It Came To Pass

Posted: June 19, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent | Tags: jacob-needleman, jay-local-14 |2 Comments

Whereas it is written, “In the beginning was the word” so our homeschool began with words.  For our Language Arts class, I was fortunate to hire the Magister, a scholar of Greek and Latin, who has taught all ages Latin and English, and, to adults, the crafts of grammar, logic and rhetoric – the essence of writing.  He agreed to teach my son.  

The Magister began, in September, introducing the three elements of language: words, phrases and clauses.  “We combine these three elements, along with a few marks of punctuation, to build sentences and express our thoughts, no matter how simple or complex.” My son learned the difference between subject and predicate, between verb and noun; fragments as different from sentences simple, complex, or compound.  Structure and method applied, the Magister lead my son through the maze of meaning, made clear.  

My son was challenged to use a dictionary – not online, but the plain, old fashioned, heavy tactile book taken off the shelf – both to define words and to find synonyms of words.  My son was taxed to handwrite his answers, using pencil on paper, like generations who have gone down this path, before him.  

Deeper into the maze, he learned that words express ideas using syntax, grammar, and the eight parts of speech.  Nouns are common or proper, and never the two shall meet.  Verbs have objects, but so too prepositions, and the same word can be a preposition or an adverb; preposition denotes relationship, while an adverb answers to “where, when, how, how much, why.”

Many verbs take an object, but some do not, thus are intransitive.  There are verbs of existence, like the verb to be, which takes no object, thus being is subject only, no separation, meaning that all life is one.  The study of words leads to questions of being.  

And so, deeper still into the maze of meaning, my son was lead by the Magister.  The Greek alphabet was memorized, because its non-Roman characters afford the young mind a sense that symbols are arbitrary yet infinitely powerful tools for expression; mark making is meaning making.

My son was challenged to memorize poetry, and he also learned to read the Koine Greek Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, a text essential to the corpus of Occidental culture.  Some argue that culture is being replaced; my son, then, shall know well both its core belief and the larger truth that all people are created equal.  Ever deeper the magister went, and my son followed, showing up always prepared for class, tete-a-tete, no hiding in the back of the classroom.  Homeschool is a one-on-one intellectual chess match.  Seeds have been planted.  

Now in the 10th month, we bring all this together, Language Arts and Humanities, in a final summative essay on the topic “What is a Person?”  This topic arose around 1 May – May Day, the International Workers’ Day – when I drove north to Jay, Maine, the site of a vicious labor strike where International Paper Corporation – a fictive person – laid low and cut down without regret the real persons residing in Jay.  If “what is a person?” is abstract, paper mills on the Androscoggin River Valley are specific, tangible and real.  Knowledge can be general and abstract, but specific particularity makes it concrete.  Jay, Maine has been our exhibit A.

My son learned the concept of an outline, structure that gives form to thought, and so we began.  Each week’s Friday “art farm” post has been my son’s Monday weekly reading.  The Magister assigned an essay by the philosopher Jacob Needleman, a commencement address given to high school students, “The One Great Question.”  From the library I checked out the book Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike, Jay, Maine, 1987-1988 published 1998 by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project.  My son read his primary source materials.  

As a carpenter, of the trades and not a professional, I used an analogy to help my son understand our process: imagine we are at the lumber yard, going through a stack of 2x4s to find those few straight and true, and reject the curved, twisted or split: many are culled, few are chosen.  The 2x4s are the noun phrases which define the heading, subheading, and smaller ideas, together, all of which frame the logical argument.  

The outlines having been crafted, my analogy changed to a mason laying bricks.  The noun phrases, fragments, were now substantives, like bricks held by the mortar of grammar and punctuation.  The outline gave clarity in forethought, allowing the writing to proceed clearly.  In fact, a mason worked next door laying stone, building a wall as my son built his argument. 

Here then, is my son’s final summative essay, a work not possible in September but 10-months into this holy experiment, his written word has been accomplished.  We have climbed a mountain, scaled a wall, and at the top, his view is both honest and expansive.  

What is a Person?  

Throughout my life, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about the question, “What is a person?” And although it might seem like a simple answer, it’s far (and I mean like FAR) from simple. To start to understand this question, we need to break it down. A good way to do that is by making an outline. We can start with the topic of “what is a person?” Then make two more groups from the topic which are called the “real persons,” and the “fictive person.”   

A “real person” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; a living and  breathing thing. Plato described them as “featherless bipeds,” Aristotle said a “thought bearing political animal,” and the Buddhists went with a suffering self – the burden bearer – experiencing birth, death and rebirth. 

A “fictive person,” is (in legal terms) a non-human entity – like a corporation – with legal rights, duties, and responsibilities, legally distinct from the humans who manage or own them. The word “Corporation” is derived from the Latin corpus which translates to the word body.

In 1987, in the small town of Jay, Maine, the International Paper Company (a.k.a IP) ran into a problem, but little did they know, it would shape labor history forever. IP was doing quite well, their profits having risen 33%, and their net sales up 42% to $7.8 billion. Because that clearly wasn’t enough, IP started cutting wages, high monthly health insurance payments, stopping double-time pay on Sundays, and cutting all holidays (which includes Christmas). So, Jay Local 14 (the union they were all in) went on strike. They would form picket lines, a long row of strikers standing outside of the main entrance road and gates to the mill, holding picket signs.

This is a perfect example of the fictive person against the real person.  Unfortunately, after a 16 month long strike, IP broke Local 14.  The strikers were permanently replaced with scabs (scabs were workers that chose to go back to work instead of continuing the strike with their coworkers).  In 2006 the mill was sold. Its waste remains, contaminating  the Androscoggin River, known today as “Cancer Valley.”  From Rumford downstream, incidences of cancer and illness are well above average, both from the chemicals discharged into the river and the mountains trapping pollutants in the air. 

Here is a short story from the book, Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike Jay, Maine, 1987-1988, by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project, where Janice Brackett, a wife of one of the mill employees, shares her perspective on IP during the strike. 

“It was horrible.  I had to work two jobs to help keep things going.  I hope I don’t see another strike like it.  I worked every week at the food bank.  We handled a lot of food for the people.  At the beginning of the strike, I was on the picket line as often as I could be, no matter what the weather was, but we were there for a good reason.  I went on bus trips and caravans near and far and we fought hard.  I attended every weekly meeting.  I was hard on the picket lines to see those scabs going in and taking our husbands’ jobs.  This was all due to IP being greedy.” 

Jacob Needleman taught high school philosophy, and his “The One Great Question” was a high school Commencement speech given in 2004, that asked:

“Who am I?  …What is man?  What is a human being? …What am I?  Am I what I am told by my environment?  Am I my ethnic identity?  Am I my national identity?  Am I my sexual identity?  Am I my physical characteristics?  Am I the opinions which have come into my mind from hearing people speak, from television, from newspapers, from my peers?  …This is a great question of the heart…” 

He concluded, “In the history of the world, in all the cultures of the world, the search to come in touch with the voice of the great self within, which is sometimes reflected in what we call conscience – the search for that contact requires the support of companions, friends, community.” 

“How?” is different from “what?”  How should we act? How should we live?  How can we connect with “companions, friends, community”?  My Mom came across a quote written by Lao Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

 The question “What is a person?” is a surprisingly hard question to answer. The non-philosophical answer (which would have been my answer a few weeks ago) might be something like “skin and bones” (real creative…), but it’s so much more complex.  I hope this answered the question at least a bit.

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School has finished. The solstice is near. Summer is here.

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