{"id":698,"date":"2016-01-25T18:29:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=698"},"modified":"2016-01-25T18:29:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:29:28","slug":"monday-missive-january-25-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2016\/01\/25\/monday-missive-january-25-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – January 25, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Snow<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Snow Days<\/strong> — Snow days are not like other days, at least around here.\u00a0 On snow days, our normal schedules and day-to-day expectations suddenly desist, and in their place a repressed desire to play often surfaces.\u00a0 This impulse to play in the snow is usually associated with children, and many children’s books deal with this theme.\u00a0 One of my favorites is Snowy Day <\/i>by Ezra Jack Keats.\u00a0 In this Caldecott-winning picture book, an inner-city boy has a variety of snowy adventures in New York City.\u00a0 However, it’s not just children who have an impulse to play in the snow.\u00a0 There are a number of classical European paintings from pre-industrial times in which adults are depicted throwing snowballs and having fun in the snow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For me, this past weekend was all about playing in the snow.\u00a0 I woke up on Friday<\/span><\/span> morning to the news that the university was closed on account of the winter storm.\u00a0 The day began with an invitation to play.\u00a0 The invitation came from Maggie, our old golden retriever.\u00a0 She dashed off into our snow-covered backyard, and she kept lo\"Snow<\/a>oking at me as if to say, “Come on.\u00a0 Let’s romp in the snow.”\u00a0 I soon joined her, and she ran around in circles and thrashed in the snow and acted like she was a puppy instead of the eleven-year-old dog that she actually is.\u00a0 As the day progressed, neighborhood kids and their parents started sliding down the hill in front of our house.\u00a0 On Saturday<\/span><\/span>, I joined in on the fun and built a snow sculpture version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.\u00a0 Several kids and other passersby stopped to check on my progress and offer words of encouragement.\u00a0 My weekend ended by watching Cam Newton skip and cavort on the football field.\u00a0 While I am not a big football fan, I love watching Newton’s joyful approach to playing his sport.<\/div>\n

\nThis past weekend reminded me of Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens:\u00a0 A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, <\/i>which I read in graduate school.\u00a0 As Huizinga argues, humans have a deep-seated impulse to play.\u00a0 In our work-centered culture, this impulse is often repressed, but it is still part of who we are, or to misquote Shakespeare, the play’s the thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Upcoming Events and Deadlines<\/b>\u2014\u00a0Here is a date to keep in mind:<\/div>\n
January 29<\/strong> \u2014 The (rescheduled) English Department meeting will take place on January 29, 2016, from 11:00<\/span><\/span>–12:30<\/span><\/span> in the English Department Conference Room.<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 Shakespeare once wrote the following line: “The play’s the thing.”\u00a0 Can you name the work by Shakespeare in which this line appears?<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Last week’s answer:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
The Gilded Age\u00a0 <\/i>Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner<\/span><\/div>\n
Yesterday\u00a0 <\/i>John Lennon and Paul McCartney<\/span><\/div>\n
The Madwoman in the Attic\u00a0 <\/i>Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert<\/span><\/div>\n
Lyrical Ballads\u00a0 <\/i>William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge<\/span><\/div>\n
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow\u00a0 <\/i>Carole King and Gerry Goffin<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
Our culture is replete with famous examples of collaborative works.\u00a0 Listed below are five such works along with a list a famous collaborators.\u00a0 See if you can match each work to the collaborators who created it:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Gilded Age\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
Yesterday
\n<\/em><\/div>\n
The Madwoman in the Attic
\n<\/em><\/div>\n
Lyrical Ballads
\n<\/em><\/div>\n
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow<\/em><\/div>\n

\n<\/em>William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge<\/em><\/div>\n
Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert<\/em><\/div>\n
Carole King and Gerry Goffin<\/em><\/div>\n
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner<\/em><\/div>\n
John Lennon and Paul McCartney<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snow Days — Snow days are not like other days, at least around here.\u00a0 On snow days, our normal schedules and day-to-day expectations suddenly desist, and in their place a repressed desire to play often surfaces.\u00a0 This impulse to play in the snow is usually associated with children, and many children’s books deal with this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-missive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":702,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions\/702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}