The "I" Word, Or: Where All the Effs and Ns Intersect

An old post re-posted for your growing insight:

Integration. Now, there is an interesting word.  No, it's not THE "I" word of timeline fame, but as--or maybe MORE--important than that other...

Because we too often limit ourselves, the sense of "integration" that immediately springs to the 21st century mind is the one related to forced busing and a small black girl in a gingham dress with ribbons tied to the ends of braided pigtails clutching a belted bookbag as she is escorted by a cadre of uniformed, armed agents through lines of fat and vituperous white, middle-aged men spitting filth and lougies at and on her. And if that's where our association lies with that word, it's a damned fine place to go for meaning.


But consider, please: "intergration" and "integrity" share the same root, and their relationship goes deeper than that. Integrity is, afterall, the state that is achieved when and only when an individual has fully integrated all the values regarded by the larger community as being of the highest worth. It is not an easy state to achieve, nor it is an easy one to maintain. But it is the ideal within each and every society; it is the means by which we recognise and applaud heroism within the community.


Different communities, of course, have different value-sets. My brother's biker club recognises its heros according to different standards than my mother's writers' group does. But those little communities are enfolded together within larger ones, and taking a god's view might give them the appearance of a mass of freshly-laid frog eggs or a zygote in hyper split-and-replicate mode or a Venn diagram on crack. You get the idea. There is a set of shared values recognised by the whole, regardless of the deviations that reveal themselves when individual groups meet on Saturdays at the library for poetry readings or at the clubhouse for cheers and beers.

It has been through our struggles across millenia with the "eff" words (fate, fortune, faith, free will and that fifth one, freedom) and the degree to which we are individually and communally empowered to wield them that we have spiraled onward toward the "N" word--through and around and leaping over the [faux] "n" word--and the path only tends upward because we manage to imbue ourselves, baptize ourselves, slake ourselves with integrity.

Integration. Need some? It's yours for the taking.

He's ALIVE!

For those of you who may like to read some of the NEW stuff Geoffrey has been writing, check out his weblog at:

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/

Of particular merriment (to me at least) are his archival posts entitled "Serpentes on a Shippe," "Ich Pwne Noobs," "I Wolde I Knewe How of Thee I Might Be Quitten!" and "Chaucer Sparkleth in the Sonne."

Yes, Geof does his very best to stay up-to-date and relevant. If you have seen Men Who Stare at Goats (in theaters now!), you may also enjoy his latest post, "Men Who Glare at Stoats."

Considering the Innovative Impulse of Boccaccio...

Reposted 11/18 for the benefit of the current class...

A bit of advice: as you complete your examination of the stories collected into a whole by Giovanni Boccaccio, think outside the info I provided in class--yes, he imagines into being a group of young paper-people to narrate this compendium of tales, and he contrives for them a format that imposes a frame, lending a logical structure upon which these relatively unrelated stories can hang together. Granting that, what else is different (from his Greek and Roman predecessors--who, mind you, preceeded him by a millenium and more!) in a more foundationally elemental way? Once more, hail back to Aristotle, for whom which element was primary? And please to be aware that what Ari said, those brahs heeded...Is the same true for Boccaccio or do we see a slide to some other of the four base elements as driving his narratives, both individually and as a whole? So far, of course, this is all rhetorical--we'll explore these questions in the oral challenge scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 29...But roll them about in your head in the meanwhile, and do your best to build your strongest (most powerfully supportable) thetical position around them, no? Yes!

You Say "Can I Have a Little Halp, Plz?" and I Say "Coming Right Up!"

[Reposted to benefit my noobs, 2011edition: If you haven't already, hie thee back over your notes from the day we first looked at poetry in this class--that's right, there on the sheet on which I'd off-printed "Parents" for you-- and check out that preliminary advice on what your early work on any newly-considered poem should have entail...THEN come back here to think deeper!]


So, you've done the first work toward your formal explication--reading and noting those many-several poems in your green packet-- but now you must render those dribblings and drools into a succinct, pointed and "look, Ma: smartz, I haz sum" format, and you are feeling a wee peckish.

Well, fear not, my fishies, for I have assured you that you, yes you!, have the chops necessary to complete this task and quite well at that...

What's that you say? You're feeling too distanced and distracted and derelict [notice the alliteration I'm rockin'?] to take much succor in my support? Well, do I have a deal for you...Step right up; that's right, make room; there's enough to go around...Now then, one time only, and for the price of a single mouse click, I am prepared to offer you the advice of another sound voice in the wilderness...



Bardiac: Explications



Go on; click it! We don't have all day! (Oh, wait...we have all week and the weekend...But, truly, you don't want to put this off--CLICK IT!)

And remember to thank the nice lady when you're done.