Looking back a whole week!
Quick review on this week's readings:
July 29 "Stonehenge" by Emerson: 1/5 Who wants to talk about real monuments when you can whine about museums and conspiracy theories?
July 30 “Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage To Newfoundland” by Haies: 2/5 I've read several of these colony founding pieces, and this was the most drawn out and boring.
July 31 Education of Woman by Defoe: 4/5 Has some good points about education that are still relevant today, but also obviously old fashioned in a way that might make them stand out a bit more..
Aug 1 The Institutes of the Christian Religion by Calvin:1/5 Proves that whiny lunatics haven't changed much in almost 500 years.
Aug 2 Poems by Drummond: 1/5 Generic bad poetry.
Aug 3 The Aeneid by Virgin: 3/5 Can't go wrong with the Trojan Horse
Aug 4 "The Ugly Duckling" by Andersen: 3/5 Long, but I can't fault Eliot for putting in the original version.
Average: 2.14 If this week was a pie, it'd be like 40% tasty pie and 60% gross and weird.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
The best individual piece for the week is Defoe's.
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And it is manifest that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others.
This is some core Liberal Education stuff. All people have potential, but education and learning to think is what makes you a good person. A few of his other essays look interesting, and I popped him on my read more list. But overall, I think this is one of the best quotes for distilling the whole idea of this project down to a paragraph or less.
Beyond that, last week's "do the whole week at once" experiment wasn't great. My comments are obviously light, and I feel like I didn't have enough time to let stuff marinate. While I could try to stay a week ahead and just rush less (do two or three a night vs four or five), there are some things I like about the more timely arrangement.
1. A lot of the readings are picked to align with a specific event. It's one thing to read the "Declaration of Independence" a couple days early on July 1st, but to push it out a full week loses some of the luster.
2. I like doing the Reflections "in real time." It's a nice way to start/end the week. Doing them too far ahead makes them less significant. Doing them on time (but well after I read the pieces) makes it harder to reflect.
Overall, I think I liked the project best when I was a couple days ahead (so I could miss a night if something happened), but not a full week. I'll try to get back to that point this week.
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