Ruminate \ˈrü-mə-ˌnāt\ v.t. : to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly
My son turned three years old not too long ago which means we’re now reading longer bedtime stories. To satisfy the demand and to push his envelope, I turned to a fifty year old book series that as far as I know was my mother’s: Through Golden Windows. Reading Aesop fables, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, tales from the Grimm collective, and other stories “of adventure”, some “magical”, got me thinking. Instead of ten different copies of Abe Lincoln on our international reading lists, what about the “old” children’s tales (many of which were never intended for children) that inform through parable, the communicative method largely dropped from American society but very strong elsewhere? They inform who we are, where we came from, and are (often) entertaining, if not simply captivating.
Just thinking out loud on this… thoughts?
Also looking back:
- Tom Barnett on Boy Scouts and NRA yesterday and Hezbollah today
Interesting idea, but it could be taken a step further. The US is a very diverse nation, so you could pull stories like this from any manner of literary traditions, from Western writers and legends to those from, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Native Americans and so on.While I can appreciate TCHe’s concern, if you present these as the stories of Americans then you take the USG and the propaganda largely out of it. Instead you are merely providing a conduit for American’s to tell their richly diverse stories.
I like the idea. However, I think it might be counter-productive.Think of all the people who claim/propagate/believe that the US is destroying their culture. This could be seen as yet another attempt to destroy the cultural heritage of a people, thereby being grist to the mills of these people.