In The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo encourages his readers to “use the old to build the new.”

And so “A Reader’s Story” continues, with daily quotes and “mini critical responses” instead of daily words. My love of the humanities as well as my experimental, creative side will continue to appear weekly.

Please peruse the website for updated photos of el Caesarino (the coolest cat in Charm City) and the iconic Harbor, specifically Fells Point.

I will continue teaching, writing and translating as my professional occupations in 2019, but all three will now take place out of the academic setting. A salute and heartfelt thanks goes out to the amazing professors, students and colleagues I met along the way. Please keep in touch!

I have started a manuscript about how solid study skills prepare us not only for academic success, but for life beyond the classroom. A memoir written in “flash fiction” (prose-poetry) remain a possibility, as does a story or two…

I have also started a Baltimore Literature and Writing MeetUp so if you are in the area, please check us out!

Sign up for email updates, they are in the works!

See you tomorrow for brunch and our first quote of 2019!

Blessings to all as well begin anew…

I will be taking a small break until approximately the start of December 2018.

I am preparing a conference paper and academic book review in the upcoming months.

This weekend I depart for the writers’ retreat I attended last year.

I hope to return with fresh ideas for A Reader’s Story.

Please leave thoughts or suggestions.

Sycophantic, fawning.

Gnathontic attitudes can get in the way of accomplishment.

Scottish. Obsolete.

An idle, indiscreet talker.

A blellum would have been ostracized.

Of a character or object from a movie, potentially marketable as a toy.

Most children’s movies have developed toyetic characters.

1. To utter or pronounce with a hissing sound.
2. To hiss.

Cats are known to sibilate but only heard Caesar do so once in almost three years, out of fear.

Yesterday, as the week closed at Loyola, I stumbled across a part of campus I had never been to before and found the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson painted on the wall:

“The great object of education should be commensurate with the object of life.”

I think what Emerson means is that education should lead us somewhere; not so much in the immediate sense of a career path, but to a greater purpose.

A truly well-rounded liberal arts education in the traditional sense prepares students for life, as I had made reference to Fareed Zakariah’s speech and book in starting my blog over a year and a half ago.

For educators, the object of life is to pass information and a love of their subject forward.