Academics week March 25-28

"If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."
"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.
"Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"

Caspar David Friedrich- Monk by the Sea.

"God sits in the chamber of our being in which the candle of our consciousness goes out into darkness... All drams are not false; some dreams are truer than the plainest facts. Fact at best is but a garment of truth, which has ten thousand changes of raiment woven on the same loom. Let the dreamer only do the truth of his dream, and one day he will realize all that was worth realizing in it." -George Macdonald

"The rational man will adapt to his environment, The irrational man expects to alter his environment to suit his needs. Therefore all progress depends on irrational men. " -George Bernard Shaw

Isaiah (finger in the air and somewhat oblivious of the historical superiority of the modern audience): The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field…

Edward O. Wilson (somewhat impressed, but nonetheless determined to do his bit for "evolutionary progress"): But… But sir! Are you aware of the existence of the electromagnetic spectrum?

CURTAIN
-Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle

I highly recomment reading Wendell Berry's Life is a Miracle, it's fantastic. There were no classes on Easter Monday, so we missed philosophy and one Latin class. We'll be having two philosophy classes this week to make up for it- it's gonna be intense!

Art- "Impressionism and other 19th Century 'isms'" was the title of the lecture. We started the class talking about Caspar David Friedrich who painted at the beginning of the 19th C. He was a Christian artist, and Dr. Tingley's hypothesis is that he was a "painter of relationships". You can see communication with nature and with others in his work. I really liked his stuff, its interesting that a lot of them show people in the foreground with their back to the viewer, it kinda brings you into the relationship, you know? The mainly talked about one called "On the Sailingboat" that is a picture about marriage. Instead of just being focused on each other they are focused on a shared goal that they're moving towards.

"On the Sailing Boat"

"The Wanderer above the Mists""Woman Before the Rising Sun""Two Men Contemplating the Moon"

"Abbey in the Oakwood"

Then we moved on to modern art. We mostly talked about realism and naturalism in Manet and Courbet, then on to impressionism, mostly looking at Monet and Renoir, and then with post-impressionism we looked at Gaugin and Van Gogh. Whew, we are just flying!

Monet- self portraitManet- Luncheon on the Grass. This caused quite a stir; he was using classical subjects and forms in a painting set in the present. Was this appropriate?


Renoir- luncheon. "Impressionism was a celebration of the pleasures of middle class life. Did it not play beautifully into a consumerist relation to the world?"

Dr. Patrick was gone, so we had a researcher friend of his come in to tell us about molecular biology. It was okay, but he just talked about his research when I think Dr. Patrick was hoping he would explain something to do with how molec. bio relates to evolution. Oh well. I have to start writing my paper for this class this week, and I'm terrified that it's going to be very hard...

We're still doing the passive system in Latin, but I think there's a whole new verb system coming up tomorrow. It'll be the last chapter though!

Music-We talked about and listened to opera-Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini! Prof. Warren had a great time listing off German words for Wagner such as 'Gesamtkunstwerk' (which means 'a complete work of art'). He also played along to Verdi's Anvil Chorus on the dinner triangle we use to call people to class and meals- the man is hilarious. After class we listened to Anna Russel's version of the Ring Cycle, which was hilarious of course.

We talked about Annie Dillard in lit. after reading the first two chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She sees herself as an aeolian harp- lets the wind just blow through her and produce what it may. The book alternates between scrutinous observation and reflections on those observations- the main theme is seeing. Prof. Tucker gave us yet another assignment- we are supposed to go out at find 5-10 objects (not from our appartment of school) and then 'write an Annie Dillard style anecdote' using them as inspiration. I think there is potential for this to be fun, I mean it allows us to be creative and stuff, but there are a couple of problems, like the fact that none of us can just write like a Pulitzer winning author on demand, and also the objects we use are supposed to be ones we can bring in to class, which pretty much excludes nature (trees, light on the water, icicles melting etc.) and limits us to the garbage we see on the street on our walks to and from school. Annie Dillard is all about nature, and although I've no doubt she could talk about garbage, I'm a little more inspired by other things... anyway, I started writing my paper for his class yesterday so I'll get that done first. I'm talking about a the emphasis on relationships in Lilith by George macdonald. There's an interesting article by him called "The Fantastic Imagination" on writing fairy tales (he had a huge influence on CS Lewis). You can read it at: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/ortsx14.htm.

Scriptures- John Wesley. Hearing the history about the Methodists was interesting. We had read A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity (1753) and Covenant Service Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God (1780).

John Wesley

Science with Dr. Metelski was about electricity and magnetism, Maxwell equations, how these advancements affect our lives...

Trivium was great again. We read and criticized some more little apologetic paragraphs we'd written, and then we talked about socratic dialogues (which Peter Kreeft uses in most of his books). Since our science paper is supposed to be written in a dialogue, this was very helpful.

Today is beautiful and sunny, and things are melting but I am feeling rather exhausted so I think I'm going to stay in and read. We have some people coming over for supper tonight, and then we're going to go sing karaoke! I'm looking forward to it.