Have an inkling who the Inklings were? Then come hear Dan Hamilton!

SEVEN SAGES

A talk by  

Dan Hamilton

Sunday, November 25, 2012, at 5 p.m. 

Congregation Ohr Chadash

3190 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd., Clearwater

Congregation Ohr Chadash, a Messianic Jewish synagogue, is located at 3190 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd., just east of the Bayside Bridge (connecting 49th St. and McMullen Booth Rd.) and on the corner of Gulf-to-Bay Blvd. and Bayshore Blvd. (Gulf-to-Bay is the extension of the Courtney Campbell Causeway and is State Rt. 60.)  Mr. Hamilton will bring along a number of books he has written to sign and sell. Coffee and dessert will follow the talk. There will be no charge for the lecture, but participants will be invited to make a donation instead. 

C.S. Lewis * George MacDonald * G.K. Chesterton

Dorothy Sayers

J.R.R. Tolkien * Charles Williams * Owen Barfield

These seven writers, whose "baptized imaginations," as C.S. Lewis termed his own experience, produced some remarkable writings and influenced countless other writers, artists, and thinkers. They often are treated as a cohesive group, though the connections may be elusive. Who are these people? What did they write? Why are they important? Which of their books should we read? Some of these writers were part of the literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Others came before, and their earlier writings nurtured their literary progeny.

Seven Sages presents an overview of the lives and works of these writers, pointing out their common ground and differences, identifying their connections, and providing recommended reading.

Dan Hamilton is an engineer, technical consultant, teacher, tutor, and writer with a lifelong interest in the works of C. S. Lewis, the Inklings, and other associated authors.

Dan has edited numerous George MacDonald novels, written a fantasy trilogy (Tales of the Forgotten God), and co-authored two books with his wife: Should I Home School? and Look Both Ways. Dan and Dr. Ed Brown wrote In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis, which tells the fabulous story behind the magnificent Lewis collection that now resides at Taylor University in Indiana.

Dan and his wife, Elizabeth, helped buy, rescue, and preserve The Kilns, C. S. Lewis’ home from 1930 on, where he wrote the Narnia series and many of his other books. Dan co-founded the C. S. Lewis and Friends Society at Taylor University and the Central Indiana C. S. Lewis Society in Indianapolis.

The Kilns @ 1997. Photo taken by jschroe from Kailua-Kona,
Hawaii, USA, and uploaded to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kilns

Dan is finishing The Inn at the End of the World, a volume of short fantasy stories intended as a companion to Tales of the Forgotten God.

BOOKS BY DAN HAMILTON

Forgiveness

Tales of the Forgotten God:
    The Beggar King
    The Chameleon Lady
    The Everlasting Child

WITH ELIZABETH HAMILTON
Should I Home School?

Look Both Ways

WITH DR. EDWIN W. BROWN
In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis

EDITED BY DAN HAMILTON
George MacDonald Novels 
The Parish Papers:
      A Quiet Neighborhood
      The Seaboard Parish
      The Vicar's Daughter

The Last Castle
The Prodigal Apprentice
On Tangled Paths
The Elect Lady
Home Again
The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman
The Genius of Willie MacMichael
The Wanderings of Clare Skymer

Can I Just Say...

Does my sweetie know me, or what?

Plus a matching card!

This post is a couple of months overdue ... so I'm craving another licorice fix.

Maybe he'll see this and take the hint?

:-)

Part Two: A Sherd is a Shard is a ... Huh?

Something to ponder when you're on the pot ... or on pot ... or contemplating going to pot. :-)

Wanna know what the primary meaning of shard (preferred spelling) or sherd (secondary spelling) is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary?

Hint: It has nothing to to do with broken pottery.

 I. A cleft, gap.

 1. A gap in an enclosure, esp. in a hedge or bank. Now chiefly dial.

The OED gives examples from literature going back to 1000 A.D.

Wanna know what the second meaning of shard is, according to the OED?

Hint 2: Still has nothing to do with broken pottery.

†2. Used by Spenser for: ? A dividing water.

[Yr.] 1590   Spenser Faerie Queene ii. vi. sig. R7,   Vpon that shore he spyed Atin stand, Thereby his maister left, when late he far'd In Phædrias flitt barck ouer that perlous shard.

Wanna know what the third meaning of shard is, according to the OED?

Hint 3: Still has nothing to do with pottery.

3. A gap or notch in the blade of a tool. dial.

Finally, we come to the fourth meaning of shard, according to the OED:

 II.

 4.

 a. A fragment of broken earthenware. spec. in Archaeol., a piece of broken pottery. Phrase: to break, etc. into sherds : to reduce to fragments, break beyond repair. Cf. potsherd n. and adj.   and Old English crocsceard. Sherd is now established as the normal Archaeol. spelling.

So ... according to all of this, wouldn't the actual meaning of shard seem to be the gap or the hole left in the pot when it breaks apart? 

How did we come to assign to a fragment, the absence of which causes a shard, the term for the absence? 

Isn't that a bit like calling a doorway the door? 

A Sherd By Any Other Name?

SpellCheck agrees with me. But what do we know?

Shard. S-h-a-r-d.

A piece of broken pottery or glass; a fragment.

But now I see it spelled sherd. S-h-e-r-d.

SpellCheck underlines it in red, and to me it has the not-quite-right look of a word with an errant letter.

My style books are no help. The APA (American Psychological Association) style guide, which I use to write most of my education papers, doesn't list the word. MLA (Modern Language Association), in which I write my literary papers), doesn't seem to address the word. The formidable Chicago Style Manual, which I use to write history papers and travel guides, doesn't list it.

Even my AP (Associated Press) Style Book, which I use for newspaper writing and which has explanatory listings for when to use shake up (v.) or shakeup (n., adj.) and calls for a hyphen in mo-ped, contrary to Webster's New World College dictionary, is silent on the spelling of shard/sherd.

Google to the rescue in the form of the National Geographic Style Manual! The listing says to use sherd when writing in the archaeological sense of potsherds or sherds of pottery; use shard for all other senses.

So ... if I break a flower pot I bought at Wal-Mart yesterday, I pick up the shards. If I find a broken flower pot in what a century ago was a dump site, I excavate the sherds.

Love it.