No problem, no problem. Them as needs will find. For whatever reason, I learned my first Blake in grade school, not high school; and I felt the richer for it. As for nostalgia over what is supposedly being lost, I am sure a lot of people will get through their lives just fine with none. A lot of people get through their lives without knowing Newton as well. Maybe all culture of this sort is just a bunch of self-congratluatory twaddle, with no wealth really involved, no richess of soul. After all, of what use is it?

I don't buy it. I could not give a whit if my daughter never learns who Gracie Allen was, or if her children never hear the names of the Ninja Turtles or the Lion King. They are chaff. But to grow old without Blake (OR Carlos Williams or Gregory Corso or a lot of American, English, Italian, German and French voices among others) to my mind is to grow old deprived and impoverished.

Thank god we (so far) still have libraries and a huge matrix of public clues that allow those who hunger for this kind of richness to find it.

I did not decry a mystical cultural loss. I think you are misconstruing what I said. There is nothing mystical about it. There is less dialogue, less exposure, less cognizance of what I consider to be important writings and voices in the public domain generally than I experienced before I was twenty. The dumbing down of America is not a paranoid fantasy of mine.

The exposure to more and different cultures, which you describe, is certainly a positive element in the balance. And if you are fighting illiteracy as a teacher, then I applaud you for it. I am sure it is a frustrating job in some respects, and heart-warming in others. The point is not that white dead males should be honored, or some other cultural quirk. The point is that wisdom and beuaty should be shown and shared whether it is penned by a black person or a red person or a white person.

The quote above, that education is a fire to be lit, not a bucket to be filled, is very much to the point.

I don't much care about Victorian Christmas carols, or much of Christmas anything, but it pisses me off to notice how "politically correct" advertisers are not willing to say Merry Christmas anymore, but substitute "Happy Holidays" instead. A cultural loss? Maybe. Certainly a cultural wussiness.

A