Placemats at local diners contain all kinds of strange and wonderful tidbits. Consider the following quotation found beneath the plates at The Nook in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, in an ad for the nearby Market Street Wineshop:
Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull. … If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover.1
No argument here. But it occurs to me that the quotation would be just as true, if not more so, if for the two instances of the word wine you substituted literature and story (or poem, play, etc.). If you’re a teacher, may you never allow the magic to become ponderous — and blessings on you as you help the wonder in the words shine through!
- The quotation turns out to be from Kermit Lynch, Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France. [↩]