1. In WR 115, we started reading Mike Rose's article, "Blue-Collar Brilliance", and I think some of my students started to see that too often blue (and pink) collar workers are looked down upon and paid low wages because they often don't have a college education, despite the variety of types of intelligence their work requires.
2. I'm reading Greenblatt's biography of Shakespeare and at one point he makes a thrilling point: with the Bible being translated into English and with the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer written in English, the deepest things, the fate of the soul, were being explored in familiar, everyday English, opening the way for Shakespeare to do the same. We, in the 21st century, take it for granted that our vernacular language is suitable for the words of worship, Bible translation, writing poems and plays, and so on, but for Shakespeare, using the vernacular in this way was a fairly new idea. (It's part of what makes the explosion of sonnets, poems, plays, and other works in the mid to late 16th century so exciting. The poets, playwrights, sermon writers, essayists and others are in the midst of discovering the beauty they can create with their own language -- and it's a relatively new thing.)
3. Not long ago Sixteen Tons tapped a keg of a new ale brewed by New Belgium: Snapshot Wheat Ale. I love it. It's light, easy to drink, and each the beer rewards each sip with a pleasant tart finish. The Deke and I went over to Sixteen Tons around 7:00 and had a fun talk and I enjoyed a pint and a half of this excellent San
No comments:
Post a Comment