Couple of things, Angels & Demons movie coming out, Dr. Feaver
Day after Christmas, the morning news is all abuzz with the new tech toys eveyone received as presents. The one that caught my ear was one newsperson complaining about how to get her Kindle up and running. I felt quite superior since I had no trouble getting my book opened this morning. The joy of being a Luddite.
Also much ado about the new Angels & Demons movie starring Tom Hanks, with Ron Howard directing.
Angels & Demons was written before the DaVinci Code. If you haven’t read it yet, go back and get the introduction to the fictional professor, Robert Langdon. It looks like the movie won’t be out until May 2009, so you’ve got plenty of time.
I’ve been thinking about where I could use some improvement for the coming year. Notice, I’m not about to call it resolutions, that would be asking for failure. And I remembered an old college philosophy professor who I greatly respected, Dr. J. Clayton Feaver. Unfortunately I only had one short course under him. We went to his house one day, and I remember gathering around him and hanging on each word, a Plato delivering lectures to dull headed Aristotles. He was my first introduction to people like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. But the one thing I was particularly taken with and still remember all these years later, was when he said we should read at least one book a day, anyone can ingest a 200 to 300 page book in a day. At the time it seems like some sort of impossibility, and I wonder at all the words he read and wished to be able to do the same, still do.
So if I could accomplish one feat for the coming year it would be to read more, maybe a book a day, and remember kind interesting people that inspire and attempt to make us better.
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I absolutely adored Professor Feaver. I had him only once as an instructor (in the big Intro to Philosophy course in Dale Hall), but had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of years later. While I was attending OU, he gave the invocation at the beginning of football games, and his prayers were always about finding the positive and good that we have inside us. He was excellent at inspiring excellence in other people. The final essay I did in his class, on the difference between knowledge and belief, is the best test essay I ever composed. There are many good people in the world, but few truly great ones. Dr. Feaver was a great man.
I had the great opportunity of getting to know Dr. Feaver in the early 70′s. He was the chair of OU’s College of Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee for which I served as its Research Associate. He was truly a scholar and a teacher and in the best and fullest sense of the word a Professor. I came to respect and love him and think of him often these 30+ years later. Thank you for reminding me how blessed I am and have been.