In one of his letters, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about how the translation group he and C.S. Lewis and others had would not permit anyone to bring a cheat sheet. Their aim was to translate together, and to do the work of translating on the fly. If someone brought a crib sheet to the table so they could sneak a glance at it, that was cause for ejection from the group. What’s the problem with such a sheet? It certainly can help with translation, after all. But if the aim is to translate together and not to appear to be wiser than one is, the notes don’t serve the ends of friendship; they serve the individual’s ego and fear of being perceived as one actually is. It’s a violation of trust, a concealment. I’m thinking about this today as I consider the role of tech in classrooms and boardrooms. Wearables and apps on phones and laptops allow us to have crib sheets that others won’t notice. And in some contexts, these technologies can be helpful. I’ve sometimes dictated ideas and short essays while on a long run across the prairie, speaking into my phone as I run. Sometimes I use my phone to snap a photo on a run or a hike when I really wish I had my sketchbook and time to sit and do a plein air sketch. I often then complete the sketch from the photo at home that evening. The tech can be useful and helpful in so many ways. But it can also remove us from the community, or prop up our weaknesses rather than helping us to become stronger. I wonder how many of my students aren’t writing notes in class because (a) they are using tech to summarize what they hear from me, and (b) no one has ever taught them how to take notes. Lately my teaching technique has shifted and I am teaching more of what I used to teach middle schoolers: how to read, how to take notes, how to listen to others, how to have a thoughtful conversation. Used poorly, tech can help us pretend to know how to do those things. Used well, it can help us learn those things. And with practice, we can store up good things in our hearts, where rust and moth will not destroy them, where the tech needs no upgrade, no recharge, no planned-obsolescence replacement.

I don’t remember which of his letters Tolkien wrote about that. So rust and moth do eventually take the fine edge off my memories, for sure! I do keep extensive notes on my reading, as I have done for decades, and I could look it up, but I also like writing blog posts quickly, as an exercise in writing, memory, thinking.

Years ago, when I was writing my first book on C.S. Lewis, a few chapters for a friend’s book on Lewis’s Christian apologetics, and a chapter on Tolkien’s philosophy of play for another volume, I spent a lot of time in the Lewis and Tolkien archives at Wheaton College, and reading through the collected letters of Lewis and Tolkien.

Those were good years, and part of the delight of being a professor. The pay is poor, but the reward is leisure for reading and writing that results in better teaching. That privilege is becoming scarcer and scarcer, and even those of us with tenured jobs find that the machinery of the university is steadily grinding down the scholastic (from the Greek scholê, meaning “leisure,” and from which we get our word “school”) in favor of alleged efficiency.

It’s a busy week for me, with lots of grading and teaching and administrative work to do.

In the midst of it I’m also privileged to be doing some behind-the-scenes work for the Episcopal Church’s Eco-Region initiative, helping churches and dioceses grow in their care for the land they steward.

And I’m also privileged to be doing similar work for A Rocha USA. The past few years have given me the delight of meeting some new people like @dswanson and a host of others who are committed to this kind of work.

All of it is work that most people won’t notice or hear about, and that’s fine with me, as long as it means that today I’ve done a little bit of the work of tikkun olam. I can’t do it all, but I can do a little.

Today my morning begins with prayer, and coffee, and writing.
I am dreaming of building a school that is built on love.

Today in class we were talking about how to build a garden that responds to the land we are on. We talked about soil types, water, landforms. We also talked history, culture, and economics. And of course we talked plants and animals, paths and furnishings. Vertical interest. Companion plantings. And so much more we have covered this semester.

Several students said they wanted to put in a koi pond. I immediately thought of all the challenges that come with that but kept quiet while they worked through the possibility. One student realized that winter is harsh here; how could the koi survive? Then a few minutes later another student said “I’ve got it!” And he pointed out that the pond could be put over the heating tunnel that leads between buildings and where the snow never lasts more than a day even when it’s bitter cold outside.

Such a joyful moment when the students, working on a problem together, discover other problems and then solve them.

We also looked at gardens on other campuses, including my alma maters: Middlebury, Penn State, and St John’s College in Santa Fe. And other places where I have studied and worked, like Oxford and a handful of places in Spain.

For your delight and for my students, here are two photos of the koi pond on the Placita at the St John’s campus in Santa Fe.

“The King uses the following method of storing his tribute income. After it has been melted down, it is poured into clay jars, and whenever a vessel is filled up, its clay is removed. Then, whenever he needs money, he strikes off and coins as much as he needs at te time.”

Herodotus 3.96, Strassler Edition. Written sometime in the 5th C. BCE, about events in the late 6th C. BCE.

I am, of course, reminded of 2 Corinthians 4.7 where St Paul says that Christ’s followers “have this treasure in jars of clay” so that it will be clear that the treasure belongs to God and doesn’t come from us.

I wonder how common this treasure-storing practice of Darius was in the ancient Mediterranean. Did St Paul know about this text? Or was it simply a common enough practice? It would have the advantage of making it hard to steal the gold and silver, of course, because those ingots could become quite large.

The Carpenter

Sioux Falls. Sketch in black and white pencil on blue toned paper.

Little by little I am expanding my technique and experimenting with new (to me) media.

Art supply stores are becoming dangerous for my wallet. Dangerous, but also delightful.

One nice thing about small towns like mine: The architecture of the main streets. Most new buildings are made for efficiency and low cost. Which makes them ugly or bland at best. But old buildings made with stone and brick, with artistic flourishes, repesent local materials, craftsmanship that makes beautiful use of the local land, and design that celebrates the mason as an artist and not just as a bricklayer.

One important reason to oppose tyranny (small and large alike) is that tyranny is bad for the tyrant, too.

It is easier to remember the evils of the tyrant that we must suffer; it is hard but valuable to remember that when we oppose tyranny we are acting powerfully in a situation where we might have felt powerless, that we are doing good in circumstances that might have felt altogether evil.

The tyrant probably knew at some point how bad tyranny was, but hoped to escape the worst of it. The deeper they involve themselves in tyranny, the less free they become. To oppose tyranny is to strive for the liberation of the tyrant from their own grievous choices, and for the liberation of the tyrant’s subjects from their own grievous tyrant.

What kind of people do we want to be?

In our civic life we tend to answer such questions as though the answer were obvious. To us, our own answers are easy to affirm.

We rarely consider the possibility that we might be answering too hastily.

Even when we can imagine alternatives, we have a hard time imagining those alternatives as serious or viable.

We should be slow to reply, quick to listen, careful to consider.

It is surprising how often those of us who teach the liberal arts have to defend the importance of the liberal arts within the academy. Outside the academy, we expect this; most people don’t dwell on (or in) the liberal arts, and it would be unreasonable to ask the average person to explain them well.

But inside the academy, the pressures of financial reality always press upon us, and as universities and colleges have become more bureaucratic, they have also been increasingly led by people whose professional skills lie in administration and management, or in law and policy, or in fundraising. Honestly, most of them do a better job of navigating the shallow and treacherous shoals of federal funding and its labyrinth of associated laws than, say, the typical philosophy or English professor would. We have the patience for fine-grained texts, but that patience feeds on beauty and goodness and truth, all of which are in scant supply in governments.

The downside of this is that those administrators also tend to forget what we mean by the liberal arts. The name gets used in so many ways that it loses most of its meaning. In most places, it becomes a touch of varnish to give sheen but not bulk to training in a profession. A few classes that have no meaningful connection to one another but that satisfy some “distribution requirements” that can be reported to the government as proof that we have done the thing we agreed to. And as those classes are removed from the center of an education to the margins, it should come as no surprise when a class that once taught great texts and great questions now teaches some theory and some critique but does not dwell too long on the depths of being human.

I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

Socrates, in Plato’s Meno, 86b-c

From time to time I find it helpful to reacquaint myself with the foundations of the liberal arts.

They are arts, which is to say they require practice over a long time, and one never completes them.

They are liberal, which is to say they are practices of those who are free or who wish to be free.

They make connections between the increasingly isolated disciplines.

This is illustrated by the many ways we use words like “art” and “law”, by the time we (hopefully) spend considering not just what is legal but what is good and just. (“Lex iniusta non est lex”)

Or considering what is not just useful but what is beautiful for its own sake.

Or seeking truth rather than pretending already to have mastered it.

My son’s cat

sketched only in white pencil. Happy Halloween!

Today in my Environmental Philosophy class I asked the students: what would you like to learn to sketch today?

One of them asked to learn to draw a fawn. I thought that was a good idea so I put up an image of a fawn on the screen and asked them: how would you begin?

Another student said: well, based on what youve taught us so far, I’d go for the big shapes first and then I would refine it.

Think you can show us what you mean? I asked.

He jumped up, took the chalk, and started the sketch. First the big shapes and then more details. We talked through the process as he went, but he needed very little help. And as he went, everyone else sketched in their notebooks.

A few minutes later he was done, and his fawn looked wonderful.

Then everyone laid open their sketchbooks and we walked around the classroom looking at what others had done. Every single one had a decently-sketched fawn.

My student had become his classmates’ teacher.

And I walked out of that classroom filled with pride and gladness.

Now here, for my students, I have repeated the process with watercolors, so they can watch me work.

The aim is to observe, to notice, to see. We don‘t need photos; we need to use the eyes we have as well as we can, and to let the world simply be itself before our eyes.

Without first observing, how can we do any philosophy at all? The love of wisdom begins in wonder, says Aristotle.

And wonder begins with noticing, with the small moments that make us say “Aha!” And “Ah!” Or nothing at all, because the world has shown us something that leaves us without words for a little while.

If you look at the automatically generated alt-text for these photos in sequence, you’ll see that the AI goes from thinking it is a rabbit, to a fox or dog, to a deer, to a resting fawn. This makes me glad, too.

Purple Prairie Clover

Another sketch while waiting for the students to arrive for last night’s Augie Green hike at Good Earth State Park.

An idle sketch

using the #3776 fountain pen my daughter gave me, and remembering a conversation with a few friends this weekend about Fermi problems.

Even this late in October, the prairie garden is still very full of life. The dried sunflowers have become dense packets of nutrition, and the birds are feasting. If the garden lasts through the winter, there are enough sunflowers in there to feed the birds all winter long, and to plant hundreds of new sunflowers for the coming year.

And the sunflowers and asters and maximilians are still blooming, so all the pollen-seeking insects, and the ones that come to sip sweet nectar have food as well, at least until the frost brings that banquet to a close.

Asclepias

Good Earth State Park.

Painted while waiting for my students to arrive for a sunset hike.

My students asked me the other day to teach them to draw trees so I’ve been working on tree studies this weekend.

Most of these were done while sitting as a passenger in my friend’s truck, driving across southwestern Minnesota. One was done while sitting by a lake, eating Vietnamese-inspired croissants from Mi Sant bakery and kitchen.

Turkey on Central and 7th. Quick trip to Minneapolis this weekend. During breakfast at Relish on Sunday this turkey appeared on the sidewalk. I snapped a photo and then painted it on the way home. Feeling pretty good about how the painting turned out considering the bumpy ride. (For those who worry about such things: I was not the one driving.)

Last night, while re-reading LOTR, I was reminded that the Sackville-Bagginses and so many others thought Bilbo had vast treasure because he was so often giving gifts and sharing good things with others. But when Frodo and his friends are standing by the stone trolls Frodo tells them that none of the troll-treasure remained. Bilbo gave it all away, because he did not feel it was right for him to hoard for himself that which had been stolen from others. He redeemed the theft and made the treasure clean in the only way I know how: by giving it to those who needed it most.