Rollin’ Down the River (coffee-table book)
When the Blue Goose—my blue 2013 Mazda CX-5—and I finally rolled into Three Forks, Montana on Tuesday afternoon, July 26, 2016, I’d already been well over a thousand miles, and seen some impressive sights. But, as I checked into Broken Spur Motel that afternoon, the ‘real trip’ was just beginning.
Spitballs from the Back Row
One of the hardest parts about discussing educational issues regularly is that while everyone is for a ‘good education,’ almost no one can define what that should be—go ahead, try it!—let alone how to manifest it. We’re all using the same words with different images and concepts in our heads.
Spitballs from the Back Row features a collection of Larry’s most popular bi-weekly columns from the Springfield (MO) News-Leader. Full of stories, experiences, and anecdotes from Larry’s career in and around the classroom, this book is a must-read that will have you nodding in agreement while adding lots of “ah-ha”moments to your perceptions of education.
MORE Spitballs from the Back Row
Quickly! How do you define ‘a good education’? What does it mean to be ‘educated’? Public education has long been an incredibly complex venture, and – two decades into the 21st century in an increasingly technological age – it is not getting any easier.
As with the first book in this series (Spitball from the Back Row; Oghma Creative Media; 2018), the author continues to bring some of these subtle issues to the surface, raise different perspectives, minimize misperceptions, and provide balance, always in a light, readable, and often humorous style.
From the first essay (Teaching Fish to Climb Trees) to the last (Halloween Pranks and Library Thanks), and throughout the book’s ten sections, you’ll experience a wide range of thought-provoking topics, as well as an occasional chance to smile.
The Parallel Tao Te Ching
My own journey into the land of the Tao and the Tao Te Ching started with a little synchronicity here and there, and then developed into curiosity and beyond. On my spiritual journey, I kept running into various circumstances that revealed references to the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu. Presented not as a religious text, but as The WAY of Things, (Stephen Mitchell calls it “the classic manual on the art of living,”) I became intrigued and began moving past curiosity into conscious exploring. Eventually, I decided to read a verse a day for a while to get a better feel.
As might be imagined, then, I have naturally encountered several different—indeed, widely varying—translations of this literary, metaphysical, and spiritual-but-not-religious masterpiece. I have been repeatedly reminded that translations of the Tao Te Ching are as almost as varied as the proverbial pens that write them and the audiences for which they are intended.
What would be most helpful is a resource that parallels a few translations at a time, providing the opportunity for instant comparison between renderings while simultaneously enhancing one’s insights into the individual messages of each chapter and finding translations that speak to the reader. Wr legality) and further require having a digital device nearby to use them, of course.
So, the idea of compiling a resource myself began to slowly and reluctantly creep into my consciousness. (I’m not a Taoist scholar, but I figured I could compile translations.) And, long story short, that resulted in this book.
