Not much going in comp because of snow. BL’s hit the ground running with certain human tendencies and the green creative writers are writing a 2 stanza 10 line poem on snow. Everyone rushed out and brought back a handful of the stuff for a lesson on texture. The folks were good enough to avoid an all out snowball fight. In the poem on snow, the excluded words are white and cold.

We’re working on sight; how do we see through poetry? And who’s seeing, the poet or the audience or both? In BL Barbauld is helping. She’s telling us about flight, space travel, contemplation, and personification. And she strokes up against the border between what can be known or what should be known.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to bend down and scoop up some Martian sand and let it drop and toss it up into the rarefied air.

How important is creative freedom? Richard Florida has an approach to this question in economic terms, essay found via Chris Mooney.

Peter Jackson’s power play hasn’t been mentioned by any of the current candidates running for president. Yet the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas competitors is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2004 campaign. And for good reason. Voters are seeing not just a decline in manufacturing jobs, but also the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar brain jobs–everything from software coders to financial analysts for investment banks. These were supposed to be the “safe” jobs, for which high school guidance counselors steered the children of blue-collar workers into college to avoid their parents’ fate.

But the loss of some of these jobs is only the most obvious–and not even the most worrying–aspect of a much bigger problem. Other countries are now encroaching more directly and successfully on what has been, for almost two decades, the heartland of our economic success — the creative economy. Better than any other country in recent years, America has developed new technologies and ideas that spawn new industries and modernize old ones, from the Internet to big-box stores to innovative product designs. And these have proved the principal force behind the U.S. economy’s creation of more than 20 million jobs in the creative sector during the 1990s, even as it continued to shed manufacturing, agricultural, and other jobs.

Thus far the idea of creativity has come up in classes ranging from freshman composition, creative writing, and British Literature. Creativity isn’t just about poetry or character development; it’s also about mathematics, history, and physics. It has to do with how we use tech, paper, and the people around us to make things, good things. I don’t agree with all of Florida’s conclusions because they’re blanket, but the essence is there. People need room, space, to think.

Spinning makes great points about a distinction between learning and education.

I could make the distinction that education points to infrastructure and institution while learning goes to an action, habit, and the nature of creatures. Our environments are loaded with things to learn. Education formalizes the habit. Professor Drout points back to and comments on recent (but perennial) flaps about the MLA and attitudes about the humanities. But I think we always need to ask: who benefits from the institution, from the work, from the discoveries, from the fights? The answer is: it depends on where and who you are.

I say to Spinning: keep up the good work. She lives it.

Spinning is running through late-night yards after knowledge. I love it.

We quit the premises for a few moments and when I quietly snuck back in, I came face to face with three tiny black and white sweet baby faces fanned out in defensive stance and hissing at me, tails lifted uselessly behind them. They were so adorable, yet still I screamed in surprise and scared the little boogers back into their hole. At any rate, I did go back and find Didascalicon and brought it inside the house, moving rather quickly once I remembered that a bear had been in the backyard just a few months ago. . .

Spinning writes about what we should do after reading a novel like Blood Meridian. There are a lot of answers. Problem is I don’t know any of them.

Personally, I read such a novel for the ideas and the writing. Sure, it’s a novel full of violence, but the violence in my view is a small part of it. I like writing that reminds the reader that there are mysteries and there are mysteries. Also, one book or story feeds others. After the ride of Blood Meridian, it can be hard to move on to the next story. BM can overwhelme the reading list, but it can also give it life.

Wanderlust wanted a little on the grail of Aurthurian fame. Here’s a quick explanation. And another take on Boron. Much can also be gleaned from GoM.

Oddly enough, there is a border that cannot be crossed in fiction. There is a horror that no writer can release and the boundary line is not drawn by his own compliance to what is acceptable by society or by the censorship of government, nor by his own conscience. The most evil mind can draw you in, but only reading will extract the necessary venom to bring the world to ruin. I possess the secret that will bring you to the edge, but you are the one who will perform the deed. And I shall remain blameless.

Then

I thought last week was strange when I found a fish–a speckled trout actually–underneath a bush by my shop (dropped by the eagle I suspect). This week is even weirder so far.

Then

With that forewarning, I invite you to read on. (this was a story idea by the way; not a personal observation. The story line wouldn’t matter. The kicker is that at the end the writer has been effectively hypnotized by (hidden messages within?) the text to be programmed to destroy. Similar I guess to the old telephone hypnosis trick from the old movies.

Thanks to sg

I do not try to live my life the way Frederica did/does . . . and so laminations begins. Then there’s wanderlust with, as the author claims, laughter.

So we have to read Sir Gawain but the kids can have even more fun with it.