June is set aside for important rituals like cleaning out the drawers, closets, spraying for bugs and doing whatever we please. We’re having a jolly time of it.
We’re NOT doing the summer reading program at the library but we ARE reading.
We are spending time in the mountains.
We are picking tomatoes, growing grass and watching flowers bloom.
I’m reading educational philosophy from my college files. I’ll share some of my favorite passages from my study today.
On reading:
“…there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation:–talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society…is…the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time. And how can we have access to such a society? Most typically through books, especially the books and personal writings of the great and the wise.” ~John Ruskin, 1864
On the value of unstructured, joyful living:
“Dr? Nehru tells that in India ‘during every period when her civilization bloomed, we find an intense joy in life and nature and a pleasure in the art of living.'” ~Eric Hoffer, from The Ordeal of Change
“…’great’ thinking consists in the working out of insights and ideas which come to us in playful moments. Archimedes’ bathtub and Newton’s apple suggest that momentous trains of thought may have their inception in idle musing…the sudden illumination and the flash of discovery are not likely to materialize under pressure.” ~Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change