For emotional effect, I can’t think of anything that hits harder than Hal’s blunt repudiation of Falstaff with “I know thee not, old man” (H4part2, 5.5). How that line pummels the expectant Falstaff is exquisite drama. #SundayMacbethChat

Hotspur: underrated Shakespeare character. Henry IV part 1 1.3 must be immensely fun for an actor playing him, in all his choler. #SundayMacbethChat

All the Devils Are Here, by McLean and Nocera: excellent history of the ~2008 financial crisis. #SundayMacbethChat

My freshmen are always entertained by “Give me my longsword, ho!” #SundayMacbethChat (Romeo & Juliet Division)

Don’t go dragging tapioca into this! That’s some tasty stuff!

Re-read it last year: 100% worth it. Enjoy, Brett!

To add insult to injury, CRANIUM is in today’s Connections. I think they’re taunting us.

DILUVIAL isn’t on the word list today either

Today’s kids can still do it if we ask them to, as I know both Marcus and Brett do.

Now, on to Walden and the Dickinson!

I admit to giving excerpts: for instance, my interdisciplinary American Studies class just finished reading only about 1000 lines of “Song of Myself.” 😏 Seriously, though, they did a superb job of making sense of that massive, important poem—as good as any group I’ve had in 25+ years of teaching it.

I guess her check from Antifa Central will be in the mail soon 🙄

Give that man a Yawp! (Not the first poem I teach but the opening poem of our study of Transcendentalism … after we take a silent nature-walk around the far reaches of our campus.)

FF is a derivative, like in calculus or—more menacingly, for the economy in the 2000s—credit default swaps. Marcus is right: a school’s obligation is to keep its focus on the underlying value, not be distracted by a derivative’s projection of value. Care about people, not their shadows.

100%, Nick. This is one of those negative externalities that people often don’t account for when they tally up benefits vs. costs. What is authenticity worth? Relationship? Time is easy to account for (and relevant, of course), but what about openness to struggle through something difficult?

That essay is one of the essential ones about AHF. We also read several intriguing, energetic ones that are more debatable, but hers is on a different level.

Teaching AHF in the modern era is both still very intellectually lucrative and quite unlike teaching anything else. The amount of framing, pairing, and critique it demands makes it a challenge—a worthy challenge, I’d say.