Jane Haddam

It’s a little cold this morning.  I’ve got to get all my stuff done here and then head out to a local community college for a writer’s conference, where I’m supposed to be speaking–to classes, mostly–as their first mystery writer, ever.  I know there are people out there who get all huffy about the disdain…

Every time this blog gets into one of these discussions about what it mean to be educated, somebody is sure to bring up “dance,” and to do it in a way that makes it clear (if only tacitly) that calling dance a major art we should all know about is just plain silly. And here’s…

I don’t really have the time to write a real blog entry today.  I’ve got to go running all over creation, and it’s one of those days where it starts cold and ends hot and nothing makes sense.   I did a talk at the public library in Glastonbury yesterday.  The audience was wonderful and the…

So, the first thing th is morning, I got up, logged on, and found Robert’s last comment on yesterday’s post–and I had an epiphany. My real problem here–the point I keep failing to get across (and not just to Robert, although he’s the most articulate about this particular set of objections) is so basic, it…

So, a couple of things–first, as an aside, I want to point out that I’ve never suggested that we go about education as an exercise in making people memorize books.  I just want them to have read them. And second, I don’t think you’re going to do much to change the incentive structure until you…

So, you know, ack. I refuse to do it. I’m with Newman on this one–knowledge is not divisible.  If you only know the trunk, or the left foot, or the tail, you don’t know the elephant. So, do I think “culture” can be taught? Sure I do.  After all, they taught me mathematics, and I…

For what it’s worth, I wasn’t ignoring Jem’s questions.  I was just leaving them for this post. And things being what they are–I’m in a noisy computer lab, and it’s easy to be distracted–I just want to outline my answers at first. To begin with, there is the “what is culture?” question, and here I’m…

Yesterday, I had to take my older son to the train station so that he could get back to school, and I came home in the middle of the day bone tired and not much interested in doing anything that took effort. The result is that I spent the late afternoon watching a little movie…

So, it’s the day after Easter, and I’m still on John Henry Newman’s book, and  notmuch farther in than I was on Saturday.  I had people over, and they took down part of a tree and an enormous parasitical vine that was eating half my house, so that was good. But as to the book–…

So–the book on faith healing was short, and I finished it yesterday morning, which ended up giving me a sort of paralysis right before I had to go off and teach.  I had no idea what I wanted to read next, and I knew I was going to end up picking something in haste and…