Spinning writes about the importance of sharing ideas in a group. The richness of the experience of story is indeed made that much more powerful by sharing ideas and testing them. This is foundational to college which, in my mind, is an action. My friend Lawrence Johnson always argued that college was a place where people read and speak together.

Like a tennis match the ball of ideas flew back and forth, and with each lob a point was made.

We also made some great lobs today in British Literature, talking about some of the subtle shifts we’re seeing in Pope and Locke. We’re talking Tories and Whigs. We’re talking Locke’s emphasis on the reasoning individual. There’s so much to do. I was asked about Pope and his Catholicism by Robin and Mike and, in a sense, and feeling a little bad for doing so, evading the question.

In a way we need to get into the guts of Locke and Pope to set up the next transition, the Romantics.