And It's One More Month Up in the Ozarks
Digest No. 16 - December 2024
On Commonplacing
In the same way, we have to inform the multitude that restoration comes at a price. Suppose we give them an intimation of the cost through a series of questions. Are you ready, we must ask them, to grant that the law of reward is inflexible and that one cannot, by cunning or through complaints, obtain more than he puts in? Are you prepared to see that comfort may be a seduction and that the fetish of material prosperity will have to be pushed aside in favor of some sterner ideal? Do you see the necessity of accepting duties before you begin to talk of freedoms?
Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition, foreword by Roger Kimball (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 168.
Great Ideas: Man, Education, Aristocracy, Duty, Progress
I read Weaver’s book for the first time back in October, and boy, did I feel like I had been missing out. That’s a nice way to come away from a book, not with feelings of regret, where someone thinks, “Why didn’t someone force me to read this sooner?” (an emotional sense that I worry too many classical students have in college). Rather I came away with a deep sense of gratitude, something like, “Man, I see why this has been recommended to me X times!” Ideas Have Consequences has indeed been suggested reading from so many people I lost count, and I totally get it. Weaver has a piercing insight that makes his writing seem incredibly potent over 75 years later. I cannot recommend this book to you enough, dear reader. And if it’s the first time someone has done so, don’t wait until you hit the hundredth recommender to pick it up.
On Reading & Researching & Writing
I’ve been thinking through how to best use the remaining six months I have here at the Classical Education Research Lab. I still have some projects going, some of which may not wrap up before my departure. I’m working to fill in some gaps in the recent Heritage Foundation report on Classical Schools, for instance. That project is well done, but I knew from my time in the classroom that some of the categories were incomplete due to how the data was gathered. I’ve put together a survey for classical schools to fill out which is short and focused only on the Trivium / Quadrivium portion of Rachel Cambre’s work. It’s available for any school to take, even if they aren’t on her report (all you have to do is click this link). Feel free to share it with your friends!
Related to my work at the Lab has been my studies with the Jubilee Centre. I went back and forth on getting another degree, but the program was simply too enticing to pass up. While the MA won’t necessarily enhance my “job prospects,” I enjoy the rigor it requires and how it has helped me focus on a future book project.
I like to work in some Christmas readings during the month of December, both on my own and as a family. This year I read The Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffman, as well as The Night Before Xmas: A Futurama Christmas Story.
On Traveling, Speaking, & Publishing
I have been incredibly grateful for the slower pace of December. We have stuck close to home for the most part, with violin recitals, piano recitals, Christmas singing, and Lessons & Carols occupying much of our routine. My family and I are traveling to Birmingham for a couple of days this weekend to spend time with The Cousins. Work will of course go with me, as I’m already gearing up for the Spring term. I’ve got at least three trips planned this Spring and a handful of writing projects coming due. I think it will be a whirlwind sprint toward June.
A nice Christmas present arrived this month in the form of my contributor copy of Hemingway and Film from Kent State University Press. The book technically released in earlier in the Fall, but I’m not sure when the Kent State UP website updated it from pre-order to just plain old order. Feel free to head over there and grab yourself a copy for the New Year. Receiving books from a publisher is a particularly happy moment, especially nice printings like the kind you get from Kent State.
On a similar note, I am pleased to say that my two eldest children both had creative endeavors published this semester. Their school magazine, The Eccentric, is hosted by Kepler Education, and it is put together by the students, who are also the primary contributors.
My seventh grader had a poem published, which he titled very simply “The Hobbit.” My ninth grader also had a poem published, a funny little thing called “Bombadils,” but he also had a short story accepted as well. “Murder in the Mansion” is the first part of something larger he has planned, and I’m looking forward to seeing the final result. This means that four of the Hadley clan have had something published in 2024 (my wife had an essay published back in June, in case you missed that one). I wonder what 2025 will have in store?
On Listening
If you don’t manage to work White Christmas into your Christmas break at least once, then I don’t know what you’re doing with your time. But at the very least, you can check out this excellent Danny Kaye routine.
