Peter Townsend > Recent Status Updates

Everything they say about Madeline Miller is arguably fact, if you get into her work at all you are hooked. I don’t know if it is a part of our current zeitgeist but stories of gods seem to be gripping. Miller does an amazing job of interpreting Mythologies and crafting a fresh narrative for a modern audience. This is a great formula and I am hopeful for more from her.

Chapter 3 begins…

The introductory essays of this “Complete Works,” is extraordinary. It contextualizes the importance of Shakespeare in a real way much in the same way that “The Great Conversation” does. There is an argument which maybe considered fact, that Shakespeare does more to connect the entire world than any other individual. Some may bristle at this but the position is made soundly, read these essays before you begin

It’s okay. It is filled with little anecdotes about the five senses+one. The language and sentence structure of the book is a little clunky, not to sounds too much like a grammarian, but it makes certain passages unreadable.

The assignments used are an interesting way to spell-out the thought-processes of a director. More than anything for me, it spells out way I can have my students unpack these issues.

Oh...my...goodness gracious. No words can express or should express what happened in the 10 pages but much had been alluded to. Any book (in this case “Book I: Dune”) has the standard Acts which present resolution of conflict or ideas, the full book “Dune” in its 3 parts must answer an overarching story line while this first book presented many problems, solved few, and then presented more. This book is great

The dawning comprehension of his being of “the clockwork” is chilling. There is a religion here that controls the outcomes of everyone in this world, he, through his training since birth has become “a Monster.”

Have some Bene Gesirites blinded others in order to put in motion another possibility? This is what Paul sees in “the globe,” the alternate endings that started from a specific point. Strange.

“You’ve matured lately...”

Growth through pain? Birth happens through pain. The pain of this life.

Was the pain in the box the moment we all must realize is the moment of our transformation?

Interesting dialogue between the men coming from the shuttle. It sounds like soldiers on an initial deployment. I can hear the sounds of “Jarhead,” and other films running through my head when I read, “No showers down here. You scrub your ass with sand.”

These soldiers do not understand the value of what they cannot see. Of oil, of Spice.

What is a soldier’s purpose?

I think of chess; I think of pawns.