AO Conference!

Thanks to Lisa's daughter, who made these cute figurines!


I had a great time at the conference! Everyone was so nice, I loved finally meeting people who had been a name on an email list for so long. To all the Advisory members, you're as wonderful in person as you are in email. What an honor to work with you!

I took loads of pictures! Here are just a couple -

Ambleside Advisory Babies


Busy With Walk-in Registrations


When my head stops buzzing, I'll be able to think more clearly and post a little more. But for now, it's back to work, which means enlisting the help of our kids to select books for AO's year 11.

New Camera!

I'll be posting a lot more pictures from now on!

Look at this one, I just snapped a shot of a weed that Miss M had picked that was lying on the van dashboard:





and here's me testing the macro mode on a clover:




and even the ring on my finger:

Chapter 2 - The Singing School

The Educated Imagination - Chapter 2 - The Singing School

In the first chapter, Frye described three attitudes with their corresponding languages of expression:
1 - awareness that self is separate from world leads to ordinary conversation
2 - attempt to adapt the environment for survival and comfort leads to informative, practical language
3 - imagination of how things could be leads to the figurative language of art

Early cultures begin by identifying with some kind of deity or magic, so primitive imaginative literature is always in the form of legends or myths. Epic poems and ballads, early Greek drama are two examples.

Writers follow convention. An ancient Greek could not have written To Kill a Mockingbird, he could only express what he knew in the form he knew. Literature can only exist in certain forms: a story has to have a beginning, middle and end. Suspense makes it interesting, the plot revolves around characters. A character usually discovers something about himself as a result of some crucial experience. Detective stories tend to follow a certain formula, romances do, too. Even plots aren't very original. What's original in literature isn't so much what's said as the way they're said within the conventional form.

Writers tend to reference other works and themes and characters to make their own allegories, similes and comparisons. And one story will sound somehow similar to another, or one character will remind us vaguely of a character in another book. It's like all of literature is a complex intertwining of characters. The same themes and the same characters keep on popping up as we read more and more, so that, for someone who reads a lot, literature itself starts to seem like one main theme with a few main characters, and each book is like a variation in the way the story is told.

One recurring theme is a cycle: seasons, water, even life all represent variations of the cycle theme. In myths, heroes may go through a cycle of adventure, and rebirth (perhaps as a constellation.) There's the recurring theme of the female who is sometimes good and beautiful, but can turn treacherous. Loss of identity and regaining it is a popular theme in literature.

Some speculate that all stories are really just reminders of one main story from long, long ago that we can't quite remember, but that we continue to try to recapture (this reminds me of the book Lucy found in the magician's house in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!) Frye wonders if we somehow sense that we were once in a different place, and we're trying to re-create that place. It might be the Garden of Eden, or Atlantis. We yearn to get back because, in that place, we felt like we belonged and like we were at one with our environment.

Modern literature doesn't try to take us back to that lost place so often. Instead, it describes man's misery. But that still fits with the theme: it's an attempt to drive home the point that we don't belong here, we belong somewhere else. It also reflects that, as we get more civilized and technical, we're getting more absorbed with our day to day routine and contemplating less about our relation to the the universal scheme of things. And the characters and themes in modern literature are less vague and more sharp, more similar to ourselves and the world we know than a vague, misty hint of what we yearn for. They're still the same recurring themes and characters, just portrayed more to modern expectations.

Last Child in the Woods

"Richard Louv argues in his new book that children are suffering from attention problems and higher rates of mental and physical illness because they aren't exposed to direct nature. In Last Child in the Woods, he calls the idea 'nature-deficit disorder.' "

"He gathered anecdotal information to help back up his theory that nature helps children become more observant, calm and creative, though there aren't hard figures to back it up. 'There's a real sense of wonder that is lost when kids aren't exposed to nature,' Louv said . . . 'Nature doesn't have to be Yosemite. It can be the empty lot nearby or the back yard. Any place where they can learn about their surroundings.' "

"Just the fresh air alone is so important for them. And it's great for their imagination. It's where they learn to be brothers and work together . . ."

This article reviewing the book, Outdoor Tme, encourages parents to get their kids outside. It doesn't mention Charlotte Mason, but it sounds like something she might have written herself.

Thanks, Roxie, for sharing this link!

The Motive for Metaphor

Notes from The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye

Chapter 1 - The Motive for Metaphor

No matter what the language, if you go very far getting an education in that language, you'll end up studying its literature. Every language has its Shakespeare and Milton. Literature (novels, plays and poetry) is an art. It has no direct utilitarian value. So what good is it?

Frye has us imagine that we're shipwrecked on an island. First, we survey the area and note that it's wild and barren of human intelligence. That makes us feel alone and scared. Second, we're curious about the place and we have an opinion about it - we like it, or we don't. Those are intellectual and emotional responses. To express this, we use a specific level of language--lots of nouns and descriptive adjectives. On an emotional level, our opinion tends to focus on what we feel belongs as a part of us, and what we like or want. We want to feel at home, so after our basic needs are met with a shelter and food supply, we start working on our wants to make ourselves more comfortable. We might plant a garden and distinguish between plants--those we want (our crop) and those we don't want (which we perceive as weeds.) At this level, we have things we have to do (find food) and things we choose to do (weed the garden.)

Later, another person is shipwrecked, too, and the two of you marry and start a family. Now you have a society and the place starts taking on the form of civilization with engineered buildings, agriculture, medicine--applied arts and sciences. This requires practical language with lots of verbs and action words. We're adapting our environment to suit us. Animals (beavers, for example) do that, too--we still haven't really gone beyond the level of animals.

What separates us from animals is a conscious awareness that we exist, paired with practical skill. We envision what we want and bring it to reality. But first, we have to see it in our mind. That's the imagination, and it uses a third level of language. This is the language of literature and poetry, and it's less practical.

Art differs from science in this way: science starts with what's there and works outward, trying to make sense of it by discovering its laws, which often brings it into the realm of math, which is abstract and in the realm of the imagination. It goes from the world to the mind. Art goes in the opposite direction. It starts in the mind, in the imagination, and then tries to fit it to the real world. Science seeks to progress, to learn more and more. But art can't progress. Drama will never improve and leave Shakespeare in the dust, poetry will never progress and be better than Dante. Art's masterpieces are timeless and not improvable. And, since art seeks to find meaning and help us find our place in the world, then we can't outgrow our need for it, no matter how much the world evolves and makes progress. We'll always be asking the same questions about why we're here.

Perhaps, somewhere in our mind, we're seeking to return and recapture a sense of belonging, or being united with our environment, identifying with something. Some think of this as a return to the Garden of Eden, or nirvana, or heaven, or some other explanation. Art seeks to free man's spirit from the bondage of time and space.

Writing is either describing the world, or is instructive (practical), or else it's an abstract association with the mind (art). Being abstract and associative, artistic writing (literature) tends to use a lot of suggestive similes and metaphors. But practical writing has to be precise, so it tries to steer clear of vague suggestive clichés.

The Educated Imagination

Literature encourages tolerance - bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them also as possibilities.

-Northrop Frye, writer (1912-1991)

This quote was posted this morning on the Jackson Browne message board I frequent. It's from the 1964 book The Educated Imagination. I started reading that book a few days ago because it kept coming up in some of my favorite blogs. Then I checked my email, and someone mentioned the book in her email to me. It's really eerie how that book keeps coming up lately. I don't know what it all means, but I guess I'll do the only thing I know how to do. I'll take notes as I read the book and post my notes. Maybe something will come of it??

Is TV Making Us Smarter?

This article says so. Pop culture is increasing our collective IQ's because plots are more complicated for today's sophisticated audiences. Even video games are more complex than ever. But "reading books chronically understimulates the senses...books are simply a barren string of words on the page..."

So I guess Charlotte Mason was wrong! I'd better go tell my kids to "close that book and do something more mind-stretching. Go watch TV!" ;)

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050516crbo_books

My Real Name

(No, this isn't about my "actual" or "real-life" name; it's about my real name, real in a Platonic sense. Also note that this is mere speculation and the reality may be rather different.)

As a Christian, I look forward to the day when I will enter heaven and the Lord will call me by name. But I wonder, what name will that be? The same name I have used and been accustomed to, day in and day out, here in this world? Or will it be another name--a name I have never heard, perhaps, yet is unquestionably mine? A name which I do not know and yet know intimately, as I know myself. The name that I am. The name which is uniquely mine. "Oh," perhaps I will say, "so that's my name. Of course! How could I be anything else?" And of course I will answer to it. No one could help answering to their name.

(I also find the idea of a heavenly language interesting. Zephaniah 3:9 particularly kindles my imagination: "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord." What will that language be? I know, from a passing acquaintance with Tolkien's languages, that certain words seem fit to their meaning: this word is this thing, and could not imaginably be anything else. I often wonder if this might be a glimpse into the reality of language.)

Books I Finished This Month

The Headmistress at the Common Room has started posting a list of books she read for the month. Books like Brave New World (which I actually have on my shelf) and one by Virginia Woolf, and books I've never heard of. It's a great idea, so I'm going to do that here, too.

I read one book this month. It was The Moffats. I was reading it to the boys and we finished it last night.

Okay, so maybe I should wait until I have time to read to start my list. I did start The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye (it was posted on two "what I read this month" lists, which is where I found out about it) and I hope to do Ambleside's Year 10 along with Tim this coming school year so we can discuss them during the year.

Two Hours Later

I'd forgotten what a nightmare it is trying to reconstruct an attendance record from the kids' old daily assignment schedules. One son started off great, dating all of his schedules, but then he petered out. Another son started dating his in the last term. We had to go through some recorded narrations to fill in the middle. But that part's done. Two sons' forms are done. It's taken two hours with a few hair-pulling moments to get this far. Now I need to do Tim's. Since hestarted high school, there's a specific way I have to label his subjects so they count for credits. We went over the credits he'd need and sorted them according to Ambleside Online's curriculum so we have a pretty good idea which credits he'll be working on in which year. But I need to find the file on my computer to see what we did before I get started on filling out his forms, and I have a squirming baby on my lap.

When this is done, I'll feel justified in indulging in a large bowl of (dairy-free) banana ice cream.