January 19: Why books?

For almost 30 years, I have used a Franklin Covey Planner. I will probably stop this year; they are more than a retired person needs. It's just a habit now, and an expense. But I do recommend them for busy professionals.

Every day it provides a quote. Some are quite sagacious, some are sort of "Norman Vincent Peale-Joel Osteen" types of advice, and some are just plain weird.

On the 14th, this was it: "The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. . . As long as we have books, we are not alone." This is attributed to Laura Bush. It's not original though (and her speechwriter penned it anyway, I am sure). C.S. Lewis wrote, "We read to know we are not alone." She should have given him credit. Bless her heart.

As a reader in my soul, I do not understand how others do not like to read. How does one understand the world, interact with it, think through ideas, know where we came from, and most of all, hear from God? Yet, of course, for most of humanity, almost everyone did go without reading.

It is a great privilege to pick up a book and get lost in it.

Comments

January 26, 2025: Joseph Campbell's view of things

A colleague sent me this quote the other day. He said that it had really helped him through life and as he faced changes and retirement, and it also helped him follow his bliss and find what he really wanted to do. “The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness rejoins consciousn...

Why to Read Fiction, Idea #27: Empathy, anyone?

The Idea #27 is tongue in cheek. But these are some ideas about writing fiction, which I have done in ten novels (and counting), a dozen short stories, and two produced plays (I know, not exactly the same). Background: In 2015 a colleague and I wrote an open educational resource public speaking textbook for a grant provided by our University System. We didn't realize at the time that it would go viral and be used all over the world within a few years. There are two reasons for that: it is good (as good as anything on the market) and it is free, although only in digital form. Check out www.exploringpublicspeaking.com for it. We also didn't know at the time that my co-author would die at 39 in 2016. I still miss him. Back to the point, I receive requests for the test banks every other day, and this morning I received one from Pennsylvania. The writer had a signature line: "Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in t...

Starting Over

We are ridiculously dependent on information technology. I found that out two weeks ago when my MAC of ten years went inoperative. "Crashed." "Died." Fortunately, some smart technicians were able to salvage my files; I should call them my life, my work, my creativity. But I did lose my passwords. Specifically, I lost the password to my two blogs, which I have not posted to since the crash. My first blog, partsofspeaking.blogspot.com had been in operation since 2006. It had almost 3000 posts on it. Fortunately, I can still get to them. The whole world can. The fact that I can't get into edit or post it any longer means I also can't take it down. It is going to be there as long as Google Blogger will be. If anything there would get me in trouble, well, I'll have to live with that. The second one, highereducationobserver.blogspot.com, is where I wrote about my professional expertise as a department chair. It reflected more research. In both blogs, ...

Parts of Speaking Publishing

Search This Blog