My Summer Vacation in Green Town, Illinois

     Most of us had the childhood experience when returning to school after summer break having to write the mandatory, "What I Did This Summer" essay. Of the range of things we rarely wrote "slept a lot more," "nothing," or "stayed in trouble." We would often write about the summer vacations.
      Anyone who knows earthly geography, knows from the title of this blog that my summer vacation was spent in the sub-creation of Ray Bradbury. While this is true, it does not make the grandness of my vacation any less fantastic. Vacations should be about leisure, rest, laughter, reflection, and fine conversations. Additionally, one should return from vacation a better person.
     While I have read Dandelion Wine many times before this summer's read, I had never read this wonderful work with Summer Morning-Summer Night, and Farewell Summer. Enough good cannot be said of these summer works by Bradbury. It would be impossible to read these works together and not be thrown into memories of one's own summers past. Of all the reasons to read Ray Bradbury's stories, the distinctly human act of introspective reflection and reminiscence of years ago is a main motivation.
     The people we meet on the streets, in the shops, and in the homes of Green Town are easy to connect with despite the gap in historical setting. We understand these people because we can see ourselves in them. Our longings, fears, secrets, pains, and joys are here in these characters. Possibly one of the best reasons to read is not merely to escape, but to see our lives more clearly.
     Anyone who travels to Green Town will also be reminded of what really matters in this world, this gift of life. The various rituals, ceremonies, discoveries, illuminations, and the particulars of life to savor. Many of those who inhabit Green Town, also call us to live. They call us to better see this life that we are called to live. While there are elements reflecting a world that is not perfect, there is much there to enjoy.

Walking to See: Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian

     Set in the city on an early November evening in the year 2053 at 8:00 pm, The Pedestrian is a powerful fable about the glories of walking as a human activity, but the perils of walking in an age that no longer walks, sees, listens, or thinks.  Walking “was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.”  It has been during this “ten years of walking” “just walking" “every night” for “hours and miles” at a time that Leonard Mead has come to be a man that clearly sees his world.  In fact, Mr. Mead is a model for us all.  It is astonishing what Leonard has come to see in all this time of walking.
     Mr. Mead was at one time a “writer,” but now that “magazines and books didn’t sell anymore” he did not write.  It may very well be that where Leonard used to write to see, he now walks to see.  Mead lives in a time when most people simply stay at home with their “viewing screen."  It is on his many walks that Leonard observed the empty and alienated lives that people in 2053 were merely passing through.  Their homes are described as “tomb like building(s)” inhabited by “gray phantoms.” It is in this wasteland that Mead makes his daily “journey” on the streets overgrown with grass, due mainly to the non-use by any other pedestrians.
     Not all is hopeless as Mead walks. Once he thinks that he hears the “murmur of laughter” but sadly concludes that it is not. Even when the humane is absent, Leonard is still a human who is walking and who is seeing.  A scene of keen engagement occurs when the reader is with Mead as “he listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction,…occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.”
     It is in this world of alienation, loss of walking, where most have their viewing screen “to see with” that normalcy has been defined to match social behavior and Leonard Mead is simply odd.  On one particular evening, he is accosted by police.  Even Leonard is incredulous because police are “…a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left…”  This story, as well as Fahrenheit 451, seems to make the case that social and cultural change came first, and then political and municipal changes followed.  In other words, there was no longer a need for police (except for the extreme oddities such as Leonard Mead) because with the decline of literacy, civility, and conversation, the masses were no longer good or bad citizens. In fact they were not citizens at all. It is in this barren world that Leonard Mead, the walker and seer, is ordered by the police to “Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!” It is in this world that such misbehavior as walking merits a trip to the “Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”
     Many of Bradbury’s stories blend both a dark realism with elements or hints of hope.  This story is of that type. The story ends with both a reference to “one particular house” that was brilliantly illuminated.  This house was Leonard Mead’s.  However, the story also ends with the police car that has Mead in it, headed toward Meads new destination.  Behind is left “empty riverbed streets…empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.”
     Throughout the story, light and darkness are contrasted.  In reference to people, we read of the artificial light of their televisions with “the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces,” on the streets of the “infrequent lamplights” and with Leonard’s arrest of the “fierce white cone of light” the police car shined on him. Apart from the stunning description of Leonard’s home all aglow, is an early reference to lights in terms of a simile. “There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside you; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow.”
     It could be argued that The Pedestrian is a tale that celebrates one of the most human of endeavors.  The story conveys the activity of walking, with all of its possibilities for sight, and in Mead’s case, with all of its perils in a dystopian world.  It is walking that forces the walker to breathe deeper, and possibly breathe deeper of life, and potentially moves the walker to deeper reflection on what is seen, and heard and what might be known.

Great Books and Liberal Arts According to Dr. Bird

For the full reading consult pp. 201-226 The Great Ideas Today 1991.

Civic Education with Professors Kirk, Kass, and Guinness

     In addition to a desperate need for a revival of the Great Books to bring back some life in the barren world of modern education, the United States of America has been in trouble regarding political and a general civic ignorance.  Historian Thomas Cahill once quipped that Rome fell when its people forgot what it meant to be citizens.
     I wrote a blog last year on the amazing book edited by Leon and Amy Kass What So Proudly We Hail.   If one were to take this wonderful volume, add to it Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order, The Will of the People published by The Great Books Foundation and Os Guinness's The Great Experiment, all of these, with the exception of Kirk's brilliant work, are readers of primary sources with the kinds of questions that engage thought and call for action.
     Dr. Kass and others have gone the extra mile in offering the kind of civic education that behemoth government would rather its people not learn. Uncle Sam hopes the people merely yield to what may ultimately become the first democratic republic that quietly aquiesces to tyranny-- a tyranny enabled by social and political propaganda misleading the masses.
    When Civics was replaced by American Government, we lost something central to our education.   Now is the time for a return to a civics education that shapes citizens, not just consumers, and minds shaped by the media.  Let me urge all who read this blog to get these books and make your way through them.  Encourage others to read, learn, converse and live as citizens. You can also benefit tremendously by the free curriculum Kass and others have assembled.  Here it is a free education wisely informing any who would learn about the potential fullness of being a citizen in this nation for the time one resides in this nation, while there is a nation.

The Wisdom of Aesop

     One of the best courses I had within my doctoral program was a study of Aesop's fables. We used the Babrius and Phaedrus edition in the Loeb series.  Of all of the fables, I was struck recently on the political and moral implications of one in particular. The Ant and The Grasshopper should be carefully studied by all people, especially political leaders that seem to have little sense of the past and absolutely no sense of the future regarding their current actions.

     Once there lived an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow. All day long the ant would work hard, collecting grains of wheat from the farmer's field far away. She would hurry to the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain of wheat carefully away in her cupboard, and then hurry back to the field for another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them carefully in her cupboard.

     The grasshopper would look at her and laugh. 'Why do you work so hard, dear ant?' he would say. 'Come, rest awhile, listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labour and toil?'

     The ant would ignore him, and head bent, would just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh even louder. 'What a silly little ant you are!' he would call after her. 'Come, come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!' And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing merrily.

     Summer faded into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the days were short and grey, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold, and snow began to fall.

     The grasshopper didn't feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer's field were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. 'Oh what shall I do? Where shall I go?' wailed the grasshopper. Suddenly he remembered the ant. 'Ah - I shall go to the ant and ask her for food and shelter!' declared the grasshopper, perking up. So off he went to the ant's house and knocked at her door. 'Hello ant!' he cried cheerfully. 'Here I am, to sing for you, as I warm myself by your fire, while you get me some food from that cupboard of yours!'

    The ant looked at the grasshopper and said, 'All summer long I worked hard while you made fun of me, and sang and danced. You should have thought of winter then! Find somewhere else to sing, grasshopper! There is no warmth or food for you here!' And the ant shut the door in the grasshopper's face.

     As we did in that doctoral seminar, I'll let you provide the best application.  There is tremendous wisdom in the fabulist tradition.  If you have not read them lately, it would benefit you.  Imagine proverbial teachings in short-short story form.  Let us rescue these wise teachings from the elementary school and pray our "highly educated" politicians read some fables.

Thomas Aquinas on Wisdom

     On occasion, but it should be with great frequency, within the context of a class discussion or even a lesson at Church, the topic of wisdom is discussed.  Frequently, but it should be on occasion, the definition is put forth as practical or applied learning.  It is at times like these I desired that Thomas Aquinas's definition of wisdom had won the day in Western civilization.  In truth, the Liberal Arts would have done much better through the ages if his definition had been the one people lived by and taught.  
     For Thomas, and most Philosophers until the modern world, Philosophy was essentially the "love of wisdom."  To engage in the the practice of philosophy was the faithful pursuit of wisdom wherever it might be found. The primary understanding of truth was saying of a thing what was and not saying of a thing what was not.  In a larger sense, wisdom was an understanding of the truth of things. Philosophy was not navel gazing and not ideological manipulation, but it was a diligent quest to understanding the good, the true, and the beautiful.  
     Thomas asserts (and I paraphrase) in the Summa Contra Gentiles I, 2: While humans are finite, among all the human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the ultimate end, and it is the most noble, and the most useful, and that pursuit that can provide the greatest joy. Through Philosophy, we humans are more like God and can apprehend the truth of things which calls us to a better life.  
     It is also worth noting that among some of the greatest Philosophers in the Western intellectual tradition, there was no one more committed to prayer.  Thomas, as a grand example of this, not only sought wisdom as part of his brilliant, intellectual, and knowledgeable endeavors, also, daily, prayed for wisdom.
    This may surprise post-Enlightenment people that prior to the Enlightenment, wisdom was closely connected to reason.  For them to reason, reflect, imagine, conjecture, was part of what it meant to act faithfully in accordance with being in the image of God.  As it related to the four causes expounded by Aristotle and adhered to by Thomas, wisdom is an understanding of the final cause.  Sadly, this has all but been lost in science and philosophy today.  
     Is it possible that one reason Philosophy is ridiculed by so many today as irrelevant and outdated is because it lost its way a few hundred years ago and has never fully found the way back to the path.  If philosophy was still about the blending of the theoretical and the practical, the reflection and the proper moral action, one can imagine that there would be many who would come to love and live wisdom.
     

Christopher Dawson's "Outline of History"

     Teaching as one who desires to "think Christianly", the reality is that it is not merely the content, but the way one thinks about the content.  A Professor of Cultural History who is informed by Christian conviction will certainly cover many of the the same topics, eras, issues, and people that a non-Christian counter-part would cover.
    I remember hearing, years ago, about a rabid atheistic Professor of Philosophy who so disdained Thomas Aquinas, he refused to even mention him in his Survey class other than to dismiss the greatest Medieval Philosopher, arguably the greatest Philosopher of all time.  Obviously, his students were cheated of a full education.  Biases considered, as we all have them, when I teach Cultural History, my debt, respect, and gratitude is extended toward Christopher Dawson and explicitly stated..
     Dawson is most certainly correct when he expressed this conviction about the Christian view of history.  The Christian view of history is not a secondary element derived by philosophical reflection from the study of history. It lies at the very heart of Christianity and forms an integral part of the Christian faith. Hence there is no Christian “philosophy of history” in the strict sense of the word. There is, instead, a Christian history and a Christian theology of history, and it is not too much to say that without them there would be no such thing as Christianity.
    Due to the influence of Dawson's writings on my historical consciousness, I often begin by giving the widest parameters of Western Civilization by describing Pre-Christian; Christian; and Post-Christian phases. To provided more nuance, I again, borrow from Dawson's works. Any reader will note the central role that Religion, in particular, the Christian Religion, holds.  Dawson, like other great historians, spoke of discernible patterns or cycles in history.    The following is an outline of Western Civilization I have gleamed from several of Dawson's works.

A. Period of Growth. Dominance of the old synthesis in the young civilization.
B. Period of Progress. Disintegration of the old synthesis in the progressive civilization.
C. Period of Maturity. Rise of the new synthesis in the mature civilization.

The Hellenic world