Category: literature
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Civilization has run ahead
Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks. — GK Chesterton in The London Daily News
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Billy the Kid
Today for Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales, we’re reading a short about Billy the Kid. Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales is another one of my podcasts featuring bedtime story readings — in this case the myths, legends, folklore and tall tales of the world. Now and again, I read one of my own…
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Koschei the Deathless
Today for Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales, we’re reading Koschei the Deathless. Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales is another one of my podcasts featuring bedtime story readings — in this case the myths, legends, folklore and tall tales of the world. Now and again, I read one of my own stories or even…
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Tehlu’s Angels and the Chandrian
Today we’re going to touch briefly on the connection between Tehlu’s Angels and The Chandrian. Before we start, spoilers below, though as I said at Writer UnBoxed, I personally am okay with spoilers because only a culture starved for wonder would care about spoilers. In eras filled with wonder like the Middle Ages, they loved…
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Brand Story : My Love-Hate with “Story”
It took talking with two self-proclaimed “story marketers,” a bombardment of “brand story” during the superbowl, and a self-proclaimed (though unordained) “pastor” who said, “It’s all about stories, man, just stories,” for me to realize how fully I had fallen out of love with the word “story.” It also helped that three different large organizations…
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Of Making Many Books There is No End ?
I grew up in a fairly conservative religious community that abhorred study and praised ignorance, in a way. They believed along with what Asimov said of many Americans: that my ignorance is as good as anyone else’s knowledge. I understand that the rational capacity of any given person is up to the task of puzzling…
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Maps of Meaning Lecture Series
HUGE thanks to Dr. Cirilla for introducing me to Dr. Jordan Peterson. I highly recommend folks take the time to sift through the Maps of Meaning lecture series by Dr. Peterson — it singly handedly redeemed the entire field of psychology and psychiatry from the baggage of my youth:
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Sound of Silence : Doors of Stone Prep
Apologies for delaying this reread of Kingkiller since OCTOBER. Still anxious to get it all read in preparation for whenever Doors of Stone comes out in the distant future (don’t want my intentions to get misconstrued again). But I’m mainly anxious to get it reread because rereading books we love is fun. To explain the delay:…
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Tehlu’s Wheel
I want to take a moment in the midst of this reread to point out that Tehlu’s wheel is an ancient symbol found on Mohenjo-Daro seals around 3000 B.C.E. It’s a sun symbol — a sun wheel to be precise. The Gauls used the sun wheel as a sort of good amulet. As a Celtic tribe,…
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A Defense of Boring Personalities
No boring subject exists, just bored people. Boring personalities tend to find the subjects they bore into quite fascinating, stimulating, and they usually emerge as experts in their field. Bored people are cool, but dilettantes. My bride’s mother used to tell her essentially that good girls should never be bored. At first blush, I hated…
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Science Establishes Agnosticism
“The general notion that science establishes agnosticism is a sort of mystification produced by talking Latin and Greek instead of plain English. Science is Latin for knowledge. Agnosticism is the Greek for ignorance. It is not evident that ignorance is the goal of knowledge. It is the ignorance and not the knowledge that produces the…
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A Defense of Spoilers
Spoilers showed up this Christmas, my niece — who’s two years old — gave my sister-in-law and brother-in-law two presents. Both were wrapped. She’d decided exactly what she wanted to give to both of them. Each parent had helped her wrap the present for the other parent. And she wanted to give them first. On…