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“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.” — G.K. Chesterton In my first year of university, a professor opened class with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay The Crack-Up: “The test…
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Educators and parents alike have a reliable tool for Friday afternoons: the sugary incentive. I still remember Mrs. Crow in Grade 1 treating us to popsicles after a good week, or the “penny jar” in Grade 2 that led to a class party. As adults, we often expect children to exhibit intrinsic behavior (doing right…
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During my first year in a Master’s program, I was a “deer in the headlights” who happened to stumble into a course on George MacDonald. I knew he was admired by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so I gave him a shot. Little did I know that three years later, I would be finishing a…
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I have a four-year-old son who loves pirates and a two-year-old daughter who loves to dump water on the floor. At any given moment, I feel like I’m on the high seas—and I’m rarely the captain. Puzzles are a mainstay in our house. My son prides himself on 40-piece floor puzzles; my daughter prides herself…
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Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers is a brilliant, bitter examination of the reality of WWII. By following the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, Eastwood navigates the delicate balance between truth and propaganda, gently deconstructing the “American Hero” without villainizing the soldier. Growing up in America, I was taught the incomprehensible…
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I tell a lot of stories to my classes; it’s how we connect. One of my favorites is about a junior high basketball game back in Seattle. We were locked in a back-and-forth battle for the final five minutes—an ulcer the size of a grapefruit growing in my stomach the whole time. With nine seconds…
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Cinderella, Snow White, and the “Happily Ever After.” Lately, I’ve noticed a growing hostility toward these classic endings. The arguments usually fall into two camps: they are overused, or they are unrealistic. While both points have merit, I don’t think we should disdain the happy ending any more than we should disdain the cold porridge…
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In December 2001, I sat in a darkened theater and watched Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I had read the books as a child, but seeing that world come alive sparked something inside me. My friend Sam and I made a pact to see every installment together. We returned for The Two Towers,…
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Jeffrey Overstreet is one of my favorite film critics. Whether he is writing for JeffreyOverstreet.com or drafting his fantasy series Auralia’s Colors, he remains uncompromising. Every year, he draws fire for critiquing “Best Picture” nominees that happen to be wildly popular. His response to the “popularity equals quality” argument is a simple, rhetorical analogy: McDonald’s…
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I’ll admit from the start: I am a little leery of qualifying anything with the word good. In our relativistic age, “good” often feels as empty as saying a building is “strong because it’s strong.” It either means nothing, or it means something entirely different to you than it does to me. G.K. Chesterton famously…