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This is a common place book intended to serve students, teachers, and homeschooling parents. While well intentioned, many parents and teachers involved in Christian schooling lack the cultural resources to initiate the young into an education that is both evangelical and cosmopolitan, within a framework of proper respect for a hierarchy of virtue and the need to cultivate nobility of soul within oneself and one's people. We hope to provide a wide eyed guide searching across the earth for good curricular materials, valuable for a broad study of history and literature, to more readily enculturate a new generation of literate youth in a rapidly barbarizing society. Without the practice of wide reading certain frames of mind may be forgotten that will never be remembered again.

Curricula Pages:

Primary Knowledge

History — The Ancients, Christendom, America

Bible

Literature

Poetry

Art History

Music History

Photography

Cinema

Folklore

Rhetoric

Logic

Nature

Math

Economy

Law

Children's Culture Catalogues:

Books

Art

Music

Games

Theatre

Crafts

Personal:

About

Commonplaces

5 February 2026

• 19:4819:48, 5 February 2026 Diaries of History (hist | edit) [14,221 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Japanese diaries Pepys Walter Scott's journal has been praised: November 20, 1825.—I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular Journal. I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting, and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information, by not carrying this resolution into effect. I have bethought me, on seeing lately some volumes of Byron's notes, that he probably had hit upon the right way of keeping such a me...")
• 19:2119:21, 5 February 2026 Pirate Lore (hist | edit) [906 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with " - Author Captain Charles Johnson Text A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates at Wikisource A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, or simply A General History of the Pyrates (abbr. GHP), is a 1724 book published in Britain containing biographies of contemporary pirates,[1] which was influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates. The prime source for the biographies of many well-known p...")

3 February 2026

• 19:0819:08, 3 February 2026 Bill Knott (hist | edit) [535 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "On Poetry: " I haven't found anybody modern who is CONSISTENTLY not gay. But Bill Knotts has a ton of good stuff but thats just because of how much he has written. Its still 70 percent gay nihilist bad-serious vulgarity." - CB UP TO THE MINUTE A jet falls on a cow. Part of the animal sticks out and twitches like the usual closeups of the hero's jaw. Children I admire play in the crushed cow's shadow. And even the plane itself has been left atop the skel- eton...") Tag: Visual edit

31 January 2026

• 04:5004:50, 31 January 2026 William Logan (hist | edit) [7,043 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "From Vain Empires (1990), exemplary of the smooth postmodern style of that time. Decadent inhabitation of the encyclopedia of western culture. late 90s disdain for Christianity.")

25 January 2026

• 00:0300:03, 25 January 2026 Aesthetic Poems (hist | edit) [96 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Poems from European aesthetes. Many in translation. Auras often missing from American curricula.")

13 January 2026

• 07:1707:17, 13 January 2026 Taishō (hist | edit) [46 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "A Japanese Village Suye Mura by John F. Embree")
• 07:0807:08, 13 January 2026 Heisei (hist | edit) [11,912 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with " Doing Fieldwork in Japan, Theodore C. Bestor, Patricia G. Steinhoff, and Victoria Lyon Bestor (co-editors), University of Hawai'i Press, 2003 (ISBN 978-0-8248-2734-2) Neighborhood Tokyo, Theodore C. Bestor, Stanford University Press 1989 and Kodansha International 1990 (ISBN 978-0-8047-1797-7) Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, Theodore C. Bestor, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2004 (ISBN 978-0-520-22024-9) - Globalism The Clash:...") Tag: Visual edit
• 06:5806:58, 13 January 2026 Shōwa (hist | edit) [998 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Sources on Showa era life: A Japanese Village Suye Mura by John F. Embree Beardsley, Hall & Ward – Village Japan (1959) British factory, Japanese factory; the origins of national diversity in industrial relations MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)")
• 06:0806:08, 13 January 2026 Meiji (hist | edit) [50,340 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Sources on Meiji:")
• 05:5505:55, 13 January 2026 Japanese History (hist | edit) [40,242 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with " This overview is intended to take a year for secondary students. '''Ancient Japan:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Heian:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Kamakura:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Sengoku:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Tokugawa:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Meiji:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Taisho:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Showa:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: '''Heisei:''' Core Lessons: Expanded: Notes to Be So...") Tag: Visual edit

3 January 2026

• 22:0422:04, 3 January 2026 Fairy Lore (hist | edit) [37,077 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "== The Secret Commonwealth of Elves == AN ESSAY OF The Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most Part,) Invisible People, <ins>heretofoir going</ins> under the name of Elves, Faunes, and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low-Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the Second Sight; and now, to occasion further Inquiry, collected and compared, by a Circumspect Inquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish in Scotland. Secret Commonwealth, O...") Tag: Visual edit

1 January 2026

• 22:1822:18, 1 January 2026 Michael's Commonplaces (hist | edit) [2,135 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "While in many ways this whole wiki is a commonplace book for me, it seems fitting for me to set aside a page as a reminder to myself of what I want the substance of my teaching to be. Material and anecdotes and illustrations and great books and artworks come and go, but every teacher should have a core that every student should walk away from understanding == The Word of God == Revelation 5:8-10: And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twent...") Tag: Visual edit

31 December 2025

• 19:3419:34, 31 December 2025 Capriccios (hist | edit) [239 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with ". examples . Piranesi . modern contrast: blame! ; 20th c architectural fantasies? creative application: drawing your own fantasy homes and architecture; get the student thinking about how they psychologically inhabit different buildings") Tag: Visual edit

22 December 2025

• 22:4022:40, 22 December 2025 Royal Saints (hist | edit) [344 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Important to think of in terms of Christendom, authority, and holiness. Good King Wenceslaus: Stories Song (sufjan stevens version) Movie St. Edward the Confessor St. Edmund the Martyr St. Margaret of Scotland St. Olaf St. Stephen of Hungary St. Tamar the Great St. Boris the Baptizer St. Vladimir St. Olga of Kiev") Tag: Visual edit

20 December 2025

• 20:4020:40, 20 December 2025 1960s Science Fiction (hist | edit) [3,225 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "  - _b_O I d Hundredth_b_ e (Earthsea 1) Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber - A Wizard of Earthsea e (Hainish 4) LeGuin, Ursula K - The Left Hand of Darkness e (Pern 1) McCaffrey, Anne - Dragonflight e (Ringworld 1) Niven, Larry - Ringworld IT 1964 New York World's Fair 1965 - Attractions - General Motors - Page Six e 1968 if mag e 1540157347-HarlanEllison-lHaveNoMouthandlMustScream e A_Boy_and_his_DognEllison e a_clock-work_orange e Aldiss - Hothouse c An Uneven Showcase of 196...") Tag: Visual edit
• 01:4701:47, 20 December 2025 World Cultures (hist | edit) [1,917 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with " Cosmopolitanism How to carry yourself in global professional society around many different peoples, without compromising your Christian or American values Exposure to world literature and cultures International relations, geography, post-colonialism, area studies ... for the conservative evangelical Understanding modern institutions and academia Political philosophy") Tag: Visual edit

15 December 2025

• 00:5400:54, 15 December 2025 Silly Poems (hist | edit) [721 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with " James Jarrett (trans) - 12th c A gift of butter I got a gift of butter, now Good butter it was claimed to be I don't think it was from a cow And if it was, it cowed me A beard was growing on the stuff A goatish beard without a doubt Ah. it was sickly, sour and rough With poison juices seeping out Ah, it was slick. ah, it was grey I don't think any goat produced it I had to face it every day Oh, how I wish I had refused it The salts a thing it never knew...") Tag: Visual edit
• 00:5200:52, 15 December 2025 The Tain (hist | edit) [38 bytes] Michael Thomas Jones (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The Warp Spasm - Thomas Kinsella trans") Tag: Visual edit