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Extending the timeline of successful online teaching back to the very early days of computing at the start of the 20th century, Darby cleverly called upon Vygotsky as a guide for supporting the humans in the virtual classroom. Many of the strategies she then goes on to mention as way of scaffolding these students leaves the instructor with the onerous task of preparing for every bolt and nut supporting the structure.

Hayman leans toward the visual aspects of a play when words in the script are transposed physically onto the stage, the first four chapters put an emphasis on the aural effects of stage directions and dialogue. Choosing a selection of familiar Shakespearean scenes and modern stagecraft, the audience has more to ponder when an absence is noted, such as a silent pause, that might provoke an actor to innovative insight.

The first two of three stories would be the groundwork a young Count Leo did to get his War and Peace ready for literary history. Both of these Chechnya-set stories are full of soldier chatter that it barely registers when one of them dies, just one less voice speaking up. “Three Deaths” focuses on chatter about medicine and legacies for two different types of people and finds peace with the fallen tree.

A melancholic series of misfortunes fall on the families of Genji and To no Chujo as the next generation fumble with love: Higekuro and Kashiwagi make a mess of the affections and even the mildly amorous Yugiri was led astray. Any one of these scandals would be enough for the honour-bound boys to hang up the blue trousers of service (kind of lost the meaning of this part of the book) but Murakami’s death got Genji.

Having read the titular story before reading the translator’s introduction as well as the other stories related to death ended up being a preferred way of understanding this masterful study of a mild-mannered magistrate whose striving for refinement literally cost him a regretful span. A poignant portrait of the extreme lengths one goes through to find an answer to the unanswerable question: what makes a good life?

Finding out the guilty party and seeking justice proves the greater challenge when the whole Indigenous legal system is a pile of cutlery resting on top of rotten leftover food. Vivid illustrations such as this come from a genuine plea to make things better, yet Joe seems content to let things slide like he did with his aunt Sonja, just as long as there is enough going right for him and close-knit friends like Cappy.

The ultimate goal of transformation become more pronounced in the final chapters with the author acknowledging that capitalist economies are going to envelop most of the work we do, yet the spiritual practice does not attempt to soften this reality by force. Eventually work will take care of itself even if capitalism suddenly ends. Being more aware and ready to see the Jewel Net of Indra in everyone helps to free us.

The Blessed One seems to be more and more on the offensive when answering Mahamati’s questions, as if the ignorant and stupid people will never learn the invaluable lessons about Nirvana, the Tathagata or any Buddhist teaching. All done, however, with Zen-like compassion that it almost seems like any clever fool must realize that everything one understands must prove incorrect before one gets a truer understanding.

The stories of mistreatment and disrupted family connections start coming out of the woodwork, some of them related to the case that Bazil and his boy Joe are putting together, others provide the local colour of native life post-Louis Riel. All these stories give Geraldine the time and healing her body needs to recover from the inciting incident. Two-thirds into the novel, might learn something about the Round House.

A very harrowing and haunted tale from the reservations that presents a small story of injustice that might never be solved, and yet Joe and his buddies make it seem like boldly going into an adventure, like the first season of Star Trek: the Next Generation just with more frank discussion about the the anatomy of particular brave officers on-board the Enterprise. Wait for season two’s episode “Q Who”.

It dawned on me on me reading the first three chapters of this book that the design of Small Teaching, both Lang’s original and Darby’s Online update, is to present teaching tips in the small format, just enough for instructors to want to find out more, being the obsessive information hoarders they are. It is impossible to be exhaustive on educational technologies other than get a bit each time.

Wrapping things up with a brief summary of how ghoulish nuclear-armed states can be towards the rest of the world, not just humans of various political persuasions but all living creatures on the planet. The threat gets more and more cartoonish, concluding with an absurd American strategy to halt temporarily Earth from its rotation as if incoming missiles over the Arctic would land in the Atlantic, says all it needs.

The question of actual authorship notwithstanding, these insights from the distant path are surprisingly prescient and psychological. Like Commander Chakotay claims, “long before Jung invented active imagination” the insights presented in this dialogue makes one wonder if the Blessed One had really seen it all before completing the Nirvana escape while inspiring many to appreciate all aspects on this incarnation.

The low points of the anyone’s career when things seem stagnant and even moments of inspiration are followed by doubt and resentment are the focus of the next two parts. The arrangement of chapters tells a story in itself, where things don’t go as planned, more to do with the nature of a job but really as any Buddhist would intuit: it is even more how each person responds to the situations with a kind, open mind.

More behind the scenes for the arms race, Ellsberg relishes in the impersonal calculations of flame and blast radii that make the tragedies of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki mere factors to be multiplied. A sudden shift into a family saga where Ellsberg‘s father recalls quitting his job before he would have been complicit in developing hydrogen bombs spins this book into Darth Vader “I am your father” melodrama.

Posting general impressions about this and that throughout his scholarly life, Aurelius comes to some startling conclusions, almost by random chance or a law of averages. He mentions the styles of theatre popular since antiquity but does not really have anything meaningful to say other than these dramatic forms existed, quoting a couple of them out of context, but then gets to a wonderful summary of our acts in life.

The tension of what might have happened to the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis was cautiously determined by the serious efforts of Kennedy and Khrushchev, plus many advisors. This uphill battle for diplomacy is a contrast to the slippery slope over two decades earlier, from F D Roosevelt’s modest pacifist plea to total war with the decision to bomb civilians proposed mainly by celebrated war-monger Churchill.

The office spaces may have changed and matured over the past two decades since this book was published yet working conditions have not changed much since the Industrial Revolution despite what managers may think. Considering conflict as unavoidable a factor as payroll or phone calls, Richmond cultivates a mindset to allow all things to work as they will with the Buddhist no-mind in order to avoid the risk of no job.

Perhaps for the best that Marcus’ musing were never meant to be published in his lifetime as many Roman citizens would have wildly wondered about the sanity of this emperor who writes distractedly about nature and atom as if he were Semmelweis from Jeffery Goines’ memorable 12 Monkeys speech. Even as Aurelius accepts one day he, too, will be forgot, still many TikTok husbands think about his words daily.

Another Dickensian attempt to include as many of the diverse and often confusing characters in the novel as they all react in their quirky ways to the upcoming marriage of Florence and Walter. Many of these tertiary acquaintances might have had rich lives somewhere else on a few discarded pages, but they all seem stock in their reaction to the least surprising union of two most-deserving mates ever to be married off.

Like many other influencers, using this primitive social media platform of a personal journal, Marcus jots down his maxims mostly for the entertainment of himself, yet his words so stoically echo through the ages, inspiring Shakespeare to write Hamlet (or a translator centuries later to transpose quotes into the text) and natural philosophers to continue pondering into the ever-changing atom-filled universe.

Never failing to surprise with synchronicity in her stories, von Franz continues to delve deep into the psychology of Gerhard Dorn, who wrote dramatic dialogues of the parts of the Self obtaining a wholeness, just like the alchemists sought to achieve. Notably how Jung saw himself in Paracelsus, perhaps von Franz see herself as a student like the physician Dorn yet she takes extra credit for including Zen and Taoism.

The curiosities become more complicated near the end of the book, as opposed to the historical perspective on the preceding few centuries where it is easier to spot whose side was on the wrong, mainly the whites. But the theme of the whole book is based on the circular nature of such histories, so it is no surprise that 1492 or 1887 or 2033 was also as complicated as a misremembered past from which we are recovering.

The confession, like many others from St. Augustine onwards, teaches others to hate the situation while giving a free pass to the sinner. Thus Ellsberg seems to have pride at the top of his list of moral admissions, playing up as the smartest person in the bullpen while somewhat recklessly allowing policy-makers and world leaders to escalate the nuclear arms race just because of a gotcha message he wanted to slip in.

The second half of this enlightening account gets more scandalous with its storytelling, where the gods and sources of creation reveal their dirty minds, where all of it is a reflection of the authors of these myths and mysteries: the humans who look around their immediate surroundings and think something else must be going on. Takes a mind like Watts to elucidate that this something is really some things in dualism.

The final stages of Civil War are unsurprisingly messy and full of indiscriminate punishment. Not sure what the Latin phrase for “mopping up” might have been, probably closer to executing traitors and burning ships, even entire towns. Nobody seems to able to reach a peaceful conclusion and it is perhaps safe to assume any lacuna or text defective note indicates some place set on fire. Cassius reappears ominously.

The title is intriguing enough, but not sure if von Franz delivers on the promise of either an analysis of alchemical text or a discussion of the active imagination. What really seems to be going on is her lecture on several curious books that she had been studying, backed by the authoritative teachings of Dr. Jng, and soon centres on Gerhard Dorn, the quasi-mystic doctor from the sixteenth century as a modern medic.

Lingering on what might be the last book in the Collected Works exclusively to analyze alchemical imagery, a process begun seven years ago when I first read Psychology and Alchemy, perhaps it is time to move on from the arcane riddles Jung deciphers? A world that I am reluctant to leave as he is just getting into the Alan Watts territory of Taoism. But water-damaged mandalas fused together halts my progress.

Toning down the pop culture references at least in the body of the middle chapters while leaving subtle hints in the chapter titles, the field is still the great span of history for Canada and the United States, the many indignities endured and the occasional reaction that usually are treated like a rebellion. As much as many Whites would like to move on in a positive direction, we must not forget what gets repeated.

No small amount of seething satire went into writing this account that explores the “White” and “Indian” relations for several centuries in North America, often brushed off with the same “well that happened” approach that many, myself included, were taught in history classes. Pocahontas, Riel, Sitting Bull, Rogers and Greene all fit into a triad of Dead, Live and Legal Indians that troubles White culture.