Category: Quarterly Discussions
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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August 14, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
After Job loses everything (including his health), but before his friends come to “comfort” him, Job’s wife offers a rare sentence of advice. No other female speaks in the Book of Job so it caught my eye. She suggests that Job should end his misery. By the end of chapter 2, Job is in a truly pitiful state.
May 8, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The “Town-Ho’s Story” is one of the more enigmatic chapters in Moby Dick (which contains plenty of enigmatic chapters). Situated between “The Gam” and “Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales,” the “Town-Ho’s Story” serves multiple purposes. First of all, at this point in the story, Ahab isn’t interested in any gams. He doesn’t care to chat with other whalers unless they can point him to the white whale.
February 6, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I don’t know if anyone reads Galen anymore. I certainly never encountered his works during my education. Yet it turns out that Galen wrote a lot. In fact, he was one of the most prolific of the ancient authors. He also touched on nearly every subject. Not only did he write about medicine, but he wrote about grammar, rhetoric,
April 18, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The April Quarterly Discussion focused on “Donkey Skin” as told by Charles Perrault and “The Color Master” by Aimee Bender. “Donkey Skin” stretches back to ancient Asia. There are any number of interesting twists and turns embedded within centuries of retellings. In the Perrault version, after the queen dies, the king feels pressure to marry his daughter in order to fulfill the queen’s dying request.
January 31, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Michael Faraday introduces Lecture 1 of the Chemical History of a Candle with a passionate discussion about the function of the cup of wax which builds at the bottom of a burning wick. This liquid wax pools to be used as fuel in burning. This cup wastes nothing since all gathered wax will be burned or will eventually cool for the next usage.
August 16, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Summer Quarterly Discussion on Erasmus covered a lot of territory. Participants brought a wealth of knowledge which we used to explore Erasmus’ language, satire, use of myth and religion, and social critique.
One of the questions that continues to interest me is why Erasmus uses a mythological figure to discuss religion. Folly goes through great pains to link herself to the Greek pantheon.
July 26, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently picked up Rollo May’s The Courage to Create. In it, he wrote a line that struck a chord with the current blog discussion of satire. May wrote, “Certainly Dionysian periods of abandon are valuable, particularly in our mechanized civilization where creativity and the arts are all but starved to death by the routine of punching clocks and attending endless committee meetings,
July 12, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Laughter is a tricky business. In fact, it’s never a sure thing. What makes one person laugh may offend someone else. I have seen this happen on a number of occasions when some of the audience at a comedy club get so disgusted that they walk out. Comedy is edgy, thorny, and sometimes uncomfortable. This type of laughter pushes our boundaries.
May 17, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog.
Metaphor was born from curiosity. From metaphor comes astonishing revelations. Such was the experience of this year’s April Quarterly Discussion. We discussed two short stories written by completely different authors, one by the contemporary science fiction and fantasy author Ted Chiang, and one by the Canadian Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Montgomery’s story “The Man on the Train,” first published in 1914,
November 3, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The October Quarterly Discussion merged two chapters from The Prince by Machiavelli with a chapter from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of prime interest was the focus on the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Machiavelli presents him as a champion of the princely cause since he successfully tricked and killed his opponents,