Category: Custom
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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February 20, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In Book Eight of The Odyssey, King Alcinous of Phaeacia treats Odysseus to a series of entertainments. First music and food, then games and sport. At this point in the epic, Odysseus has yet to tell his tale of woe. The Phaeacians do not yet know his name or identity. Instead, the king requests the best performers in honor of the guest.
October 31, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
For the October Quarterly Discussion, we read a selection from Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” in combination with Nelson Mandela’s statement at the opening of the defense case in the Rivonia Trial (Pretoria Supreme Court, April 20, 1964). Mandela’s speech ends with the words:
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people.
November 22, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
As usual, after completing the October Quarterly Discussions, I am left with more questions than answers. But more importantly, more vital to me, is the fact that many questions have been deepened. During discussion, these ideas evolve and morph into three and four dimensional figures, versus the two dimensional beginnings. Whether you call it Socratic dialogue or inquiry-based discussion,
January 26, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
II have to apologize for all the material that I’m skipping in the posts on Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Truly, one could never do it justice. It contains a world of descriptions and personalities and consequences. It’s like looking at all of humanity in a microscope. Though large, the book reads more like a play than novel.
May 26, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Last week’s blog (https://hmu.edu/2023-5-19-reading-rabelais-part-i/) used Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel as the foundation to connect with contemporary works. Today’s blog continues in the same vein, connecting the old with the new. As I said before, however, Rabelais is not easy reading. The language feels foreign, even after translation. He prefers large, often obscure words, and includes anatomical puns whenever possible.
Before HGTV, before Ty Pennington or Joanna and Chip Gaines, before This Old House even, Charlotte Brontë wrote about the dullness of life in orphanages and the solitary life of a governess in Jane Eyre. As Jane moves from situation to situation, she comments on the decoration of her living situation. In each case, the style of the place juxtaposes that of the people. Her aunt mistreated her and spoiled her children,
March 18, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
As chrysanthemums and tulips sprout, birds nest, and winter eases its hold on the ground, humans also begin to change some behaviors. We associate spring with life and vitality. With this also comes annual responsibilities such as cleaning. Cleaning is one of those mundane tasks that demonstrate cultural values or cultural shifts. Much can be learned about cultures through notes about the way that we clean,
December 10, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Recently I attended a webinar hosted by Middlebury College on the subject of data literacy. This webinar was part of a program called Middlebury Initiative for Data and Digital Methods (or Midd:data for short) and functioned as an introduction to the importance of data literacy. The program is founded upon the principle that “Data and digital methodologies are as central to a 21st-century liberal arts education as reading and writing.”
The webinar consisted of a discussion between Eric Schmidt,
August 13, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth. But it [growth] has always been necessary, and more than ever now, it is. Otherwise we won’t make it. We won’t survive. That’s what the witchery is counting on: that we will cling to the ceremonies the way they were, and then their power will triumph, and the people will be no more.” –
November 6, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Social Contract has been on my mind a lot lately. Of course, elections and coronavirus and all of the current stresses on society have been on my mind, and they often circle me back into what it means to exist in a community at all. What is the sort of contract that I have with fellow citizens?