Miles's blog

As everybody knows the one thing I have lots of is time on my hands.  I have frittered a lot of it away over the past seven months (but I have also done a lot of good things) so I decided that while I am sitting in Stamford awaiting my next trip to New York I should try to improve myself.  I have decided to take a class.  Not a normal class at a stuffy college, or even a vocational class at a local community college.  No, I have decided to take a class the modern way—online.  Well, not technically online since I am not going to formally sign up and listen to lectures and take tests, but I am going to order a class to be downloaded to my computer or perhaps sent to me on DVD.  Aspiring to learn the most I am going to find a class on the website of “The Great Courses.” 

(After all, if they called it “The Mediocre Courses” or “The Mundane Courses” nobody would sign up.  I have no idea if these courses are great or not.  Maybe they are great not in the sense of quality, but in that they cover important topics.  Anyway, having seen the ads in the New York Times I am going to take the plunge.)

I am not sure which course to take.  The website has broken the courses up into topics, ranging from “Science and Mathematics” through “History” and “Philosophy and Intellectual History,” to “Better Living.”  This kind of wide selection has long been a problem for me.  I just spent 10 minutes at the grocery story deciding which kind of microwave popcorn to buy.  Not only did I have to factor in price, but I wanted to have some concern for the amount of fat, sodium, and calories, all weighed against taste.  I don’t know why there is no app for that.  I agonized over this, and that was only for a five dollar purchase.  These courses are hundreds of dollars some of them, although the website does have a list of “courses under $40” further adding to the degree of difficulty in making a choice.

I decided to rely initially on herd mentality and start with “best sellers.”  After all, if these courses are truly great, thousands of others would have selected for me.  I am in luck, the first one listed under best sellers is a writing course “Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft.”  I have tried to fancy myself a writer for a while, but my last formal class (aside from one adult ed class about 15 years ago) was in college, which I graduated while Gerald Ford was in office.  (That is not an exaggeration.  For those of you too young to remember and who did not listen in school, Ford was the president after Nixon resigned and before we spent four years with a peanut farmer prior to the Ronald Reagan bringing us “Morning in America.”)  However, I am not sure building great sentences is the best way to create good writing, as a sentence is merely a means to an end and not the end product itself. I will keep looking.

I love history and the next best-seller is right up my alley:  “The World was Never the Same: Events that Changed History.”  (Apparently all course titles have to use a colon.)  There are 36 of these events, some as momentous as 9/11, others more obscure. Caesar crossing the Rubicon was important and something I know nothing about, that would be interesting.  I am not sure what happened when Dante saw Beatrice, or who Erasmus was and what was the book that set the world ablaze. This looks promising.  Unfortunately it only has a rating of 3.2 out of 5, which is pretty low for the business’s own website so I will keep looking.  “Turning Points of American History” has a five star rating, and I can learn about things like “The Scourge of the South—Hookworm.”  Who would have thought a measly worm would be a turning point of history right up there with Gettysburg and the Declaration of Independence? (I guess a dash replaced a colon for this guy, maybe that is what accounted for the high rating.)

But I do read a lot of history so maybe I should take a philosophy class.  Not “Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning.”  Too late for that.  I should have taken it back when I was trying cases and writing appeals.  I quit being a lawyer so I could avoid argumentation.  Maybe “No Excuses: Existenialism and the Meaning of Life.”  I have no idea what that means, but the meaning of life would be a good thing to figure out.  Philosophy, though, is too hard.  I should look for something more interesting.  Perhaps in the “Better Living” section.

Here is something useful: “The Everyday Guide to Spirits and Cocktails: Tastes and Traditions.”  Susan told me bartenders can make a lot of money.  Perhaps I should learn a new trade.  I am onto something, I think.  “Medical Myths, Lies, and Half Truths: What We Think We Know May Be Hurting Us,” would be informative, but probably scary as they might say that the ginko I take doesn’t work and that I should eat more fish and fewer oreos.  Perhaps I would be better served with “Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation & Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition.”  Kari Quevli has been telling me for years that western thought is highly overrated.

I have been enjoying the symphony and art museums lately, perhaps I would be best served finding classes in the “Fine Arts & Music” section.  There are classes specifically on “The Symphony” and “The Concerto” but maybe I should take the more global “How to Listen To and Understand Great Music.” Just enjoying the sound, apparently, is not sufficient.  They have classes for all the greats—Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and many others.  Or maybe I should learn about fine art.  Either “The World’s Greatest Paintings” or “How to Look At and Understand Great Art.”  (They seem to want to instruct on using the senses.  Not just how to understand music but how to listen to it, and how to look at art.  Do they want me to turn my head, close one eye, or turn my back to the symphony?  What is next, how to smell your food or how to taste wine?)

There are a lot of choices.  The courses under $40 might be the best way to get my feet wet, and I see there is one I should have taken a long time ago—“Art of Public Speaking: Lessons From the Greatest Speeches in History.”  Hundreds of jurors and rooms full of district attorneys would have been spared hours of pain had I taken this one.  More relevant would be “Sensation, Perception, and the Aging Process.”  I will need that so I can know how to listen to the music and look at the art while I get older.