WILLA CATHER ON THE BEAUTY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Willa Cather, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, edited by Andrew Jewell & Janis Stout (New York: Knopf, 2013) (From a letter to Read Bain, dated October 22, 1932: "No, I am not a Catholic, and I do not think I shall become one. On the other hand, I do not regard the Roman Catholic Church merely as 'artistic material'. If the external form and ceremonial of that Church happens to be more beautiful than that of other churches, it certainly corresponds to some beautiful vision within. It is sacred, if for no other reason than that is the faith that has been loved by human creatures, and loved over the great stretch of centuries." Id. at 458.).

I AM LOOKING FOR A NEW--AND MORE TRADITIONAL--YOGA STUDIO

. . . which is hard enough when living in a major metropolitan area, such as New York, Chicago, or Boston, but nearly impossible when one exists in a midget city, as is New Haven, Connecticut. There is more to yoga than the asanas. See photograph below.

On an unrelated note:

William J. Broad, The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012) (light read).

John E. Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection (New York Warner Books, 1991) (light read; be careful; see your physician first).

HE WHO HOLDS THE GUN

Christopher J. Koch, The Year of Living Dangerously (New York: Penguin Books, 1978, 1995) ("Hamilton had a hard, essentially simple cast of mind; he never lost sight of the notion that power in the state resides with the man who holds the gun. And all through the year he would simply keep asking who held. it. Intellectuals and experts more subtle than he was failed to do so, and for that reason proved to be wrong." Id. at 39. "The West asks for clear conclusions, final judgments. A philosophy must be correct or incorrect, a man good or bad. But in the wayang no such final conclusions are ever drawn. The struggle of the Right and the Left never ends, because neither side is wholly good or bad. The kasar can have noble qualities; the alus, mean ones. So it was with you, Bung Karno. Unlike Arjuna, you failed to heed the advice of Krishna--that advice which Billy was so insistent about. All is clouded by desire: as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust . . . Through these it blinds the soul." Id. at 249.).

"SENTIENT BEINGS ARE INNUMERABLE: I VOW TO SAVE THEM ALL."

Thich Thien-An, Zen Philosophy, Zen Practice (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing/College of Oriental Studies, 1975) ("A key virtue of Buddhism is humility. To be humble is to avoid placing oneself above other people. A Vietnamese Zen Master once taught his disciples: 'I am not necessarily a saint or a sage, and you are not necessarily a common man.' From the Buddhist point of view, everyone is a human being, and because we are all human,we all have our weak points as well as out strong points. Nobody short of a Buddha, a completely Enlightened One, can be considered perfect. If we recognize that we are not yet perfect, then we cannot expect others to be more perfect than we are ourselves. This recognition creates better relations between men. To be aware that we are not yet perfect will not only make us more humble towards one another, but also more respectful and tolerant. [] Tolerance is a key factor in interpersonal relationships." "Every action we take, every word we speak causes a reaction in people around us. For example, if we feel anger, when others see us, they also share that anger with us. And when they see us happy, then they also share the happiness with us. We share not only our physical life and our material goods with each other; we share spiritual and emotional characteristics as well. Such is the act of relating between oneself and another. Because we are all related to each other, none of us is an island; all of us are a part of the whole, Men are not separate. The separation between oneself and another is not real. Our ego-consciousness and out illusion create the separateness. If we see through this egocentricity and this illusion, then we see that we are not really different, Buddhist philosophy, as well as Hinduism, always describes it this way: 'You are my extension and I am your extension.' Therefore, because everyone is our extension, when we intend to hurt someone, at that time we hurt ourselves. Likewise, because we are their extension, when they intend to harm us, they harm themselves as well." "Buddhism recognizes that all men and all living beings are interdependent. Through their bodies and minds are different, they are still interrelated. Since they are interrelated, they are not separate. We are all different facets of the same reality, different parts of the one while, just as the numerous waves rising and falling in the ocean are interrelated transformations of the one ocean. Because we are all so inseparably bound together in the vast ocean of existence, Buddhism suggests that we should love one another, We must shift our sense of identity away from the narrow, constrictive ego-consciousness to the all-embracing universal consciousness. We must learn to see each other as extensions of the same reality. Then we can live together in the world as friends and brothers, and this world of hatred and suffering will be charged into an abode of peacefulness and bliss. This samsaric world will be transformed into Nirvana." "The Buddhist tries to develop in himself a universal consciousness and non-discriminatory love during both sitting meditation and daily activities. To express this compassion, Buddhists remind themselves of the Bodhisattva vow: 'Sentient beings are innumerable; I vow to save them all.'" Id. at 138-140.).

ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: SOMETHING WORTH DYING FOR

Chan Khong (Cao Ngoc Phuong), Learning True Love: How I Learned and Practiced Social Change in Vietnam  (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993) ("But in April 1963, the most extreme anti-Buddhist proclamation was issued by the Diem regime. They declared that Wesak, the Buddha's nativity, could no longer be celebrated as a national holiday in Vietnam, and that it was a crime to display the Buddhist flag. In twelve northern provinces of South Vietnam, Wesak was the most important holy day. All fish and meat markets and nonvegetarian restaurants were closed, and anyone could enter a Buddhist temple and receive a vegetarian meal. Buddhist flags were on display everywhere, and processions of carts made of flowers carting a statue of the baby Buddha could be seen throughout the cities, towns, and villages. In Hue, the Buddhist stronghold in Central Vietnam, every household traditionally prepared an altar in the front yard on the eve of Wesak to welcome the baby Buddha. Imagine what a shock it was for the people to learn that all of these practices were suddenly forbidden." Id. at 34. "On June 11, 1963, Thay Quang Duc immolated himself to call for religious freedom. No one had informed me that he was going to do this, but just as the moment he set himself on fire, I happened to be driving by the corner of Phan Dinh Phung and Le van Duyet Streets on my motorbike, and I witnessed him sitting bravely and peacefully, enveloped in flames. He was completely still, while those of us around him were crying and prostrating ourselves on the sidewalk. At that moment, a deep vow sprang forth in me: I too would do something for the respect of human rights in as beautiful and gentle a way as Thay Quang Duc." Id. at 38. "The number of Buddhists who sacrificed themselves increased. Thay Nguyen immolated himself in Phan Thiet on August 4, 1963; the nun Diew Quang in Nha Trang on the same day; Thay Thanh Tue in Hue on August 13. I know that in the West it is hard to understand why Vietnamese burned themselves. It looked like a violent act. Please try to be in the heart and mind of the person performing such an act of great love and sacrifice. To move the hearts of the hardest en and women, you have to give a gift of great value-- even your own life. These people did not die when their bodies turned to ash. When I looked deeply at Thay Quang Duc's sacrifice, I could see his love and deep commitment to human rights born again in me and in thousands of Vietnamese and others all over the world. We received the fire of love and commitment to act from his great sacrifice." Id. at 39-40. Perhaps, those of us who have not found something worth dying for, have not found anything really worth living for.).

ON EDUCATION

Krishnamurti, Think on These Things, edited by D. Rajagopal (New York: HarperPerennial, 1964, 1970) (From "The Function of Education": "I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves what education means. Why do we go to school, why so we learn various subjects, why do we pass examinations and compete with each other for better grades? What does this so-called education mean, and what is it all about? This is really a very important question, not only for the students, but also for the parents, for teachers, and for everyone who loves this earth. Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examination and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? Having a job and earning one's living is necessary--but is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will." Id. at 1, 1-2. From "The Problem of Freedom": "The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is the most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvelous; but that never happens. Whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in that very understanding there is a transformation. So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, not in doing whatever you happens to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment."  Id. at 9, 11. From "Orderly Thinking": "In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectuals--intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally, we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance,; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea." Id. at 59, 61.).

ENVY AND NARCISSISTIC CHARACTER DISORDER

Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Narcissism and Character Transformation: The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorders (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts) (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1982) ("It is clear that notions such as 'fear of the Self' or 'rejection of the Self' have little meaning within a psychoanalytic framework. At best it is see as the fear of allowing the formation of the narcissistic transferences, lest the earlier wounding be repeated. But this is quite a different thing from fearing the 'will of the Self,' whose numinosity far exceeds the energy content of the ego, In terms of Jung's approach to the psyche, however, it would be the rejection of the Self, the failure to live one's true pattern, that leads to what we now call the narcissistic character disorder." Id. at 23. "Envy, the felt conviction that 'anything I need will be withheld form me, so I will spoil or otherwise destroy the withholding object,' is one of the most difficult emotions to experience and integrate. Envy, the 'evil eye' of folklore, is a central feature of the narcissistic character. It can take a grossly destructive form, but equally a subtle, spoiling one of precisely withholding what a person needs, for instance encouragement, warmth, bodily comfort, etc. In this manner, the narcissistic character often treats people in the way he experiences being treated himself." Id. at 41. "Envy is the dark side of the narcissistic character. I view it with great importance, because I find it to be the 'psychic glue,' the element of affinity that keeps the components of the self, in it grandiose form, cohesively together,  Dealing with envy and its associated components of rage and sadism can allow the deintegration of this self structure. As a result, a properly functioning anima or animus can emerge." Id. at 42-43. "If her partner is stuck in narcissistic  patterns, however, he cannot be of any help to her in her quest for real feminine identity, linked as it always is to the Goddess. The narcissistic male, indeed, is the greatest obstacle to the development in a woman of real, feminine power." Id. at at 112. Query: With many early twentieth-century women opting for same-sex relationships, is a woman's narcissistic female-partner an equal obstacle to the development in a woman of real feminine power? "Anima (Latin, 'soul'). The unconscious, feminine side of a man's personality. She is personified in dreams by images of women ranging from prostitute and seductress to spiritual guide (Wisdom). She is the eros principle, hence a man's anima development is reflected in how he relates to women. Identification with the anima can appear as moodiness, effeminacy, and oversensitivity. Jung call the anima the archetype of life itself." "Animus (Latin, 'spirit'). The unconscious, masculine side of a woman;s personality. He personifies the logos principle. Identification with the animus can cause a woman to become rigid, opinionated, and argumentative. More positively, he is the inner man who acts a a bridge between the woman's ego and her own creative resources in the unconscious." Id. at 180.).

FOLLOWING THE WARRIOR'S WAY: REREADING CARLOS CASTANEDA

Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (New York: Pocket Books, 1972, 1974) ("'You take yourself too seriously,' he said slowly. 'You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!'" Id. at 21. "'When a man decides to do something he must go all the way,' he said, 'but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.'" Id. at 39. "'You must learn to become deliberately available and unavailable,' he said. 'As your life goes now, you are unwittingly available all the time.' [] 'Let me put it in another way,' he proceeded patiently. 'It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding. Your problem right now stems form that, When you are hiding, everyone knows that you are hiding, and when you are not, you are available for everyone to take a poke at you.' [] 'Don't explain yourself, don Juan said dryly. 'There is no need. We are all fools, all of us, and you cannot be different." Id. at 66. "'To be a hunter is not just to trap game,' he went on. 'A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable." Id. at 74-75.).

Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan (New York: Pocket Books, 1971, 1972) ("'Once you decided to come to Mexico you should have put all your petty fears away,' he said very sternly. 'Your decision to come should have vanquished them. You came because you wanted to come. That's the warrior's way. I have told you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decision still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.' 'I believe I do that, don Juan, at least some of the time. It's very hard to keep on reminding myself, though.' 'A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear.' That's even harder don Juan. For most people death is very vague and remote. We never think if it.' 'Why not?' 'Why should we?' "Very simple,' he said. 'Because the idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.'" Id. at 47. "'I told you once that our lot as men is to learn, for good or bad,' he said. 'I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters; now it is your turn; perhaps some day you will see and you will know then whether things matter or not. For me nothing matters, but perhaps for you everything will. You should know by now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well a everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses to act, and act it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.' 'A man of knowledge may choose, on the other hand to remain totally impassive and never act; and behave as if to be really impassive really matters to him; he will be rightly true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly.'" Id. at 85.).

Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Pocket Books/Washington Square Press, 1974, 1992).

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, with a new commentary by the author (New York: Pocket Books/Washington Square Press, 1968, 1998) ("At a very early stage of my apprenticeship, don Juan made the statement that the goal of his teachings was 'to show how to become a man of knowledge.'" Id. at 151. "'What do I have to do to arrive at that point, don Juan?' 'You have to be a strong man, and your life has to be truthful.' 'What is a truthful life?' 'A life lived with deliberateness, a good, strong life.'" Id. at 73. "'I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. But the smoke blinds you with fear, and the devil's weed blinds you with ambition.' I argued that one needs ambition even to embark on any path, and that his statement that one had to be free from ambition did not make sense. A person has to have ambition in order to learn. 'The desire to learn is not ambition,' he said. 'It is our lot as men to want to know, but to seek the devil's weed is to bid for power, and that is ambition, because you are not bidding to know. Don't let the devil's weed blind you. She has hooked you already. She entices men and gives them a sense of power; she makes them feel they can do things that no ordinary man can. But that is her trap. And, the next thing the path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.'" Id. at 124.).

Donald Lee Williams, Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge (Studies on Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts (Toronto: (Inner City Books, 1981) ("Don Juan defines a man or woman or knowledge as anyone who has had the patience and the impeccability to follow the warrior's way, attempting to live in harmony with the unconscious and to follow the turns of his or her personal fate. [] In The Teachings of Don Juan,  don Juan describes the four enemies of knowledge: fear, clarity, power and old age. The second and third are sought by the warrior and become enemies only after they have been acquired.." Id. at 19.).

ZIMMERMAN JUROR SEEKS HER FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME ... AND A BOOK DEAL

Zimmerman Juror Discusses How Verdict Was Reached

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: July 15, 2013

MIAMI — George Zimmerman was guilty of nothing more than “bad judgment,” one of six jurors to find the neighborhood watchman not guilty said Monday night.

Related

• Tense Over Looming Zimmerman Verdict, City Eases in Its Aftermath(July 16, 2013)

• Zimmerman Verdict Drew 10 Million to Cable TV News (July 16, 2013)

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The juror, the first to share her story publicly, spoke anonymously, telling Anderson Cooper of CNN that she believed Mr. Zimmerman’s account that Trayvon Martin attacked him. Fearing for his life, Mr. Zimmerman had no choice but to shoot the teenager, the juror said. Mr. Martin was unarmed.

“I think his heart was in the right place,” the juror said of Mr. Zimmerman’s eagerness to try to protect the neighborhood. “It just went terribly wrong.”

She said later, “It pretty much happened the way George said it happened.”

Juror B37, the number she was assigned for the trial, also said that when the six jurors first began to deliberate, they were evenly divided between guilt and innocence. One voted for second-degree murder and two voted for manslaughter. B37 said she was one of three who initially voted “not guilty.”

“There was a couple of them in there that wanted to find him guilty of something,” the juror said.

But after sorting through the evidence and Mr. Zimmerman’s account, the three jurors changed their minds. Second-degree murder was discarded first. Then, after much confusion over the jury instructions, manslaughter was also set aside, she said.

The jurors, who gave their verdict Saturday, concluded that Mr. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, she said. “I have no doubt George feared for his life,” she said.

Unlike the swirl of anger and passion over the role of race outside the courtroom, race did not come up during 16 hours and 20 minutes of deliberations, she said. No juror, she said, viewed the case through the prism of race.

The fact that Mr. Martin was black did not drive Mr. Zimmerman to suspect and follow him, she said. It was the overall situation — he was cutting through the back, the townhouse complex had been hit by a rash of burglaries, and Mr. Martin appeared to be walking aimlessly in the rain, looking in houses, she said.

“I think he just profiled him because he was the neighborhood watch and he profiled anybody who came in and saw them acting strange,” she said, regardless of race.

The juror also said that she and most of the other jurors believed Mr. Zimmerman was the one screaming for help during the recording of a resident’s 911 call because he was the one being beaten. An “important” piece of evidence, she called it.

“It was a long cry and scream for help — whoever was crying for help was in fear for their life,” she said.

For whatever reason, Mr. Martin, she said, decided to confront Mr. Zimmerman and threw the first punch.

“Trayvon got mad and attacked him,” she said.

The juror also said that Rachel Jeantel, Mr. Martin’s friend who spoke to him on the phone moments before he was killed, was “not a good witness.” The juror said Ms. Jeantel “clearly didn’t want to be there.”

Clearly sympathetic to Mr. Zimmerman, the juror, who is married to a lawyer and has two grown children, referred to him as George. The juror, who has signed with a literary agent with the intent of writing a book, said she felt sorry for Mr. Zimmerman and for Mr. Martin, calling the situation a “tragedy.” The six women became very emotional, she said, immediately after they handed their verdict to the bailiff.

“It’s just sad that we all had to come together and figure out what is going to happen to this man’s life afterwards,” she said. “You find him not guilty, but you are responsible for that not guilty, and all the people who want him guilty aren’t going to have any closure.”

A version o

BRUCE CHATWIN

Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hills (New York: Penguin Books, 1983, 1984) {"'Nothing', she concluded the final paragraph, 'can be lonelier than the loneliness of marriage...'" Id. at 86.}.

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking, 1987) (From the bookjacket: "In this extraordinary new book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours: a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking together, explore the hopes and dreams that animate both them and the people they encounter. Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers--Christ or the Buddha--recommended the Road as the way to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?" "We do not often ask these questions today, for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case." "Pre-colonial Australia was the last landmass on earth not peopled by by herdsmen, farmers, or city dwellers, but by hunter-gathers. Their labyrinths of invisible pathways across the continent are known to us as Songlines or Dreaming Tracks, but to the Aboriginals as the tracks of their ancestors--the Way of the Law. Along these 'roads' they travel in order to perform all those activities that are distinctively human--song, dance, marriage, exchange of ideas, and arrangements of territorial boundaries by agreement rather than force." "In Chatwin's search for the Songlines, Arkady is an ideal friend and guide: Australian by birth, the son of a Cossack exile, with all the strength and warmth of his inheritance. Whether hunting kangaroo from a Land Cruiser, talking to the diminutive Rolf in his book-crammed trailer, buying drinks for a bigoted policeman (and would-be writer), cheering as Arkady's true love declares herself (part of The Songlines is a romantic comedy), Chatwin turns this almost implausible picaresque adventure into something approaching the scale of a Greek tragedy." "The life of the Aboriginals stands in vivid contrast, of course, to the prevailing cultures of our times. And The Songlines presents unforgettable details about the kinds of disputes we know all to well from less traumatic confrontation: over sacred lands invaded by railroads, mines, and construction sites, over the laws and rights of a poor people versus a wealthy invasive one. To Chatwin these are but recent, local examples of an eternal basis distinction between settlers and wanderers. His book, devoted to the latter, is a brilliant evocation of this profound optimism: that man is by nature not a bellicose aggressor but a pacific, song-creating, adaptive species whose destiny is to quest for the truth.").

Bruce Chatwin, Utz (New York: Penguin Books, 1988, 1989).

Bruce Chatwin, The Viceroy of Ouidah (New York: Penguin Books, 1980, 1988).

TWO FEMALES

In exploring the possibility of getting a second dog, I came across this and wondered whether it might to true of woman as well.

"THE CANINE BEHAVIOR SERIES By Kathy Diamond Davis Author and Trainer

Adding a Second Dog to Your Family

Choosing the Dog

Leaving aside for a moment all the changes a second dog would bring to you family’s life, let’s assume you’ve been through all that and it seems right to you to add a dog at this time or some planned time in the future. Of course you need to look at all the normal things about choosing any dog. Those things include: size; grooming required; activity level; disposition for interactions with the people and animals in your environment; genetic tendencies to make noise (and your facilities for keeping noise from disturbing neighbors); matching the dog’s training needs to your training ability; and other factors.

Before settling on a breed, think about the gender of the dog. For the happiest dogs and the safest household, opposite sex dogs almost always do best together. Many same-sex combinations of dogs will fight, sometimes to the death. Those who work out a dominance order may not fare much better. The dominant of two males will become more dominant (toward other dogs, not humans) than he would have otherwise been, and the sometimes submissive one will be pushed into more submission than would have otherwise been normal for him. Because they live with humans rather than in the wild, they are stuck in this situation. It can be stressful.

Two females are more likely to fight to the death than males are. It’s as if neither is willing to admit the other girl is “better than” she is, so they cannot come to a stable pack order. The males make that decision more readily in some cases, but the one who has to be submissive can take it more to heart than the female."

READING LEVELS

I heard the piece below on NPR a month ago, and it has stayed in the back of my mind with respect to the literacy/illiteracy level of many law students. 

QUERY: If students do not read in high school, or read but do not read complex materials, will they be able to read complex legal texts? Or will they need to subscribe to a service that translates complex legal text into simplified language (isn't that what Gilbert's did? will practicing law using updated versions of Gilbert's and CLE to stay abreast of the law?). And not being readers, or not readers of complex texts, will they be able to write on complex and subtle legal matters, or engage in complex and subtle legal analysis? Not being readers, or not being able to read complex texts, may explain why more or more law students want "experiential learning" opportunities. It will be interesting to see how more and more law schools "dumb down" their curriculum to accommodated the next generation of law students.

Just a thought.

What Kids Are Reading, In School And Out

by LYNN NEARY

June 11, 2013 4:51 PM

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Walk into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves and shelves of hugely popular novels and book series for kids. But research shows that as young readers get older, they are not moving to more complex books. High-schoolers are reading books written for younger kids, and teachers aren't assigning difficult classics as much as they once did.

At Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., the 11th-grade honors English students are reading The Kite Runner. And students like Megan Bell are reading some heavy-duty books in their spare time. "I like a lot of like old-fashioned historical dramas," Bell says. "Like I just read Anna Karenina ... I plowed through it, and it was a really good book."

But most teens are not forging their way through Russian literature, says Walter Dean Myers, who is currently serving as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. A popular author of young-adult novels that are often set in the inner city, Myers wants his readers to see themselves in his books. But sometimes, he's surprised by his own fan mail.

"I'm glad they wrote," he says, "but it is not very heartening to see what they are reading as juniors and seniors." Asked what exactly is discouraging, Myers says that these juniors and seniors are reading books that he wrote with fifth- and sixth-graders in mind.

And a lot of the kids who like to read in their spare time are more likely to be reading the latest vampire novel than the classics, says Anita Silvey, author of 500 Great Books for Teens. Silvey teaches graduate students in a children's literature program, and at the beginning of the class, she asked her students — who grew up in the age of Harry Potter — about the books they like.

"Every single person in the class said, 'I don't like realism, I don't like historical fiction. What I like is fantasy, science fiction, horror and fairy tales.' "

Those anecdotal observations are reflected in a study of kids' reading habits by Renaissance Learning. For the fifth year in a row, the educational company used its Accelerated Reader program to track what kids are reading in grades one through 12.

"Last year, we had more than 8.6 million students from across the country who read a total of 283 million books," says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning. Students participate in the Accelerated Reader program through their schools. When they read a book, they take a brief comprehension quiz, and the book is then recorded in the system. The books are assigned a grade level based on vocabulary and sentence complexity.

And Stickney says that after the late part of middle school, students generally don't continue to increase the difficulty levels of the books they read.

Last year, almost all of the top 40 books read in grades nine through 12 were well below grade level. The most popular books, the three books in The Hunger Gamesseries, were assessed to be at the fifth-grade level.

Last year, for the first time, Renaissance did a separate study to find out what books were being assigned to high school students. "The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read," Stickney says, "has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years. A century ago, students were being assigned books with the complexity of around the ninth- or 10th-grade level. But in 2012, the average was around the sixth-grade level."

Most of the assigned books are novels, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men orAnimal Farm. Students even read recent works like The Help and The Notebook. But in 1989, high school students were being assigned works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Emily Bronte and Edith Wharton.

Now, with the exception of Shakespeare, most classics have dropped off the list.

Back at Woodrow Wilson High School, at a 10th-grade English class — regular, not honors — students say they don't read much outside of school. But Tyler Jefferson and Adriel Miller are eager to talk. Adriel likes books about sports; Tyler likes history. Both say their teachers have assigned books they would not have chosen on their own. "I read The Odyssey, Tyler says. "I read Romeo and Juliet. I didn't read Hamlet. Asked what he thought of the books, Tyler acknowledges some challenges. "It was very different, because how the language was back then, the dialogue that they had.

Adriel agrees that books like that are tougher to read. "That's why we have great teachers that actually make us understand," he says. "It's a harder challenge of our brain, you know; it's a challenge."

But a challenge with its rewards, as Tyler says. "It gives us a new view on things."

Sandra Stotsky would be heartened to hear that. Professor emerita of education at the University of Arkansas, Stotsky firmly believes that high school students should be reading challenging fiction to get ready for the reading they'll do in college. "You wouldn't find words like 'malevolent,' 'malicious' or 'incorrigible' in science or history materials," she says, stressing the importance of literature. Stotsky says in the '60s and '70s, schools began introducing more accessible books in order to motivate kids to read. That trend has continued, and the result is that kids get stuck at a low level of reading.

"Kids were never pulled out of that particular mode in order to realize that in order to read more difficult works, you really have to work at it a little bit more," she says. "You've got to broaden your vocabulary. You may have to use a dictionary occasionally. You've got to do a lot more reading altogether."

"There's something wonderful about the language, the thinking, the intelligence of the classics," says Anita Silvey. She acknowledges that schools and parents may need to work a little harder to get kids to read the classics these days, but that doesn't mean kids shouldn't continue to read the popular contemporary novels they love. Both have value: "There's an emotional, psychological attraction to books for readers. And I think some of, particularly, these dark, dystopic novels that predict a future where in fact the teenager is going to have to find the answers, I think these are very compelling reads for these young people right now."

Reading leads to reading, says Silvey. It's when kids stop reading, or never get started in the first place, that there's no chance of ever getting them hooked on more complex books.

ON THE ROAD WITH PICO IYER

Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 1993, 1994).

Pico Iyer, The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (New York: Knopf, 2000) ("The Olympics pose a curious kind of conundrum for people such as me, of course, if only because they affirm affiliation to nation-states in an age that has largely left them behind, mass-producing images of nationalism and universalism without much troubling to distinguish between them. They ask us to applaud the patriotism of others while transcending the patriotism in ourselves, and they draw our attention to the very boundaries that are increasingly beside the point. (I, surrounded by cheering fans waving flags, am often reminded how difficult it is for the rootless to root for anyone, and, reluctant to ally myself with a Britain, an India, or an America that I don't think of as home, generally end up cheering the majestically talented Cubans or the perennial good sportsmen from Japan)." Id. at 110.).

Pico Iyer, The Lady and The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 1991, 1992) ("One reason I had always been interested in Zen was my sense that for people like myself, trained in abstraction, Zen could serve as the ideal tonic. For Zen, as I understood it, was about slicing with a clean sword all the Gordian Knots invented by the mind, plunging through all specious dualities--east and west, here and there, coming and going--to get to some core so urgent that its truth could not be doubted. The best lesson that Zen could teach--though it was, of course, something of a paradox to say or think it--was to go beyond a kind of thinking that was nothing more than agonizing, and simply act. In that sense, Zen reminded me of Johnson's famous refutation of Berkeley by kicking a stone. It was unanswerable as pain." Id. at 65. "Nowadays, of course, he continued, Zen had much more appeal for foreigners than for Japanese (who generally entered monasteries only if they had to take over a family temple): this despite--or maybe because of--the fact that outsiders had a great deal to give up before they could even enter the front portals of Zen, and the surrendering of self and cerebration clearly came less easily to us than to many Japanese. 'I remember this one Zen teacher told me, soon after I arrived, that the appeal of Zen to many foreigners was like a mountain wrapped in mist. Much of what the Westerners saw was just the beautiful mist; but as soon as they began really doing Zen, they found that its essence was the mountain: hard rock." Id. at 15.).

Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports From the Not-So-Far East (New York: Knopf, 1988).

PICKING UP MY DOG'S POOP . . .

. . . something I do three or four times a day, is my three or four moments of Zen every day. With all the crap going on in the world, let me be worthy enough to pick up after my dog.

OUR DOGS CIVILIZE[D] US!

Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, 1992) ("It is politically unpopular to claim that human character traits (intelligence, courage, ingenuity) can be inherited. But that's the working belief in the sheepdog breeding world. It is thought that a dog sired by Wiston Cap, one who looks like the old man, will likely behave like his eminent sire." Id. at 9. "Learning a dog's worldview, altering it (within bounds), accepting a dog's understanding as sometimes more reliable than a man's--these commonplace tools of dog training are a mild cultural treason. The rare dog handlers who, by gift or necessity, become truly dangerous inhabit a reality most of us can scarcely imagine--every day they share the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations of a genuinely alien mind. When I asked these men about their connection with their dogs, they were reticent. They were also, without exception, masterful and deeply obsessed." Id. at 78. "It has been twenty thousand years since man and dog formed their partnership. That we have altered the dog genetically is well understood; it is hardly known how they changed us. Since dogs could hear and smell better than men, we could concentrate on sight. Since courage is commonplace in dogs, men's adrenal glands could shrink. Dogs, my making us more efficient predators, gave us time to think. In short, dogs civilized us." Id. at 132. "In America, dogs are rarely seen in offices, shops, subways, trains or buses, and only in our mountain West will you find a dog in a bar. Sometimes I think Americans are afraid of dogs." Id. at 133. "J. M. Wilson once said the proper thing to do with a dog that qualified at the National is put it away until the International. This sound advice is universally ignored. When a man has a dog that's almost, almost perfect, it's beyond human restraint to leave the dog alone, Instead, they'll work on that slight imperfection, screwing the dog down tighter and tighter until, under the pressure of the big trial, the god just falls to pieces." "Many a man came off the course today abashed at problems he;d caused himself, overtraining his dog." Id. at 193.).

"ONLY THAT A MAN CAN STAND UP."

Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain, illustrated by Michael McCurdy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943, 1978) ("James Otis was on his feet, his head close against the rafters that cut down into the attic, making it the shape of a tent. Otis put out his arms. 'It is all so much simpler than you think,' he said. He lifted his hands and pushed against the rafters.' We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills . . . we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.'" Id. at 206.).

RANDOLPH S. BOURNE, WAR, AND THE THREAT TO INTELLECTUAL AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Randolph S. Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915-1919, edited with an introduction by Carl Resek (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964) (From "The Idea of a University": "[T]he American university has become a financial corporation, strictly analogous, in it motives and responses, to the corporation which is concerned in the production of industrial commodities. Trustees who are business men, who hold positions as directors or executives in large financial or industrial corporations, carry over into the management of the university the attitudes and sensitivities learned in the corporate world. The university produces learning instead of steel or rubber, but the nature of the academic community has become less and less potent in ensuring for the academic workman a status materially different from that of any other kind of employee." "As directors in this corporation of learning, trustees seem to regard themselves primarily as guardians of invested capital. They manage as a sacred trust the various bequests, gifts, endowments which have been made to the university by men and women of the same orthodoxies as themselves. Their obligation is to see that the quality of the commodity which the university produces is such as to seem reputable to the class which they represents. And in order to maintain the flow of capital ad the general credit of the institution they must keep the stock above par. In the minds apparently of the trustees, and of the executives and professors who work with them, the reputation of a university is comparable to the standing of a corporation's securities on the street, the newspapers taking the place of he stock exchange. . . . When your stock is depressed by an alarming rumor, it is irrelevant whether the rumor is true or not. The mischief lies in what people think, not in the actual facts. And for this purpose newspaper chatter is authoritative, Your object then becomes not to discover the truth but to combat the rumor. If the fall in your stock is due to a suspicion of the value of your commodity, you renew your efforts to convince the public of its soundness. If it is due to an offending employee, you dismiss the employee. Having removed the cause of the prejudice, you then expect your securities to resume their former level." Id. at 152, 152-153. "... One is often amazed at the callousness of university trustees towards the indignation that follows these arbitrary dismissals of professors. But this corporate attitude naturally discounts the opinions of the non-investing public. It is not the discontent of idealists that matters, but the vague complaints from parents that their sons are being taught irreligion and sedition within the university, complaints from business men that a professor is tainted with economic heresy, indignation of prominent alumni at the connection of the university's name with unpopular movements. Theses are the attitudes that depress the credit of the university in the investing world, and these are the attitudes that carry weight, therefore, with the university president and the trustees.Vested interests presumably receive dividends in the form of orthodox graduates. Whatever interferes with the supply of such a revenue is therefore a serious assault on the stability of the corporation." "In any such system of ideas, the professor becomes inevitably a mere employee of a company which has a standing to maintain in the corporate world. His intellectual freedom is extremely precarious, because a chance remark, or any public activity, may bring him that newspaper censure which causes the grave damage the university is likely to incur in the minds of the significant classes." Id. at 154. One wonders what Bourne would say were he around in this era of super-corporatization of universities, an era where more and more universities do see themselves as primarily engaged in business rather than education. Certainly don't see education as their primary business, and have little interest in providing their customers (though still designated "students") with an intellectual education. And, where academic freedom is either absent or viewed as a nuisance. From "A War Diary": "The kind of war which we are conducting is an enterprise which the American government does not have to carry on with the hearty co-operation of the American people but only with their acquiescence. Ant that acquiescence seems sufficient to float an indefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehended and unaccepted purposes." Id. at , 36, 36.).

Bruce Clayton, Forgotten Prophet: The Life of Randolph Bourne (Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State U. Press, 1984) ("Viewed in light of the war, his earlier nonpragmatic prescriptions for youth seem dreamy, paper thin, of a piece with a romantic era, too fragile for the real world. And yet, here in 1917, Bourne, although certainly chastened and less romantic, was still clinging to a sustaining faith in the essential rightness of his own personality. He was sill pitting the individual personality against the crowd. Even in his attacks on pragmatism, he relied upon the trust that he and the other irreconcilables were right. ..." "The, too, historians who emphasize Bourne;s disillusionment, particularly those who pigeonhole Bourne as alienated, play a dirty trick on him. Today few can swallow [Woodrow] Wilson's lofty idealism or the confident predictions of Dewey and the American liberal community. Yet because Bourne could not, because he was in a tiny minority, [Christopher] Lasch labels him alienated, making the rest of us to feel slightly sorry for the young man's stubborn refusal to become another liberal visionary. Presumably, those like Bourne who could not believe that war could advance much of anything, let alone international democracy, are alienated, while those today who see Wilson's idealism as an extravagance, and a dangerous one at that, are insightful, sophisticated historians." Id. at 226-227.).