There is something tremendously stabilizing about a library. Really, I’ve never noticed it before, and it is incredibly strange, so much so that I feel as though it must mean something to me, must point me somewhere else, to some goal or career or future. Today I made the mistake(?) of wandering through classroom buildings…
The following is the transcript of a speech that I wrote and presented for Hillsdale College’s Edward Everett Oratory Contest this February. The contest’s topic for all competitors was “Individual Rights and the Common Good in American Education.” Speeches were to be ten minutes long and delivered entirely from memory. With this speech, I made…
With Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter arriving in the next several months, my thoughts have been straying to the action of God and religion in my life, as well as to my life in general. A convergence of literature in my various classes—all focusing on or mentioning confessions, testimonies, biographies, or journeys toward God—supports this…
“Call me Ishmael.” That highly recognizable three-word imperative begins Herman Melville’s iconic American epic, Moby Dick. While even a casual listener might remember the opening line, the first few sentences taken as a whole more completely express the ideas of the book, turning readers toward the ocean and making assertions about human nature: “Call me…
This past Thursday morning, my little town of Hillsdale was hit by a severe thunderstorm that caused a lot of damage in the town, including on my college’s campus. I spent part of Thursday morning driving around, just looking at the trees down and observing the effects of the power outage. This post springs from…
Last summer, I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and found it to be a intriguing book. Since then, the words timshel and “thou mayest” have been ringing in my head from time to time. Timshel is a Hebrew word that has”thou mayest” as a translation of it. If you have read East of Eden,…
In King Lear, the marvelous play by William Shakespeare, the Duke of Albany explains to wicked Oswald that “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well” (Act I, Scene IV). In other words, even when we humans try to improve something and hold the best of intentions, we can destroy. Our sinful and fallen natures…