Mantis Nymph on Rays of Susan.

July 27, 2010

Do you see menace or divine inspiration? The merciless predator or the mysterious prophet? Friend, foe, or just another bug in the garden? The popular image of the praying mantis raises an interesting set of contradictions. It can summon up the dark side, a violent realm of bloodthirsty predators and ravenous cannibals. It can inspire flights of fancy into a magical wonderland of soothsayers, pathfinders, and shapeshifters. It can be the ruthless killer lying in wait for the ambush, or a kindred believer facing a holy shrine to pray to the almighty.

In Honor of the Fallen Ace.

July 25, 2010

On Saturday, July 24, the population of tiny Ida, Louisiana, may have quadrupled. The event that set Saturday's population surge in motion happened 66 years ago on May 30, 1944, near Celle, Germany. On that fateful day, Captain Fletcher E. Adams' P-51, the "Southern Belle," sustained enough damage from a German ME-109 attack that Fletcher had to bail out. His chute deployed and he made a normal descent. Unfortunately, he fell into the hands of some hard-core Nazis, who murdered him.

Venice Redux:
The Doge's Palace before I Go.

July 4, 2010

In Ron Fritze's final essay about his cruise on the Splendor of the Seas, we return to Venice for a visit to the Doge's Palace. Ron takes us to the Bridge of Sighs, the chamber of the Great Council, the quiet little Correr, and the Venetian Arsenal.  On his flight back home to the USA he was treated to a spectacular view of the Alps. 

How to Be 'Smart' to the Core
(Foreign Language not Necessary)

June 3, 2010

Arkansas education is in the news again, but this time the news “cuts to the core” of academic excellence at the University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Humanities on the Fayetteville campus. The state’s flagship university has decided to cut the much-lauded 66-hour core curriculum for arts and humanities to a more humble and modest 35-hour "minimum core" requirement to comply with Act 182 of February 2009. In effect, the legislation eliminates the foreign language requirement for a humanities degree in Arkansas unless you are a foreign language major....

Nature Teaches a Nurturer.

May 5, 2010

Audrey Madyun of Maumee, Ohio, writes about a life lesson gleaned from her observation of two robins on a warehouse parking lot — the kind of lesson available to any of us if we only take the time to pause amid the bustle of the day and open our eyes to the world around us.  Thanks, Audrey!

Dreaming Dirt Music
and the Hope for Grace.

May 5, 2010

In Christian Goering's latest for LitTunes, the song "Dear Oklahoma Rain" becomes the object of a study about the creative process, demonstrating again how John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath continues to inspire songwriters and musicians a half-century after its publication. "I wanted to produce a record of original music to, as Neil Young sings, 'leave tracks in the sound,' " Christian writes.  His tune takes us to southern Kansas for the saga of a farmer mired in the drought of the Great Depression, a widower with seven kids who decides to hold his ground after the death of his beloved wife. 

The Dance of Time:
Hungarian Culture in Transylvania. 

April 23, 2010

Zoltán Boldizsár Zeyk lives in a Hungarian village in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, where he teaches his native Hungarian and also English as a foreign language.  Although his village is a part of Romania, the people who live there hold dear to their Hungarian traditions in a struggle for cultural identity that is woven into language, folk music, and dance.  An Easter folk dance performance by the youngsters of the village inspired Zoltán's guest essay for Planet Gnosis, which features photographs by his daughter and a link to video of the performance.

Turks and Talent:
Meritocracy in the Ottoman Empire.

April 23, 2010

The Ottoman Turks are near the top of the list of obscure subjects taught in history class.  But they were a threat to Christian Europe for centuries and became a bogie man to Europeans.  These "bad guys" of Western history instituted a system of meritocracy that promoted social mobility and helped populate the military with capable, non-Turkish commanders.  Ron Fritze discusses several of these legendary figures in his latest contribution to Age of the Reformation.   

Whose Teeth Sow the Foot Soldiers?

April 1, 2010

Let us travel, then, you and I, into some distant woven shade, and hide there among the ashes and the oaks, sip pale green nectar from the limestone springs, eat our berries and our nuts, and wait, wait for the binding to be lifted and flung into hot stars, burning, burning.

May Day.  The Good Comrades
Are Vanquished.  What Next?

March 24, 2010

After twenty-five months of silence, Dylan FitzDylan returns to CornDancer with the publication of a lyrical narrative he claims to have written while imprisoned in a Soviet socialist satellite state. What are we to think of Marko's oracle, the androgynous, raven-haired creature whose last dance outside the Youth House in Györ, Hungary, leaves her feet bloody and her prophetic voice mute?   What role does Imre Washington play in the first May Day celebration after the fall of the Iron Curtain?   And how successful is sweet Ildie in her search for new isms?

I Remember Mother.

March 6, 2010

Yesterday — Friday, March 5, 2010 — marked the thirty-ninth year of my mother’s death. Two years ago, while attending a writing seminar, I turned a long story about my mother and me into a poem. My mother’s name was Joy Kathelene Hinson, so in her honor, this is how the poem came to be.

Three Aussies: Pile of Puppies.

January 25, 2010

I'm sixty years and they're eleven weeks. It's a good balance. Crow's Cottage rocks with new life and awesome bursts of animal energy.

Three puppies! It's hard to imagine, easier to accept. Compassion got the best of me at the moment of acquisition.

Commas, Conjunctions, a Million
Dollars, and the Barenaked Ladies.

November 18, 2009

What does AAAWWUBBIS have in common with the Barenaked Ladies and a pile of money? How does the tune "If I Had a Million Dollars" help students learn about "comma causers" and smartly crafted sentences? Focusing on the concept of "purposefully arranged words," this compact, one-period AAAWWUBBIS writing activity created by Cindy Williams answers those questions and more as it "invites" students to connect writing to the music of their world. It's good and proper grammar, too! 

Language, Reality
And the Murder of John Locke.

September 2, 2000

It has got to be maddening to be murdered, to know in the fast fleeting now that the bullets are flying at you and into you, to struggle toward your slayer, to fall in a screaming air of violence onto the floor of your last breath.

When he fell, I don't think John fell at the feet of the killer. I think that John, resolving the last powerful gasp of his chi into a lunge, took the gunman down to the floor with him. I think John died triumphant, face-to-face with the coward who shot him dead.