A Wednesday : Weakness of strength, radicals, Degas, ad hominem, sharpshooters.

Philosophy : Weakness of Strength

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century thinker, nature-lover, and generally kind person, talked about how the the traits we admire or hold up as virtues are not always so. For example, in Big Ideas for Curious Minds (p.86), it talks about how

“…if you are very clever you will probably also be lonely because other people won’t understand you,” or “…Cheetahs are the fastest land animals…but the things that make them so quick…make them weak in other ways. A lion, which is much slower…can easily steal a cheetah’s food because it is so much bigger and stronger.”

This is such a powerful thought that wraps in a lot of things, including our own identity and perception of ourselves in relationship to others. What is perceived as strength may have drawbacks, and what may be considered weakness might actually be a benefit.

I had our Older kids write a brief list of their perceived strengths and weaknesses.

14-yo
My strengths include running my Etsy shop, acting, writing, hiking, and ambition.
My weaknesses include not being patient, long-distance running, math, volleyball, and resilience.

11-yo
My strengths include acting, art & cartooning, running, eating, writing, history, humor, and adventurousness.
My weaknesses include physical weakness and not being stronger than most people unless they’re younger or smaller than me, math, patience, fasting, yoga, bravery, and simplicity.

Maths : radicals

Sometimes mathematics is difficult.
Sometimes you need help. The kind of immediate help where you ask a question, and the teacher efficiently and patiently walks you through.

But sometimes that’s not what you get. Sometimes you get me. Which means that when your high schooler asks for help in simplifying radicals, you can’t just give that type of short, efficient answer. That would be wonderful.

What you get, sometimes, is the messy version. The kind where I have to plunge back to the basics, quickly, and try to just get to a caught-up point where I can be helpful.

Sometimes it’s messy-ugly and sometimes it’s messy-beautiful.

This was a good morning. It was challenging, but we problem-solved and by the end, were racing each other to see who could come up with the (correct) answer first. It started off a little un-pretty and ended up…smashing.

Math with my daughter. Loved it.

Language : synonyms for beautiful and pretty

Our five-year old showed us his 87th drawing of the day before 9am and I caught myself responding with another “…that’s beautiful!” Or some slight variation. And realized how much I was absently relying on a couple generalized words to give in response. So we spent a few minutes finding synonyms and other words we could use in place of of beautiful and pretty. We assembled a good list, but the one our oldest son landed on with enthusiasm was pulchritudinous, which means…beautiful.

Honestly, it will take some effort to casually, naturally integrate this into my vernacular. But the strength of enthusiasm can be contagious, as evidenced by hearing a five-year old walk around all morning muttering “pulchritudinous” in various contexts, under the direct tutelage and influence of his elder bro.

Books and reading

The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892).

* sniff * I used to read Sherlock Holmes together with my dad in 1980s Manzanita, Oregon.

Art

We marveled at Monet’s lilies, and Degas’ dancers and the ways in which they alluded to the real with light and movement.

I’ve never been a giant Monet fan, but his calming, dense buildups of sparkling nature have slowly grown on me in linear fashion over the years, sort of like Radiohead’s Kid A.

The dancers of Degas fill me with love for movement and music and the joy of childhood cascading throughout all of life unto death. The gestural lines and suggestions of where motions are headed and where they’ve been…magical.

More books

A 2-yo wanting his 11-yo bro to read to him for nap.

Quotes & interchanges

“My necklace died. We’re fixing it.”

a 2-year old, holding a string with various plastic beads on it that are cascading and bouncing along the floor, and his 5-year old brother, patiently holding the other hand and carefully focused on resurrecting the pieces carefully back onto the filament.

Outdoors

There were goats, there was tree climbing, there was reading books in the wild, and there were nice shoes worn in a muddy creek. In other words, a day not dissimilar to many others.

Home Ec fix-it

One of my prouder accomplishments regarding machinery is how I’ve kept my sewing machine going for the last 15 years, all without any particular expertise or great skill in either sewing or in fixing such equipment.

But then today happened, and I couldn’t figure it out. And my daughter needed it going, as she has an order for her very busy Etsy shop to get out.

I spent part of this afternoon’s Middle Ages trying, and in the end, failing, to bring it from the brink. But…

…I did pull out my ace: an old sewing machine that had belonged to my wife’s grandmother, and was passed down to us. This is a nice machine. It’s heavy; something that most equipment used to be. And I got it going. Not fixed. Just up and going. Small accomplishments. And she got her order out.

Reason & Rhetoric : Ad hominem and Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

Ad hominem

This one’s easy, especially as we had the master of this logical fallacy as President for four years. It’s when someone can’t win an argument on the basis of the facts, so they start calling names and going after their opponent in personal terms.

“You don’t like how I’m trying to sidestep the Constitution and explore military, law enforcement, and legal options for staying in power after I lost the election? Well, my position is that you’re a loser. A radical, America-hating loser. So there.”

That’s ad hominem arguing in action.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

This is a wonderful one too. Think of an archer who says they can always hit the bullseye. So they do this:

They shoot the arrow
Then they walk over and draw a bullseye around the arrow they just shot.
Voila! Hit the bullseye.

In debate, this type of argument is used to explain how something succeeded or failed after the outcome is already known. Perhaps it’s a cousin of Monday morning quarterbacking or (reverse) cherry-picking. You how something ends up, so you pick the evidence that best supports the end result and ignore any other facts or contextual information.

Latin

Ad : near, next to, to, toward
note: “Ad,” as a prefix, often drops the d and takes on the next letter
of the word. For example: assimilate

Other examples:
admire (minor, miratum - be amazed, wonder) - look at with wonder or amazement
admonish (moneo, monitum - warn) - give warning to
admit (mitto, missum - send) send to, allow entrance to
advertise (verto, versum - turn) turn people to what you’re offering

(From Joegil Lundquist’s wonderful English from the Roots Up, 1989)

Phrase review
Ex post facto - after the fact, something you realize in hindsight
de facto - from fact, something that happens, but is not established by law
de jure - something established by law (opposite of de facto)
dies irae - day of judgment
dramatis personae - persons of the drama, a list of actors or the main participants in a group

Poetry : Dylan Thomas Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

This has been a tough one to memorize.

End of day books

George and His Nighttime Friends by Song Soun Ratanavanh (2022)
The Paperboy - Story and paintings by Nav Pilkey (1996, Caldecott Honor)
The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Stephen Gammell (1985, Caldecott Honor)
Teacup by Rebecca Young & Matt Ottley (2015)