The treatment? 100 pages of literature a day!

Part of going back to school without actually going to a school with other students or an instructor is figuring out the discipline necessary to carry it off so that one actually learns something, so that one deals with a body of material.  That can be difficult in a busy, exhausting life.

So I have set myself the task of trying to read 100 pages of literature a day until I get through the books I would like to read.  One of the books is A Fairly Tale by Jonas T. Bengtsson.  It's a Danish work in translation. 

For some, 100 pages a day would be nothing.  For me, it is challenge, but it is something I can do.  I think I need to.  It is a treatment of sorts.

What's the malady?  Mental atrophy, so it's like exercise.  Intellectual malnourishment, so it's like food.  Illness of expression, so it's like medicine. 

I consume so many words through social media every day that are hastily thrown together, that are incompletely constructed, that are formulaic in their captivity to ideology (left and right) that I need to spend time with words that carry the weight of time, that are carefully constructed, that lead to humane but surprising places to counter what is becoming too common. 

Yes, literature will be a diversion.  Yes, it will also make me a better writer and speaker.  And it will certainly make me a more critical consumer of words and ideas.  But the adventure of it is that I actually don't know where all this reading will lead and who I may become inside or out because of it.

In the final 100 pages of The Plague by Albert Camus that I read tonight, I never expected to read some of the things he says in those passages, nor did I expect to have the reflections that resulted.  And now I'm someone slightly different.

A favor you can do for your future self--Keep a journal

While I was searching for an old set of speakers two days ago, I found the little black book in the picture at left. 

It's a fairly detailed journal from October 1, 2006 through December 13, 2007 that I had forgotten about.  And it's a Godsend.

I've been thinking a great deal about the man I was before whoever I am now.  And this book gave me many of the clues I needed.

Who was I?  I was leading a fast-paced, but more balanced life back then.  I was reading a lot and all of it substantive.  I was going to weekly parties and events and enjoying them. I was getting exercise because I was a founding member of the Grizzlies Rugby Football Club.   I was dating and doing things that were less than dating.  I started a good, long-term relationship that has since ended well in an important friendship.  I was active at Church, frequently teaching classes.  My volunteering life was off the chain.

Those were the good parts and those are things I will consider exploring again.

The bad parts weren't devastating, but they weren't easy.  I was enduring ongoing verbal and psychological abuse from some folks who seemed to be friends without really seeing it.  But to read it all now in day after day of entries, it's clear as daylight what was going on.  

I was also dealing with some hostile allies.  You read that right.  Hostile allies, allies trying to undermine the work that some friends and I were doing.  It kept popping up in the entries and it was even worse than I remember it.

While I wouldn't wish those experiences on anyone, I will say that they taught me things that shaped who I am and how I operate now.  And I'm grateful I learned some lessons connected to those experiences before I had the chance to lead an organization in a professional capacity. 

It's not in the journal, but at some point (maybe a year after the journal ends?), I know I reached a point where I said, "Enough." And now I know how I got there, even if I don't know when I got there.

The record is not complete.  It's biased because it's from my perspective.  But it is a part of myself I have again.  It's a gift I gave my future self, the man I am becoming today.  And it probably only cost me $5 and the time I put into it.

If you've got old journals that you haven't looked at in a few years, take a look.  If you've never kept a journal, consider it for a year and then put away the volumes as you finish them.  They may give you just the push you need in the future to overcome new challenges.

Back to school part 2: Learning a language

I'm sure one thing many students dreaded about high school and/or college was their foreign language class.  I didn't, but I hated math.  So it probably all evens out.

Any way...what's an adult to do who wants or needs to learn another language?  Especially when you don't have a lot of money.

I started using DuoLingo this year and really like it.  It's free, easy, elegantly set up.  The mix of drills is helpful.  And the sound quality is good.  I wish they built in time for the student to repeat the phrases, but since they aren't evaluating your pronunciation they may have seen no need.

I've been working on Danish because of family connections and because I'd like to work on a Germanic language since my previous experience, barring English, is with Romance languages.  I want to be able to read newspapers, watch films, read articles, and the basics like that. I'm not going to run into a lot of Danes in the South and most of them speak English any way.  So it's not a need for me. 

But for those who need to learn some Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, or other major language, it might just be the platform for you.

Also inexpensive and of high quality, as I've heard, are classes at the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute. 

If you have the time, give it a try.  You can devote just a little each day and make progress.  Oh, and it's good for you, as this Guardian article summarizes the matter:

However we learn, this recent brain-based research provides good news. We know that people who speak more than one language fluently have better memories and are more cognitively creative and mentally flexible than monolinguals. Canadian studies suggest that Alzheimer’s disease and the onset of dementia are diagnosed later for bilinguals than for monolinguals, meaning that knowing a second language can help us to stay cognitively healthy well into our later years.

Even more encouraging is that bilingual benefits still hold for those of us who do not learn our second languages as children. Edinburgh University researchers point out that “millions of people across the world acquire their second language later in life: in school, university, or work, or through migration or marriage.” Their results, with 853 participants, clearly show that knowing another language is advantageous, regardless of when you learn it.

Celebrating a friend's book--Opryland USA

Tonight I got to attend the book talk and signing for Opryland USA (Images of Modern America) by my friend Stephen W. Phillips at Parnassus Books.  The book is pictured at left with an Opryland poster in the background.

It's really wonderful when people take the various materials of their interests and pull them together in a project like this.  Stephen's discussion was that of an expert, of course.  And it was also fascinating to hear from many former Opryland USA employees in the audience.

Years later they could recite the most minute details of the park, but never lost to them was its significance to the Nashville economy.  That is something that I'm afraid as the years go by is becoming lost to the rest of us.

How many people from how far away came to Nashville because of Opryland USA?  In the 70s my parents drove two hours so we could go for a fun day.  I loved looking at the pictures they took months after our trip.

It was a vital part of our city and it's still a vital part of many people's story.  Thank you, Stephen, for reassembling the pieces for us.

You can find the book at your local bookstore or online at this link. 

Back to school: Feeding the mind does not have to be expensive

This really bad picture is from my recent haul at McKay's Nashville location.  Total cost?  Thirty CENTS!

I guess I got jealous of the college students heading back to school, but I have been famished when it comes to books lately.  I don't have much money.  You don't need a lot, though.  You just need to be open to surprise during your bargain hunting.

The old-school looking blue book at the top is a classic in the history of political philosophy by George Sabine.  I was a government major and a religion major.  So this was a text I had heard about for years, but I never got around to reading.  Boom.  FREE in the bins outside the store.

Also in the free bins?  Roxane Gay's collection of essays.  It's another book I've had my eye on since it came out because of the challenges I know it will present to my thinking.

The last two are Andre Malraux's Man's Fate or more accurately The Human Condition and Albert Camus's The Plague.   Yes, they're in French.  I started taking French in 8th grade, took four years in high school, and completed the hours for the French major in college.  I won medals in foreign language competitions in high school.  Being a language geek was a big part of my sense of myself in those days, but I didn't keep it up after college.  Enough is still there that I can read tolerably well.  So it's time to return some of that elasticity to brain.  I've been reading The Plague in English, but I need to go back and read it in French.  And I've never taken the time to read Malraux before.  But Jackie Kennedy once coaxed him and the Mona Lisa to come to America.  So maybe I need to find out why and for a total cost of thirty cents...why not?

The difficult stuff, the stuff that makes you think is not just for the young who happen to be assigned such books in their course work.  I am without apology a proponent of the liberal arts throughout life. A variety of practices and experiences build the person, and reading weighty books throughout life is a practice I would commend to anyone.

You may not be interested in political philosophy, feminism, or French literature.  Whatever your interests, there are inexpensive ways to pursue them.  Cheers to going back to school!