Baby Doe doll needs identity

I got this doll at auction recently, but don't have any information about her, namely, what kind of doll she is, and if she is from a kit, and so on. If you have any information about her, or want to make me an offer, let me know. She is about 20 inches long, and very beautiful. Signed by artist on back of neck.

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

Shakespeare's Coriolanus is a good play for junior high or high school students. It is not that long, and reasonably fast moving. Coriolanus can hold the attention of the normal PSP, cell-phone dependent teenager.

I never thought about this until I watched the BBC production of Coriolanus, but do you suppose Volumnia is trying to compete with her son in being the most noble Roman of them all? Coriolanus is the hero in the beginning of the play, coming home to accolades and the admiration of all. And then look toward the end of the play, after Volumnia's speech that convinces Coriolanus not to sack Rome. Note how she becomes the Roman heroine. Do you suppose Shakepeare is saying something about mothers who are too heavy handed with the encouragement towards glory of their sons?

Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare

The children read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, each taking parts act by act. As may have been expected by those familiar with Troilus and Cressida, the children were disappointed. In their view, the attitude of the playwright seemed sour. They were offended by Shakespeare's besmirching of the hero Achilles and ribald treatment of Telemonian Ajax.

Dissatisfied with the play, the children could not fathom whether it was meant to be a tragedy or satirical farce. They could not emotionally identify with any of the characters and especially thought the treatment of Cressida offensive and unrealistic. They did not feel that Shakespeare gave enough detail to explain why she acts as she does. Nor was there enough about her to help the audience regard her as more than a flittering shade. Come to think of it, most of Shakespeare's women are wimpy, vaccillating creatures, if not altogther insane. Generally, if they act in a decisive fashion, it is usually to murder someone, or to commit suicide or adultery.
(The renowned and learned Shakespearian scholar, Dr. Nalin Ranasinghe disagrees with this opinion, citing the fair Rosalind, as an example of a noble Shakespearian woman.)


The greatest disappointment about Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is that it is not really about Troilus and Cressida at all. Did he write it as a bit of buffoonery to mock human nature, employing the Iliad as a familiar backdrop?

The purpose of education

If you have ever spent dreary weeks doing house or farm chores, you probably have experienced moments of intellectual despair--that is, the sense that your mind is enslaved by the needs of the body. You feel as if your mind is a caged wild bird, beating against rigid bars--the parameters that sustain physical life. Instead, think of it this way--the body is the instrument of the mind. Physical experience is the mind's feeding ground.





In his essay "Of Education" Milton wrote,





"The end, then, of learning, is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest, by possessing our souls of true virtue, which, being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so cleary to the knowledge of God and things invisible as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching."

The immaterial light is kindled through matter.

Summer Classics Reading list for teens

Now that summer, and the summer sports have begun, I'm sure you have periodic panic attacks about whether your kids are learning enough in the few precious years available for learning. If you're like me, you feel guilt about the school year--you didn't make the kids read enough good books, and as we all know, we are what we read. Check these out:

Younger teens will like these:

In the Wilds of Africa
By W. H. G. Kingston

David Livingtone

Henry M. Stanley

Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates Mary Mapes Dodge

New Testament

Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens

The Old Curiosity Shop
Tom Brown’s School Days
Tom Brown at Oxford
Westward Ho!
Thomas Hughes
Charles Kingsley
Robinson Crusoe
Swiss Family Robinson
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Little Men
The Boys King Arthur
CC Coffin’s Boys of 76 (revolutionary war)

Old times in the Colonies (French and Indian War) CC Coffin
Boys of 61

The War Trail Captain Mayne Reid
The Scalp Hunters

Captain Marryat’s Children of the New Forest

Jules Verne The Survivors of the Chancellor,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
The English at the North Pole,
Around the World in Eighty Days
Journey to the Center of the Earth

From the Earth to the Moon by Michael Strogoff

Oliver Twist,
Great Expectations,
David Copperfield,
A Tale of Two Cities,
Dombey and Son
Mystery of Edwin Drood

James Fenimore Cooper The Spy
Sir Walter Scott

Ivanhoe
Quentin Durward

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe
Bret Harte The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Plain Language from Truthful James

Older teens will like these authors (so do adults!!)
Thackeray
George Eliot
Merediths
Hardy
Defoe,
Bulwer-Lytton The Last Days of Pompey

Child's life of Columbus (Young folks series) by Wingerter, Charles $8.00

Textiles Crafts books

Here is a list of craft books, mostly textiles, that I am offering for sale. Shipping on one or more is $3.