Sifting "Owl Creek Bridge"

It's a bromide that teachers learn from their students. If the translation of the bromide comes to "Students impart information to their teachers of which the teachers were ignorant"

-->--I am not sure I agree. Or, if I have gleaned new information from those I teach, it doesn't tend to be the sort I was itching to know. (I really did not need to know that Ben Franklin's sells cap bombs. Really. Although I must admit it is in keeping with their patron's interests.) I will not deny, however, that I have learned from my students in this sense: that in looking for questions to ask them, I have had to dig deeper into certain questions than I would be likely to, left on my own.

In Five Acts

Recently I was reflecting on how to coax a play out of a certain story. It’s the second or third time I’ve given this particular short story a run-over, and both my earlier attempts completely dissatisfied me--so much so that this time I decided to scrap everything I had done before and start afresh. So I did what every good writer with writer’s block ought to do: I wrote something else, in this case, something in the nature of an outline. Since a great part of my difficulty with the story in question was structural (it’s cursed with scenes in many places, lots of time elapsing, plenty of authorial intrusion, etc.), I decided to set out the approximate structure of a play, in hopes that doing so might give me a template for altering the story in question.

What Humans Value

It is an unquestionable fact that we human beings value things more when we have sought them. A man who spends his entire life in the pursuit of greater riches and security will value it more than his grandson, who has no reason not to squander the old money passed down to him. A man who has had to work to find a job will be more appreciative of the job when he finally gets it, than the man who finds a plumb position dropped right into his lap. And the sensation of finally grasping a difficult proof in philosophy or in math is a wondrous one that will never be experienced by the rare geniuses who understand such things at first reading. (To be sure, genius has its own consolations; but that is another matter.)

Why I Am Not a Liberal, with Apologies to an Ancient Name

To return to Halloween night (which was enjoyable, no?), there was more than one germ of a story which I wanted to follow that evening. But rather than offering further reasons as to why I am what I am, I thought perhaps I might explain why I am not what I am not: a liberal.

Top Ten Reasons Why I am Roman Catholic

I once saw a shirt with that title on it, and it had some good ones. I remember pleasing your mother, beautiful weddings, having great popes (we've advanced since the Middle Ages, in case you weren't watching) and grand things like that. However, the makers of the t-shirt entirely overlooked two excellent reasons for being Catholic, which I think deserve attention. The first is for a later post. The second, being seasonal, is the subject today. The great thing about being Catholic, in addition to all those other great things, is that Catholics celebrate twice.

News or Chews?

Last night when I told my mother I had started a blog, she said, “Yeah, I just feel like being Chesterton or someone, going out and sitting in a garden in the sun and reading for a long time. Getting away from everything, the internet, the telephone, TV . . .”

So what if Spencer was anti-Catholic?

He wrote great poetry.

"So up [Redcross] rose and thence amounted straight.
Which when [Despair] beheld, and saw his guest
Would safe depart for all his subtle sleight,
He chose an halter from among the rest,
And with it hung himself, unbid, unblessed.
But death he could not work himself thereby;
For thousand times he so himself had dressed,
Yet natheless it could not do him die
Till he should die his last, that is eternally."

—Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto 9.