“There are many cultural reasons why we fall into this confusion about grading, many of them having to do with the lust for scientific precision that came out of the Enlightenment. Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen …
A Word to NSA Students
We are halfway through Jerusalem Term, and so it is appropriate for me to bring you a few words of exhortation — what your academic dean described to me as a few kicks and hugs. This I am happy to do, and after thinking it over, I decided to speak to you in a Mosaic …
Not Eating Gravel
“I have no problem with high standards or tight rules — but the rules are for the children; the children are not there to give the rules something to work upon. There is nothing wrong with hard work in a rigorous school, but there is something wrong with work that is hard for all the …
Ideational Art
“Ideational art, speaking for its culture, represents a nonvisual world of transcendental realities lying beyond both reason and the senses. Its subjects are spiritual: Almighty God, the Divine Christ, the blessed Madonna, inspired apostles and saints, and, generally, the realm of intangible spiritual values” (B.G. Brander, Staring Into Chaos, p. 269).
Up to Our Chins in Sensate
“Drawing their data from encyclopedias, histories of art, and museum catalogs, from art journals, scholarly monographs, and other reference sources, the researchers listed art works by the scores of thousands. They classified each item according to its traits, whether ideational, integral, or sensate. Then Sorokin compared changes in the arts to the changes of cultural …
And Narrative Is All the Rage These Days
“MTV’s rock videos tend to be fragmented and surreal, with fast cuts, visual rhythms, and imagery that is striking but does not make a lot of sense. Country videos naturally tend to be narratives, reflecting the storytelling character of the music'” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, p. 165).
No Secular Sacred Divide in Bluegrass Anyway
“A similar mixture of sacred and secular numbers can be found on nearly every bluegrass album by nearly every performer. Contemporary bluegrass virtuoso — and country music crossover –Alison Krauss told a reporter, ‘I’m trying to remember a [bluegrass] band that doesn’t play gospel. I just can’t think of any.'” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, …
Perichoretic Singinng
“When people got together to play musical instruments, they also stood in a circle so they could hear each other and blend in—an act of communal, participatory music-making, not a performance before a passive, non-music-making audience. This is still the practice today when people come together to play bluegrass music” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, …
True Rejection of Hellenism
“Johnny Cash . . . lists in the liner notes to his album Unchained what he likes in music: I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and …
Death By Sabbath
“But the first principle is given clearly by Isaiah: Call the Sabbath a delight (Is. 58:13). And even this verse is abused whenever truncated, narrow, and parsimonious Sabbath observance is substituted for the real thing. The cranky Sabbatarian, who ‘cooks kids in their Sabbath milk,’ does not limit this destructive behavior to one day in …