinguishing features which literature receives from the spirit of a nation, from its scenery and climate, its historic recollections, its government, its various institutions, from all those national peculiarities which are the result of no positive institutions; and, in a word, from the thousand external circumstances which either directly or indirectly exert an influence upon the literature of a nation, and give it a marked and individual character, distinct from that of the literature of other nations.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, in The Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Outre-Mer, Hyperion, Kavanagh, The Poets and Poetry of Europe, Essays, Etc. London: Chatto and Windus Publishers, 1874. p. 202.

Great Ideas: Citizenship, Poetry, One & Money, Soul

Finding a good copy of Outre-Mer is incredibly difficult. Part of the problems lies with Longfellow; he edited the published edition more than once, removing chapters or putting them back in without explanations or clarifications of “editions.” Add to that the poor sales of the first edition, and the wide reprinting of Longfellow’s works when his popularity was at its zenith, and it becomes a detective’s job just trying to find the best edition of the book. The chapter I’ve quoted here is fascinating, and it is different from the essay he would write previously, “The Literary Spirit of Our Country” (the latter from 1824 and the former from 1835). I would love to work on something deeper here, exploring how Longfellow’s views changed over time. But that will have to wait a while.

God’s Grandchild

“Philosophy,” he said, “to him who heeds it,
Noteth, not only in one place alone,
After what manner Nature takes her course

From Intellect Divine, and from its art;
And if thy Physics carefully thou notest,
After not many pages shalt thou find,

That this your art as far as possible
Follows, as the disciple doth the master;
So that your art is, as it were, God’s grandchild.”

Dante Aligheri, Inferno in The Divine Comedy. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Complete Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. 9. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. Canto 11, lines 97-105 [p. 75].

Great Ideas: Philosophy, Nature, Physics, God

I concluded my final course for Thales College’s CCEP Program last week and discussed Dante’s Inferno with the students.1 I’ve started using Columbia’s Digital Dante for these online discussions because I can easily look at Mandelbaum’s translation alongside Longfellow’s. I understand that it is worthwhile to read more modern translations of Dante, but Longfellow’s has a special place in my memory. And this reflection stood out to me on my most recent pass through. He may not be where people start reading The Divine Comedy anymore, but I still recommend giving it a try at some point.

The Last Unicorn. Directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, featuring Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Tammy Grimes, Robert Klein, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Lee, Keenan Wynn, Paul Frees, and René Auberjonois. Jensen Farley Pictures, 1982.

I could write pages and pages regarding how much I love Peter S. Beagle’s novel, The Last Unicorn (1968). But for this post, I want to actually encourage you to give the 1982 film adaptation a try. I will add at the front that my son hated this movie, but I will have to address his shortsighted views of adaptation another time.

I’ve spent the last few months encouraging folks on to read Beagle’s excellent book, and I’ve had some success, I think.

But I have to give the animated film it’s due as a part of this effort. There is a lot to commend in this adaptation of The Last Unicorn, so I will only address a few of the main reasons here.

First, this is a movie that will help you love the book. I will admit that I have a biased, nostalgic love for this movie. This is more than a Reminiscence Bump, so bear with me briefly. As a child, I consumed a lot of media. I imagine I was a fairly standard consumer in the 80s and 90s, with a radio, a personal computer (running Windows 3.1), and a TV/VHS combo in my bedroom. I read quite a bit, compared to me friends, but I still took in most things through the television screen. I don’t know when I first watched The Last Unicorn, but it was early in my life. But, and this is the important part, this movie engendered a love in me that opened me to the novel. I started with the film and found that a story I loved could be even better. Many people watch novel adaptations and come away frustrated; by working in the opposite direction, I found this movie drew me into the book, causing me to note things explored in the written word that weren’t present in the film (though admittedly, the differences are surprisingly small). I firmly maintain that watching this film will make you a better reader of the book. And there aren’t many movies which can accomplish this.

Second, the quality of the film makes it stand out from its contemporaries. Granted, 1982 was a lean year for animated films, and most of them were merely television expansions (I’m looking at you Mighty Mouse in the Great Space Chase and Bugs Bunny’s 1001 Rabbit Tales). There was, of course, Don Bluth’s adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H., but it is such a heavy departure from the source material that it is essentially a different story. Of the 1982 releases, only Bluth’s film competes with The Last Unicorn in terms of quality animation, storytelling, and voice-casting. Add to those that it is more faithful to the book, and I think it is the clear winner.

Rankin and Bass Studios are at their peak here, with elements that are clearly their own but also bringing in aspects of Beagle’s imagination with give the film a distinct look compared with their other productions. And who could forget the voice casting? Jeff Bridges as Prince Lír is somehow chronologically jarring and also perfect for the young, impetuous man of virtue. Christopher Lee completely nails King Haggard, bringing his grizzled wickedness to life in a haunting performance. And while Beagle would disagree, I think Alan Arkin as Schmendrick is perfect. His voice acting captures the oddity about Schmendrick, destined to be a great wizard but cursed to be a buffoon. It is a perfect combination, exemplifying the unique moment that was fantasy films in the early 80s.

Third, the film bears all the hallmarks of Beagle’s wit and imagination, even amidst the changes from the source material. This is largely thanks to the fact that Beagle wrote the script himself. You could pull up the script and the novel side-by-side, and you would find an unusual amount of similarity. Normally, when films are made out of novels, the dialogue particularly suffers from on screen needs (i.e. actor chemistry, time constraints, idiot directors). Here, whole sections come from straight from the book, which is a good thing. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked into a classroom and started reading from Beagle’s novel aloud.1 The scene that I most often return to in such moments is in chapter XIII, where Schmendrick, Molly, and Lír engage in a sort so desperate argument about power. The scene from the book goes like this:

“Do something,” a hoarse voice said to Schmendrick, as Molly had said it long ago. Prince Lír stood behind him, his face bloody and his eyes mad. He looked like King Haggard. “Do something,” he said. “You have power. You changed her into a unicorn—do something now to save her. I will kill you if you don’t.” He showed the magician his hands.

“I cannot,” Schmendrick answered him quietly. “Not all the magic in the world can help her now. If she will not fight him, she must go into the sea with the others. Neither magic nor murder will help her.” [. . . ]

“Then what is magic for?” Prince Lír demanded wildly. “What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?” He gripped the magician’s shoulder hard, to keep from falling.

Schmendrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, “That’s what heroes are for.” (p. 273-274).

It is a powerful scene which is etched in my memory. But when I first read it in the book, I was a bit surprised. For in the movie, it is Molly Grue who asks the essential question: “What use is wizardry?” I’ve never heard Beagle explain this change, so I cannot speak from certainty, yet I’d like to venture a speculation. Regardless of his reasons, what it accomplishes is profound. Instead of a moment of almost mockery, in the film Schemdnrick’s response is to Lír despite Molly asking the question. As such, it becomes a request, a pleading, and far more hopeful. You can watch the scene below to get a sense of what I mean:

Not everyone loves this film (which is probably true of the book as well). Still, I think it is a worthwhile 93 minutes. It is something that will leave you thinking, and it will serve as invitation to something else. You don’t have to just take my word for it though.

May means Star Wars. And The Mandalorian and Grogu did not disappoint, regardless of what the critics may say.

On Reading & Researching

I enjoyed finishing Book 3 of The Faerie Queene as the school year wound down. We did not make it to Romeo and Juliet, as I had hoped. But it was worth it to leave the students considering Britomart and all the challenges that rise up to challenge our loves. Of the books in Spenser’s masterpiece, I do think this one might be the most appropriate for teenagers.

I’m still working through Chesterton and the Philosophers, though I’ve had to set it aside briefly to read Longfellow’s Outre-Mer. I find it frustrating that there are not enough easily accessible, quality editions of Longfellow’s prose works. The Library of America volume has most of the best poetry and a handful of good prose, but I would like to see LOA put out enough volumes to cover all his works, including his lesser read narrative writing.

I’m also working through The Sun Also Rises again for a book club, as well as Perelandra for a different book club. I’ve got plenty of good things to read to kick off the Summer. I anticipate joining the Walker Percy slow read for the Summer, which will likely be Love in the Ruins. Few books have made me laugh as much as this one, so I’m looking forward to an excuse to go back through it.

On Researching & Speaking & Publishing

Just a few days after my last digest, The University Bookman published my review of ’s Classical Catechism. This was a challenging book to review but ended up being one of the most enjoyable reviews I’ve written over the years. I think this is an important book for classical educators, largely because it is one of the few books to truly hit a universal note in offering thoughts on modern pedagogies. Below is a little preview.

I’ll be participating in an online conference this week, presenting on Longfellow and Hemingway as travel writers. I think there is much more to be explored here, and it’s given me a renewed interest on a few authors I’ve got in the back of my mind. I don’t know what kind of project this could turn out to be, but least a couple of essays (or even a book) could come out of it.

The conference is called Modernist Crossroads and is offered free to anyone interested. You can check out the schedule and register here. It will be a fun time, with a nice mixture of academic and laymen offerings, I think.

On Traveling & Laboring

May has been a month of only local trips. We celebrated graduation at Trinitas in the middle of the month. This also mean celebrating other graduates in our circle. We mixed in a wedding of a former student (turned co-worker) and the new Star Wars film, meaning we’ve had plenty to keep us busy. I’ve also begun thinking about my future at FSU, which has included reviewing syllabi and considering reading lists. I’m sure I’ll have more to share on that in the coming months.

I’m particularly happy to see so much promotion for the upcoming launch of ’s . I’m working with Josh on this project, helping to design and lead the Great Books certificate offering. The program as a whole is exciting, and I think all of the certificates being offered present great opportunities for anyone wanting to expand their education. The Great Books program has already been making people upset online, with squabbles over the list making themselves known. However, I don’t mind for two simple reasons: the list is not meant to be exhaustive but rather representative, and there are a limited number of hours for something like this. I’ll post a bird’s eye view of the reading list below:

I’m sure everyone can find some aspect they would do it differently. Let me know in the comments! Or sign up for a course to really show me what you think!

On Listening

There were a lot of cool videos that were made during COVIDtide. This was one of the byproducts of so many people finding leisure forced upon them. This video of Kurt Smith and his daughter performing “Mad World” was one of the best ones.

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum’d,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t’whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.1

That is one of John Milton’s earlier poems, “On Time.” From there, I drew the title of this presentation, “Fly envious Time.” I doubt the young Milton had any such notion that this poem would find use in this kind of setting, but such is the way of things we leave to posterity. Before pressing on, it is perhaps worth noting a few things up front. First, I must apologize for the poor summary of this workshop in the ACCS guidebook. Originally, I had pitched this idea as a practicum, where I would do little speaking, if any, and others would offer their views. ACCS, instead, asked me to turn it into a breakout session, but the wording of the original proposal remained. Mea culpa. Second, the practical aspect of this talk might come across as unusual. In the time we have allotted, my ability to give practicable advice on how you run your classroom, without knowing much about your context, is incredibly limited. And dare I say, such an approach isn’t really Classical in its form. So, I would like to move quickly through this rather obligatory introduction portion, and move to a sample lesson. Upon entering, you should have received a copy of the short story entitled “The Pedestrian.” Hold on to it; we will get to it soon.

There have been lots of talks this week about the meaning of “classical,” as well as some presentations on how to grade or build assessments that make the teacher’s job a little easier. These are helpful things to consider, and if you missed one of those talks, you should definitely listen to them as soon as ACCS puts them up in the Member Resource Center. I don’t intend this talk to contradict any of those fine presentations, but I do want to come at the discussion of classical assessments from a slightly different angle. I think you’ll find lots of overlap with what others have said this week, so I hope this will offer a kind of consolation if I am not practical enough.

You’ll notice the use of the word leisure in my title, which is something of a buzzword these days in our small CCE circles. And it isn’t hard to meet someone who has read Josef Pieper’s Leisure: the Basis of Culture and believes it to hold the key to something important for teachers, though it is not always clear what that important something might be. It is also common to meet those who have only heard of Pieper’s work, and long for leisure in their own classroom. What I want to suggest to you today is one way in which I believe leisure might be accomplished in a humanities classroom. I hasten to add that I think this is applicable to all classrooms and all grades. But, my suggestions today are based on my engagement with the books I teach as well as attempts I’ve made in the classroom. I’d be happy to discuss with the Geometry teacher or the Grammar PE instructor on ways to adapt this sort of thing, if they’re so inclined. I only ask that you remember that my anecdotes are worth very little compared to the 6,000 years of recorded history that we attempt to give to our students every school year in a humanities classroom, but that realization is part of what led me here.

Let’s get our terminology straight before getting too deep. And it is probably best to start with leisure. The word comes from the Greek, σχολε, which became the Latin scola, and in English becomes school.2 And contrary to what that English word conjures up for us, the Greek concept is more akin to the English word leisure. I won’t press the etymology much further, because that would rob you of the joy in reading Pieper, whether for the first time or for a re-read. So, if you want to know more, grab a copy of Leisure from the Eighth Day Books table before you leave. The easiest way to show you what the Greek word suggests is to look at Aristotle, who always makes for wonderful examples. He says in the Nicomachean Ethics: “And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.”3 The Greek here is instructive: δοκεῖ τε ἡ εὐδαιμονία ἐν τῇ σχολῇ εἶναι· ἀσχολούμεθα γὰρ ἵνα σχολάζωμεν.4 We are “un-leisurely” in order that we might have leisure. This Greek concept does make an appearance in the Old Testament as well. In Psalm 46:11 we read: “Cease striving and know that I am God.”5 That phrase, cease striving, is the Greek σχολάσατε. And the noun form of this word became ὁ σχολαστής for Plutarch, meaning one who lives at ease or a man of leisure.6 Plutarch uses it to describe Marcus Brutus, saying he was “given to books and study.”7 So put images of a 1970s leisure suit aside, forget any notion of leisure as a solid day of binge-watching your favorite show. Leisure stems from work, and it is itself a work oriented to books and study. This is what I suggest should shape your classroom. I’m sure you have students who cherish grades more than the eloquence of a fine Shakespearean sonnet. Or perhaps you have parents who don’t care what the story of Calculus might mean for their children, they just want them to succeed on the SAT.

Now to be clear, I’m not denigrating those things. Parents see test scores as keys to their child’s happiness in the future; students see practicality in the classroom as the only measurable benefit. And good Christian people adhere to such views. But they are, I think, aiming in the wrong direction. They are typically either desirous of leisure so as to be leisurely, wanting the end reward without the effort up front, or they understand leisure to mean vacating or emptying. As I tell my students often, remember your Aristotle: we are un-leisurely in order to have leisure, we strive to know God that we might cease striving by knowing Him. This notion of leisure is aimed at the pursuit of truth, of knowledge, of virtue. James Schall puts this into a nice context in his On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, another book I cannot recommend enough. He explains, “To waste our time with our friends means that we do not have some sort of tight agenda, that we are not always looking at our watches or worrying about our lives . . . We need time-out-of-time, the time that passes without our noticing.”8 Schall compares this kind of “wasting time” to prayer, a comparison that I think we all ought to linger upon and one that resonates strongly with Psalm 46. For your classroom ought to be of the same kind, if leisure is your desire. Remove the clocks from the sight of your students. Ask them to put their watches in pencil pouches or lockers. It will no doubt be difficult, but your students need to see what you do in the classroom as akin to visiting with old friends, of wasting time in the most glorious and holy sense of the idea. Milton challenges Time in his poem, to run out its race, to glut itself on what is false and vain. Our classrooms must be places where time works differently, where the rat race of human existence is put aside, and teachers and students and visitors get lost in conversations with the long-dead and the eternal. If you want to know how to acquire leisure in your classroom, it will have to begin with a repudiation of the clock.

“But,” you are likely saying to yourself, “I have a curriculum map I must finish. My academic dean will kill me if I only get to Homer in the Ancient era or Austen in the Modern.” Fair enough. How can you make it through a course, hitting all the right notes, getting in at least the minimum number of assessments, and still have leisure? It’s a good question. I’ll start answering it by telling you a secret: I don’t take work home. This past year, I had 3 Composition courses to prep and 1 humanities seminar. That totaled about 40 students, writing essays, speeches, thesis papers, and course assessments, on a fairly regular schedule. And outside of some occasional senior thesis editing, I did not bring work home all year. This was not always true of my life as a teacher, but by my fourth year in the classroom, this had become standard for me. As Hemingway once said, “There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.”9 I spent enough late nights grading student essays, looking for those oasis points in a dry desert of mediocrity, and it cost me plenty. But I realized that if I did not know how to live leisurely outside of my classroom, it was not something I could give my students in my classroom. If I wanted those under my tutelage to leave school in possession of what Milton describes as sincerely good, perfectly divine, with Truth and Peace and Love, then I had to break time’s hold on me outside of class, which might, just might, enable me to help students do the same.

This has given me a threefold approach to the classroom, which I have employed in a variety of humanities settings, but which I think are applicable to every course, math, science, art, and music included. I will briefly lay these out, and then attempt to demonstrate what I mean in our remaining time. First, I dispensed with the idea that the goal of a classroom was to expose students to as much as possible. It is not faithful nor reasonable to think that a seventeen-year-old will retain and comprehend half of the historical, literary, or theological aspects of the Medieval period, simply because I try to cram it in. The tyranny of time is often accompanied by the fear of missing out. FOMO did not begin with social media but has been the plague of teachers and students for millennia. I give students, in my humanities class, the best of what I am able. We read all of Homer, but we jump around in Josephus. We read most of Blaise Pascal, but only the most pertinent sections of Francis Bacon. This frees me to linger, to work hard at understanding specific things, that I might move leisurely through the chronology of human history. It does mean that I must know where I want to take my students; it means I must be un-leisurely to have leisure. But it has been liberating. And so the first principle of my classroom is to cover fewer books with an aim to deeper understanding.

Second, I adopted a method of instruction which puts the emphasis of reading in the classroom. We read the bulk of our materials together, as a group. This accomplishes a lot but let me explain a couple of primary points worth noting. It models how to read for the students, while encouraging them to be bold in front of others, to be unafraid of making mistakes. It gives us a shared vocabulary, so that our common language can make real discussion possible. And it shows the students what I value, far more than charts or timelines or quizzes can ever make plain to them. Students leave my class understanding the value that I place on reading, because we do it together, often. Again, this means thinking through the text on the front end in order to move leisurely in class, but that is how leisure is attained. So the second principle of my classroom is to read our primary texts aloud in class.

Third, I lecture rarely, opting instead for discussions, which is what makes this a bit hard for me. It is not unusual to read a passage with students, only for me to turn around and ask them to explain it to me. “Help me understand what Augustine is saying,” I tell them. And I have done this with third graders studying Rome, fourth graders studying Roland, eighth graders studying Beowulf and twelfth graders studying Booker T. Washington. I teach by asking questions, by engaging the dialectical process of refining the pursuit of truth by seeking to understand. I am not deceiving my students when I ask for their help, for I truly gain a better picture of Augustine and Aquinas and Abelard when I ask questions of my students and when they ask questions of me. I could summarize Aquinas’s Four Ways or Livy’s Roman history, but what would that yield? Content crammed in craniums. For texts to have any chance of forming our students, you must let the texts do their work, just like old friends providing counsel around a roaring fire. And yep, you guessed it, that requires more of me up front. So the third principle which guides my classroom is to devote most of the time not reading a text to discussions, centered on the Socratic method of questioning.

So let’s try this, shall we? I’m going to read this story to you. And then, I’m going to ask you some questions.

Ray Bradbury The Pedestrian

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I have other suggestions, of course. I do assessments in a particular way. I engage parents using specific language. I send home only certain kinds of homework. But since I don’t know your context, I won’t pepper you with what very well be useless tips. Instead, I want to leave you with this thought: regardless of what subject you teach, I am convinced that you will find leisure and rest by reading good things in your classroom with your students. But don’t take my word for it. Russell Kirk, someone whom you should all become familiar with if you are not already, talked about a lack of reading as an enemy of the Permanent Things which give life meaning. He says,

Literature can corrupt; and it is possible, too, to be corrupted by an ignorance of humane letters, much of our normative knowledge necessarily being derived from our reading. The person who reads bad books instead of good may be subtly corrupted; the person who reads nothing at all may be adrift in life, unless he lives in a community still powerfully influenced by what Gustave Thibon calls ‘moral habits’ and by oral tradition. And absolute abstinence from printed matter has become rare. If a small boy does not read Treasure Island (1883), odds are that he will read Mad Ghoul Comics.10

Kirk’s point is that Literature (with a capital L) unites us in our pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It is the source, particularly for Christians, of the normative, virtuous, moral direction our lives take as we grow further up and further in to the righteous life. If you take nothing else away from today, take this: read good books with your people. It is, I’m convinced, the surest way to a life of leisure. Thank you. I’m happy to take any questions.

The First Morning of Summer

Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, New York: William Morrow, 2006, p. 17.

Great Ideas: Experience, Time, Man, Custom & Convention

I have read this book three times from cover to cover, but I will pick it up every May and start flipping through sections. I stood in my front yard one time, reading it aloud amongst the dandelions while my children rolled their eyes. Bradbury has become a kind of invocation for me heading into the Summer months, and this opening line recurs to me whenever the wind starts to come in off the Gulf, bringing with it the scent of the sea and the call towards enjoyment.

Waking Understands Sleep

We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, New York: HarperCollins, 2012. p. 179.

Great Ideas: Good & Evil, Soul, Immortality, Sin

I do so enjoy teaching and discussing this book. It can be a slog for some readers, because Lewis devotes so much space to the dialectic process that Ransom, the Unman, and the Green Lady experience. But it is one of the most satisfying endings to a work of Science Fiction that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. And the King’s words to Ransom strike so many deep notes, that I constantly return to this section to mull it over once more in my mind.

Worthy of Meticulous Effort

When Katherine peeled back the wrapping paper and realized what she was holding, she attempted to speak, visibly caught her breath, and blushed. Her eyes filled, and she tried to smile through awkwardly quivering lips. The realization that someone had paid such attention to her face—her face—that someone had drawn her with such tenderness, had deemed her worthy of such meticulous effort and artistry, reduced her to meaningful silence. She and Theo gazed at the portrait as she gathered enough composure to speak.

‘I don’t even know what to say. It’s umm . . .’ She hesitated, fearful of flattering herself. ‘He did a beautiful job.’

‘Well, the artist simply drew what he saw, and what he saw—who he saw—is a work of art.’

Allen Levi, Theo of Golden, New York: Atria, 2025. p. 209.

Great Ideas: Beauty, Art, Judgment, Love, Sense, Man

Theo of Golden has been making the rounds of late, and after many endorsements, I managed to read it. It took a while for me to find a groove with it, which may have been my own fault. But by the end, I had come to quite appreciate the story of the old Portuguese man handing out hand-drawn portraits to a bunch of small-town southerners. I think this scene captures well the ethos of the portrait giving that motivates the story. And I’m very intrigued to hear that Mr. Levi is working on a second novel.

An Important Difference

‘There will be room for academic essays in our journal,’ Simon goes on, ‘and this is surely important. Yet there is a difference between insightful commentary about culture and the actual creation of culture. For both, we will need to create a community of people drawn from many walks of life, from here, there, and everywhere. It will be difficult and dangerous.’

Michael D. O’Brien, The Island of the World, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007. p. 253.

Great Ideas: Art, Beauty, Courage, Custom & Convention

I have been slowly working through this book. It is huge, to begin with, but it is also heavy in content. You go a chapter or two and then you feel like you’ve been hit in the stomach. It has, thus far, proven a worthwhile read, so I’m going to keep plugging along. The section on creating an alternative culture fascinated me, primarily because it was an attempt to highlight the truth in a world where the truth was systematically suppressed by the government. The problem looks different in a world of social media, I think, but it remains none-the-less.

Weeds and Roses

Amongst the roses grow some wicked weeds;
For this was not to love, but lust inclined;
For love does always bring forth bounteous deeds,
And in each gentle heart desire of honor breeds.

Edmund Spenser, The Warrior Princess: Book 3 of The Faerie Queene, ed. Roay Maynard, Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2018. 3.1.49.6-9 [p. 22].

Great Ideas: Love, Virtue & Vice, Poetry, Sin

There are few things more appropriate to reading with teenagers than Spenser’s Faerie Queene. While C. S. Lewis’s famous advice to read it at age 12 might be a bit much today, 17 seems perfect. Too many classes only read Book 1, the story of Redcross or Holiness, but Books 2 and 3 hit home even more so for the teenage life, I think. Britomart’s story in particular hits on so many of the things these almost-adults are looking towards in terms of what comes next in life.

David I. Smith and Susan M. Felch, eds. Teaching and Christian Imagination. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016. 256 pp.1

To say that this book has two authors is misleading. It is, in fact, a join effort bringing together the writing talents of four authors besides to the two on the cover (viii). This interesting approach to writing mirrors much of the method behind the book. In this volume, David I. Smith, the director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin University, follows up his successful collection, Teaching and Christian Practices (2011), which sought to provide a glimpse into the classroom of ten college professors. That book was hands-on and practical. Smith’s second outing, Teaching and Christian Imagination, still seeks to be practical, but does so through a less structured manner. It offers “a more loosely linked collection of reflections, close readings, and examples of practice,” aiming for a dialogue with the reader as opposed to a monologue the reader ingests (9).

The book builds and expands upon three metaphors: journeys, gardens, and buildings (7). These images create the structure of the book, while the authors take turns offering thoughts and suggestions in line with each imaginative concept. As such, the authors only delineate voices in the endnotes, including other helpful tidbits about the sections as well (207-235). Part One, “Journeys and Pilgrimages,” provokes contrasts between pilgrims and tourists, galloping and walking, spattering provocative images throughout. Part Two, “Gardens and Wilderness,” invokes landscapes and seasons, offering interesting anecdotes about math here and there. Part Three, “Buildings and Walls,” draws the reader back to the concrete, with a reminder that buildings are meant to stay put, and educators should thus be mindful of what they are building.

Taking the advice from the “Introduction,” I did not start at the beginning of the book. Instead, I meandered through the sections for well over an hour, finding things that caught my interest and reading them with excitement. “Walking in Circles” reminded me of the need for patience in the classroom, especially if a student does not know everything I think they should (55-57). “The Soul of Statistics” jolted me a bit as I wondered how much I considered my students’ past or their need to forgive (110-112). “Building Well” gave me things to reflect upon, in my classroom and in how I teach Gilgamesh and Genesis (197-201). And those are only a few of the highlights from my first time through.

The next time I sat down, I thumbed through the index, looking at Scripture references that caught my eye and authors who I missed on the first read. This brought me to “The Divine Architect,” with some fresh ideas about God as the architect of the classes I teach (150-154), and “A Rhythm of Work and Rest,” which affirmed somethings I already do in the classroom but challenged me to consider different ways of approaching homework and deadlines at the same time (84-86). After the second sitting, I felt as invigorated as the first, and looked with anticipation towards the next time.

Smith and Felch succeed in their stated goals, and the book as a whole has much to offer. It is the kind of book that one gets lost in, forgetting the time of day or that the water is boiling. It is genuinely engaging, and deserves the praise lavished over it on the back cover. One of the strongest elements of the book is its use of other sources, especially God’s Word. None of the authors turn to Scripture as a way of justifying themselves, but rather each one allows Scripture to form their imaginations and metaphors in a way that brings out some wonderful ideas for the Christian educator. The cross-disciplinary background of the authors creates a prose that is delightful and open to a variety of readers. While the aim of the book is directed towards Christian teachers, any Christian might find this a valuable use of their time, even if they only wander a bit.

April has been a wild ride of a month. is 29 weeks pregnant and there are 3 weeks left in the school year. It’s non-stop from here to July, I’d wager.

.

On Reading & Researching

Man, oh man. It has been a month of starting too many things.

I’ve worked this month on my essay for the University of Birmingham. The topic for this course was moral dilemmas (and how it relates to character). This is somewhat unfortunate for me since I subscribe to a very MacIntyrean approach to moral dilemmas. Still the reading on this has been interesting, and it has given me some thoughts about future course materials at the IGC.

I’ve had a copy of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House for years, given to me by in a book swap. I’ve picked it up many times but never started reading it. But for some reason, I picked it up two weeks ago and found myself standing there reading it for 20 minutes. That sealed it for me, and it was moved to my “Currently Reading” stack. Wolfe is hilarious, and I might enjoy his skewering of the self-important, pretentious art crowd a bit too much. I’m also reading Chesterton and the Philosophers, edited by my friend , which has been a fascinating exploration. I’m working on a review of it, which I hope to have finished in the next few weeks.

Our school has done a community read of Goerge MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. Our fourth-grade class reads this as part of the curriculum, and the Grammar school drama this year was an adaptation of it. So there has been a lot of interest. Our faculty read it together and we gathered this past Monday for a big community discussion of the book. I was grateful for another reason to give it a third read. One of the final books my 11th and 12th grade students will read this year is Spenser’s Faerie Queene. They seem to be enjoying it, though we’re moving at a much faster pace than I prefer. I’m hoping we’ll be able to cover some of Britomart’s story before the school year ends.

On Publishing

I still have some things awaiting either acceptance or rejection in the publishing queue, with one book review accepted but not yet in print. However, I am pleased to announce that a project I worked on for much the Fall has now been released.

The Cather Standards (which I like to think were actually named to please ) have been released by the National Association of Scholars. I was pleased to serve as a member of the Expert Committee, and I think the final result is something that every school would do well to consider (whether public or private). But don’t take my word for it. Read the full report here.

On Speaking & Traveling

The month began while we were on Spring Break, which was well-enjoyed. We went and saw The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, hit the beach, and enjoyed a lovely Easter Service with the saints at Providence Church (pastored by ). When we move to Tallahassee, we will miss our proximity to the beach and seeing our fellow Providencians each week.

I also attended two conferences this month, though I thankfully did not speak at either one (my plate has been plenty full). Two Fridays ago, I drove from Pensacola to Tampa for the Spring 2026 Philadelphia Society meeting, which was a grand time meeting new people and connecting with old friends. I’ve been to enough meetings now that I rarely have any down moments. And this meeting also had a serious contingent of the Ciceronian Society present, which meant having more fun than was normally allowed.

As the conference ended on Sunday, I drove from Tampa to Charlotte, NC to attend to the University of Birmingham & Jubilee Centre Residential. Add to that the Tuesday drive back to Florida, and the whole trip spanned five days and 1,580 miles. I’m glad to be home for a while, with no travel planned until this Summer (with two trips in July, after the baby comes). I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied in Pensacola in the meantime!

On Listening

I come from a generation that views music videos as a kind of art form. And as my kids get older, I frequently say to them, “let me show you this.” Prince’s “Batdance” is among one of the very weirdest, and fun, music videos out there. But I don’t love the song. I do love “I Would Die 4 U,” but there isn’t a good video of it. It’s been ringing in my ears since the Project Hail Mary trailer, so now you can share in its infectious fun!

Mylius: I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . a year or two ago you mentioned that you didn't see A.I. as a reliable tool for research. What are your thoughts about A.I. in its current state? Leaving aside the question of whether it should be used in any given situation, I'm curious if you think the quality has improved enough to make it a viable research tool, and how academics you know would see it.

SCH: A fair question. In short, no. I’m more skeptical of A.I. as a helpful research tool today than I was two years ago.

I’m linking a recent Nature study that shows how hallucinations are prevalent in A.I.-backed research. And how it is a disaster. There are also several studies on legal cases getting tossed out because lawyers used A.I.

And I’m including a link that is more anecdotal, but I think it gets to my fundamental complaint:

I might write something up on it, because I do think the evidence is stacking up against A.I. as a research tool. Of course, I don’t think tools are inherently neutral and I think A.I.’s current iterations are built on theft (along with a healthy dose of the rejection of God; see Altman’s recent comments on digitally transferring his brain out of his body). For me, this is fundamentally a deal breaker for regular usage in this realm.

I will add that there are things I think A.I. can be useful for, though I think this will be exclusively in tailored, limited-range A.I.s which function in hyper-specific ways. I’ve come to this conclusion through conversations with programmers who are experiencing success with A.I.s in this precise way; specifically, they experienced failure at using LLMs designed for general use but found them helpful when they were smaller models created specifically to help their companies. So, take that for what it is worth.

I’m sure ’s OC podcast roundtable on the topic is worth a listen, if you didn’t already see it. I’m closer to and in that conversation than I am to .

Mylius: Thanks for the info and the article. I’ve seen plenty of A.I. hallucinations myself, and I can see why people would be fooled by them.

But I’m not thinking of using it for amassing citations of things you haven’t actually read (which nobody should be doing anyway), but rather using it as an advanced search engine for locating materials. For example, you could ask A.I., “List out five scholars currently researching classical education. Cite a book or article for each” or “Find five scholarly articles written in the past five years critiquing theistic evolution.” And then you look up the sources and actually read them. You can also ask the same questions to three different A.I. programs to get a variety of answers, since asking an A.I. program a question one time and then going with that answer is rarely the most helpful.

Using A.I. to locate scholarly articles (which many schools require as a senior thesis source) could be especially helpful for students because finding relevant scholarly articles can be extremely difficult. Students can and should be taught to use sites like Proquest or Google Scholar, but that can be very difficult. You’re hoping you’ve put in the best keywords, and then you scroll through hundreds or thousands of hits. Students usually pick out something semi-related and just throw it in their paper. (Yes, this might be a reason not to require scholarly articles in the first place, but I’ll leave that as a separate issue.) The best case scenario to finding a scholarly article is that they see an article cited in a book or another article they can look up, and then they find a copy to download. Or they can have someone recommend the article to them. At least using A.I. would help them locate something more relevant much more quickly. And then, of course, they’d look it up and actually read it (if it exists).

Would you still see a downside to using A.I. that way?1

SCH: On the whole, no I don’t think this resolves anything for me.

First, while it is true that Google and other major search engines have become a hot mess, this doesn’t seem a reason to switch to A.I. searches. If anything, these companies are pushing users to do that, which is a reason to resist if possible. I know this is something of a hardline position, and I don’t fault people who choose the “easier” route. I will also add that I tell college students all the time that using search engines outside the Library will lead them into error. I know this is harder in a CCE setting, where research Libraries are not as easily accessible. But I do think Google Scholar, The Internet Archive, and Academia.edu are sufficient to get students started in high school.

Second, I think the easier route is an illusion. I repeated your first search in Copilot and ChatGPT, followed by a simpler keyword search in Google and Bing.2 Fundamentally, I didn’t find enough benefits in the A.I. results to see that as superior to a basic search. And while this is only one example, I do think this is an easily repeatable outcome. The perceived benefits are simply not there or are not as pronounced as believed. This corresponds to a lot of the research showing that regular A.I. users overestimate its benefits, even when it can be empirically shown as otherwise. has written about this on his Substack and just wrote about this recently. To be clear, I’m not saying you are a regular user in this regard, merely pointing out that this kind of argument does fit the standard pattern. And I expect to see more and more CCE teachers moving this direction in the coming months (as an aside, I largely think this is because CCE teachers are always behind on trends; I imagine classical schools will finally give in on A.I. right at the moment that colleges and public schools completely ban it. But this could be a cynical take.)

Third, and I think this is the most important point, what is the purpose of research? If part of that task is to learn what kind of questions to ask, what kind of keywords work, and where to look for helpful research, then asking A.I. to do all of that defeats the purpose. I used to tell students all the time, “if you’re not finding good results then you are either asking a bad question or you’re truly a thought pioneer (and it’s never the latter).” I then coached them on how to improve and find helpful sources. What’s more, the web is indeed more open today than it was ten years ago, so accessing legally available PDFs of research articles is far easier today than it ever has been. I think teaching students to do proper research is too easy to accomplish for teacher’s to sublet out to A.I. If time is an issue, or if it is too tedious, then we should question why we’re doing it in the first place (for the record, I think senior thesis is a poor capstone of a classical education and have spent years trying to get administrators to change tactics, to no avail). I believe on the whole that one of the primary drivers of students to use A.I. is the difficulty of the work, but a secondary one is that teachers have not trained the students well enough for that difficulty. Driver #1 occurs more often than #2, but I don’t think #2 gets enough attention.

This reminds me of the “brainstorming” argument for A.I. use, and I will admit it was the first one I encountered that I thought might be okay. But I watched as what it really meant was college students losing the ability to search the Library, parsing out sources, and instead learned to rely on A.I. to do the research for them. Maybe this wouldn’t be the case for kids in a CCE setting, but I’m skeptical. A.I. is designed to give the illusion of shortcuts. Teenagers do not do well with such tools, and quite frankly neither do adults.

I think there are ways A.I. could be useful in research one day, especially as it better integrates into the original search function of Libraries. But thus far the makers of A.I. only want to make it so researchers don’t have to do the actual work (which is the same with the image generators, writing editors, etc.). The tech folks who create A.I. have a poor understanding of human nature and purpose.

2

ChatGPT

Here are five contemporary (or relatively recent) scholars actively shaping research and discussion on classical education, along with a representative book or article for each.

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1. Arlene Holmes-Henderson

• A professor at Durham University focused on classics pedagogy and access to classical education.

• She founded a research center dedicated to how classics are taught and learned.

Representative work:

• “Classics Teaching and Learning Research” (various articles and reports; e.g., work through Durham’s Centre for Classics Education Research)

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2. Susan Wise Bauer

• A major figure in the modern revival of classical education, especially in homeschooling and K–12 curriculum design.

Representative book:

• The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

  • A widely used guide to the “Great Books” approach and self-directed classical learning.

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3. Christopher Perrin

• Co-founder of Classical Academic Press and a leading theorist of classical Christian education and curriculum design.

Representative book:

• An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents

  • Explains the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and its modern application.

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4. Jessica L. Richardi

• Education researcher examining how classical education is implemented in modern K–12 schooling.

Representative article:

• “Introducing K–12 Classical Education: Modern Take on Ancient Curriculum” (2022)

  • A literature review calling for more empirical research into classical schools and their outcomes.

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5. Victor Davis Hanson

• A classicist and historian who critiques the decline of classical learning and argues for its renewal.

Representative book:

• Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (with John Heath)

  • A well-known critique of modern academia’s retreat from classical studies.

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Brief note

The field of “classical education” today spans multiple domains—curriculum design, philosophy of education, classical languages, and K–12 school reform. Modern scholarship is still developing, with researchers increasingly calling for empirical studies of outcomes and methods in classical schools.

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If you want, I can expand this into a longer bibliography (e.g., 10–15 scholars) or focus specifically on classical Christian education, Great Books programs, or empirical education research.

Copilot

Here are five scholars currently researching classical education along with their respective areas of focus:

1. Dr. Julia Hejduk - Focuses on the Liberal Arts and Virgil’s Aeneid. 1

2. Dr. Christopher Schlecht - Explores the concept of Liberal Arts. 1

3. Dr. Albert Cheng - Directs The Classical Education Research Lab at the University of Arkansas, conducting original research on classical education. 1

4. Bhion Achimba - A poet and scholar of global refugee literature, currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah. 1

5. Susan Heuck Allen - Visiting Scholar in the Department of Classics at Brown University, specializing in the history of archaeology. 1

Citations:

• “Just Movement: What United Progressive Pedagogues?” by Luke Trouwborst. 1

• “Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik” by Susan Heuck Allen. 2

Google Search

Bing Search

Time Only Goes Forward

“Oh my Lady,” he said, “why do you say such creatures linger only in the ancient worlds?”

“Are you so young?” she answered. “How could they come again? Since our Beloved became a man, how should Reason in any world take on another form? Do you not understand? That is all over. Among times there is a time that turns a corner and everything this side of it is new. Times do not go backward.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, New York: HarperCollins, 2012. p. 54.

Great Ideas: Time, Man, Space, Reasoning

I’ve found the parallel readings of The Divine Comedy and the Ransom Trilogy has proven imaginatively fruitful for me, and for my students (I think). The scenes in the early portion of the book, where Ransom and the Green Lady are discoursing without interference bear striking resemblances to much of the dialogues in Purgatorio and Paradiso (particularly between the Pilgrim and his Guides). This might be more of a basic influence than outright imitation, but I would be hard pressed to believe that there are no connections between the two works.

Your First Adventure

His Lady seeing all, that chanced, from far
Approached in haste to greet his victory,
And said, “Fair knight, born under a happy star,
Who see your vanquished foes before you lie:
Well worthy be you of that Armory,
Wherein ye have great glory won this day,
And proved your strength on a strong enemy,
Your first adventure: many such I pray,
And henceforth ever wish, that like succeed it may.”

Edmund Spenser, Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves: Book I of The Faerie Queene, ed. Roy Maynard. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1999. 1.27.1-9 [p. 29].

Great Ideas: Honor, Love, War & Peace, Prudence

I have been looking for a reason to dive back into The Faerie Queene, and teaching it is one of the best reasons to read something. These last few weeks of school move at a breakneck pace, so I won’t be able to go as deep as I’d like. Regardless, the poem is so worth the reading. And despite the allegorical nature of the poem, my students thus far seem to be having an easier time with it than they did with Dante. I’m not sure if that is because they are reading “the story” or “plot",” which is harder to discern in The Divine Comedy, or if they just find Spenser’s verse easier than Dante’s (or Musa’s translation, anyways). One interesting note about this particular passage: a few of my students saw in this a pagan remnant, as though Redcrosse’s seeking for fame and Una’s praise of him have more in common with the pre-Christian world than the Medieval one. Just wait till they get to the House of Pride . . .

Original Grace

Thus, through no merit of their own good works
are they ranked differently; the difference is
only in God’s gift of original grace.

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Volume 3: Paradise, trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. 32.73-75.

Great Ideas: Soul, Immortality, Punishment, Eternity

Even when my students struggled with Dante’s theology in Inferno and Purgatorio, they didn’t disagree too deeply. But boy, they had wild oscillations to Paradiso. They would adore some sections (like his definition and defense of “faith”) but then were frustrated by others (such as by his portrayal of the Trinity). I tried to coach them into seeing the mathematical influences on Dante’s Paradiso, though that only helped somewhat. In the end, for many of my students, Dante’s medieval mind is too far removed from them. I do hope they’ll return to the book, as I have over the years. Because I think there is still much they can mine from it.

Freedom as Relationship

As the entrepreneur of its own self, the neoliberal subject has no capacity for relationships with others that might be free of purpose. Nor do entrepreneurs know what purpose-free friendship would even look like. Originally, being free meant being among friends. ‘Freedom’ and ‘friendship’ have the same root in Indo-European languages. Fundamentally, freedom signifies a relationship. A real feeling of freedom occurs only in a fruitful relationship—when being with others brings happiness. But today’s neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all.

Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Erik Butler. New York: Verso, 2025. p. 2-3.

Great Ideas: Relation, Slavery, Happiness, Government, One & Many

Given that this is one of Han’s older writings, I did not expect it to sound as though it had been written about today. And yet! That is precisely how this book sounds. I’m not through with it but is early criticisms of neo-liberalism strike me as devastating. And this tidbit, snuck into the argument mid-chapter 1, has kept recurring to my mind since I read it. This connection between “real freedom” and “fruitful relationship” is the positive definition of freedom that so many need, particularly our young people. I hope to read some Han in group settings, because I imagine so much of his thought resonates even stronger that way.

The Architect Returned

They became desperate for an antidote, such as coziness & color. They tried to bury the obligatory white sofas under Thai-silk throw pillows of every rebellious, iridescent shade of Magenta, pink, and tropical green imaginable. But the architect returned, as he always does, like the conscience of a Calvinist, and he lectured them and hectored them and chucked the shimmering little sweet things out.

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Picador, 2009. p. 2-3.

Great Ideas: Beauty, Judgement, Art, Citizen

This has sat on my shelf for years, and I would occasionally pick it up, look it over, and then place it back on the shelf. I do not know why, but when I repeated this ritual last week, I started reading instead of putting it back down. And now, I’m hooked. Wolfe is a funny writer, which helps a lot given the seriousness of my reading list lately, but I also find the discussion of architecture in our modern world utterly fascinating. Having worked recently in a Brutalist building on a college campus, while surrounded by gorgeous, classical styles everywhere else, might have something to do with my interest. I found this specific contrast interesting, the conscience as a metaphor for the learned idiot. Naturally, as a strict comparison, it doesn’t work. But I think Wolfe’s use here does serve as a reminder of just what influence architects wield in our culture. And it’s something to think about going forward.

I greatly enjoyed this one. And I hope to do more with it in the coming months.

The story is simple enough: three Roman soldiers discuss the death of Jesus Christ, while drinking in a Hebrew bar run by a fellow named George. This sounds like peak Hemingway, though the play format of the story does make it unique. Hemingway wrote only a small number of dramas, with The Fifth Column being the most well-known. And Hemingway treated the story as one of his “short stories” when he compiled The First Forty-Nine Stories anthology. So, while it stylistically stands out from much of Hemingway’s other writing, I think it should be thought as well within his regular framework of writing towards that “fourth or fifth dimension” that can be found in writing “the truest sentence you know.”3

It is appropriate that, in contributing to the great body of art which explores this central moment in history, Hemingway would be aiming at something profoundly true. The story ought to be considered a devotional work in this regard. The Crucifixion has been a primary focus of the Christian imagination for as long as Christians have been making art, though its representation has changed over the centuries.4

Hemingway’s choice to use three soldiers is interesting, since the number is never specified in the Gospels. There is the obvious connection to Christianity’s penchant for Trinitarian symbolism. But I think these three offer a kind of “outsider” Synoptic trio, with the bartender forming that lone Johannine voice in reverse. Though they are never explicit, the soldiers offer a whole view of the Crucifixion itself, showing how the skeptic, the curious, and guilt-ridden might view the death of the Son of God. And Hemingway accomplishes all of this through dialogue, letting the reader infer the speaker’s tone, pacing, and facial expressions.

This works in large part for the same reason that such scant details in the Gospels continue to fascinate readers after two millennia. What we do know is that the Roman soldiers recorded in the Gospels had a range of responses, something that Hemingway explores. It is also evident that none of these men are the Centurion mentioned in the Gospels, whom Matthew says, “became very frightened and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’”5 He’s clearly not among the three in George’s bar, but it isn’t a stretch to imagine them all coming from that man’s centuria. We see in such conscious constructions that Hemingway is aware of the tradition surrounding Christ’s death and knows where to push it and where to conform to it.

But the dialogue offers more than artistic riffs on the Christian tradition. An example from the early part of the story shows both Hemingway’s knowledge of the tradition but also that layer of truth he’s pursuing:

1st Soldier—Have a drink of it yourself. [He turns to the third Roman soldier who is leaning on a barrel.] What’s the matter with you?

3d Roman Soldier—I got a gut-ache.

2d Soldier—You’ve been drinking water.

1st Soldier—Try some of the red.

3d Soldier—I can’t drink the damn stuff. It makes my gut sour.

1st Soldier—You been out here too long.

Hemingway is likely referencing Paul’s advice to Timothy here, noting how a little wine is good for the stomach.6 But it’s also playing off a couple of connections to Christ specifically, with echoes of the Living Water and the institution of Communion occurring in this little space.7 It also establishes the character of each unnamed soldier, reflecting how each will respond to Christ’s death as the scene progresses.

A little bit later, as the third soldier tries to find comfort in the red wine, the four men in the bar get right to the heart of the matter:

1st Soldier—Oh, I don’t know. He was pretty good in there to-day.

2d Soldier—Why didn’t he come down off the cross?

1st Soldier—He didn’t want to come down off the cross. That’s not his play.

2d Soldier—Show me a guy that doesn’t want to come down off the cross.

1st Soldier—Aw, hell, you don’t know anything about it. Ask George there. Did he want to come down off the cross, George?

Wine-seller—I’ll tell you, gentlemen, I wasn’t out there. It’s a thing I haven’t taken any interest in.

2d Soldier—Listen, I seen a lot of them—here and plenty of other places. Any time you show me one that doesn’t want to get down off the cross when the time comes—when the time comes, I mean—I’ll climb right up with him.

1st Soldier—I thought he was pretty good in there to-day.

3d Soldier—He was all right.

The refrain of the first solider, “He was pretty good in there to-day,” is repeated six times in a story of less than 1,100 words, of which only 752 words is actual dialogue, making this singular phrase account for 6% of what is said. Not a huge number by any means, but it’s the only thing repeated with this level of emphasis. The phrase also reveals that the first soldier sees in Christ more than a passive recipient of the Roman legal sentence. The first soldier views Christ as a willing participant, as though it could have been different if Christ had chosen. And it is the fact the He endured it anyways that fascinates him. The second soldier disbelieves this, even though his own account can offer no alternative explanation. And the third soldier only lowers his head more every time the phrase comes up again.

Which raises an interesting question in my mind: why not repeat it a seventh time? This would certainly make the Christian symbolism come even more to the fore and give the phrase a sort of finality to its emphasis. The first soldier even asks for “just one more” which the reader assumes is the request for wine but could just as readily been for that missing seventh repetition of the phrase. But that would be one step too far, I think, confirming for certain what will become of the first soldier after the curtain closes. Such intentional ambiguities highlight the very process of trying to understand what Good Friday means, which individuals must examine.

And this questioning is, I think, the point of Hemingway’s attempt to “make [the Crucifixion] new.”8 The closing discussion highlights how the three Roman soldiers each try to make sense of Christ’s crucifixion, like the various artists who was represented it across the centuries. The first soldier, who saw in Christ a fighter, finds that everyone is a “nice fella” after Christ’s death. The second soldier, who sees nothing special in Jesus, expresses disdain for Jews and his skepticism of his fellow’s reactions. And the third soldier, who has done nothing but “feel like hell,” wants merely to go to bed and forget this day ever happened.

That is of course true of every man and woman across all of history. Each of us must figure out who exactly we believe Jesus to be. We may turn out to be wrong, as the second soldier most definitely is, but we must answer the question either way. Hemingway is posing the same question that repeats throughout the New Testament, “who is Jesus?” Pilate never did find the answer that “pierced the heart” of so many at Pentecost.9 Perhaps Hemingway’s soldiers found the right answer somewhere further down the line?

I encourage you to read the story and decide what you think.