It has been a tough week at Professor Carol. We were in Germany when sudden malfunctions hit our website: error messages, odd formatting, and the like. And then the site went completely down at several points. The problem was simple to describe. It dominates the … Read more
On Tuesday, I posed a question to my high-schoolers in the music-history course I teach online for Memoria Academy. The question sought to stir their thoughts on the technological changes affecting music, the arts, and life itself during the fourteen years since I recorded the … Read more
Memories flooded me Monday as I arrived in Weimar, a city best described as our heart-home. No matter where I walk, my mind overflows with twenty-four years of memories. After the intensity of my early December Christmas-Market tour (Interlaken, then down the Rhine to Düsseldorf), … Read more
If you read this digest regularly, you know my essays tend to cluster around topics in the arts, history, language, and culture. Today, though, I have a question about technology, albeit a weird one. Still, I hope someone can answer it. The question concerns something … Read more
Those born in the US right after the Second World War arguably have had the easiest life of any humans ever living on the planet. This statement does not apply to people who served, suffered, and died in the Korean, Vietnam, and Middle-East Wars or … Read more
Our society has hit a brick wall on education. We are into a state of hopelessness about the decline of educational standards, lifting our heads only to mutter something like: “Well, you know, uh, these kids won’t do what you tell them, and, uh, too … Read more
I joined my daughter at the YMCA last night. My version of working out wouldn’t impress anyone, but I enjoy the bikes and the treadmill. This Y has a little library in the lobby with some interesting titles, so you can scoop up a book, … Read more
Survival, not entertainment, once dictated what a child was taught. Sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it? But the sentence resonates in our lives right now. Our three-year old granddaughter Patti has discovered the CD player! Yep, an old-fashioned, lightweight, metallic boom box that also sports a cassette … Read more
I’m purging my closets and drawers. It’s a hard process as I seem to form an attachment to every plastic spoon, receipt, or sock that comes into my life. Still, the hardest thing, for me, is throwing away newspaper clippings. I have boxes of old … Read more
