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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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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.
David Youngblood
Jun 26, 20204 min read
53 views
0 comments
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
David Youngblood
May 16, 20202 min read
17 views
2 comments
A-Not-So-Romantic-Love-Story
“When two people are really happy about one another, one can generally assume they are mistaken.” -- Goethe
Rachel Beck
Apr 28, 20209 min read
47 views
0 comments
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.
David Youngblood
Apr 11, 20201 min read
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The Big Lie
As educators, our job is to create a union between experience/encounter and knowledge and reflection.
David Youngblood
Apr 6, 20203 min read
14 views
0 comments
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
Rachel Beck
Mar 17, 20203 min read
27 views
0 comments
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.
David Youngblood
Mar 15, 20204 min read
13 views
0 comments
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.
David Youngblood
Nov 30, 20196 min read
230 views
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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."
Rachel Beck
Nov 21, 20195 min read
74 views
0 comments
"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?"
Rachel Beck
Sep 23, 20193 min read
73 views
0 comments
Delight in Disorder
As 17th-Century poet Robert Herrick suggests, “when art is too precise in every part” it loses its attractiveness and charm...
David Youngblood
Sep 21, 20192 min read
85 views
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Shift Happens
There’s a distinct yet hard to identify point in the early part of the school year ...
David Youngblood
Sep 1, 20192 min read
15 views
0 comments
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.
Rachel Beck
Jul 29, 20193 min read
57 views
0 comments
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.
David Youngblood
Jul 29, 20193 min read
9 views
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The Abstract Relationship
The more relationships move toward abstractions, the farther we move from true intimacy.
David Youngblood
Jul 24, 20192 min read
32 views
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Uncompassed in a sea of sentences
Uncompassed in a sea of sentences: helping readers help themselves
David Youngblood
Jun 14, 20192 min read
23 views
0 comments
Why Dissent Matters
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”--Leonardo da Vinci
David Youngblood
Jun 7, 20193 min read
46 views
0 comments
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.
Rachel Beck
May 31, 20193 min read
141 views
0 comments
Old and New Ideals in The Great Gatsby
Classics are always relevant-- that’s why they are called classics.
Rachel Beck
May 26, 20196 min read
55 views
0 comments
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.
David Youngblood
Jun 26, 20204 min read
53 views
0 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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