Dear W,
Sorry to hear the news and good luck with the operation. I’m not a big fan of giving advice – I dread it actually – but I remember feeling lost, pretty much from diagnosis onwards. The below is an effort to at least give a badly drawn map as per Holub’s poem. It may not be a route to anywhere sensible but it is, at least, a route that has been taken.
A student at my school called Mia has made a great website to show off her photography – please drop by and leave a comment! She’s spent two years coming to Coding Club and worked away teaching herself javascript and more.
And she’s 10.
Am seriously impressed!
Really enjoyed Doubt. This parable definitely going to be reused with students.
“A woman was gossiping with a friend about a man she hardly knew— I know none of you have ever done this—that night she had a dream. A great hand appeared over her and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession.
She got the old parish priest, Father O’Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. “Is gossiping a sin?” she asked the old man. “Was that the hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?”
“Yes!” Father O’Rourke answered her. “Yes, you ignorant, badly brought-up female! You have borne false witness against your neighbor, you have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!”
So the woman said she was sorry and asked for forgiveness. “Not so fast!” says O’Rourke. “I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!”
So the woman went home, took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. “Did you gut the pillow with the knife?” he says.”Yes, Father.” “And what was the result?” “Feathers,” she said. A world of feathers.
“Feathers?” he repeated. “Feathers everywhere, Father!”
“Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind!”
“Well,” she said, “it can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.”
”And that,” said Father O’Rourke,“is gossip!”
via the indispensable Mr DuPlessis this video shows:
a) a large slice of my childhood
b) the same school I now teach in (the playground hasn’t changed)
I found out on Saturday that a friend of my mother’s is in hospital at the moment with numerous cracked ribs and a punctured lung. How she got there is, somehow, wonderfully “Oxford”.
Her husband has been very ill and is now in a wheelchair. He felt that a tree needed pruning in their back garden. Rather than ask in the tree surgeons she decided do do it herself (she is mid 60s). She put the chainsaw on a long extension and set about climbing up the tree. When she was 10 feet or so up, she began to cut but lost her footing and fell. The tree was overhanging the neighbouring garden and she bounced off the branches, landed heavily on the wall and then fell into her neighbour’s garden. At this point she feels she may have blacked out.
Now, the council own the house next door and they had recently taken the decision to turn it into a home for teenagers with very severe learning difficulties. To help these teenagers, the council had installed a large trampoline in the garden. When she came round, five of these children were bouncing up and down on the trampoline shouting “Angel from the sky! Angel from the sky!”
It took her some time to work out where she was. When she did she climbed back over the wall (no mean feat as it is 6 feet high) and dragged herself back to her ill husband. There, she made them both a cup of tea. He comfortingly said that it didn’t matter, she didn’t need to prune the tree all at once.
Yesterday, a little bit before being sent home, a reverend came round our ward. Two had gone to theatre so there were four of us: two cabbies called Pete and Rob, a thirty-something and me.
The reverend started with Pete and they had a long chat. Then he moved on to Rob, and again had a long chat. When he reached the thirty-something, there was less chat and more “Are you in pain? Is there anything I can do?”.
Next up was me. He walked to the end of my bed, looked at me sans smile and then wandered off.
Don’t know what to make of it … half of me relieved, half of me put out.
Perhaps it was my superhero shoes.
Yesterday, I had another one of those conversations about classics. Anyone who studied Latin, Greek or both to any level will have had something similar.
“Really, ancient Greek? Wow. What’s the point of that? I mean, I’m sure it’s interesting but why bother? What jobs does it set you up for?”
Everyone who treasures their classical education has their own reason for doing so. Mine were various: teachers, notably Nick Aldridge and John Claughton, inspired me; I enjoyed deciphering the language; I became mildly obsessed with the invention of tragedy and whether all heroes were “mad”; and more. Others love myths, or art, or ancient history, or the fact that it helps your spelling. Some of these loves are brief. My brother, sadly, was infatuated with Persian Naval tactics. The affair was brief and ended bitterly.
This time, finally – and yes it has taken me far too long – I think I managed to crystallise why I treasure the classics, and why I think Ancient Greece deserves study: it’s what you might call “the human adventure”. By that I mean this big old project all of us on planet Earth have of learning how to live together. Studying the classics, spotting some of the classical seams running through Western civilization, makes you feel part of something larger than yourself. Soppy perhaps, but hey ho.
And if you don’t want to take it from me, take it from Pericles.
“It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having an especial regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
‘And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; our homes are beautiful and elegant; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own …
Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner or prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face….
If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war.
For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless; but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act and of acting too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger. In doing good, again, we are unlike others; we make our friends by conferring, not by receiving favours. Now he who confers a favour is the firmer friend, because he would fain by kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting another’s generosity he will not be winning gratitude but only paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbours not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit.
To sum up: I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace”
[Source: Jowett]
Just been to a great ‘maths lesson’ by The Idler Academy’s Head of Mathematics, Alex Bellos. Much of it I’d read in his book, Alex’s Adventures in Numberland but there were enough interesting asides – and a refreshing lack of portentous ‘thinkers’ – for it to be a good evening.
One of the astonishing bits was seeing monkeys outperform adults in memory tasks. The chimps at Kyoto had to remember some numbers in order
Anyway, feeling very enthused. Will be going to more academy talks I think.
I still resent how difficult skateboarding is but I do love this.
from Digital Czech via Matt Jones
I saw Jerusalem last week. It was 3 hours long, some of the country folk a little generic, but fabulous.
Then I went to a night out at the new Bush Theatre. It was smaller, less hyped, but in its own way just as wonderful.
Both were a relief. Recently, I have found bookshops, music and the like harder and harder to face. I am beginning to opt for very professionally done (but ultimately crap) airplane thrillers over challenging fiction, background music over anything else. I am reading more books that you forget as soon as you put them down, TV that you don’t mind not pausing while you make a cup of tea.
As Darwin said,
“My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of fact . . . .The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
Except Darwin’s general laws were pretty impressive and mine are becoming more and more like platitudes drawn from pub trivia. I am not quite at the “kids these days” horrors a younger me swore I’d never say, but I am slipping along the the slope.
Nor am I alone. Many friends I speak to, male friends at any rate, are all increasingly reading non-fiction or trashy plane reads. Trips to the theatre, to concerts, new fiction and the arts all are treated with not dread exactly but at least a sigh. They take so much concentration!
All of which makes me wonder, perhaps this panic about children and attention spans is the projection of middle-aged men (like me) grumbling about their loss.