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The High King
It’s happened: we’ve finished them. All five Prydain chronicles. I could cry. Oh, wait — I did. Several times. And it’s not just because my daughters and I reached the end of this…
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Taran Wanderer
With Llonio, each day he visited the nets, the baskets, and the weir, sometimes returning empty-handed and sometimes laden with whatever strange assortment the wind or current brought. In the beginning he had…
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On Freedom of Thought
Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliche about teaching you to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning…
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Tolkien’s World
My daughters are becoming pretty knowledgeable Middle Earth historians. Last night at supper they were discussing why Elrond’s brother Elros may have chosen to become human rather than an an elf. Then there…
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Encyclopedia of Outdated Information
…up until the last generation it was possible to be born, grow up, and spend a life in the United States without moving more than 50 miles from home, without ever confronting serious…
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Homogenization
Very few of us have contemplated more rigorously what is happening through media change than Jacques Ellul, who has sounded some chilling alarms. Without mass media, Ellul insists, there can be no propaganda.…
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The Pleasures of Reading
Plan once appealed to me, but I have grown to be a natural worshiper of Serendipity and Whim; I can try to serve other gods, but my heart is never in it. I…
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Grinding Machine
I’ve had some time to read today and find that I can’t really ingest any more of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction without pausing to reflect. This excerpt in…
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Lady of Shalott
This week, Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” was on my 6th grader’s reading list. She read it, then last night I read it aloud to both girls and basically we all registered our…
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Compassion for Strangers
The death of Rick Warren’s son by suicide is sad enough. But reading the news stories, we see a secondary tragedy — the vicious discussions that are generated in virtually every comment thread…