I’ve been thinking about television series and their endings and their popularity I heard, just barely, that the TV series Friends had its final episode last week. Fortunately, snob that I am, I never saw Friends. Nor did I ever view an entire episode of Seinfeld nor (shudder) Sex and the City nor American Idol nor Oprah nor Survivor nor, to go back in time, Dallas. When all my friends were wondering “Who shot J.R.,” I was wondering “Who is J.R.?” I satisfied my curosity by asking someone, but I still don’t know who shot him. I do try to keep up with what’s going on in the TV world for the sake of “relating to the culture,” but I’ll admit to being mystified by the popularity of most of what is offered on network TV. Three of the shows I mentioned above, as I understand it, were about the sexual escapades of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings in NYC or maybe Philadelphia. Anyway they’re all somewhere up North where I suppose that sort of thing is entertaining. I’m even interested in foreign and exotic cultures, but this one just seems tawdry and rather boring.
Another three of the programs entertain by embarrassing people–except I heard that Oprah foreswore that sort of programming a few years ago. I’m not the least bit interested in watching “reality television” which is not so much real as it is unreal and totally alien to anything I see or hear about in my community.
This is not a “what is the world coming to” sort of post as much as it is a “what am I coming to” musing. Popular culture and I seem to have parted company about 15 to 20 years ago, and I’m not sure we’ll ever come together again. The last popular TV show I remember watching regularly was The Cosby Show.

Today is the birthday of Henry Sienkiewicz, author of Quo Vadis?, Catholic Polish novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905. One of my students is assigned to read Quo Vadis? this month; I think I’ll try to re-read it myself and see how I like it. I read it long, long ago but don’t remember it too well.

It’s also the birthday of Soren Kierkegaard, who, as far as I can tell, was a mess–but interesting.

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), “The Sickness Unto Death”
Another quote: Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself.

There’s a list of “classics” floating around the blogosphere, and the idea is that you’re supposed to copy it into your blog and highlight in bold type the ones you’ve actually read. E over at Reading to My Kid has his own list of picture books everyone should have read. I would like to say that I don’t agree with all the choices on the list. Not all of these qualify as “classics.”

Millions of Cats, by Wanda Gag
Angus and the Ducks, by Marjorie Flack
Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobodkina
The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes, by Phyllis Krasilovsky
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton
Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff
Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown
Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss
Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell Hoban, illus. Lillian Hoban
Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson
A Hole is to Dig, by Ruth Krauss, illus. Maurice Sendak
In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
George and Martha, by James Marshall
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig
Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion, illus. Margaret Bloy Graham
Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, by Charlotte Zolotow, illus. Maurice Sendak
Ira Sleeps Over, by Bernard Waber
A Color of His Own, by Leo Lionni
A Whistle for Willie, by Ezra Jack Keats
The Beast of Monsieur Racine, by Tomi Ungerer
Strega Nona, by Tomi De Paola
Eloise, by Kay Thompson, illus. Hilary Knight
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? Bill Martin Jr., illus Eric Carle
Freight Train, by Donald Crews
Frog and Toad are Friends, by Arnold Lobel
Jamberry, by Bruce Degen
First Tomato, by Rosemary Wells
Hondo & Fabian, by Peter McCarty
My Friend Rabbit, by Eric Rohmann
Tuesday, by David Wiesner
Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, by Lloyd Moss, illus. Marjorie Priceman
Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, by Chris Rashka

As you can see, I’ve read most of the books on the list–most of them many times. The ones toward the bottom of the list must be more recent titles. I haven’t kept up with recent trends in picture books since I have enough classic picture books to fill a child up with reading. In fact, I wrote and self-published a book a few years ago called Picture Book Preschool with suggestions for more than 365 picture books to read to your child, a book for every day of the year.

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

Well, Brandywine Books and probably about a dozen others got to it before I did, but anyway today is approximately the 440th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. How’s this for an appropriate quote?

“Do thy worst old Time; despite thy wrong, my love shall in my verse ever live young.” Sonnet 19

Actually, my favorite Shakespeare quotations come from the plays.
Hamlet:
Hamlet: Denmark’s a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons. Denmark being one of the worst.

Merchant of Venice:
Antonio: In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.

As You Like It:
Rosalind: Your experience makes you sad: I would rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad, and to travel for it, too.
Rosalind (again, my personal favorite): Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

I could go on, but I’d rather have comments. What’s your favorite Shakespeare quotation?

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik was a Victorian novelist and poet. I read her most famous novel, John Halifax, Gentleman, a long time ago, and to tell the truth, I don’t remember much about it. I do have a vague impression of a scene where two friends, young men, are out talking on a hillside, and one of them (maybe John) makes some momentous decision. I found this comment on the author on a website dedicated to the literary heritage of West Midlands:

Dinah was respected for her very generous and compassionate nature and this strength of character can be seen in the rather moralistic tone of much of her poetry, fiction and essays. She felt that true nobility was not dependent upon material wealth and this theme is well developed in John Halifax, Gentleman. The resulting style can seem rather too sentimental and dull for modern tastes.

Ah, yes, we moderns have outgrown the sentimentality and dull generosity and compassion of those Victorians. And strength of character has definitely gone out of style. As for being moralistic, heaven forbid that any novel nowadays have anything to say about morality one way or the other, except maybe to ridicule it. I’m beginning to wonder if the twentieth century craze for moral ambiguity and a tolerance for any and everything isn’t just that–a craze, a passing fad. Perhaps it’s time to write books that are a little bit sentimental, not too preachy, but having something worthwhile and character-buidling to say. Wouldn’t the author who could write a book that was entertaining, deeply thoughtful, and also “moralistic in tone” be a true artist in the best sense of the word? Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Dickens–all my favorite authors were able to be sentimental, moralistic, entertaining and profound. I don’t remember if Dinah Mulock had that ability or not, but it sounds as if she at least tried.

The current read aloud books in this homeschool are Cheaper by the Dozen and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We watched the movie of Cheaper by the Dozen the other day, and all of us agreed that we wished that someday someone would make a movie that was actually based on the book of the same name. I’m enjoying reading about Dad Gilbreth’s educational techniques which involved a lot of painting things on walls and some “external motivation,” i.e. rewards for outstanding performance. We don’t paint Morse code on the walls and ceiling, but we do have a map of the world on the living room wall (wallpaper). I can’t say my children are expert geographers, but I think they have absorbed something just by having the map readily available.

Plainsman over at Southern Appeal asks an interesting question in this post:

““Traditional and conservative Americans who seek to revitalize the intellectual and cultural life of the nation face a basic strategic choice. Should we try to slip inside the culture-generating, “prestige” institutions and change them from within, or should we devote our energy to creating and nurturing alternative institutions, in order to develop a new establishment, one that can issue direct challenges to the present establishment’s pretensions to award prestige and define the “mainstream”?”
He’s discussing Ave Maria Law School, a conservative Catholic school endowed by Domino pizza magnate Thomas Monaghan, but the concept applies in so many other areas. Should we (conservatives or Christians) try to “invade” Hollywood or just go off and make our own movies? Should we try to get really great books with Christian or conservative themes published by mainstream publishing firms or should we just try to get the world (and the Christians) to notice good books published by “Christian publishers?” Should great Christian professors try to get tenured postiions at secular universities and change the culture of those universities, or should they teach at private Chirstian colleges and try to raise the level of teaching and learning in those colleges? Should conservatives try to remain somewhat influential in the Republican Party or leave and form a purer, more completely conservative political party (Taxpayer’s Party?)? Homeschool or try to change the public schools? It seems that the answer to each of these questions is a little different. It depends on the person who’s making the choice, the particular opportunity that presents itself, the level of openness of the secular institution that one is trying to influence, lots of variables. No doubt it is tempting to take our marbles and go elsewhere to play, and sometimes that may be exactly the right choice. As with homeschooling, we may create totally new and innovative alternatives in the process.