Cut Pine Moon

cutting a tree

seeing the sawn trunk it grew from

tonight's moon

Matuo Basho

on the intended ambiguity of poetic imagery

from "The Heart of the Haiku" by Jane Hirshfield read by John Freed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlP-_-jFMAU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

A Happy Christmas Present:The best access to free cultural & educational media on the web

“Open Culture” is truly what it self-advertises – “The best free access to cultural & educational media on the web.”

It is the richest and easiest to navigate treasure trove that I have come across for open access to complete major university courses, to streaming classic films, to textbooks, ebooks and audio books as well as language and science lessons that are free for use by instructors or learners or the merely indulgers of art, science and global cultures.

In support of my previous superlative, here is the home page link to Open Culture's list of free online university courses: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses .

To bait others and especially my literature class students further, here is a sample link from “Open Culture” from its list of “Cultural Icons” to Margaret Atwood's discussing traditional and speculative [i.e. science] fiction as well as new media on “Big Think” in 2010.

Margaret Atwood on “Big Think” – http://bigthink.com/margaretatwood .

Margaret Atwood

What follows is a connecting link directly to Margaret Atwood's own Website: – http://www.margaretatwood.ca/ .

NOTE: There is also an iPhone app for “Open Culture,” but in my experience its intermittent connectivity obviates its usefulness. JF

Dr. Freed's Caution: Once you start examining the virtual gems discoverable in “Open Culture,” you might never return to the real world.

Finding Equality Through Logic

Yvette Doss

Pasadena, CA

What follows is a link to my featured speaker of the week, Yvette Doss, for my LBSU 402 class at Brandman University -- "The Ways and Rhetoric of Knowing" from NPR's "This I Believe" series.

This is the prologue for the class.

Listen to Yvette's essay "Finding Equality Through Logic" by clicking on the following URL: http://thisibelieve.org/essay/12393/ .