I couldn't attend the Celebration of Knowledge conference put on by CiRCE, but the set of CDs just arrived in the mail. They will be my fair companions in the van, on the treadmill and during dinner prep.
Two new games at our house. We recommend them highly:
The Settlers of Catan
Blokus
(I think I owe Mrs. M-mv another thanks for this recommendation. Am I right?)
And, finally, from my Autumn Reading Challenge list:
Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry
"Two epidemic illnesses of our time - upon both of which virtual industries of cures have been founded - are the disintegration of communities and the disintegration of persons. That these two are related (that private loneliness, for instance, will necessarily accompany public confusion) is clear enough. And I take for granted that most peole have explored in themselves and their surroundings some of the intricacies of the practical causes and effects; most of us, for example, have understood that the results are usually bad when people act in social or moral isolation, and also when, because of such isolation, they fail to act.
What seems not so well understood, because not so much examined, is the relation betweeen these disintegrations and the disintegration of language. My impression is that we have seen, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning. And I believe that this increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration, over the same period, of persons and communities."
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