By Chandler Ryd During the past four summers, I have worked as a gardener. I pulled weeds, cut grass, planted flowers, trimmed bushes, and raked leaves, and as I worked, I listened to audiobooks on Spotify. I fell in love with Hamlet, Don Quixiote, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and heard from G.K. Chesterton, Langston Hughes, and Jane Austen. Through those peaceful, meditative summers, … Continue reading Letter from the Editor, October 2016
By Grace Marie Link “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s not it, is it?” After watching the eight-episode television series, viewers will relate to Dustin’s lament at the end of the beautiful, exciting, and inspiring Stranger Things. The series includes all the necessary ingredients for a successful television show: skilled cinematography, intriguing plot, killer soundtrack, and nuanced characters played by top-notch actors. It brings the viewer … Continue reading Stranger Things and the Return to Faerie: A Contemporary Recovery of the Moral Imagination
By Katie Davenport “Good guys are boring. They do the right thing all the time. But bad guys, you never know what they’re going to do.” The preceding quote is from director David Ayer, explaining what drew him to the concept of his latest movie, Suicide Squad. Mr. Ayer’s words, though they apply to fictional characters, embody an important aspect of American pop-culture. As a … Continue reading Where Have all the Heroes Gone?
By Mark Naida Jesus, I say, is there a new world here? Certainly, he says… there is a new earth where there is a sun and a moon, and all of the best things; but this one here is older. —François Rabelais, Pantagruel May Fridays we ate rectangular pizzas baked in an oven made of earth and straw. As I sat on a picnic … Continue reading Pastoral Vignettes
CREATION Art polarizes. Modern and contemporary art have become entwined with with numerous issues of identity and value, such as one’s political leanings. The well-known Political Compass Test asks test-takers to affirm or deny that “Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.” Like it or not, the conservative-in-stereotype opts, quite vocally, to skip the wing of the museum that holds … Continue reading Human Waste and Radiant: Why We Need Contemporary Art
By Chandler Ryd Faulkner From the opening pages of William Faulkner’s experimental novel The Sound and the Fury, it’s immediately apparent that the story unfolds through an unconventional narrative technique. Those familiar with the body of Faulkner’s work will likely notice his trademark use of stream-of-consciousness, but in this novel, Faulkner adds something even more unusual. The novel is divided into four sections of roughly … Continue reading Faulkner and Film: A Bridge Between Mediums
By Emily Lehman We lumbered over the remains of stone pillars heaped like fallen stacks of spools, scraping our shoes over ancient foundations and glancing up at the Greek countryside in a day that vaguely threatened rain. “And this,” our guide said, “was the site of the cult of Mithras, the center of an ancient Greek cult that involved eating bread and drinking wine. Mithras … Continue reading Christ and Mithras: A Chestertonian Defense of Christian Myth
By Sarah Borger Life at Hillsdale often seems like a busyness competition. At the beginning of each new semester, or during class registration time, many conversations revolve around course loads and credit hours, and become competitions for who has the most extracurricular activities or works the most hours. The silent contest for who has the most credits launches, and questions of whether we should take … Continue reading Learning How to Rest: The Importance of Sabbath at a School that Won’t Stop Moving
Right as I was sitting down to write our final Letter from the Editors today, a Facebook notification bleeped onto my laptop screen—and since I was supposed to be writing this letter, naturally I logged onto Facebook to check the notification instead. It turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise—You Won’t, a small-time, two-man band that happens to have quite a following at Hillsdale, … Continue reading Letter from the Editors, April 2016
By Chris McCaffery He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm. —John … Continue reading Irony Part III—To Celebrate a Feast: Learning to See and Learning in Order to See
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