Hash for May 01, 2009

- The Reading of Gossamer von Goss's final blog entry

Group 1 - [MAPS] They all worked individually and it all came together, Maps

Group 2 - [BOUNDARY] Boundaries, Children's Literature, Rabbit Hole, Transformation into something new and bringing that back with you

Group 3 - [DREAMS] Dreams are remembrance (Before Adam)

Group 4 - [COMPLIMENTARY] Complimentary - Chp. 7 of Ong - Orality and Literacy are complimentary

Group 5 - [TRADITION] - Stories are the history and the memory of the culture

Group 6 - [CONTEXT] - Everything is contextual, nothing exists without context to something else

Individual Presentations

KKB - commands attention w/ storytelling: info not seperate from message

Check Mark Parker - not bound to his text, passed around tangible objects, chaos

ONG

Chapter 7 - Be read very carefully - People who talk about literary history usually never talk about the oral tradition, largely because it does not exist in terms of written text. The Bible is a book/text centered culture. Interiorization and the importance to the individual are literary evolutions.

1. Plea for Oral Traditions in the literary history.

2. Identify these schools of literary criticism-
Formalism - New Criticism - Nothing but the text!
Structure - Deep Structures within the text that control it
Deconstruction - "There is no outside the text!" Everything is connected
Reader Response - It depends on the experiences and knowledge of the reader

3. Phonocentrism (speech)
Logocentrism (word)

4. We have become more interior, and this is because we have become more literate.

YATES

320 (Robert Flood - Kabalist, Thought Memory Theatre be in world), 329, 352, 364

Luby's Blog - HE IS POSSESSED! Read it!

!!!!!!!****A Manuscript Found in Sara Gassa (or a) (sp?)****!!!!!!! Find It! (Only if you want to read a crazy frame novel.... story about story about story about story etc.)

Fourth Day of Individual Presentations

***Friday mandatory attendance! (Talk to Dr. Sexson if you won't be there) We'll do a review and wrap up the semester.***

Snake Hair Kayla - what makes story/myths so important to us... now in secondary orality, and in primary orality

Lisa of the Little Legs - Ichi (sp) - last wild indian that came out of the woods in 1911 - lived an oral culture til his 40's where he spent time in San Francisco

Two-Tongued Charlie - How much orality is found within the bible, mostly old testament - Epic Lists and their power - Performance and Torah

Joan Gossimer von Goss - The Power of Words

Jana the Tamer of Horses - The Power of Names - Three aspects: Naming something gives power to the person giving the name, forced familiarity, junk mailing names and prizes; the power they give the thing that is named

Steve of the Rivers - The Raven, The Light, and My Failure as a Mythteller - He wrote a native-type story but found out there just was no magic there

Parker of the Outback - Film and the Oral Tradition of Storytelling - Films and Dream Logic and Movies as the next evolution of storytelling

Chris the Scribe - The Story Shower - My Father and why he's the greatest storyteller ("story shower") I have ever known

Charismatic Kari - The Power of Names - Religious Names and the Power they give the people in the bible

(*** I think that even calling something what we have told ourselves they are - like desk, table, tree - gives us power over them... imagine seeing that green, woody thing outside and not knowing what it was... we would have absolutely no power over it, and that's the point.***)

Kate of the Beautiful Eyes - Tristram Shandy vs. The Literate Tradition - couldn't convey what he wanted through print alone, so he used many oral aspects to get his point across

Summer Breeze - T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets" and connections with poetry starting somewhere other than where Professor Sexson said they did! Ah! Blasphemy! What the shaman speaks is law ;)!

Third Day of Individual Presentations

Chris of Laughing Rats - Kabala and Oral Traditions - A Word is a thing, the letters define that thing

Wise Wandering Shannon - Oral Traditions with the deaf people - History of sign language - Every letter looks like greek alphabet, more like writing rather than oral... but reading lips and gestures are hugely oral tradition

Check Mark Parker - Big Box of Goodies - Convey Meaning by building off past language and the evolution of it - Order out of Chaos

*** (The Degree to which you are text bound is also the degree to which you are seperated from all others)

James the Rat - Reoccuring Dream - Homer reading Illiad - Poetry and the beginning of story telling - Plato's thoughts - Fight Club and Images in movies taking Oral schemes out of Literature and putting them into Iamgery and Stimulus

Kyle of the Skinny Jeans - "The Alphabet vs. The Goddess" Book - Oral and Literate Tradition Different from Ong - Ong sets the two apart... Schlane? approaches them as being parallel and internalized - Rise of Patriarchal Society and Male Dominance Influence... Brain structures and purposes for the way we are

Tautologic Tai - The Medium is the Massage - Works directly with the Ong Book - Secondary Oral people can not perceive Primary Orality... Mcluhan says all media and mediums now do this - Juxtapositions and Experimental Book - Huge Scroll Writing/Comic/World and Meaning of Life!

Big Rich - Evolution of Orality - How complimentary these papers have been sit in his mind - Anatomically modern man and the ability to speak about the same time as the evidence of culture - Also spoke of why we speak and where it comes from (Natural Sounds and Beautiful Song)

1st Day of Individual Presentations

Jared and Sutter went.... I had their ifo stored in computer, then my battery died. So if you want to know what they talked about, I'll either update this soon after visiting the muse of their blog or you can go read their muse as well. ;)

Kelsey of the Free Rent- Played "Let it be" - Music, Muses, & Oral Traditions - Music
- Can be an oral tradition - A frame of existence
- Muses called upon before recitings.
- Mother Mary for personal salvation rather than performance.
- Music transcends oral & Literate traditions.

KK Ben - Creating a good story from Vivid Dreams, Personal Experience Memories
- Meaning Making
- Telling Story

Bearded Brandon - Situational and Existential - Abstract (song that never ends) and written to perfection - Song down on print - The song made up on stage, then they forgot the song, then they wrote a tribute and wrote that down, and sung about it (Tribute - Tenacious D). Box in box song. Myse-em-abyme.

ZZ Zach - What he learned - Advantages of the memory theatre
- Being able to reach into that part of your brain

Nick - Flyting as an oral tradition
- David and Goliath
- Beowulf and Unferth
- Greenland Eskimoes verbally abusing on drums
- Inuit excommunicated after losing verbal battles
- 16th Century word contest, chastise with/Scottish poets
- Dunbar and Kennedy - sounds a lot like rap
- Agonistic Oral Cultures

Carly - T.S. Elliot connection for her and class - Interrelated connections of time - Four Quartets circle (Tradition of Individual Talent)

Ugh...Computers

So maybe a really tiny computer wasn't the best idea I've ever come up with..... they seem reliable and all, but if something gets lost electronically, like....say, a couple days a class notes..... you can't blame yourself, you can only blame the little computer as it blinks there so innocently in front of you. Sometimes you can blame yourself, but it's so terribly easy to click the wrong button on this little thing that it doesn't feel like it's your own fault.

Let's say I had written it on paper and then erased the two pages with my eraser.... on accident. Then I know that it would be my fault and only my fault... couldn't blame it on the eraser or the paper. Oh woe is me.....

Hopefully I'll be able to pull those little guys out of some hidden folder or dark and doomy tab/link/jargony jarg jarg place on this thing they call a pc. Hmm...

2nd Day of Individual Presentations

1. Sweet Smiling Melissa - Names - Adam named animals, man now has power over animals - Lolita and list of names

2. John of the Striped Hat - Sang and poetry for everything he has learned this semester

3. Deep Sea Fishing Jeff - Books, Letters, Periodicals, Radio, Television, Internet, Mobile Phones (collective wisdom available to all in world, rather than just those listening to mythteller) as an Aid to oral tradition, rather than undermine its progress

4. Zach of the Saving Bells - On Tonality... present in text and print too? Used Ong to support his theory.... it causes people to perceive language differently (relationship problems ;)

5. Willy Quiet Willy - List and literature - Oral tradition into Literate Tradition

6. Lisa the Luddite - Sound and Poetry - Wallace Stephens Quote - Orality allows poetry to come alive and awaken the senses in ways the print culture can not... pace, tones, monotony, creations of the voice...

7. Bright Eyes Kevin - Memory....Orality and Literacy... Mythtelling (connections with Memory, Imagination, and Soul)... Myths and Creating connections with Earth and Self and Sound

8. Robert of the Worded Limbs - Men of Japan who are (were?) the social class of taletellers in their society... they did this for money, and stories about happenings in their area... Performed Samurai poem/song/story... Tradition of strong warrior still living in strong businessmen today

9. Helena of the 10,000 Lakes - Nature as the inspiration for sound and orality - The Seasons and there sounds of the patterns of life - We've lost connection with the earth's myth because of our movement to literate world

Hash for April 13, 2009

*** Assignment - Required - Call for Help on the Rough Draft of your paper ***

- He also wants us to comment on the other's blogs.... he would love to see this happen more.

Groups - 1+2 Wednesday, 5+6 Friday, 3+4 Monday.... then z-a for presentations after that.

Correct Tests!

- Automatic A for anyone who builds Camillo's Memory Theatre to the big scale! (Hmm...:)

In Response to John Nay - Music as a Matter of Discussion

I completely agree with what you are saying here.... and you are right, not enough people see the dangers because they are either the happy rich man or the numbed poor.

What I'm wondering, just for the sake of conversation, was what television shows you had in mind for the lazy, overconsumption, and snobbery? (I know there's plenty, but did you have any in mind?) For some reason as soon as you said that, I thought of the shows that are the exact opposite.... shows like "The Biggest Loser" that are making hugely overweight people get up and do something to better their health and the people around them; shows like "Lie to Me" or "CSI" that stimulate the thought processes and surprise you at every turn. These shows don't really address the problem at hand that you speak of... but one show that did pop up into my head right now that contributes heavily are shows like "Paris Hilton's New BFF". Shows like disgust me.

I think another thing that you might want to address are the insane amounts of money our society poors into sports and the athletes involved. Talk about a material era :).

Ze Test!

Oh, it should be interesting to see how this one turns out. Looking at it one way, I knew almost everything on it..... but looking on at it the other, the ones I didn't know, I really didn't know. Sooo, through amazing eduguessing perhaps I puller around some amazing numbers. Ve vill find out sune!

Hash for April 06, 2009

-Talking of throwing darts at the Kane book to make a paper topic. He says anything can come from it.

-Crazy Coffee Carly to the board to write questions for the test!!!!

Chapters 4,5,6 of Ong.... Ramone Lull, Bruno, Camillo from Yates's Memory Treatises Chapters

Here we go:

1. Nietzsche says we are all walking __________ . dictionaries
2. Off Sutter's Talk of Ramone Lull, name these terms for given to him: Motion, No Images, Non-Corporeal, Ladder, Tree
3. Ong Chap. 6 - Triangle vs. Box (questions will go along these.... remember Fritag Triangular form as reference to Aristotle's Poetics vs. Mis-en-Abyme (into the abyss) Box within Box form of Orality)
4. The Protestant Reformation = Printing Press
5. Mandala - Squaring of the Circle
6. Democratic/Alphabet
7. Ong 142 - Gesang ist dasein. (Means "song is existence" in German)
8. Ong 130 - Finality and Closure (print)
9. Yates 224 - The Memory System of ______ would require the memory of a divine man, the Magus. Bruno
10. What does alithiometer stand for? A Truth Measurer
11. 7 Pillars of Solomon's House of Wisdom - Camillo (The 7 Planets of Yore)
12. Iliad - "Such was the funeral rights of Hector, The Tamer of Horses"
13. Ong Chap. 4 - How many times was the alphabet invented? Once
14. What are the chances of something happening? 1 in 3 (The longer you live and the older you get, you just realize that coincidences are always happening because you realize they do.)
15. What did Tai and Robert use for their memory systems? Their Bodies
16. FW Article - Before writing their was speech, and before speech their was gesture.
17. Yates 188 - Lull and Kabala - System that arose from this
18. FW Article - Hypertext & Portmanteau - (James Joyce and Cyberspace language)
19. Ancient Hebrew language was lacking what? Vowels
20. LTRTR NGLSH
21. Yates 203 - What is Bruno doing when he's said to be crazy and unrestrained? Bruno rushes out of convent/Divination of Man through memory
22. Ong 126 - Tristram Shandy's Silence - Blank Space (I read another book about this this semester too!)
23. George Herbert's Poem "Easter Wings" (Hourglass Shape + Butterfly Wings) - Ong 126
24. The most notorious book that nobody reads? FW
25. Myths are repository for practical knowledge.
26. The ability to hears colors? Synesthesia

In Reference to Tai's Book Report....

Read Tai's Book report and do as it says (read it ;). This book is an amazing book for the modern mind. It is my favorite (mostly because it contains every aspect of a book I want.... mythology, mystery, action, and dark humor).

And as I said in the comment I left on his blog, I think that Neil Gaiman's works always find a way back to Sexson's classes, one reason being because both Sexson and Gaiman are heavily rooted in the mythological stories that show up in our modern lives today. (The classic Romeo and Juliet, Beauty and the Beast, and other famous stories have been played out in myths from thousands of years ago.) It is also this connection that makes Sexson so enjoyable to listen too and Gaiman so enjoyable to read. I wonder how my perceptions of them would change, however, if I had only ever been able to read Sexson's thoughts and listen to Gaiman speak. I'm sure it would make these people completely different in my mind's eye. But that is one thing I will never know..... but once again, read American God's or any other Gaiman literature (for graphic novelists, his Sandman Series are untouchable.... for children's literature, Coraline.... and for fun fantasy, Neverwhere.... and for dark fantasy, American Gods or Anansi Boys). So go out, read and be happy, and if you by chance decide to read one of these books because of this blog please come tell me about it, I'd love to talk to you about your experience! -Chris

Hash for April 03, 2009

Talking of people's ideas for their papers and some going off on Oral Traditions but not having them connected to the books and the ideas expressed in class.

****Last day of the class is the last day to cross your t's and dot your I's on your blogs****

Talking more of correctness Nazis and reading Kevin's term paper on his blog.

He's reading a wonderful paper on "Right Writing" and every sentence is the wrongness it speaks about. :)

Speaking on Term Paper topics and discussing problems and what can be worked with to make them better on the paper.
-Bog People and The Ceremony/Sacrifice
-Paleolithic Art and Orality
-Post-Modernism and Ong's Six Points
-Power of Names
-Oral Poetry and The Sacred Meaning Behind It
-Pure Sound (he then recites Finnegan's Wake); when words don't matter in your song
-Tone of Voice
-The Medium is the Message (Ong and McLuhan connections); Sexson against any type of video of classes, teachers, and students.
-Science as a Degradation to the Oral Tradition (The Alphabet & The Goddess - Book being lent to him for his paper)
-Oral Poets; The Oral Tradition and the Individual Talent; Standing on the Shaman's Shoulders as well as Shakespeare.

Group Meetings!

- Change in group presentation days:

Wednesday April 15th - Group 1+2
Friday - Group 5+6
Monday - 3+4

Everyone please read....

I have posted all of the pictures I have to date on a separate blog that is linked over to the right called "Memorize Us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"..... hopefully this will make it easier for all of you to memorize your peers rather than sifting through my blogs to find the pictures. Enjoy!

Nothing is ever learned, only remembered...

Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls
Her wat'ry Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

John Milton
Paradise Lost

Of Triangles, Circles, and Squares....

Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean the universe - which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

Galileo
Il Saggiatore

For Bright Eyed Kevin....

Have not we too? -yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence!

Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar-
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God,- of God they are.

-William Wordsworth
"Yes, It was the Mountain Echo"

Hash for April 01, 2009

Talking schedules:

***8th of April is Second Quiz... Monday of next week discusses the quiz. Responsible for 4,5,6 in Ong. Yates up to Bruno. Finnegan's Wake Article. Ramone Lull. Camillo. We contribute to the creation. Bring question.****

*** Assignment - Comment on Kevin's Paper***

Friday - meeting in class with groups

6th of April - Talk of quiz
8th of April - Quiz
10th of April - Holiday
13th of April - Review of Exam
15th of April - Group 1+2
17th of April - 3-4
20th of April - 5-6
22nd of April - Begin our Individual Oral Presentations.... getting in 10 people a day. Going to be asked to be scytsophrenic. Formal.... beginning, middle, and end. Clarity. Stick to literate rules (MLA, paragraphs, ya know! Then be crazy and redundant and informative in our Oral Presentations (papers due during presentations).
1st of May - Conclusions and Evaluations
7th of May - Thursday of Finals Week - 6 pm - Final Test

Strunken White rules - Tai's Presentation - talking of our papers and who said we need to write and write a certain way. Typographic space.

pg. 130 - Ong - 2nd Paragraph end with quote by Yeats - "More Diffuse Affects" - Learned tongues textualize the language of the world.

"The Debate between Orality and Literacy is kind of a fake one - as Ong sets them up." -MS

"Writing is something we come naturally by, speaking is something we learn." -MS quoting Jacque Derida.

Finishing our talk of Finnegan's Wake Article:

Explanations again of Ramone Lull, Camillo, Bruno.
pg. 204 Yeats- Bruno explanations. ":The Philosopher's Stone in the psyche..." Astral Images. Such a memory would be the memory of a divine man. "A Magus..." The Divination of man was considered occult.

"Joyce, like Camillo before him, found himself at a loss to explain what it was he was creating."
The squaring of the circle, the circling of the square... The Mandala... like no other book that ever existed and still a replication of every book ever made.
Trying to capture orality before writing even came about... before ever writing.
"Cock and Bull Story"... Tristram Shandy... A Shaggy Dog story... A story that has no point, no end, beginning or point.
Portmanteau - One word during double, triple whatever duties. Joyce uses Lewis Carrol's word to the utmost in Finnegan's Wake.
***Aegypt - To Follow Bruno out of this class. Use this book.***

Triangles vs. Boxes (Circles and Squares) once again:

Sophocles - Ong - Great person of the literate tradition.
Sheharazad for Orality

Book of Judges - Oral Tradition in Spades - Redundancies and Repetitions in original forms. More powerful in its pure form.

***For Friday come up with more things to put into triangle and box.***

Hash for March 30, 2009

- Passing around the term paper topics paper.

- Talking of Kevin's imagination, memory, and soul paper topics.

- Talking about "rough giraffes"

- ****Assignment - Give Kevin his criticism on his blog, because he asked****

- pg. 144 in Ong, Talking of linear, chronologic plots not coming from epics, but rather boxes within boxes coming from epics. It's Fritag's Pyramid (the triangle) + (beginning, middle, and end) + (model for the literate tradition) vs. frames within frames within frames (unrelated, repetitions, oral traditions).

- Reading of the beginning of Tristram Shandy.

- pg. 145 in Ong, singers plot narrative not by conveying information with the same way as a man of linear thought... singers remember in a public way... themes, formulas... that other singers sing.

- Discussing teachers and the square within square and how well it works sometimes with the right teacher.

- Continuing down the road of our "Finnegan's Wake Article"

- Inscription is when you go to the genuine museum and all of history is played out and you become a participant of all this history rather than an observer of it.

- Yates has three chapters dedicated to trying to understand what Bruno is doing in his memory treatises.

- In Article, he breaks Bruno and Camillo into one simple paragraph. If you uderstand Bruno's memory theatre, well, then you understand THE UNIVERSE. Stupefyingly complex. Imprisoned in terrible situation of forgetting.

- Jana the Tamer of Horses is dripping a red juice on her jacket, accident.

- We had drank from the great river of letha, and it is "lethal" because we forget.

- Though virtually forgotten today, Camillo was one of the most well known persons of the 16th century. Not content to theorize of memory theatres, he built one of wood. He built the Seven Pillars of Solomon's House of Wisdom. The arranged items in the bleachers became the show to the person on stage. You could give an amazing speech on what was in the pillars. "THEIR OWN DIVINITY" is what they reach for. This is something to remember for the test.

- Novel talked about in this class.... told we should go read it now (all about Ovid):

An Imaginary Life by David Malouf

"Best book Zack has read in a long time." + "It's the imagined clash between a literate man banished to a land of oral people."

Everything is still with you, somewhere that can't be reached.

Hash for March 27, 2009

Synesthesia (sp?) - a person who hears colors... going back to primary orality

Walter Ong - pg. 122 - Print encourages closure. A sense of what is written has been finalized.

(Introduction, Body, and Conclusion)

Model for the storyteller is Shahara Zad. She figures out how to keep them going so she doesn't die. Her stories do not have a finalization.

Think about TV shows that never end.... Lost, Heroes, and such..... secondary orality makes them never end. With a literate society, things have endings. Where is society moving?

Websites, Blogs are all just like this... never ending and always changing. Always changing.

Kindle gets passed around. We talk about the amazing book technologies and how to keep hundreds of books with you.... your iphone, kindle, other phones, etc. Quite amazing now.

***Aristotle was the first to say that a story needed a beginning, body, and conclusion like Oedipus Rex, the first detective story.***

Finnegan's Wake now subject.... going back to his story, third paragraph...

Talking about grunts and moans... oooo... ahhhhh..... sounds. Linguists believe this is how language originated. Chain gangs and dwarves in the mine.

"Before books there was speech, and before speech there were mute gestures."

Echolalia - Sexson says that babies are wonderful at it. It is the joy you take in hearing any sound you make. Their gutteral bubbles and gurgles that they love to make.

When pure sound becomes carnal, it is echolalia.

****Assignment - Listen for Echolalia, study it and makle your own. Blog on it too.***

Joyce read Vico, who understood that thunder bolts change things. Joyce onomonopiatizes lightning many times with a hundred letter word in his book.

Musey Room - Joyce's word for museum.


"In order to remember, you have to be dismembered." -MS

A book is tactile. Lisa said she laughed at the "Black Book of Colors" because black is the absence of colors.

***Turn to pg. 203 in Yeats, she says something about Bruno. **** Important pg. for next exam.**** The Googlable Guy! (Next book title)

***BLOG ABOUT YOUR TERM PAPER FOR MONDAY. HE'LL WANT THESIS STATEMENT FOR IT.***

Rich is here, Kayla, Carly, Danielle, no James, Kevin, Bri, Tai

*****My boundaries group meets at 4:30..... Thursday next week....

Lynn, Alex, Brian, Claire..... not in class anymore...

Hash for March 25, 2009

- ***Term Paper Topics coming up*** By Monday... need topic and thesis statement.
"Oral Traditions" need to be somewhere in the title of your paper.

- Any subject in the Kane book related to the Oral Tradition is ok for term paper. Ong ok too. Yeats could get a little troublesome because it goes off our subject at times.

- In this paper I'm going to talk about... I'm going to talk about it by using the examples of... I will try to get this result in the end...

Passed around:

Great Beginnings: Great Endings

- Ong pg. 32 very important for Joan's "Word Magic" paper.

Talking about the connections between classes.

The bible was written in Latin, and since everyone was incapable of reading Latin, all the information from it was in the hands of the priests. The whole protestant reformation wouldn't have been possible without the printing press.

"Intestate and Without Issue"

Secondary Orality in the world - Is there no place where there is closest to Primary Orality.

pg. 136 - Ong - He talks to us about electronic technology and how they are fostering a new literary movement. He died before he could see the huge movement to electronics instead of writing.

Expalanations to the memory theatres:
Deep Sea Fishing Jeff - beaches back home
Bearded Brandon - an outline form
Christine of the Laughing Rats - a huge building worked at in Iraq
Jared of the Open Plain (will be remembered now because we discussed it)
- Parker of the Outback Steakhouse (didn't explain...just discussed his name)


I will not have these two pictures
Quick Wit Nick - Not Pictured
Christine of the Laughing Rats - Not Pictured

pg. 136 of Ong discussed at the end - Discusses Secondary Orality and how it applies to the electronic word. "Relationship between electronically published word and the polarity discussed in his book." (MS wants Carly to write the book)

- Talked to Zack of the Saving Bells about his retrograde technology of ordering movies from Netflix and having them sent.

- We all download movies now (most of us) for free from the net.

Electronic: Orality and Literacy will be my book. :)

Camillo and Bruno need to be addressed in class Friday.

Hash for March 06, 2009

- Chris is passing around the big book of Hebrew - The Gemara

- Helena is going to spout off a list of like 70 people that she memorized for her prayers before she went to bed.
- An experiential demonstration of what we have been discussing.

Ong - End of Chapter 5 - Beginning of 6 - ***No matter how we have rid ourselves of the oral tradition, it survives in the strangest places.***

***Rhetoric was thought to have to do with the oral tradition - but not now.***
***Typographic is more important than the Chyrographic.... printing press more important.*****

***Eisenstein - Printing press is the significant invention of last 1,000 years. No reformation without it in protestant church.... because no widespread bibles.***

- Defending the doctrinal dissertation - Privileging speech or print

Zach of the Saving Bells and Two Tongued Charlie are in the Teaching Option - Sexson wants them to do something in the oral tradition in their classes in the future.

Great Beginnings, Great Endings - A Book written by Sexson a long time ago about great beginnings and great endings in books.
- We are reading from it.

- Kubla Khan - Mantra in opening lines. Opius (Opium induced ;)

- "Sometimes what we only imagine is happening enough to satisfy us."- MS

- Pantomimes, important, period.

- "An authentic remembering gives the book back its body."- MS

Why no conflict between the book saying the same thing each time you come back to your book? You're never the same person coming back to it.

Isis remembering and recreating her husband to bring him back!

Second Set of Orality Masters

For the Eyes of the Shaman....

If by some chance you get to read this by tomorrow, Master Shaman, it is imperitive that another CD 1 be burned for all the pictures that are not up so far on my blog. I have tried reading the disc you originally gave me (in 4 different computers) but the disc is showing that it has nothing on it. I will continue to try, but it looks as though we'll need another. Sorry once again for the delay in this whole process and if there's any way to make it up to ya I'll do my best. Thank you, Chris

First Set of Orality Masters

For those who don't know what a Luddite is: a member of any of various bands of workers in England (1811–16) organized to destroy manufacturing machinery, under the belief that its use diminished employment

Deserved Explanations

I must apologize to the class for having its scribe be pulled from them during such a crutial time. I've dealt with some emotional pain over the last few weeks that has been pretty hard on me and my family, but everything is starting to seem like it's finally starting to come to a partially satisfactory resolution. I am back in Bozeman and all is now fine with me. You'll be seeing me and my little computer once again in class tomorrow and everything will pick back up right where I left off. I have read all of your blogs and seen that, for the most part, the recitals of memory went quite well. I'm very glad to hear that. Right at this moment I will be putting up the first set of pictures of you all on here and will get the rest of them up ASAP. Hope you enjoy browsing them, memorizing them, and I'll see you tomorrow. -Chris

Doodling in Class May Help Memory

FRIDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- You might look like you're not paying attention when you doodle, but science says otherwise.

Researchers in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle. The findings were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, said in a news release issued by the journal's publisher. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."

For the experiment, a two-and-a-half minute listing of several people's names and places was played for test subjects, who were charged with writing down only the names of the people said to be attending a party. During the recording, half the participants were asked to simultaneously shade in shapes on a piece of paper without attention to neatness. Participants were not told they were taking part in a memory test.

When the recording ended, all were asked for the eight names of those attending the party as well as eight place names mentioned in the audio. Those asked to doodle wrote down, on average, 7.5 names and places, while those who didn't doodle listed only 5.8.

"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process," Andrade said. "If that process is important for the main cognitive task, then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade."

In everyday life, Andrade said, doodling "may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."

Intro to Oral Cultures

It is a fascinating video, a little slow and partly made for missionary education, but I find the most interesting part of the video is to be found at the very end when you get to see the young boy, maybe early teens, telling what you can make out to be a very exciting and obviously gripping story (by the number of people watching him). Even though we can not understand his language, we can understand the emotions and the tensions just by listening and watching him speak. This is something you absolutely can not do with a piece of literature in a foreign language if you do not understand the language. Hence, we have another downside to literacy. Please, though, feel free to skip around in the video, just make sure to watch the last minute. (Suprisingly, I could not find a single thing on the second part of this video. If anyone else runs by it let me know.)

A Different Type of Epithet

Hash for March 02, 2009

- ***You will write down your 50 memorized item, your epithets, a paper idea for the final paper, and your group names on Wednesday the 4th. ***

- We will be hearing of Ramon Lull from Sutter, then joining into our groups for conversation time.

- Ramon Lull created his memory system as a conversion/persuasion system from non-gentile religions to the gentiles.

- Read some from 176 in Yates. Corporeal Similitudes stick out in our imagination (like Quasimoto).

- Lull believes the nine aspects of God can be assigned to anything. Lull's memory is not stagnant.

- Alethiometer - "Truth meter" - Leth means forget, aleth means unforget.

- BCDEFGHIK - The nine attributes of God.

- Bonitas is what Yates uses on 179 for goodness.

- 184 starts on why corporeal similitudes will not work.

- Yates only uses repetition (From artificial memory) to actually memorize something.

- Yates's images in the book do not flow along with Lull's ideas.

- Lull uses frequent meditation. Lull and Bruno were magical, and that's why these people have been viewed as heretical and were killed because of their power and theri ability to bestow it upon others.

Most important thing to note on Lull - Got rid of Corporeal Similitude and was huge on movement in memory.


Epithets ( Brandon's Epitaphs) -

1. Briane Barber - Summer Breeze
2. Bowles, Kari - Charismatic Kari of the Curly Hair
3. Clark, Chris - Chris Scribbles the Scribe
4. Connell, Parker of the Outback
5. Crawford, Steve - Steven of the Rivers
6. Currie, Jana - Animal Tamer
7. Ebert, Rich - Big Rich
8. Joan Goss - Gossamer VonGoss
9. Tai Kersten - Tautological Tai
10. Kienitz, Kyle - of the skinny jeans
11. Kayla Kitchens - Snake-Haired Kayla
12. James Kushman - "The Rat"
13. Helena Lafave - 10,000 takes
14. Larscheid, Brian - The Eldest
15. Kevin Luby - Bright-Eyes
16. Parker Mann
17. Christine McCann - of the laughing rats
18. Shannon McLaughlin - Wise Wandering Shannon
19. Meznerich William - Willy Quiet Willy
20. Deep Sea-Fishing Jeff (Shutt)
21. John Nay of the Striped Hat
22. Kelsey Stavnes of the Free Rent
23. Brandon Spevacek - Bearded Brandon
24. Carly Parelius - Crazy Coffee Carly
25. Melissa Newman - Sweet Smiling Melissa
26. Stremmel, Sutter - The Sacker of Cities
27. Zach Morris - Zach of the Saving Bells
28. Zach Smith - Za Zen Zach
29. Jared Zygarlicke - of the open Plain
30. Kate Beaudoin - Kate of the Beautiful Eyes

- These memory systems take us to a place that is not a place.

"You've got to like what you're doing." -MS says this of our paper presentation.

Hash for February 27, 2009

- We will be going through the our groups and giving epithets today.

- ***Google pictures of story tellers and oral tradition people and blog on them***

- Next week we will hear from Sutter on the Yates book.

- Talked of the stations of the cross and the ceremonies involved within the Catholic church for an oral tradition.

- Freud said, " Give me a person until the age of six, and then you can have them."

- Talked of the "Catch 22" satirizing and humor and what it has to do with the things we make fun of (such as literature) in the class.

- Talked of people who believe things "because they're in word....written in stone....signed in blood"
- The protestants in the family who believe this.
- The lawyers whos only matter is if you signed a document or not.

- Because Sexson forgot something, Sutter introduces us to Ramone today.

- Ramon Lull, (google Lullism) pg. 173, he introduces movement into memory, it is the most important aspect of his memory system... the memory systems we've seen so far are single images on shelf, his move around.
- The circle with 9 letters within it on board... B C D E F G H I K. The virtues of God are within circle. The Bohemian Ideals

- Can you return a book to the oral culture? Finnegans Wake came the closest.

- The class is reading from Finnegans Wake. The book does not end... it ends in the middle of a sentence. Stops with circular totalitary type thinking.

- Finnegan's Wake says something different every time you open it. It always means something different. Always.

- "The Ballad of Finnegan's Wake" is an old fable from Irish Lore of a man who falls off a ladder, has a wake, and gets up at it.... maybe, I need to find it online.

- My Group's Epithets: Crazy Coffee Carly, Bright Eyed Kevin, Big Rich, Totalogic Tai, Snake-Haired Kayla, Red Damsel Danielle Hawly, Summer Breeze, James "The Rat" Kushman, Chris Scribbles the Scribe

Hash for February 25, 2009

82.5 average on the test..... He said it was either: A - Too Easy, B - We're Too Smart, C - We're Learning Our Memory Techniques. (We decided mix of b and c)

Friday we'll talk about epithets within our groups.

Be prepared one week from Monday the 2nd of March to begin reciting 50 memorized things. The important thing there will be to talk of your technique.

Ong was a Jesuit Priest - doing his dissertation and Marshall McLuhan was his tutor (Northfrop Frye was around that school at the same time.)

- Ong was extremely organized.

"Lots of scripts but only one alphabet" pg. 88......Ong?

Sexson's "Re-Membering Finnegan" link, which on my blog isn't a link but a web address you need to copy and paste. Pain, I know.

pg. 100 Ong - "Writing is a solipsistic operation."

pg 92 Ong - Grammar comes from "magical lore" in Middle English. Glamour is also related.

First written documents were lists/inventories. (Not Lit Majors but Business)

Finnegan's Wake is a list and wonderful connection to the oral life world.
***Assignment was to figure out what you love hearing, writing, listening to***

Henry V part 1 - Falstaff's List - One of the most famous

Chris went over how having no vowels in Hebrew is like having personalized license plate. Readable but something's missing.

Here's the address to a Hebrew paper: http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/newspapers/halevanon/html/halevanon.pdf

Hebrew did eventually evolve to have vowels of sorts.

And we all recited the alphabet song because we're brainwashed in 2nd or 3rd grade to know this and be taken from our oral mindset!!!

Link to Re-Membering Finnegans Wake

Re-Membering Finnegan

Hash for February 23, 2009

-Carly tells us about her Coffe Trader's memory theatre.

-Should the coffee shop people know these powerful secrets?

-Corrected test and come out as always (slightly dissapointed that not as well as predicted ;).

This is the 2nd Phase!

- Going through Carly's theatre - "Kickstand for Achilles, Agamemnon at bike rack, Apollo at the moon in the sky"

- How many novels were written from people's memory theatre? Who knows?
***Read Chapter 4 in Ong***

-True and genuine writing only comes about when the alphabet was invented. Perfected by Greeks. No vowels in Hebrew.
**** My license plate I always remember is NTMD8R***

Ram Testicles

Yes... Today was the day we remembered John Nay and his connection with the Testicles of a Ram. I've read the other two blogs that have been posted on the test so far, and it looks like their thoughts show that they have done fairly well.

I think I did too.

But if there's one thing I know about these wily Sexson Testicles, I mean tests, it is that they can feel good (hmmm... I mean you can feel secure in your grade ;) , and then they can come crushing down on you the day they are corrected in class. You're all like, "Yeah, sweet, I didn't know two or three....but I feel a low A coming on...." and then

BAM!

Fifteen minutes, twenty bickerings with the teacher over small technicalities in the verbiage used, fifteen sighs of disbelief, and one tear later..... you have yourself a beautiful, shining, solid C sitting before you.

Now, this doesn't happen to everyone....but please, don't feel crushed when you're the unlucky one that the testicle decides to go rotten upon. Just keep up your good attendance, get your blog rolling with stimulating thoughts and provocative images, and you'll be on your way to passing with flying colors in no time.

Just remember, a bad testicle isn't the end of the world.

Sick Day

I am terribly sad that I was unable to attend class today.... I'm feeling quite miserable and want to get better as soon as possible. I will look to the blogs of my peers to hopefully get some good info for what we will be testing on.... here is to a great test on Friday. Best of luck to all! -Chris

Happy Valentines Day!

Hash for February 13, 2009

- Discussing blogs about all sorts of wonderfulness.

- Kevin will talk on Yates's Chapter 2+3.

-Memory, imagination, and soul - Both connected by Aristotle and Plato. Can't have one without the other. Connected like the trinity.

-pg. 33: Memory is mental images of things past and imagination.

-"Imagination acts as your one hour photo for your memory."

-pg. 37: Faedras. "Memory....is the ground work of the whole." The ground work of the trinity. And if soul is you very essence, and memory is its groundwork, memory is given a HUGE role.

-"Knowledge is a statue that you use your imagination to create a cast around, then you use your memory to create a mold around the cast and keep its image there." I imagined a totem pole with a huge cast around it, then a lot of clay to get a mold around that. ;)

-Chapter 3: Roman memory knowledge put to the back shelves until two monks made it important again. Had same connection ideas with trinity and all, but they took it farther by asking why the memory to soul is important. Pg. 65.

Wonderful outline of the subject of the art of memory on Wikipedia....good for studying for test...... can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

Yates is far more interested in Plato (influenced Renaissance) than she is in Aristotle (influenced Middle Ages).

Neoplatanism (important):a philosophical system, originated in the 3rd century a.d. by Plotinus, founded chiefly on Platonic doctrine and Oriental mysticism, with later influences from Christianity. It holds that all existence consists of emanations from the One with whom the soul may be reunited.

Freud says you can remember all the way back to your birth. Psychoanalysis is a memory analysis in its purest form. Jeung says you can remember everything before you were born too, all the way back through the human race.

Anamnesis - Recollection of everything that has been forgotten....EVERYTHING!

Gnosticism - Says there's a spark of divinity in us all (the epiphany)

Plato knows we fell from perfection into this nasty world of muck and sin.

Plato says your wings want to come back and that's why your shoulders itch when you remember something.

Lethe - river of forgetfullness

Mnemosiny - river of remembrance


Hamlet, Jesus, and...... uh oh, talking crazilyof communion and cannablism and the power of eating Jesus and becoming one with him.

Hamlet, Jesus, and Krishna - Remembrance

Chapter 2 in Yates is ended by Augustine. He realized memory is not just an item in persuading and working stupidly... it is a key component of reality.

- Augustine converted to Christianity... because he READ A BOOK!

Memory is essential.... look at his passages in Yates on pg. 47.

****HOMEWORK - REGROW YOUR WINGS IN MEMORY - AND BRING A QUESTION TO NEXT CLASS FOR THE TEST. Not TOO trivial and multiple choice.****

Books around:
-Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love: Marsilio Ficino, tn. by Sears Jayne

Sesame Street.... Stealing our Orality!

Hash for February 11, 2009

- Talking of Ong's Nine Characteristics of Orallity
-

- Connection with Ong's Third Point (redundant and copious):
-Talking of "The Song of the Moon Bone" from Kane and how it has to do with the repetitive nature of orality..... and and and of of of
- Sexson participated in the paoti meetings of the Cheyenne that started at 6 at night and ended at 6 in the morning in the early 70's.

- Connection with Ong's Fourth (conservative):
-Many new newspapers are now talking about things that haven't even happened yet because news that happened yesterday is old news
-McCain sitting with Thalia.
-Cliche's connect us to eachother.... the old connected to the young.
*****Blog - A whole conversation in cliche's*****


- Connection with Ong's Fifth (close to the human life world):
-People programmed by Sesame Street lose interest in information such as the list of names at the beginning of the Bible that make all of us literarians bored out of our minds.
-The only statistics that counted in Orality are those that were pragmatic and meaningful.

Connection with Ong's Sixth (antagonistically):
-Therpischore flyting and dancing.
-There is good flyting, praising however.

Connection with Ong's Seventh (Empathetic and Participatory):
- MUST participate and bring others into it.... you enter the world of the story and bring others in too. *Not like a book where you are by yourself.
- We are epically empathetic for the person who participated in the stealing of our pictures on the tac board.

Connections with Ong's Eight (Homeostatic):
- Adaptive to the things that are current to keep itself around and new.
- Snowman adapts to never melt from the board.

Connection with Ong's Nine (Situational, not Abstract):
- Everything is very concrete. Not fleeting.
- "The man was blameless" -literary
- "The man was beautiful in the way a warrior before battle is beautiful" -oral
- People see things that are useful to them, not stupid shapes or analytical processes.
-Purely seen or heard as the situation you are in, not anything else.

Talking about a movie he went to as a child:
"All the King's Men" - Heavy Politics - He thought it was a movie about an elementary school that falls to pieces and kills a lot of elementary school children because all he remembered was the quick scene where the kids die in this school incident. Oral thought process. The thing that sticks most is the most important part.

Kevin will start class talking about Yates when talking about Aristotle and Plato and what they have to do with soul and the subject of memory.

Important - pg. 65 - Ong

Act 1, Scene 5 - Hamlet - "Remember Me"

Jesus holding bread and wine - "Do this and remember me"

What does Krishna mean, what does Jesus mean, and what do the ghost mean when they say "remember me".

Suggestion for Memorizing Ong's 9

Thermostat - Erato - Oral tradition is additive rather than being subordinative. - "Temp was 63 and 64 and 65 and etc."

Chalk Board - Clio - Aggregative (meaning in groups and bunches) rather than analytical (trying to seperate into classes and order) - A thousand words on the board and their JUST A THOUSAND WORDS, you can not seperate them into groups.

Screen - Urania - Redundant and Copious. - Power point after power point after power point of constellations, so many words I can't concentrate!

Quiet Desk - Thalia - Conservative. - John McCain sitting with Thalia, giggling.

Overhead Projector - Polyhymnia - Close to the human life world. - Hymns connect me to the world of human life and beyond.

Old Brown Desk - Terpischore - Antagonistically toned, much flyting - Dancing and fighting

Tac Board - Calliope - Empathetic and participatory - Epic Empathy for the one who participated in the thievery of our pictures.

Snow Man Drawing - Euterpe - Homeostatic (Meaning the ability to adjust your internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium) - The snow man can adjust his body to never melt from the board.

F Sign - Melpomene - Situational, not abstract. - Tragedy always pertains to a situation, not an abstract something or other.

Hash for February 06, 2009

-Someone continues to steal our pictures!

- Talked of cliche's that are nasty nervous visuals: nose to the grindstone, pick your brain, etc.

- Lynn did a wonderful list of cliche's, James did too but they were all personal to him and his family.

- Passing around the group list.

- Reciting cliches.

Book going around: The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan

- Kevin will give us a talk next class about Plato.

- Keen-Kenning Ben is now going to do the nine muses before we get into the nine points of Ong.

- pg. 37 -
Thermostat - Erato - Oral tradition is additive rather than being subordinative. - "Temp was 63 and 64 and 65 and etc."

Chalk Board - Clio - Aggregative rather than analytical. - Baggage, not math, on the chalkboard.

Screen - Urania - Redundant and Copious. - Power point after power point after power point, so many words I can't concentrate!

Quiet Desk - Thalia - Conservative. - John McCain sitting with Thalia, giggling.

Overhead Projector - Polyhymnia - Close to the human life world. -
Old Brown Desk - Terpischore - Agonistically toned, much flyting.
Tac Board - Calliope - Empathetic and participatory.
Snow Man Drawing - Euterpe - Homeostatic
F Sign - Melpomene - Situational, not abstract.

Sesame Street brain washes us! Takes us out of the oral tradition!

Talking now of the words you use when you sneeze.

Hash for February 06, 2009

- Passing around a list for us to know what group we're in.

Books being passed around today:

The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord (passed around so we can talk about it)

The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan

The Castle of Crossed Destinies - Ital Calvino


- Took a trip around the room for the muses

- Turned off all the lights and Zach told us his experience in High School with the Allegory of the Cave... teacher projecting his shadow on the cave.

"Noble Savage" - people more in touch with the true and not tainted by literature

Kain made this point, "Myth is the telling and the doing, literature is about reading of things people use to tell and do."

- Memory is the act of creation, building.... not just recalling. Not all memories are there because they "really" happened.... or does it even matter?

- We're talking about everyone's blog: Richard's blog about cliche's, Homeric Question in quite a few.

****Assignment - Produce an epithet for one other person in this class.****

- Proverbs are part of the oral tradition.

- Two characters proverbial in Hamlet: Ophelia's father (proverbial character)

- Expletives are for comedy and orallity.

- Wonderful performance by Clare from "The Tempest"

- Our great criticism of our chosen path in life/school is that it is IRRELEVANT (ah!).

- Make a list of the cliches you use all the time - ***WOULD MAKE A GOOD BLOG!***

- Chris told us of her rats and the memories they have.

- Anthropomorphizing - Making the animals feel and talk and think logically.

- In Kane, myth tellers are people who were around way before literature, and that they are connected with animals.
- Rats have been studied by scientists and it has been proven they make a "laughing" noise only when they are clearly enjoying themselves.

Controversial Top 50 People of all Time.... Perhaps I'll Memorize them... Perhaps not. ;)

Rank Name Religious Affiliation Influence

1 Muhammad Islam Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader. More

2 Isaac Newton Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e.,
Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church)physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion

3 Jesus Christ * Judaism; Christianity founder of Christianity

4 Buddha Hinduism; Buddhism founder of Buddhism

5 Confucius Confucianism founder of Confucianism

6 St. Paul Judaism; Christianity proselytizer of Christianity

7 Ts'ai Lun Chinese traditional religion inventor of paper

8 Johann Gutenberg Catholic developed movable type; printed Bibles

9 Christopher Columbus Catholic explorer; led Europe to Americas

10 Albert Einstein Jewish physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics

11 Louis Pasteur Catholic scientist; pasteurization

12 Galileo Galilei Catholic astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system

13 Aristotle Platonism / Greek philosophy influential Greek philosopher

14 Euclid Platonism / Greek philosophy mathematician; Euclidian geometry

15 Moses Judaism major prophet of Judaism

16 Charles Darwin Anglican (nominal); Unitarian biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions

17 Shih Huang Ti Chinese traditional religion Chinese emperor

18 Augustus Caesar Roman state paganism ruler

19 Nicolaus Copernicus Catholic (priest) astronomer; taught heliocentricity

20 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Catholic father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist

21 Constantine the Great Roman state paganism; Christianity Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion. Convened the First Council of Nicaea that produced the Nicene Creed, which rejected Arianism (one of two major strains of Christian thought) and established Athanasianism (Trinitarianism, the other strain) as "official doctrine."

22 James Watt Presbyterian (lapsed) developed steam engine

23 Michael Faraday Sandemanian physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity

24 James Clerk Maxwell Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist physicist; electromagnetic spectrum

25 Martin Luther Catholic; Lutheran founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism

26 George Washington Episcopalian first president of United States

27 Karl Marx Jewish; Lutheran;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism founder of Marxism, Marxist Communism

28 Orville and Wilbur Wright United Brethren inventors of airplane

29 Genghis Khan Mongolian shamanism Mongol conqueror

30 Adam Smith Liberal Protestant economist; philosopher; expositor of capitalism; author: The Theory of Moral Sentiments

31 Edward de Vere a.k.a. William Shakespeare Catholic; Anglican literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion

32 John Dalton Quaker chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Dalton's law)

33 Alexander the Great Greek state paganism conqueror

34 Napoleon Bonaparte Catholic (nominal) French conqueror

35 Thomas Edison Congregationalist; agnostic inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.

36 Antony van Leeuwenhoek Dutch Reformed microscopes; studied microscopic life

37 William T.G. Morton ?? pioneer in anesthesiology

38 Guglielmo Marconi Catholic and Anglican inventor of radio

39 Adolf Hitler Nazism; born/raised in, but rejected Catholicism conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII

40 Plato Platonism / Greek philosophy founder of Platonism

41 Oliver Cromwell Puritan (Protestant) British political and military leader

42 Alexander Graham Bell Unitarian/Universalist inventor of telephone *

43 Alexander Fleming Catholic penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy

44 John Locke raised Puritan (Anglican);
Liberal Christian philosopher and liberal theologian

45 Ludwig van Beethoven Catholic composer

46 Werner Heisenberg Lutheran a founder of quantum mechanics; discovered principle of uncertainty; head of Nazi Germany's nuclear program

47 Louis Daguerre ?? an inventor/pioneer of photography

48 Simon Bolivar Catholic (nominal); Atheist National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

49 Rene Descartes Catholic Rationalist philosopher and mathematician

50 Michelangelo Catholic painter; sculptor; architect

Hash for February 04, 2009

pg. 41 - Litany of the kinds of things people memorized when they had to memorize discreet items before they memorized poems and such.

- Lucius Scipio knew all of the people of Rome.

Books:

Memorize the Faith! (And Most Anything Else): Using the methods of the Great Catholic Medieval Memory Masters - Kevin Vost

The Singer of Tales - Albert B. Lord (the one I blogged on! :)

"Ten Cent Plague" - History of comic books!

-People are talking about the things they will see in their memory palace.

- Reciting of the muses with the class objects.... we're having people going around the room.

Erato - naked erato

Clio - old historian

Urania - projected onto the screen

Thalia - laughing at quiet desk

Polyhymnia - hymns from church on projector

Terpischore - dancing below polyhymnia

Calliope - no epic explanation

Euterpe - snowman of the calvin and hobbes

Melpomene - F is like swastica and she is tragic

- Underscore ESOTERIC in this class because we are all secretly in our own world here.

****ASSIGNMENT - Look in Yates's book and look at the images****

Go out before next week and learn 6 different languages.......riiight ;)

- One example of pg. 41 in Yates....Richard Burton knew so many different languages, he was a man who translated "Arabian Nights".

He wants to be entertained but he also wants us to memorize something useful.

-Check out Roger's blog and Sutter's blog to connect and get some good info on Groundhogs Day (the thing we spent all of class last time talking about).

Relating Prospero from Shakespeare's "Tempest" to the character Phil? in Groundhogs Day. Phil becomes a crazed perfectionist, micro-managing, obsessive compulsive...artist.

Read Ulysses.... "great stuff".

- Sexson read from an old essay he wrote about 16 years ago.... called Miranda's Attendants. Prospero's speech offended people with his crazy language. A line in a play composed of two nouns combined by an "and" and working to enlighten a third word. Great Parataxis.

-Phil Connors becomes a master magis by the end of the movie. He reaches the meaning of life. Everything is connected within the 24 hours you live you life each day. It's what we should all strive to achieve.

**** Why does Miranda, in thinking back to her first memory, think of women attendants who were helping her? Why did these women keep coming back???? Who really are these women who attended her? MUSES(Blog on it.) Instead of passively recalling, because Prospero made her recreate her memory within her. Remembers as much through her nerves as through her brain. She remembers her actual, historical as well as the mythical that Prospero is imbuing upon her.****

****How do we get to the mythic level when speaking/thinking of our thermostat and quiet desk and such?****

-The scientific method comes from the occult and ancient systems of memorization.

3 things that make Prospero's helping so powerful:

Pictorial, playful, and polymorphic

Allegory of the cave plays today as well:

-Movie Theatre

-Video Games

How might Plato's cave be seen again as a memory grotto?

-Talked about Samuel Beckett's plays like "Endgame" where the theatre and stage were set up like the inside of the stage.

-We would be able to tell Miranda who the attendants were and what they do.... (we see them around the room).

- By Friday, he wants a list of the 50 things we will be memorizing. Read chapters 12+3 in Ong with emphasis on 3, Kane prologue and 1, and Chapter 2 and on in Yates (pretty much what we've all should have been doing for the last few weeks ;).