Day: May 15, 2009

I am in the middle of Pilgrim’s Progress right now and I am enjoying it immensely. All the characters are named after their overarching bad habit, trait or virtue (Help, Obstinate, Mistrust, Piety etc. etc.)  I got to thinking about this. Wouldn’t the world would be much simpler if everyone had one name that described them completely?  Imagine the possibilities:

“How do you do Mr. Peaceandgranola?”

“I’m groovy, thanks for asking Mrs. Busybody!  How’s your son, Nobelt Baggypants?”

“Oh he’s doing well enough. I’m afraid he’s gotten into a quarrel with the neighbor, Mr. Callous, though I’m sure I don’t know what Nobelt has done to upset him. And you know how Mr. Callous is! Always so insensitive and cruel! Not to gossip, but I hear he once threw a rock in Mrs. Rapscallion’s window because he was so angry at her.”

“Not cool dude! Sounds like he needs a little love.”

“I believe so! Oh dear me I’ve got to run. Say hello to your wife, Mrs. Braidsandhemp!”

Wonderful isn’t it? Imagine how convenient it would be. I could avoid all the mean and annoying people in the world just by knowing their name! I could surround myself with nice, beautiful people all day long. I wouldn’t have to go through the long and time-consuming process of getting to know them and becoming their friend and all that.  Life would be easy.

It wouldn’t be very fun though.  I don’t think I would actually have very many friends either. After all, no one is perfect.  Everyone has their ups and downs.  A more accurate name for the typical person might be Miss Usually-nice-except-in-the-mornings-when-she-hasn’t-had-breakfast-is-also-envious-sometimes-but-very-honest-unfortunately-often-slothful.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t appreciate the occasional help.  For example, When I’m (relatively) old it would be very helpful in finding a nice husband.  Also, some books would be a lot easier to understand if there were a Mr. Antagonist and a Mr. Cannon Fodder and a Miss Femme Fatale instead of Frank and Bob and Lucy.  Since that’s usually not the case, I am greatly enjoying and appreciating Mr. Bunyan’s work.

The conversation on this blog and in our household right after Luke wrote about the Marketplace of Ideas (and Eric added his comments on his blog) has been stellar.  While all that was happening, Michael Egnor wrote an absolutely amazing and serious blog post about the evil of eugenics and and the intolerance toward “opinions on ethical issues that derive from religious traditions” amongst those who hold to “a narrow leftist-atheist ideology”.  That was followed by another amazing and absolutely hilarious blog post by Richard Sternberg on the myth of the commonality between chimpanzee and human DNA.  Both of these men have a gift.  They are obviously very bright men who worked very hard to know what they know.  They appear to be very passionate about what they do.  The thing that sets them apart is that they are both gifted writers.  I literally cried at Egnor’s piece and I laughed out loud at Sternberg’s piece.  I was so irritated that comments are turned off on the Evolution News and Views blog, that I sent them an email.

It said, “If Richard Sternberg remains “Expelled”, he could easily make his living as a writer.  Even some of Mark Steyn’s pieces are not as Steynesque as the chimapanzee post.  That is the best praise I know to give.  Kudos Dr. Sternberg!!!”

Kelly and I talk about how to prepare to take part in the public discourse.  We want that to be a part of our homeschool. Of course Kelly writes her daily comic strip, writes letters to the editor (and to World Magazine), and posts on this blog.  Christian keeps his own blog.  That is all good and well, but those are just mechanisms to practice in their media of interest.  We think it is great to be able to write well, but not that helpful until one has enough knowledge to know about what to write.  Even if there is something about which to write and even if that something is very important, it seems futile unless the writer has a passion for and knowledge of the subject.  Maybe too many writers have a passion for writing more than a passion about an important subject.

That is why I loved these two articles so much.  The writers hold profound knowledge and have great passion for the things about which they wrote.  The profound knowledge, I think, comes from intelligence and hard work, probably with more of an emphasis on hard work than on intelligence (not to suggest that these men are not off the charts in terms of intelligence–it is just a lot of hard work to get to where they are in life).  I think probably the passion comes from what one choses to love.  That and the hard work required to learn to write well puts this into the realm of the doable for many people.  It is possible for young homeschoolers to work on all of these things.