Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Good Porcelain and Good Writing

Good Porcelain and Good Writing

I am interested in the German porcelain, bathing beauty figurines. You can see examples if you go on line… Mostly examples of what not to buy. An authentic period piece will cost in the $200 plus range. What they have on e-bay are mostly knock-offs. The way you can tell is if you enlarge the picture you see the quality is just not there. It is like they took a period piece and used it for the mold… then painted glazed and put it in the kiln. Another way is to look at the price… They are all priced either $58 or $39. Duh! Is that a give-away or what.

This is the aspect of collecting nice things that is frustrating… separating the pepper from the rat poop. However, the up side is that often something authentic is lost in the sea of fakes and can be acquired for a modest price. That is about the only way I can grow my collection.

The “Wow” factor is really what drives me in collecting porcelain figurines. It isn’t the rarity, or the manufactures stamp, or the tremendous variety. If I like it that is enough…. It can be made in Germany or Mesopotamia….it can be porcelain, bronze, paste or plastic…. If it Wows me it I will attempt to acquire it if it is within my means.

WDC I use the same approach in reading and assessing the work of others. Since I teach a class (One eyed man in the land of the blind) I get to see the normal spread from really good to promising to ho-hum. Lately I have been assessing Comprehensive Outlines that are products the students have produced in the Exploratory Writing Course.

As I read these I have to be careful what I say to the students. As a teacher you want to encourage the students to do it themselves but there comes a point when a few helpful suggestions go a long way…. Its like my watercolor teacher demonstrating a few deft strokes to my weak efforts at painting. Still you have to see excellence demonstrated to really appreciate what it looks like… Even if you can’t emulate it yet you have to be able to know it when you see it…. Otherwise you will only be aspiring to mediocrity.

Edith Hamilton, who is my favorite writer and certainly a foremost woman (thinker) of our times introduced me to many bold and wonderful concepts the Greeks came up with…. One that sticks to my recollection is Hesiod who said words to the effect… “Excellence in its highest form comes from the mind of exceptional individuals who think it up… However, that too is excellence that a smart person knows when they see it.” I have taken liberties with the quote because I can never remember it exactly and have to recollect it in my own words.

At WDC there are some great tactical writers, who for some reason have yet to make it to the big time… Since I have not had the opportunity to read their longer works…. Even though I know they participate in NANO… I can only conclude the don’t have quite the command of Strategic and Operational writing that they do with Tactical writing.

This is the feedback I am getting from my students as they finish their comprehensive outlines. It is very exciting to see these outline evolve from vignettes into a full and integrated outline with all the good stuff included.