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""Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."
--C.S. Lewis
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David Youngblood
Jun 26, 20204 min read
To Thine Own Self Be True But At What Cost? Multiculturalism and the Canon
We learn as readers, or we should learn if literature is to have any value to us beyond mere entertainment and time passing.
53 views0 comments


David Youngblood
May 16, 20202 min read
Welcome to the World of Literature: Where Are We Going?
Our stories are populated with heroes. Always with the hero examples, we work to slay the ego--the true dragon
17 views2 comments


Rachel Beck
Apr 28, 20209 min read
A-Not-So-Romantic-Love-Story
“When two people are really happy about one another, one can generally assume they are mistaken.” -- Goethe
47 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Apr 11, 20201 min read
Your One Care Full Act
It is often easy to forget that these servants too have anxieties just as we do, these too have families just as we do.
19 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Apr 6, 20203 min read
The Big Lie
As educators, our job is to create a union between experience/encounter and knowledge and reflection.
14 views0 comments


Rachel Beck
Mar 17, 20203 min read
Their Eyes and the Dark Night of the Soul
In The Color Purple, God seems out of sight, especially for those who need him most. However, as the story unfolds, we find that God was the
26 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Mar 15, 20204 min read
Perhaps the Poets Have Something to Teach Us about Covid 19
I've always tried to take comfort when under stress in the words of writers and thinkers both absent and present.
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David Youngblood
Nov 30, 20196 min read
The Incredible Lightness of Grief
And this lightest of possibilities is the fuel for the hope that we as observers must feel-- it is the substitution of chance for fate.
222 views0 comments


Rachel Beck
Nov 21, 20195 min read
Death of a Salesman and the Plight of the Teacher
"Funny, y'know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."
69 views0 comments

Rachel Beck
Sep 23, 20193 min read
"It ain't my prairie"--A Little Feminism Never Hurt
“How many of you think of your mother as not ‘my mother’ but as a separate human being?"
73 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Sep 21, 20192 min read
Delight in Disorder
As 17th-Century poet Robert Herrick suggests, “when art is too precise in every part” it loses its attractiveness and charm...
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David Youngblood
Sep 1, 20192 min read
Shift Happens
There’s a distinct yet hard to identify point in the early part of the school year ...
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Rachel Beck
Jul 29, 20193 min read
Whip Out Moby Dick!
Freud said there are no accidents.But he also said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”I have to remind seniors of this amid my many Freud.
57 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Jul 29, 20193 min read
As You Look Forward, Keep Your Eye on the Past
Engaged reading triggers memory. Its fundamental to the experience of what we call “getting into” a work.
9 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Jul 24, 20192 min read
The Abstract Relationship
The more relationships move toward abstractions, the farther we move from true intimacy.
32 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Jun 14, 20192 min read
Uncompassed in a sea of sentences
Uncompassed in a sea of sentences: helping readers help themselves
23 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Jun 7, 20193 min read
Why Dissent Matters
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”--Leonardo da Vinci
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Rachel Beck
May 31, 20193 min read
Saving Literature
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated.
141 views0 comments


Rachel Beck
May 26, 20196 min read
Old and New Ideals in The Great Gatsby
Classics are always relevant-- that’s why they are called classics.
55 views0 comments


David Youngblood
Jun 26, 20204 min read
To Thine Own Self Be True But At What Cost? Multiculturalism and the Canon
We learn as readers, or we should learn if literature is to have any value to us beyond mere entertainment and time passing.
53 views0 comments
Life, Lessons,
and Literature
"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
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