May 24, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19992" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Pondering: Climber on Smith Rock ponders his next move up Monkey Face. Steve McClanahan, 2016. Used under Creative Commons license.[/caption] In his book, The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, Joseph...
May 17, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19977" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Tie-dye by Lisa Ann Yount, 2007. Public Domain.[/caption] Recently, I engaged in verbal combat with a friend over whether Joseph Campbell would have liked the TV show Game of Thrones. Imagining...
May 10, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19921" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Isadora Duncan, c.1915. Photo by Arnold Genthe.[/caption] In his book The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, Joseph Campbell demonstrates not only his insatiable curiosity and wide-ranging, omnivorous mind, but also,...
May 3, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19899" align="aligncenter" width="2019"] "Flamenco." Photography by Flavio Grynszpan, 2011. Used under Creative Commons license.[/caption] It is easy to glamorize the gifts and benefits of artistic creativity, the unique sense of transcendence it brings to...
April 26, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19879" align="aligncenter" width="720"] A door to a balcony overlooking the ocean at Castillo San Felipe del Morro. Taken by Flickr user Christopher V. San Juan, Puerto Rico. April 2012.[/caption] Soul seeks a life that...
April 19, 2020
[caption id="attachment_17226" align="aligncenter" width="720"] The Hero's Journey® (from Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Novato, Ca: New World Library, 2008), p. 210. Copyright © 2008 Joseph Campbell Foundation. The Hero's Journey is a...
April 10, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19821" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Spectators at Iowa football game, The University of Iowa, 1950s. Courtesy of the University of Iowa Libraries' University Archives.[/caption] In 2015, Time Magazine ran a piece exploring why student athletes struggled...
April 3, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19796" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus. J. M. W. Turner, 1829. Creative Commons.[/caption] Published by New World Library for the Joseph Campbell Foundation in 2012, Mythic Imagination: Collected Short Fiction witnesses many of Campbell’s...
March 29, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19748" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Moon Rising Over Craftsbury, by Bernard Lebleu. Craftsbbury, Vermont.2015. Used under Creative Commons license.[/caption] "Get up!" Through his sleep, Freddy Bliss vaguely heard the agitated voice, but he was unwilling to...
March 23, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19707" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Campaign buttons photo by Russ Walker, 2010. Used under Creative Commons license.[/caption] “Politics.” It is the word of the moment. One might even say it’s the word that exemplifies the age...
March 14, 2020
Writer's Block by Isabelle Gallino (used through a Creative Commons license) Time and again, as artists and writers we come to a point in our development where that proverbial “block” on the road of creativity...
March 8, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19668" align="alignright" width="212"] Angela Gregory as a young artist[/caption] The art of letter writing has been significantly threatened since e-mails and text messages brought about faster and more efficient ways to communicate with words....
February 23, 2020
The Dream of Joy (from The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy) by Raffaelle Monti (marble, England, 1861. Photo by Chris Beckett; used through a Creative Commons license). Having read and reread much...
February 7, 2020
https://flic.kr/p/ZCZVUn A Journey into the Unknown by Bastian Schmidt. Used through a Creative Commons License How do we know what we know? When does an introduced idea cross that threshold from something encountered to something...
January 19, 2020
[caption id="attachment_19535" align="alignleft" width="228"] A Grotesque Woman by Quenten Matys (oil on oak, Germany, c. 1513)[/caption] The story of Dame Ragnell and Sir Gawain is one of the most popular tales to come down from...
January 5, 2020
The recent OK, Boomer brouhaha both amused and bemused me, and made me think (surprise!) about Star Wars and Joseph Campbell, not that I needed an excuse. If you managed to miss it, so-called Millennials...
December 28, 2019
https://flic.kr/p/5NsmsK The Grail by Alice Popkorn. Used through a Creative Commons license As we begin the new year, I express my gratitude to Evans Lansing Smith for so skillfully editing Joseph Campbell’s research and writing...