Part 2: Dancing with one who danced with Pavlova

Left: Alexandra Baldina (Kosloff) was a member of the Bolshoi Ballet and later a principal dancer with the Ballets Russes, along with Anna Pavlova and others. Eventually, she came to the United States.

Photo courtesy of Susan Tyne, U.K.

Scroll to the bottom to see a video of Alexandra Baldina and Theodor Kosloff / Koslov performing.

"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days." Ecclesiastes 11:1

Writers knead together assorted words, shape the mass into one form or another, bake it under the heat of scrutiny and revision, and -- sometimes -- release it upon the tides of publication. Most often the words are carried away -- perhaps lost in the vast ocean of words, perhaps run aground on a sandbar somewhere, or perhaps washed up on a remote shore, never to be heard from again.

But once in a very great while . . . .

In 2011, almost eight years ago, I wrote about being part of a long-ago ballet class conducted by Alexandra Baldina, then in her eighties, at a dance studio in Tustin, California. I was not-quite fifteen, growing up in an era of "Hey, Jude," "Born to Be Wild," and "Mrs. Robinson," and I only partially comprehended what an extraordinary opportunity it was.

Baldina had been one of the four principal dancers -- the other three being Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Tamara Karsavina -- who first performed Mikhael Fokine's Les Sylphides as part of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1909, in an era of radical change in art and in world politics.

Students doing floor exercises at Montmarte School 
of Imperial Russian Ballet, owned by Miss Irene Wilson, 
in the late 1960s. The wooden room in the back corner is 
where we changed into our leotards and tights. The 
seats and dais were used by the Tustin City Council 
when they held their meetings.

Photo courtesy of Paula Hoffman. 

Miss Irene Wilson, the owner of the Montmarte School of Imperial Russian Ballet where I attended in the late 1960s, had studied under Baldina many years prior, and Baldina had visited her studio on a day my class was scheduled. Quite literally, we were, in that lesson, dancing with one who had danced with Pavlova.

In the process of writing the post about the class, I searched for links to articles about Miss Irene and about Alexandra Baldina and especially for a picture of her. Eventually, I traced one to Susan Tyne, at the time a Grades Examiner for the Royal Academy of Dance, whose grandmother also had been a student of Baldina's. Susan sent me a digital copy of a photo Baldina had given her grandmother, and I included it in the blog post, published on February, 25, 2011.

And that was that. The words floated away, and they never came back.

Until July 2, 2014, that is, when an Anonymous someone left a comment on the post that she, also, had been in that class and had Baldina's signature. I responded and left my email address, but didn't hear anything further until August 2015, when the same person left another message, this time with a name: Paula Hoffman.

Hoffman wrote, "I studied and taught with Miss Irene for years, and I am still using what she taught me all the time. Had a class tonight in fact, and a chat with my teacher after the class about my training and how it intertwines with his teaching. I also had classes with Nana Gollner, also a Kosloff student, and Paul Petroff. Amazing, we were learning the real thing."

Again, I responded, but there was no further reply.

I understood. Email hackers and cyber frauds abound. Neither of us had any assurance the other was legitimately who we claimed to be.

In January 2017, out of the blue, another reader emailed me the link to the video below, which he said had just been posted to YouTube. The video features Baldina and Theodore Kosloff, who later became Baldina's husband during a short-lived marriage, in a joyful pas de deux. This time, I was the one who dropped the ball by neglecting to even thank him for sending it. The email sat there, unacknowledged, until I began writing this post.

Baldina's signature endorsement on the back of the check 

Paula Hoffman used to pay for the lesson that day.

Photo courtesy of Paula Hoffman.

This post began just before Thanksgiving 2018 when another woman, Roberta Patton, left a comment saying she had studied with Miss Irene for years and that she thought she remembered Paula. Patton also mentioned she had just been talking with someone about her past ballet experience.

Patton's comment prompted Hoffman to email me directly, as well, and to send the two images included in this post--a picture of students doing center work in the studio and a picture of Alexandra Baldina Kosloff's signature endorsement on the back of the check Hoffman used to pay for the class that day, April 27, 1968.

The cost of a lesson with one who had danced with Pavlova and Nijinsky? $3.50.

The words I wrote in 2011 had floated out into the blogosphere where at least two other people who had occupied that same place and time fifty years ago had read them. The three of us had, in the strength of that memory, reconnected and had celebrated Miss Irene and Madame Baldina. We were older than Miss Irene was at the time of the lesson, though not as old as Baldina. But still we danced, sometimes with our bodies, always in our hearts.

Such is the power of dance and of words . . . and of words about dance.

Postscript: In my searching for information about Alexandra Baldina, I also connected with Patricia Kaye Dienhart, adjunct dance faculty at BYU in Rexburg, Idaho. Dienhart's CV says she studied under Baldina from 1962-1971 and toured during that time with the Fremont City Ballet under Baldina's direction. I also discovered that my original post had been linked to a page about Baldina on The Dance History Project of Southern California's web site. I had had no idea.

Best advice about learning?

dewey1.jpg

www.ais.up.ac.za777 × 991Search by image

(Adapted from 

http://www.storylady.com/deweygame.html)

The best piece of advice

I ever received

about learning

was to start

by reading a children's book

about whatever topic

I wanted to study

because

the language would be simple,

the important points would be obvious,

and

the overall text

would be much more interesting

than a so-called adult book

about the same topic.

Beyond Narnia and Middle Earth: The Other Worlds of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (and friends)

If you have been through the wardrobe with Lucy... 

If you have wandered from home with Bilbo...

If you have dwelt, even for a while, in Narnia and/or in Middle Earth...

Then come explore the other worlds of Lewis and Tolkien....

Saturday, April 18, 2015 
from 2 - 5:30 p.m.

Congregation Ohr Chadash

3190 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd., Clearwater, Florida 33759

Free and Open to the Public; an offering will be received to help defray travel expenses. Mr. Hamilton will have books available for sale and will remain to sign books after the sessions. 

Suggested readings: Surprised by Joy and Till We Have Faces by Lewis; Leaf by Niggle by Tolkien (not for sale at the event)

Author, editor, and teacher Dan Hamilton  will present biblio-biographical overviews of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Between sessions, Rabbi Dr. John Fischer and Dr. Patrice Fischer will lead a panel discussion on the impact of Lewis's and Tolkien's works. Dan will conclude the afternoon with a short discussion of related authors and works.

While Lewis and Tolkien are, perhaps, best known for their high fantasies The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis) and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy (Tolkien), both writers explored other fictional worlds and both struggled to reconcile their created worlds with this real, much more mundane world they inhabited -- and to reconcile both with the realm of the eternal they sensed was just on the other side of the veil. 

Dan noted that Lewis, in De Descriptione Temporum, his address upon receiving his professorship at Cambridge, identified himself as one of the last surviving specimens of "old Western Man."

"By that," Dan said, "Lewis meant, in part, a person who was educated (and saturated) in the classics of Western literature and still believed strongly in absolute values and rational thinking."

Dan will explore Lewis's life through a discussion of the books he wrote at various periods. In particular, Dan will focus on Surprised by Joy, Lewis's fairly straightforward recounting of his spiritual life from childhood on, and Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.

"Till We have Faces, a reimagining of the mythical story of Psyche and Eros, contains a number of subtler autobiographical elements," Dan explained. "TWHF is a story that Lewis had wrestled with for decades; it didn't finally fall together for him until after meeting Joy Davidman and working on Surprised by Joy and The Four Loves."

"Similarly, the short story "Leaf by Niggle" sheds light on the post-Hobbit period in Tolkien's life when he was beginning to despair that he would live long enough to finish The Lord of the Rings," Dan said. 

Over the past 30 years, Dan Hamilton has edited a number of George MacDonald's works, making them more accessible to modern American audiences*. He has lectured on the Inklings and related authors, and with Dr. Ed Brown wrote In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis, which tells the story of the Lewis collection at Taylor University.

Additionally, Dan and his wife, Elizabeth, helped buy, rescue, and preserve The Kilns, C. S. Lewis’ home from 1930 on, where he wrote the Narnia series and many of his other books. Dan co-founded the C. S. Lewis and Friends Society at Taylor University and the Central Indiana C. S. Lewis Society in Indianapolis.

Dan's trilogy, Tales of the Forgotten God (The Beggar King, The Chameleon Lady, and The Everlasting Child) will be joined later this year by The Inn at the End of the World.

Rabbi Dr. John Fischer and his wife, Associate Rabbi Dr. Patrice Fischer, lead Congregation Ohr Chadash, a Messianic Jewish Synagogue, in Clearwater, Florida. Additionally, both are faculty members of St. Petersburg Seminary and Yeshiva and have written numerous books and articles. 

Congregation Ohr Chadash is located at the east end of Gulf-to-Bay Blvd. and at the beginning of the approach to the Courtney Campbell Causeway (SR 60). Turn left at the light onto Bayshore Blvd., and the synagogue, which faces Gulf-to-Bay, will be immediately on your left. 

For more information about the event, please visit our Facebook page.

*I am indebted to Dan's work as it introduced me to several of MacDonald's children's novels I hadn't known existed. In the early 1980s, I purchased Dan's edited versions of The Wanderings of Clare Skymer, The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman, and The Genius of Willie MacMichael for our sons. Thirty years later, as I was reading about the British 1870 Education Act, which was the beginning of compulsory public education, I recalled the ideas about education MacDonald had discussed in The Genius of Willie MacMichael or, as MacDonald originally titled it, The History of Gutta-Percha Willie, Working Genius. I realized that MacDonald knew the men involved in proposing and lobbying for the 1870 Education Act -- and that The History of Gutta Percha Willie, Working Genius, most probably was his contribution to the discussion. This became a paper, "Straddling Boundaries: Gutta Percha Willie and the 1870 Education Act," published in North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies. 

'Twas the night before...

...the morning of the beginning of the end of night.

Can I just say...

...Nutella on a half of a day-old croissant is luscious!

Last year's business...

...is this year's bookkeeping chore; this year's business is a resolution not to procrastinate until next year.

Rendering unto Caesar....

Image courtesy of what used to be MicroSoft Clip Art

Taxes keep the system rolling along, 

sometimes more smoothly 

than at other times, 

but rolling along, nevertheless; 

however, 

while I do not begrudge, 

for the most part, 

my fellow citizens 

my share of 

the systemic financial burden, 

I am more aggrieved by 

the amount of time 

I must dole out

to figure out

what I

owe. 

Setting on Fire Versus Going All Aflame

I cannot set sodden matter on fire; but I can choose to not quench nor to become quenched.

Ite Infammate Omnia

Reportedly, Ignatius commissioned Francis Xavier to India (before either was deemed a saint) with the words above, loosely translated as "Go and set the world on fire" but transliterated (by Google Translate, anyway, and with inflammate spelled with one 'm') as "Go all aflame" -- a big difference, in my thinking!

Sentenced

Yesterday's post, which asked how long I would maintain the sentence-a-day journal, provoked an encouraging response from a cousin: Ite Inflammate Omnia.

The Single-Sentence Journal Begins

Let's see how long I can keep this up!

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/can-just-a-sentence-a-day-make-you-happier.html

Veterans Day / Armistice Day / Remembrance Day

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/images/poppies/connaught-cemetery-poppies-250.jpg

We used to call November 11 Armistice Day, even as November 11 in the Commonwealth countries is Remembrance Day, marking the end of World War One on November 11, 1918.

"In Flanders Field," one of the most well-known poems written during WWI, was composed in 1915 by Major John McCrae after he conducted the funeral service for another officer, a friend, 22-year-old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who had been killed in the fighting in France.

"Conducted the funeral service" puts it mildly. The account linked above says Helmer died on the morning of May 2 when he "left his dugout and was killed instantly by a direct hit from an 8 inch German shell. What body parts could be found were later gathered into sandbags and laid in an army blanket for burial that evening." No chaplain was present, so McCrae "conducted a simple service at the graveside, reciting from memory some passages from the Church of England's 'Order of Burial of the Dead'." Then they buried Helmer and marked his grave, as they had countless others, with a cross bearing his name.

Helmer's grave was marked, but the marking eventually was lost, and he "he is one of the 54,896 soldiers who have no known grave in the battlefields of the Ypres Salient." That's 54,896 unknown graves in an area that was fought over during the four years between 1914 and 1918, was the site of the first use of chemical (gas) weaponry, saw fighting every single day during one two-year stretch, and was the place where as many as 400,000 to 500,000 men on all sides of the conflict were killed or mortally wounded. That's one area of one region on the continent as a whole.

This year, the British remembered their dead WWI soldiers, those from Britain itself and from their colonies at the time, with a Sea of Ceramic Poppies flowing from the Tower of London and pooling around the base of the tower. One poppy for each soldier who died adds up to 888,246 poppies filling the moat.

This image from the Daily Mail shows the Sea of Ceramic Poppies
filling the moat around the Tower of London. 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

The last stanza charges future generations to "take up the quarrel against the foe," and we can and should consider carefully who/what that foe is and how best to "take up the quarrel."

Nevertheless, as long as we live in an imperfect world where evil vies for our hearts and minds and lives and nations, each of us is called to protect, to guard, to defend -- whether through military service or through civil service or through active, thoughtful citizenship -- the ideas* that good exists, that good will ultimately prevail, and that, until then, it is better to die, physically or in the small daily sacrifices we make for others, in the service of good than it is to pretend that evil does not exist, that the conflict does not exist, and/or that we are not called to serve.

None of us is innocent. None of us is excused. None of us ever can be said to have retired from active duty. We each have been thrown a torch. Will we take what is good and use it for evil to burn, kill, and destroy? Will we, out of fear that we are misusing it, stamp it out and, having blinded ourselves to good, stumble about in evil's darkness? Or will we hold it high to shed as much good light as we can so all can see to work for good.

*When a recruit joins the U.S. military, he/she takes an oath to "support and defend" what? The president? The country? The people? Read the oath here. Here is another Department of Defense article worth reading to help us understand how our country works and why: "Why Civilian Control of the Military?"   Update November 11, 2018: In re-reading this post today, I discovered the last link is no longer active. The article has been archived here, which, I think, says something about the availability of information; about who spins what, how, and why; and the responsibility we each have to learn about the processes of our government in order to actively participate in it.

Punctuate This: Remembering the Original President's Day

No wonder we can't figure out complicated problems like health care and climate change. We can't even figure out how to punctuate Presidents Day.

George Washington probably wouldn't have 

minded our changing the date we celebrate his birthday. 

A change in calendar systems during his lifetime shifted 

his birthday from February 11 to February 22. And, because 

the latest the third Monday can be is the 21st, we never again 

will celebrate his birthday on February 22. Never say never, 

however; the 1968 bill also moved Veterans Day to the fourth 

Monday in October -- but that only lasted until 1975 when it 

wasreturned to its November 11 origins.

Many of us of a certain age remember making stovepipe hats out of black construction paper on February 12, eating cherry pie on February 22, and having no school on either day.

Pity our children and grandchildren. The Uniform Holiday Bill of 1968 moved Washington's Birthday, as it had been called since 1885, to the third Monday in February. President Lyndon Johnson justified the change
 by saying it would "enable families who live some distance apart to spend more time together. Americans will be able to travel farther and see more of this beautiful land of ours. They will be able to participate in a wider range of recreational and cultural activities" and it would reduce the disruption caused by mid-week, non-uniform holidays.

The 1968 bill also had proposed renaming the holiday Presidents' Day (apostrophe after the s) to honor both Washington and Lincoln. But that part of the bill got lost. And, even though the bill had passed in 1968, it didn't take effect until January 1, 1971, when President Nixon signed Executive Order 11582.

Technically, we celebrate one president's birthday (apostrophe before the s) because the holiday is still listed in federal statutes as Washington's Birthday. State statutes are another matter.

On the third Monday in February, for instance, Alabamians officially celebrate George Washington's birthday and Thomas Jefferson's birthday -- even though Jefferson was born in April. Somehow, Jefferson's birthday slipped into the state calendar in 1907.

Florida doesn't list any official holidays in February. Indiana celebrates Washington's Birthday in December.

Merchants, wanting to milk the day for all it's worth, tend to refer to it as Presidents Day, President's Day, or Presidents' Day, but also tend to picture only Washington or Lincoln in ads--if they make any historical reference at all.

Presidents Day (no apostrophe) has become the officially preferred designation, even though President's Day is the p.c. -- punctuationally correct -- version and even though the Chicago Manual of Style and many dictionaries prefer Presidents' Day. And even though it officially is still just Washington's Birthday.

With the latest round of presidential candidates preparing to ride into their respective Jerusalems so convention delegates can raise the palm branches and shout 'Hosanna!' we should acknowledge the peculiar combination of destiny and drive that has drawn fewer than 50 people -- people very different in parentage, in education, in religion, in character, and in conviction of what was best for this country -- to occupy its highest office.

We also should acknowledge that we, among the nations of the earth, can most truly say to our children that any of them might grow up to be President of the United States. We should not take either of those peculiarities for granted, regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the current occupant of the office.

It's time to make it official. Presidents Day.

No apostrophe. Honoring our past. Keeping faith with our future.

If we can do that, maybe there's hope for finding consensus on health care and climate change.

Coming Clean Five Months Late

Back in August, this showed up in the mail
one day, and I mistook it for a birthday
card. I read it twice before I noticed the
$ sign….  :-) 

Confession: Despite the subheading on my blog, I haven't been a quinquagenarian for almost five months now.

Yup. I'm officially a sexagenarian and will be for the next decade.

Oh, hush. You think I can't hear the giggles and snickers and yuck-yuck jokes springing to mind?! Most of them sprang to my mind a year ago when I began pondering how I would handle the transition from quinquagenarian to sexagenarian.

The only place I foresaw a problem was here, on my blog. I mean, how many times do you hear someone say they are a trigenarian or a quadragenarian? Obscure words are obscure for a reason.

Some of us, however, like obscure words. And, as I have written elsewhere, Quodlibets and Quibblings of a Quinquagenarian sounds a whole lot better than Feisty Frothings of a Freaky Fifty-something.

So now what? Simpering Snippets from a Silly Sexagenarian? 

Hmmm.

Quodlibets: Musically, it's two or more pieces of music played simultaneously in counterpoint, usually in a whimsical way, as in the clip below where the Canadian Brass Quintet play Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" together.  Quodlibets also are theological or philosophical point of discussion, topics I often present in counterpoint to other lines of thought -- like the joy of new white socks or the parable of the gas can. Quodlibet is Latin for "what pleases," and the topics vary according to what pleases me at the moment.



Quibblings: To quibble is to gripe, grouse, or grumble about trivial matters . . . OR to make a play on words, to pun. Guilty on both counts. Just read my TWO posts on the differences between shards and sherds.

Quirky: Unpredictable, "weird in a good way" (according to the Urban Dictionary but which I couldn't get to link), peculiar, idiosyncratic. You get the picture.

Quinquagenarian: Someone between the ages of 50 and 59. Which I am no longer.

Quasi: Seemingly; apparently, but not really.

My newest favoritest prefix.

For at least the next decade.

Happy Jesus' Birthday -- Today and Everyday

This really happened.

Maybe not on exactly this day or with these particular animals present.

It is unlikely that the garments worn were this pristine. Nor do we know who arrived exactly when or in what numbers.

What we do know is that this really happened. A Jewish baby was born sometime during the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. He grew up and was crucified sometime during the reign of Tiberius Caesar.

He claimed to be the son of God; more, he claimed to be God. He said a person's response to this claim would determine that person's future for all eternity.

As C.S. Lewis put it, "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Mere Christianity, 1952)

Some people argue Lewis's logic.

Their arguments tend to hinge on the question of whether anything outside this natural world can be proved to exist -- proved using the scientific method, that is. One group has even offered a "million dollar challenge" to anyone who thinks he or she can prove any kind of supernatural occurrence. The parameters and protocols are set by the group.

The logic here escapes me. Isn't this a bit like using a microscope to study a galaxy -- only magnified exponentially. The galaxy, after all, exists within the same realm as the objects studied by the microscope. Still, the analogy seems valid. To study another existence, surely we would need tools from that existence.

All I can say is, I know what I was before I said "Thy will, not mine," and I know what I am now. I know where my thoughts and plans and motivations were leading me. . . and I know where His thoughts and plans and motivations have brought me. Someone today looking at me from the outside may see only the imperfections yet to be sanded away and not notice anything of what has already been done because they have no frame of reference of what I was before. I was dead. Now I am alive. That is a supernatural act, one which cannot be proved by the protocols of the scientific method.

All I can say is, this really happened. It happened for me. It happened for you. It happened for each and every one of us -- whether we believe it or not.

God rest ye merry, gentlemen -- and gentlewomen and boys and girls in all places, in all times.

More on George MacDonald & Dan Hamilton

Oy -- my last post was almost a year ago! One of these days I will catch up with myself....

In any case, someone just asked about the original titles of the George MacDonald books edited by Dan Hamilton (see previous post). Here they are; the Hamilton editions are on the left, and the original titles are on the right. Keep in mind, however, that even during MacDonald's lifetime, different editions sometimes had slightly different titles. I have found The History of Gutta-Percha Willie, Working Genius listed as just Gutta-Percha Willie.

The Parish Papers:
     A Quiet Neighborhood / The Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
     The Seaboard Parish / The Seaboard Parish
     The Vicar's Daughter / The Vicar's Daughter

The Last Castle / Saint George and Saint Michael (Follow this link to Peter Kazmaier's discussion of the conflict between the two "just warriors" in this book set in the time of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell.) 

The Prodigal Apprentice / Guild Court (I believe)

On Tangled Paths / Weighed and Wanting (This link leads to a discussion of whether Hamilton's edition should be considered a translation or not: http://www.librarything.com/topic/54418 .)

The Elect Lady / The Elect Lady

Home Again / Home Again

The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman / Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood

The Genius of Willie MacMichael / The History of Gutta-Percha Willie, Working Genius

The Wanderings of Clare Skymer / A Rough Shaking
These books are available through Project Gutenberg. And here is a site devoted to scholarly writing about George MacDonald's work: North Wind Journal

Have an inkling who the Inklings were? Then come hear Dan Hamilton!

SEVEN SAGES

A talk by  

Dan Hamilton

Sunday, November 25, 2012, at 5 p.m. 

Congregation Ohr Chadash

3190 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd., Clearwater

Congregation Ohr Chadash, a Messianic Jewish synagogue, is located at 3190 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd., just east of the Bayside Bridge (connecting 49th St. and McMullen Booth Rd.) and on the corner of Gulf-to-Bay Blvd. and Bayshore Blvd. (Gulf-to-Bay is the extension of the Courtney Campbell Causeway and is State Rt. 60.)  Mr. Hamilton will bring along a number of books he has written to sign and sell. Coffee and dessert will follow the talk. There will be no charge for the lecture, but participants will be invited to make a donation instead. 

C.S. Lewis * George MacDonald * G.K. Chesterton

Dorothy Sayers

J.R.R. Tolkien * Charles Williams * Owen Barfield

These seven writers, whose "baptized imaginations," as C.S. Lewis termed his own experience, produced some remarkable writings and influenced countless other writers, artists, and thinkers. They often are treated as a cohesive group, though the connections may be elusive. Who are these people? What did they write? Why are they important? Which of their books should we read? Some of these writers were part of the literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Others came before, and their earlier writings nurtured their literary progeny.

Seven Sages presents an overview of the lives and works of these writers, pointing out their common ground and differences, identifying their connections, and providing recommended reading.

Dan Hamilton is an engineer, technical consultant, teacher, tutor, and writer with a lifelong interest in the works of C. S. Lewis, the Inklings, and other associated authors.

Dan has edited numerous George MacDonald novels, written a fantasy trilogy (Tales of the Forgotten God), and co-authored two books with his wife: Should I Home School? and Look Both Ways. Dan and Dr. Ed Brown wrote In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis, which tells the fabulous story behind the magnificent Lewis collection that now resides at Taylor University in Indiana.

Dan and his wife, Elizabeth, helped buy, rescue, and preserve The Kilns, C. S. Lewis’ home from 1930 on, where he wrote the Narnia series and many of his other books. Dan co-founded the C. S. Lewis and Friends Society at Taylor University and the Central Indiana C. S. Lewis Society in Indianapolis.

The Kilns @ 1997. Photo taken by jschroe from Kailua-Kona,
Hawaii, USA, and uploaded to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kilns

Dan is finishing The Inn at the End of the World, a volume of short fantasy stories intended as a companion to Tales of the Forgotten God.

BOOKS BY DAN HAMILTON

Forgiveness

Tales of the Forgotten God:
    The Beggar King
    The Chameleon Lady
    The Everlasting Child

WITH ELIZABETH HAMILTON
Should I Home School?

Look Both Ways

WITH DR. EDWIN W. BROWN
In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis

EDITED BY DAN HAMILTON
George MacDonald Novels 
The Parish Papers:
      A Quiet Neighborhood
      The Seaboard Parish
      The Vicar's Daughter

The Last Castle
The Prodigal Apprentice
On Tangled Paths
The Elect Lady
Home Again
The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman
The Genius of Willie MacMichael
The Wanderings of Clare Skymer

Can I Just Say...

Does my sweetie know me, or what?

Plus a matching card!

This post is a couple of months overdue ... so I'm craving another licorice fix.

Maybe he'll see this and take the hint?

:-)

Part Two: A Sherd is a Shard is a ... Huh?

Something to ponder when you're on the pot ... or on pot ... or contemplating going to pot. :-)

Wanna know what the primary meaning of shard (preferred spelling) or sherd (secondary spelling) is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary?

Hint: It has nothing to to do with broken pottery.

 I. A cleft, gap.

 1. A gap in an enclosure, esp. in a hedge or bank. Now chiefly dial.

The OED gives examples from literature going back to 1000 A.D.

Wanna know what the second meaning of shard is, according to the OED?

Hint 2: Still has nothing to do with broken pottery.

†2. Used by Spenser for: ? A dividing water.

[Yr.] 1590   Spenser Faerie Queene ii. vi. sig. R7,   Vpon that shore he spyed Atin stand, Thereby his maister left, when late he far'd In Phædrias flitt barck ouer that perlous shard.

Wanna know what the third meaning of shard is, according to the OED?

Hint 3: Still has nothing to do with pottery.

3. A gap or notch in the blade of a tool. dial.

Finally, we come to the fourth meaning of shard, according to the OED:

 II.

 4.

 a. A fragment of broken earthenware. spec. in Archaeol., a piece of broken pottery. Phrase: to break, etc. into sherds : to reduce to fragments, break beyond repair. Cf. potsherd n. and adj.   and Old English crocsceard. Sherd is now established as the normal Archaeol. spelling.

So ... according to all of this, wouldn't the actual meaning of shard seem to be the gap or the hole left in the pot when it breaks apart? 

How did we come to assign to a fragment, the absence of which causes a shard, the term for the absence? 

Isn't that a bit like calling a doorway the door? 

A Sherd By Any Other Name?

SpellCheck agrees with me. But what do we know?

Shard. S-h-a-r-d.

A piece of broken pottery or glass; a fragment.

But now I see it spelled sherd. S-h-e-r-d.

SpellCheck underlines it in red, and to me it has the not-quite-right look of a word with an errant letter.

My style books are no help. The APA (American Psychological Association) style guide, which I use to write most of my education papers, doesn't list the word. MLA (Modern Language Association), in which I write my literary papers), doesn't seem to address the word. The formidable Chicago Style Manual, which I use to write history papers and travel guides, doesn't list it.

Even my AP (Associated Press) Style Book, which I use for newspaper writing and which has explanatory listings for when to use shake up (v.) or shakeup (n., adj.) and calls for a hyphen in mo-ped, contrary to Webster's New World College dictionary, is silent on the spelling of shard/sherd.

Google to the rescue in the form of the National Geographic Style Manual! The listing says to use sherd when writing in the archaeological sense of potsherds or sherds of pottery; use shard for all other senses.

So ... if I break a flower pot I bought at Wal-Mart yesterday, I pick up the shards. If I find a broken flower pot in what a century ago was a dump site, I excavate the sherds.

Love it.