"Inside the Kindergartner's Brain" by Hank Pellissier

(Courtesy of Great Schools)

Inside the kindergartner’s brain

What insights can neuroscience offer parents about the mind of a kindergartner?

by: Hank Pellissier | July 9, 2016

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"Let me do that! I’m all grown up now."

Kindergartners can be swollen with self-esteem, thanks to graduating from preschool into "big kid" school, where they mingle with older role models. Indeed, the kindergarten range of four-and-a-half to six years old is often bossy, belligerent, and boastful about newly-acquired motor skills like sprinting and monkey-bar tricks. The kindergarten brain also features many mental upgrades from a preschooler’s: superior memory, beefed-up attention span, a tighter grip on reality, improved self-control and social skills, and a firmer grasp of knowledge codes — i.e., numbers and the alphabet.

Even so, kindergartners are burdened and blessed with brain activity that’s wildly alien to adult intelligence. A five-year-old noodle has 100 billion brain cells (neurons) with 77 percent in the furiously-networking cerebral cortex — the zone that constructs language, math, memory, attention, and complex problem-solving. The neurons are maniacally sprouting dendrites, skinny octopus arms that slither out to receive data from up to 15,000 other cells, and axons that transmit information to other cells. Links between neurons — or synapses — build cognitive pathways that create every individual’s specialized "brain architecture" that allows them to comprehend, accumulate, and retain knowledge.

Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child notes, "early experiences in brain architecture make the early years of life [ages 0 to six years] a period of both great opportunity and great vulnerability for brain development." In other words, these are crucial years for building the foundation of "brain architecture" — a time when, as a parent and caregiver, you can have a significant impact on your child’s development. Kindergarten is also a critical year because you want your child to enjoy the educational process. How can you help your child navigate the new world of "grown up" expectations? Start by following the guidelines to come.

Talk, sing, and read

Talk, sing, and read books frequently to your kindergartner. Steady exposure to verbiage enables their cerebral cortex to develop strong neural circuitry for swift acquisition of language. Parents also would do well to be active listeners, asking open-ended questions that initiate thinking, such as, ‘If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?’ or, ‘What do you like most about going to the beach?’ Plus, explain how things work, use high-level vocabulary, encourage writing, and include your kindergartner in adult conversations. Kindergarten is an optimal year for introducing new words and a second language. Children’s book author Tomi Ungerer recently opined in the New York Times that, "between the ages of three and seven, children can learn three languages a year. If you’re not teaching them another language, you can always develop their vocabulary."

Reading help in kindergarten

Learning to read by "sounding out" letters in words is difficult for many kindergartners, even if their brain’s auditory development is excellent. One reason, notes Jeannine Herron, Ph.D., author of Making Speech Visible, is that memorizing the alphabet is misleading, because letter titles — A, B, C, etc. — don’t sound precisely like the sounds they represent. For example, the letter G has a J sound, H is way off-base with its "AAACH" pronunciation, and all the vowels can be utilized with more than one sound. This difficulty delays thousands of struggling readers. To circumvent this, Herron recommends teaching kindergartners to "pay attention to what their mouth is doing" when they learn phonemes.

Be gentle in kindergarten

For their learning ability to flourish, kindergartners need to feel safe and confident. A 2007 Stanford University study indicates that traumatic stress and fear can release toxic levels of the hormone cortisol; this can destroy neurons in the hippocampus, a region that supports factual and episodic memory. To protect your kindergartner’s self-assurance, give your child positive, loving, and encouraging feedback. Minimize reprimands, avoid unnecessary power struggles, and don’t use shouting or spanking in discipline. Express sympathy if they’re afraid of nightmares or the dark, and be patient about bed-wetting: Many children continue enuresis until age seven or longer.

Tiny inventors

Find a great elementary school for your child with a kindergarten teacher who comprehends the learning process at this age. Kindergarten brains thrive on exploring, playing, inventing, experimenting, constructing, and tinkering with three-dimensional materials. Their brains actually grow in response to novelty and challenge because curiosity secretes dopamine, a chemical that stimulates the dendrite expansion that wires the brain. For these reasons, it’s worth finding a class where children’s physical activity is encouraged and teachers truly understand the developmental needs of the age group. Your child’s kindergarten teacher also needs to be encouraging, understanding, and supportive to help him learn best. At this age, the big academic topics they need to master — reading and math, most notably — should be presented as fun, with minimal and enjoyable homework.

Stimulate the senses

Experiences this year will have a huge impact on your kindergartner’s absorbent brain. When not in school, children benefit greatly from activities that pique their curiosity. Expose your child to hands-on interaction with three-dimensional materials and take them on sensory-rich outings to festivals, zoos, museums, concerts, and outdoor natural areas.

Let’s focus in kindergarten

A kindergartner’s attention span is about five to15 minutes long. To bolster your child’s concentration level, engage her in activities that require focus, like meditation and board games. Teaching self-control and delayed gratification will also help your child academically: The correlation between self-control and GPA is twice as high as the correlation for IQ and GPA. You can also boost your child’s patience by modeling it in your own behavior — by speaking and acting calmly. Finally, limit TV watching to an hour per day — studies suggest TV over-stimulates young children’s neurological systems, resulting in hyperactivity and shortened attention spans.

Body building in kindergarten

Ideally, kindergartners should have at least 30 minutes a day to run and play outside. Columbia University research discovered that exercise builds brain cells in the dentate gyrus. According to John Ratey, MD, author of Spark, exercise elevates a chemical he dubs "Miracle-Gro for the brain" because it builds the brain’s infrastructure. Full-body exercises like soccer, swimming, gymnastics, and dance are recommended. Plus, for optimal brain growth, feed your child a balanced, nutritious variety of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, dairy, and meat, and limit ingestion of candy, cookies, fruit juice, and sugary, salty junk food. Egg yolk, fatty meat, and soybeans contain choline, the building block for the neurotransmitter acetylocholine, which is crucial in memory function. (Learn more about healthy brain foods kids love.) 

Tuning up in kindergarten

Expose your children to music, and if they show any aptitude, get them an instrument. Play structured, melodic music for them and sing songs. UC Irvine’s Gordon Shaw gave 19 children piano or singing lessons for eight months, and found that the kids demonstrated dramatic improvement in spatial reasoning. Shaw, who regards music as "a window into higher brain function," has published numerous studies indicating that children who study music are ahead of their peers in math.

The True Meaning Of Unconditional Love

Article from: A CONSCIOUS RETHINk

Some people regard unconditional love as pure fantasy, a myth that has been shared and searched for throughout human history. Others believe that it is not only real, but the most real thing there is.

This article will suggest that it is absolutely possible to love unconditionally, but that many people simply misunderstand what it means to do so.

We’ll explore the themes and weigh up the points of debate to try and give a clear explanation of love in its unconditional form.

Unconditional = Selfless

The literal meaning of the word unconditional is without conditions, but how does this translate into reality? To answer this, you have to first consider what conditional love is.

Conditional love is an attachment to and feeling for someone that depends on them behaving in a certain way. At its heart is the premise that the person giving the love (the lover) does so because they get something back in return – namely a response from the person receiving the love (the beloved) that meets their expectations.

More accurately, it is the love that relies upon the beloved NOT acting in a way that the lover finds unacceptable or intolerable.

Unconditional love, on the other hand, exists in the absence of any benefit for the lover. It transcends all behavior and is in no way reliant upon any form of reciprocation.

It is completely and utterly selfless. It cannot be given in as much as it flows without effort from one’s heart rather than coming consciously from one’s mind.

There is nothing that can stand in the way of unconditional love.

Wishing The Best For The Beloved

With selflessness comes the ultimate desire to see the beloved flourish and find contentment. It doesn’t have to involve any actions on the part of the lover, but it often does. Sometimes it even involves a level of personal sacrifice.

It is the driving force that spurs you on to do whatever you can to help your beloved become the best version of themselves.

It First Requires Self-love

In order to love someone unconditionally, you must start by loving yourself the same way. You must learn to accept who you are without seeking to change. If you insist that change is necessary, you are putting conditions on the love you have for yourself. This is not to say that change will not take place, but it will be natural, unforced, and unlooked for.

Only when you stop chasing changes in yourself can you begin to love others without their needing to change. It is then that love can be deemed unconditional.

Believing In The Good That One Possesses

When love is given without condition, it is a sign that you are able to see the very worst in someone and yet still believe that they are worthy of your compassion. It is the part of you that forgives the seemingly unforgivable when no one else is able to.

Unconditional love does not judge and it does not give up on those whom society may deem as immoral or evil. It is the conviction to see beyond a person’s outward flaws to focus, instead, on the inner being that some may call a soul.

It Can’t Be Said, Only Felt

The first misconception about unconditional love is that you can declare it to someone. There is a chance that you are experiencing it, but you may also be feeling something very close to it, but in some way lacking.

There is no way to predict how you may react to a person in a given set of circumstances. You may find that there are limits to your love that you were simply unaware of previously.

Because of the innate uncertainty of the future, unconditional love can exist only as a feeling and not as a mental or verbal concept (this article itself can by no means describe the very essence of it).

You will never know for sure whether what you feel is unconditional love, but this in no way disproves its existence.

A Relationship Does Not Have To Be Unconditional Too

Another common misunderstanding is the belief that unconditional love requires you to accept whatever your beloved does to you. It is, however, possible for the relationship to have various conditions upon it, but for the love to have none.

You can make a choice to end a relationship because it involves abuse or because your beloved has acted in a way that you cannot stomach. This does not have to mean the end of your love for them.It is quite possible to still wish the best for them, see the good in them, and accept them as they are – the properties of unconditional love described above. It may be that you will love them from a distance rather than get caught up in a situation that could be self-destructive.

Relationships are mere partnerships between two people. A relationship is not a feeling – it is not love of any kind – it is merely the vessel in which love can be housed. Should the partnership become unsustainable, the vessel can break, but the love does not always cease to be; it can be moved outside of the relationship and exist by itself.

This is because unconditional love has no basis in the actions and behaviors of the beloved. Your lives may end up taking utterly different paths to the point where a relationship becomes impossible, but your love for them does not diminish.

You Can Experience Negative Emotions At The Same Time

Unconditional love does not mean that you feel warmth and affection towards your beloved at all times; you are human after all. You can be angry at them, frustrated with them, and hurt by them while still loving them.

Having arguments does not diminish the love that comes truly free of conditions. Just as the waves atop an ocean do not impact the depths below, the natural highs and lows of a relationship cannot penetrate deep enough to affect the underlying feeling.

Unconditional Love From A Spiritual Perspective

Many religions and spiritual practices involve the concept of non-duality and this can be another source of unconditional love. When you feel separate from others, you have a choice as to whether or not you love them, but if you look upon your neighbor as you would look upon yourself, love is almost inevitable.

If you live free from the mental barriers that exist in the majority of people and experience the universe and everything in it as being of you, why would you choose anything other than love? While rare, this type of unconditional love does exist in some people.

There Should Be No Guilt Where It Is Lacking

You may feel it towards another or you may not, but the absence of unconditional love is not something to feel guilty about.

As much as you may wish to feel this way and rationally see reasons for doing so, it cannot be willed into being. This type of love cannot be wished for, chased, or accumulated; it can only be.

It may hurt to realize that your love for another has conditions, but this is not something you can control. So do not beat yourself up when your love for someone fades, if it was meant to keep burning, it would have done.

"This Is A Poem That Heals Fish"

This Is a Poem That Heals Fish: An Almost Unbearably Wonderful Picture-Book About How Poetry Works Its Magic

“Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire,” Adrienne Rich wrote in contemplating the cultural power of poetry. But what is a poem, really, and what exactly is its use?

Every once in a while, you stumble upon something so lovely, so unpretentiously beautiful and quietly profound, that you feel like the lungs of your soul have been pumped with a mighty gasp of Alpine air. This Is a Poem That Heals Fish (public library) is one such vitalizing gasp of loveliness — a lyrical picture-book that offers a playful and penetrating answer to the question of what a poem is and what it does. And as it does that, it shines a sidewise gleam on the larger question of what we most hunger for in life and how we give shape to those deepest longings.

Written by the French poet, novelist, and dramatist Jean-Pierre Simeón, translated into English by Enchanted Lion Books founder Claudia Zoe Bedrick (the feat of translation which the Nobel-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska had in mind when she spoke of “that rare miracle when a translation stops being a translation and becomes … a second original”), and illustrated by the inimitable Olivier Tallec, this poetic and philosophical tale follows young Arthur as he tries to salve his beloved red fish Leon’s affliction of boredom.

Arthur’s mommy looks at him.
She closes her eyes,
she opens her eyes…

Then she smiles:

— Hurry, give him a poem!

And she leaves for her tuba lesson.

Puzzled and unsure what a poem is, Arthur goes looking in the pantry, only to hear the noodles sigh that there is no poem there. He searches in the closet and under his bed, but the vacuum cleaner and the dust balls have no poem, either.

Determined, Arthur continues his search.
He runs to Lolo’s bicycle shop.
Lolo knows everything, laughs all the time, and is always in love.
He is repairing a tire and singing.

So begins the wonderful meta-story of how poetry comes into being as a tapestry of images, metaphors, and magpie borrowings. Each person along the way contributes to Arthur’s tapestry a different answer, infused with the singular poetic truth of his or her own life. Lolo offers:

— A poem, Arthur, is when you are in love and have the sky in your mouth.

— Oh…? Okay.

Next, he visits his friend the baker, Mrs. Round, who echoes Thom Gunn’s insistence that “poetry is of many sorts and is all around us,” rather than something reserved for the special formal class of “poets.”

Mrs. Round tells Arthur:

— A poem? I don’t know much about that.
But I know one, and it is hot like fresh bread.
When you eat it, a little is always left over.

— Oh…? Okay.

Arthur turns to his neighbor next, “old Mahmoud who comes from the desert and waters his rhododendrons every morning at 9 o’clock.”

Mahmoud offers his answer with easeful conviction:

— A poem is when you hear the heartbeat of a stone.

— Oh…? All right.

Arthur hastens home to check on poor Leon, who appears to be asleep, “floating gently amidst the seaweed as if thinking.” And because this is the sort of story in which a canary can only be named after an Ancient Greek comic playwright, Arthur next seeks an answer from his canary named Aristophanes, “who is no bird brain.”

Our imagination is left to ponder why, on the next page, the cage contains not the yellow canary but a red-haired woman, who sings Aristophanes’s answer. Perhaps she is a visual allusion to Aristophanes’s play Assemblywomen, or perhaps she represents a muse, whom Tallec invokes to remind us that the muse hides in many guises and reveals herself in the most improbable of places.

— A poem is when words beat their wings.
It is a song sung in a cage.

— Oh…? Okay.

Just then, Arthur’s grandmother arrives and is met with the same question, which she answers after thinking hard, evidenced by the way “she always smiles a silly smile when thinking.”

— When you put your old sweater on backwards or inside out, dear Arthur, you might say that it is new again.
A poem turns words around, upside down, and — suddenly! — the world is new.

But grandma encourages Arthur to ask his grandfather, too, who “often writes poems … instead of repairing pipes.”

— A poem? grandpa says, tugging on his mustache and looking worried. A poem, well… it’s what poets make.

— Oh…? All right.

— Even if the poets do not know it themselves!

Frustrated with the multitude of confounding answers, Arthur returns to Leon’s fishbowl only to find him sound asleep beneath his large stone, enveloped in seaweed.

— I’m sorry, Leon, I have not found a poem. All I know is this:

A poem
is when you have the sky in your mouth.
It is hot like fresh bread,
when you eat it,
a little is always left over.

A poem
is when you hear
the heartbeat of a stone,
when words beat their wings.
It is a song sung in a cage.

A poem
is words turned upside down
and suddenly!
the world is new.

Leon opens one eye, then the other, and for the first time in his life he speaks.

— Then I am a poet, Arthur.

— Oh…?

Complement the almost unbearably wonderful This Is a Poem That Heals Fish with other poetic and profound Enchanted Lion treasures: Cry, Heart, But Never Break, a Danish illustrated meditation on loss and life, What Color Is the Wind?, a French serenade to the senses inspired by a blind child, and Pinocchio: The Origin Story, an Italian inquiry into the grandest questions of existence, then revisit poet Elizabeth Alexander on what poetry does for the human spirit.

Illustrations courtesy of Enchanted Lion Books

Teaching kids compassion

Show children the value of empathy by volunteering as a family, donating old toys, or trying any of these reader-tested solutions.

by: GreatSchools Staff | February 8, 2016

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We asked other parents to share their ideas for encouraging compassion and generosity. Here are some of their suggestions:

Ways to give

Donate the old

“After every season, I take my son into his room and we weed out all of the clothing and shoes that he has either grown out of or has in excess, and we fill a box for the needy. We then shift over into his toy area and sift through to ‘make room’ for birthday gifts or Santa’s delivery. Sometimes he cries because it can be hard to give away things that carry memories,” one mother explains. “But we always talk about the fact that not all kids have toys and clothes, and how lucky we are to have what we have.”

Feed the hungry

“Every month, my children help me bake a casserole to drop off at the local homeless shelter,” writes a mother of two in New Jersey. “They ask me questions about homelessness, and I try my best to explain why these people don’t have what we have. When they help me carry the food to the shelter, I think it shows why we’re doing this. It just feels right to feed the hungry.”

Share the wealth

“Instead of presents we have decided to view the birthdays in our family as a gift to share our blessings with others. So we have a big party, invite all of our friends and ask them for a donation to our favorite charity. If you need an idea, go to your local library – they will help you find a charity that fits your family,” advises one mother in Texas. “We give our boys a gift first thing in the morning, so they are not without presents on their birthday. And after the party, when we deliver the donations, they get to appreciate the joy of giving.”

Write notes of compassion

“I have taught my grandchildren to appreciate an encouraging note from friends,” says a grandma and guardian of two. “I will gather my friends to help us prepare ‘goodie bags’ for homeless people. These bags consists of an encouraging note, some fruit or candy, and sometimes a couple of dollars. We also provide a small pillow (made with love and care) and some of our old but lightly used blankets and outerwear (hats, sweaters, coats and scarves). Our children need to know the importance of sharing and caring, because it’s not a guarantee that we will always be financially able to sustain our present lifestyle.”

The spirit of the holidays

A giving tree

“There is a sharing tree in our little town,” writes a mother in Washington. “Every year my son and I pick out two families that need help. It’s fun hunting down the gifts on their wish lists and returning to the tree with our arms full of beautifully wrapped presents. I like the idea that we remain anonymous as that teaches the true magic of giving.”

Adopt a family

“Each year during the holidays, we adopt a family,” says a mother of two. “We try to find a family with children of similar ages to our own so when we all go shopping, our kids help by knowing what kids their age want.”

Donate something new

“While shopping for the holidays,” explains one mother, “my son and I pick out a brand-new toy for the Toys for Tots collection. And when I am at the grocery store, he reminds me to buy extra cans of soups and vegetables to bring to the local soup kitchen.”

Make the most of giving

“We do a couple of things with our girls to try to teach them caring and compassion,” writes a mother in Oregon. “We go Christmas caroling in the neighborhood and collect canned food for the city’s food pantry. We drop money in every Salvation Army bucket we pass. And we shop for children of the same age as ours because ‘their parents cannot afford to give them a special gift this year.’ Other opportunities appear throughout the season, but these are the ones we deliberately plan to do.”

Zephyr Teachout: Supreme Court Pick Neil Gorsuch "Sides With Big Business, Big Donors and Big Bosses"

Zephyr Teachout: Supreme Court Pick Neil Gorsuch "Sides With Big Business, Big Donors and Big Bosses"

Why Bernie Is the Most Popular Politician in America | Alternet

Why Bernie Is the Most Popular Politician in America | Alternet

Bernie Sanders has the highest approval rating of any politician in the country with 61 percent approving, with only 32 percent disapproving, according to a March 15 Fox News poll. The Sanders 29-plus percent favorable/unfavorable gap is far superior to Trump's negative 8 percent.....(to continue reading click above link)

Krugman: Republicans Love 'Personal Responsibility' Yet Won't Hold Trump Accountable @alternet

Krugman: Republicans Love 'Personal Responsibility' Yet Won't Hold Trump Accountable @alternet: This administration is suffering from an 'epidemic of infallibility.' America is suffering from a national disease, Paul Krugman warns in Monday's column, and it's far beyond what current medicine can fix, unless Big Pharma is hiding the cure for narcissism. (Click beginning link to see entire article)

U.S. Citizens Now Being Forced to Provide Their Social Media Passwords Upon Return to U.S. | Alternet

U.S. Citizens Now Being Forced to Provide Their Social Media Passwords Upon Return to U.S. | Alternet



(click link above to read about this new and preposterous news!)

Is Donald Trump Intentionally Sowing Health Care Chaos? @alternet

Is Donald Trump Intentionally Sowing Health Care Chaos? @alternet: With the GOP's health care bill on the critical list, Trump's cynical fallback plan looks like his only option. Predictably, the promised Obamacare “repeal and replace” legislation has thrown all of Washington into a tizzy. The reason it was predictable is that if the Republicans had been able to put together a serious alternative to Obamacare’s market-friendly, hybrid health care program, they would have done it long ago and run on it. The fact that they didn’t should have been a hint that whatever they did was going to be politically unpopular. Instead, they demagogued the program for years, turning it into an easy symbol of Obama hatred to motivate their base.   (CLICK ABOVE to continue)

Sanders Slams Big Pharma for Pumping 780 Million Opioid Pills Into West Virginia 'Trump Country' @alternet

Sanders Slams Big Pharma for Pumping 780 Million Opioid Pills Into West Virginia 'Trump Country' @alternet: His progressive message struck a chord with West Virginians grappling with addiction and poverty. In a town hall televised by MSNBC Monday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders called out the pharmaceutical industry for pumping addictive opioids into small, rural towns—parts of the country already devastated by disappearing jobs and crumbling infrastructure.

Robert Reich: 4 Big Warning Signs That Trump's Budget Is Bonkers @alternet

Cutting the EPA and Medicaid to pay for the military. Donald Trump ran for Robert Reich: 4 Big Warning Signs That Trump's Budget Is Bonkers @alternet: resident as a man of the people, who was going to fight for those who were left behind – but everything we’re hearing about his forthcoming federal budget says exactly the opposite: Spending that’s a great deal for big corporations that have hired armies of lobbyists, and great for the wealthiest few like himself. But leaving everyone else a lot worse off.Here are four important early warning flares:   (click above link)

Julian Assange Confirms Sanders Was Threatened

Julian Assange Confirms Sanders Was Threatened

Julian Assange has confirmed that Bernie Sanders was threatened into pulling out of the Democratic race in July. 

During a recent interview with Australian journalist John Pilger, Assange said that Bernie Sanders was forced to drop out of the race due to threats from the Clinton campaign.

Assange’s admission appears to substantiate claims by the Kremlin who revealed they had evidence that Jane Sanders was physically threatened in order to “get Bernie on board” with Hillary’s campaign.

Trueactivist.com reports:

Pilger, who is working on a documentary about Assange, asked:

“Julian, we cut you off earlier when you were talking about what you felt were the most significant emails that you have released. Is there any last one that you’d like to mention? And also, do you have any thoughts on Bernie Sanders? I mean what is your opinion why Bernie Sanders drop out of the race?”

Assange responded:

“Look, I think—you know, we know how politics works in the United States. Whoever—whatever political party gets into government is going to merge with the bureaucracy pretty damn fast. It will be in a position where it has some levers in its hand. And Bernie Sanders was independent candidate trying to get the nomination trough the Democratic Party and if you ask me he did get the nomination, but he was threatened to drop out.”

Again, Assange has promised to release incriminating emails which are sure to result in Clinton’s indictment. He says he has evidence that Hillary made deals with an alleged Islamic state sponsor, as well as damning information about the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton campaign knows he’s on to her, too, which is why a strategist called for an assassination of Assange on TV.

“Of course, we’re very interested in revealing the truth about any candidate and yes we have some material about Bernie Sanders that will be published,” Assange added.

Source from : Usuncut.com

House Leadership Obamacare Repeal Bill Is Republican Declaration of Class Warfare on Average Americans

House Leadership Obamacare Repeal Bill Is Republican Declaration of Class Warfare on Average Americans

"On Solitude" by Montaigne

ARTICLES: HOUSE OF SOLITUDE

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92): On Solitude

Michel de Montaigne represents the consummate literary style of the French Renaissance in his Essays. He is at once an advocate of the classics (the Essays are crammed with quotations from Latin authors)  and a modern, conversant with his society, his contemporaries, its temper. Montaigne lived during the seething religious civil wars of France, which formed the heart of his reflections on how an intelligent person copes with a world gone mad.

Ostensibly a neutral during the wars, Montaigne was a middle-class lawyer and civil servant of the king - whoever he happened to be. He was despised by the extremists on both sides of the Catholic-Huguenot wars. The Essays reveal him a fideist, a Stoic, a skeptic; there is an independence of spirit that suggests his allegiance is to none but reason alone, but there is also a melancholy that reveals Montaigne as a resigned soul.

On Solitude is number 39 of scores of essays. He returned to it three times during ten years of editing and emending for publication. Montaigne quotes Juvenal, Horace, Virgil, Persius, Lucretius, Tibullus, Terence, and Propertius, but these are exercises required to display his wide reading and to identify him with the ancients, whom he projects to be saner company. The essence of On Solitude is a stoic acceptance of the stupidity of society and the wisdom of living a life of imagination and virtue. Is this solitude? Not by a strict definition, except that like his true mentors, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, solitude is the sense of separation in the crowd, the disdain for ambition, the aloofness in the heat of war, the tragic sense of life.

Here are some representative passages:

Contagion is very dangerous in the crowd. One must either imitate the vicious or hate them. Both these things are dangerous: to imitate them because they are many, and to hate them because they are unlike us.

The wise person will flee the crowd, endure it if necessary but given the choice, choose solitude. We are not sufficiently rid of vices to have to be contending with those of others.

The aim of solitude is to live more at leisure and at one's ease.

Exchanging one trouble for another is  the cycle of ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear and lust pursuing the individual who thinks it sufficient to change career or livelihood in order to change himself. But it pursues the solitary into "cloisters and schools of philosophy." "Neither deserts, nor rocky caves, nor hair shirts, nor fastings will free us of them."

It is not enough to have gotten away from the crowd, it is not enough to move: we must get away from the gregarious instincts that are within us, we must sequester ourselves and repossess ourselves.

Seneca said that we are all chained to fortune: some chains are gold, others more base. This may be inferred as a social condition, but Montaigne (without quoting this passage) offers us a psychological angle by saying that the chains are our own fashioning, the cravings and vices pursuing us throughout life. He quotes Lucretius to demonstrate the philosophical import of this necessity to "purge our heart."

We must take the soul back and withdraw it into itself; that is the real solitude, which may be enjoyed in the midst of cities and the courts of kings; but it is best enjoyed alone.

This is Montaigne's Stoic compromise versus that of Lao-Tzu or the Desert Fathers: to continue to reside in the world but assume one is not of the world. It is the heart of the issue, and Montaigne knows what our ideal should be:

Now since we are undertaking to live alone and do without company, let us make our contentment depend on ourselves; let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to truly live alone and at our ease.

He tries to identify what this solitude should consist of, revealing his own loyal but aloof fidelity: "We should have wife, children, goods, and above all, health, if we can; but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness depends on them."

A discourse on love and what Buddhists call loving-kindness would help elaborate and hone this noble ideal, despite the apparant sang-froid of Montaigne. Following is his most famous line:

We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

But the remainder of On Solitude suggests that solitude is retirement from the world, or at least from public service and civic obligation. Montaigne considers solitude a regard for a life devoted to others, a welcome relinquishing of social ties.

"Even in retirement we should not be held captive by anything, neither pleasures nor desires." Montaigne disagrees with Pliny's advice to use solitude to devote oneself to study, for even books and learning, he says, are a tyranny. "Books are pleasant; but if by associating with them we end by losing gaiety and health, the best parts of us, let us leave them." "I like only pleasant and easy books which entertain me," he declares, "or those that console me and counsel me to regulate my life and my death."

And Montaigne rejects that final temptation offered by Pliny's version of retirement: reputation, fame, glory, and the glow that accompanies the worldly man into his autumn years.

We must do like the animals that rub out their traces at the entrance to their lairs. Seek no longer that the world should speak of you, but how you should speak to yourself. Retire into yourself, but first prepare to receive yourself there; it would be madness to trust in yourself if you do not know how to govern yourself. ... Borrow nothing except from yourself, arrest your mind and fix it on definite and limited thoughts, and rest content with them, without any desire to prolong life and reputation.

Adhere to these simple guidelines to a productive solitude, advises Montaigne, not to the "ostentatious and talky philosophy" of classical authors whose concept of retirement from the world is vainglory.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Quotations adapted from Montaigne's Complete Essays, translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958. Reprinted in The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters, translated by Donald M. Frame with an introduction by Stuart Hampshire. New York : Knopf, 2003.