Gravitas

Gravitas members,

In the hopes of eluding any gross misorganization or time-wasting, I have taken it upon myself to put together a tentative schedule for the retreat. I hope to gather some input, whether pros, cons, or other suggested changes. I may be mistaken concerning some of the details of what is going on, and you should feel free to step in and correct me where needed. I hope this action on my part seems agreeable to most.

At the last minute we have an offer at the Zartman’s.

We will have our usual Milton group at 8AM.

For any who care to linger, we’ll watch The Art of Piano after this = 10AM.

Then perhaps Lunch, though this might be after the next item.

Then we want to begin working on Jane Austen and answering the question, How Does She Do It? This is for those interested in writing.

All are welcome, just somehow let Katrina know.

There is going to be a retreat. It is going to be an attempt to put together some of the ideas we have about culture or at least to fumble them around a little more so they become worn and look used.

What would be nice would be if some preliminary material could be provided, some reading or a lecture. At least some feel this way, perhaps feeling dubious about what can be provided at the time.

Todd thinks he might offer something on Ricky Weaver.

I am not sure what Ryan ended up with. He will have to inform you himself. I know it is not Pieper since Eric took that and then bailed on the whole thing. Alas, poor Eric!

The Nelsons are going to do something on Rod Dreher, I believe. Some blog person? Yes. Well, that is their prerogative after all.

Deborah is offering us Chris Dawson. I believe there is at least one lecture on Christopher Dawson at ISI. It may even be delivered by Russel Kirk. If you do not own any of his writing you should be ashamed, hang your head, and maybe look for a pack of evangelicals to hand out with instead.

And I plan to hold forth on Roger Scruton. You can do many things in order to prepare for Scruton. Go here and see what books he has, what articles, google him perhaps. He has several lectures on the ISI’s site, and I think the one on why culture is important would be pertinent. Or you can just read Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy and pretty much get all you need there.

We will also read stories. I will bring many stories to read, various and sundry. It may be other things are planned, but these are not so interesting to me. Others will have to plan them and advertise them.

Oh yes, there will be food, probably.

To those who were able to make it to Olivia’s concert, she is very thankful. In fact, she was sad that she didn’t get to see you all afterwards.

Please note: A problem has indeed arisen regarding tickets for the free concert on Sunday. Jennifer has attempted to contact everyone we knew who was interested. In case she missed someone, I simply note here that you must contact us. We have some tickets yet available for both the 2:00 pm concert and the 4:00 pm concert.

Thank you~

We have officially moved the next bash from Dec.1 to Dec. 8.

Hope many of you can come!

In case I have not yet said anything to you personally ….

Olivia has her first violin concert at Orchestra Hall on Sunday, December 9, and 2:00 p.m. It is a free concert (no tickets necessary). She will be playing with a bunch of other violinist and violists from McPhail together with the Minnesota Orchestra.

 She would be quite thrilled if any of you be able to make it.

If we are going to have a retreat sometime this winter we are going to have to start thinking seriously about it. We need to think about three things: where, when and what.

I think the what is the most urgent question. Here is a suggestion:

We have been reading a bit about culture. At this point some sort of concerted effort would be helpful; we should have a conversation in which we all try to understand where these writers are in relation to one another, and what each contributes to the greater conversation about culture. In short we should see what we, the August Body known as Gravitas, make of this odd phenomenon. Perhaps we could distribute among ourselves five or six books and write our papers either as a review, a critique, the exploration of a suggestion found in the book or in the author’s works, or what have you. That will allow for a range of possibilities as to what you do your paper on and it will allow a certain roundness of approach if we pick the right books.

So we have these authors: Arnold, Dawson, Eliot, Weaver, Pieper, Barzun, Williams and Scruton.

I think the easiest way would be to take a book and use it as the basis for an intelligent paper, but if, for example, you wanted to take on the whole Weaver opus and lecture us about a certain theme, that would also be fine. You might want to refute somebody or compare and contrast some of them. Even if all we do is explain the argument of a book it will be profitable.

We are tossed about yet again. Another change rocks our little ship, comrades. We will not have the bash at the Zartman tenement but at the funny farm where they keep those odd people, the Whites.

One feels so wrenched around by all this that one is indisposed to find a suitable quotation with which to close these announcements. Happily, nothing else seems to have been changed, but knowing the times in which we live, one can scarcely dare to hope all will now remain the same.

Note that the Bash of October will be at the Zartmans’ tenement.

We have completed comrade Weaver’s glorious Visions of Order, the last chapter of which is a triumph. Next we will read comrade Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture. We will read the first 3 chapters for the October Bash.

It has been a glorious Bashing season, comrades! Not only have we had Dr. Delnay in attendance, we also had the pleasure of the presence of the notorious Mike Riley at our September Bash and in October we look forward to the attendance of Mr & Mrs Lilrabbi, that illustrious couple from Iowa. All of which rather has the people of Gravitas holding their breath with regard to the glorious Bash of December.

And now some words from comrade Weaver to close this announcement:

“It is part of the barbarian’s self-protection to reject cultivation.”