Old before wise

The fool’s words are the cruelest statement in Shakespeare’s cruelest play.  As someone who has just reached the age the government defines as “senior citizen” and who is entering the blogosphere for the first time, I suspect that I too am ignoring the fool’s advice.  Like most Americans, I prefer possibility to fulfillment, so I’ll continue to ignore this advice.

 

What will be the themes of this blog?  Memory and the search for wisdom in various ways will inform most of the posts here.  My first classroom was in the Kgari Schele School in Molepolole , Botswana.  Currently I am the Academic Vice President of the Family Foundation School in Hancock NY.  In between I’ve taught at four universities. So teaching and learning will be one of my threads.

 

I’m a father and a grandfather, so family memory, wisdom and learning might appear in this blog.

 

I’m a scholar of the theatre and compulsive reader, so musing on literature, theater, and our lives will be another thread.  I’d like to personalize these musings in ways that are simply unacceptable in academic criticism.  If reading isn’t fun and/or enlightening why do it?

 

The playwrights I like the most Shakespeare, Shaw, Brecht, and Edward Bond (who too few Americans know) all are engaged in politics—so while this will not be a political blog in the usual since of the word the intersections of art, morals, politics and popular culture will be another of my threads.

 

Mostly though I’d like to muse on what wisdom is, how memory defines us and therefore wisdom itself—I want to bend the personal to the philosophical or at least to the critical. So if you’re interested, stay tuned.  Before I started this blog,I promised my self I’d post two or three times  a week,  so more will be here soon.

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