I keep opening file folders with blog ideas or items that intrigue me. It’s fun. I love words and ideas and odd thoughts and strange places (and people), and shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. I guess that’s what blogs are made of, though of course they can be very serious too. I’m serious. I like to learn things and discover stuff.

I found a print-out I made in 2016 about Shmoop. It’s a free website to help young students understand books and write literary essays. First thing I checked was if it’s still going on. It is. Next thing was when it started. Shmoop University has a November 2011 launch date, but I caught an inkling that it began earlier with a thing called Sparks Well, you can take it from there.

I did take the time to copy subjects that Shmoop teaches for test prep section but I have to figure out how to transfer it into this blog.

And then my battery cut out, and I still don’t know how to transfer that doc.I have an idea. I’ll try it .

Forget my cold, forget my work, let’s just play and think a bit. When do you suppose the last living polymath existed? When was it ever possible? When did it become impossible?

polymath noun: a person of wide knowledge or learning. a Renaissance polymath. SOME WOULD SAY JUST SOMEONE WITH CURIOSITY.

DERIVATIVES polymathic |pɒlɪˈmaθɪk| adjective polymathy |pəˈlɪməθi| noun

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek polumathēs ‘having learned much’, from polu- ‘much’ + the stem of manthanein ‘learn’.

Today there is so much to know that we all tend to become lop-sided with expertise in a very small area. Perhaps a related talent can spread the apparent skill a little further. I can only notice this with artists. I have noticed that a good head for maths is often accompanied by a predilection/talent for music. People good with their hands and eye-hand co-ordination are often artists and or architects or designers. I’m sure you can think of some other examples but not of anyone covering the entire spectrum of current knowledge. Robots to the rescue! We are all about to be products (or victims) of our algorithms.

I have finally come to terms with the overwhelming knowledge of the reviewers and writers I read in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS). I became aware of it the afternoon I was reading my newest issue and was so NOT interested and also so grateful for not feeling compelled to learn more about subjects I had not the least interest in. See? it’s curiosity that leads you on when you simply do not want to know anything about three-toed sloths - or whatever - that is the day you have found freedom. Not that you’re not interested but it can wait. I think that’s called maturity.