Category Archives: Humanities

I’m Reading My Share But…

Sorry to start Tuesday on such a depressing note, but read this:

  • One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Many do not even graduate from high school.
  • 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
  • 42% of college graduates never read another book.
  • 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
  • 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
  • 57% of new books are not read to completion.

–Jerrold Jenkins, Jenkins Group — via Parapublishing

Wow. This is stunning.

The purpose of an education is: to educate! What a concept! An education is a background store of knowledge that can be applied across the educated person’s life, from work to relationships to hobbys and leisure activities. An education is a knowledge and understanding of the culture in which the educated person lives and operates, and an appreciation for the foreign and historical cultures that share this planet.

A good education certainly includes a basic understanding of history, math and even organic chemistry. But those can be acquired anytime, if the key goal of an education is met. And there is only one real key to a good education.

Reading.

—Dave Haxton

This is why I do the work I do.

A Prayer to Our Mother

Our Mother, who art all around us,
blessed be thy children
Thy blessings won, thy work is done
on earth and in the heavens

Give us this day, the strength and trust
to confront our fears
As we challenge those who would use our fear against us

Guide us in this struggle
with love and peace
to create a new world
of justice, joy,
and harmony

For thine is the beauty
and the love of creation
In the circle forever,

Blessed be.

–Jennifer Webster

Literacy Links

When did you discover your love of reading? I was “a natural” in that reading was a second reality — easy to slip into. I read a lot as a teenager, but my serious reading began in earnest around age 20. Serious as in quantity as well as attitude.

As an advocate of literacy, I try to provide resources to help people seeking information. In the extended entry are the links for the U.S. literacy sites.
Continue reading →

The Myth of Writer’s Depression

Speaking from experience (several bouts of clinical depression), I can guarantee that depression beyond the very mildest level (which makes you just miserable enough to stay home and finish the book rather than go out and have fun) destroys creativity–and that treating depression enhances it. Why? Well, depression doesn’t just make you miserable. When you’re depressed, you have no energy–and writing books takes hard work, which takes energy. When you’re depressed, you find it hard to start new things (like books, chapters, the day’s work), and hard to make decisions (like which book, or which character, or even which way Albert will turn when he leaves the throne room…) When you’re depressed, everything seems futile–you are sure the book will be lousy even if you do write it. When you’re depressed, you have less courage, less resilience, less ability to handle ordinary stressors. So…you can’t summon the energy or the courage to write…every little comment throws you back into your misery…and the next thing you know you’re in the midst of a full-fledged writer’s block.

–Elizabeth Moon, “The Writer and Depression” and author of notable science fiction/fantasy books

Piece of Pi

I just finished reading Life of Pi, a tale presented as a true-life survival story. I realize it’s a novel, but I want it to be true. It’s that compelling.

In fact, I might just decide to believe it as such. Certainly the story contains truth. People survive amazing ordeals. I like the protagonist very much — who couldn’t like a boy who just wants to love God, who is open to finding the divine in many ways? No, this is not just a novel. It is a true story.

Like A Well Reaches

The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.

–Yann Martel, Life of Pi

A Prayer Against Loneliness

When we’re writing, I’m not sure that we think of the reader. It’s more that we pray not to lie, to get it right, so that if we’re writing about a tree, we get that tree and not a petrified log…. Every poem is a prayer against loneliness. When I write, there are two people: the poem I’m writing and the poem that wants to be written. When I re-read what I’ve written, that makes three. If I read the poem to someone else that makes four. Poetry and prayer spell loneliness.

–Sharon Olds