Weekly Pose Ponder No. 15
Summarizing the week's posts -- Findings ("Coffee and Chocolate"), a two-part essay on Mortimer Adler, SmallStack, Anthropocene Magazine, and a video conversation with Dan Allosso!
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This week I dug into my “findings” curational workflow to share reading suggestions from posts and articles not found on Substack. I spent a lot of time digesting Mortimer Adler’s dense article, “The Schooling of a People,” and writing up my reaction to it, mostly positive — although he evoked a cuss word out of me at one point! ~ Tracy takes on the whole of Greek philosophy!?
The week’s featured Substack is Robin Taylor’s SmallStack project.
Friday’s resource is Anthropocene Magazine.
Plus a special first. I have cross-posted a video of
and myself in conversation. This did not go out by email but is on the website only. Here is the VIDEO link.Finally, an announcement. I’ve added a dedicated domain (pondercraft.com) to this blog/newsletter. I settled on Pondercraft rather than Pose Ponder. — It could be there’s another name change coming up. — Thank you for your readerly patience as the writing here gets sorted!1
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Findings: Coffee & Chocolate
A couple times per month I’d like to share what I’ve been reading — things that don’t make it into regular posts. I’m experimenting with categorizing. First up will be Anthropocene-related articles. How can people become more familiar with the basics of our new era?
Adler on the Problem of Education (Part 1)
You know how on YouTube there’s this thing called “reaction videos”? It’s where somebody watches some other third-party video for the first time, and they record their reaction to it. I guess it’s similar to “unboxing” videos. A YouTuber records their own reaction as they go through the experience of opening up a package containing some new gadget they …
SmallStack
Today’s featured Substack is a new project by Robin Taylor: the SmallStack, aiming to help Substack publications with fewer than 1000 subscribers. Writing a very small publication myself, I love this idea. I haven’t signed up to be included in the directory yet because I have to fix a couple backend settings (i.e. update my domain link), but I plan to v…
Adler on Education (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of an essay on Mortimer Adler’s article, “The Schooling of a People” from the edited volume, Reforming Education. Part 1 is here: Last time, I largely agreed with Adler’s plea for educators to sit up and pay attention to the Problem of Education as it presents itself in an entirely new era, both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking. A…
Resource: Anthropocene Magazine
Today’s Friday resource is Anthropocene Magazine, published by Future Earth. The trailer (video) is short and beautifully done. You can read their About page...
Backstory. I started out in Nov 2023 writing “The Daily Inchoate” to get in the habit of writing daily and pushing my inchoate thoughts out there. When I realized the “daily” part was solved (thank you, Substack!), the next step was to try not to be quite so “inchoate.” I changed the name to a long-running handle I’ve adopted over the years that mirrors my M.O.: pose (questions) and ponder (all the things I’m reading). Pose Ponder will stay around in one form or another. The purpose of this Substack, however, is gradually zeroing in on lifelong learning in the Anthropocene, with the aim of trying to be a good human. Pondercraft is the “craft” part of posing and pondering, and it emphasizes lifelong learning. Although it’s my bread and butter, I do want to move beyond learning, thinking, writing (all absolutely necessary) to more doing, following Hannah Arendt’s admonishment that (political) action is the highest form of human activity. I’ve come to accept her priority for activity (the via activa) against those pesky over-philosophical ancient Greeks who were too all-in on contemplation. ← Lots in that. Stay tuned.