Thank you HM for sharing your support and thoughts. Your words are encouraging to us all.

*Photo by HM Baker

“Cloaked in their very ordinariness, the prosaic events that truly shape our lives–escape our notice . . . . The infinitely numerous and apparently inconsequential ordinary ones, which taken together, are far more effective and significant.”

- Gary Saul Morson

“[Home] is the center from which we define and understand the nature of everything we encounter in the world.

The home . . . is not one thing among many in a world of things; nor is it merely the product of a culture. Rather, the world of things derives its sense, and a culture its significance, from their relationship to the home. Without the home, everything else in the world or in a culture is meaningless.”

- David Patterson

Hello,

I’m new to Seeing the Everyday magazine (just purchased my first subscription and a gift subscription for my sister). I saw your mag at my doctor’s office and I was entranced! I even stayed after my appointment to finish reading it…I wanted to steal it, to tell you the truth. I can’t wait to receive my own first issue.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to purchase previous issues? It makes me sad to think of all the beauty and inspiration on paper I’ve missed out on; I really hope there is a way I can get a hold of what’s already been published

Thank you for a prompt response. I commend you on an excellent product; please don’t go under like so many other great magazines are doing.

Sincerely,

L.F.

“The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses–they are not phantasms . . . they have weight and form and location.”

- Walt Whitman

“Prosaics” is a term, coined by contemporary literary philosopher Gary Saul Morson, used to capture a way of thinking that

“. . . Questions whether the most important events may not be the most ordinary and everyday ones—events that we do not appreciate simply because they are so commonplace. To adapt Abe Lincoln’s saying, God must have loved the ordinary events because he made so many of them. Cloaked in their very ordinariness, the prosaic events that truly shape our lives—that truly are our lives—escape our notice. The truths we seek are hidden in plain view, and for that reason are all the more difficult to discern.”

In other words, the big milestones of life, important as graduations and job promotions are, may cause us to overlook what Morson calls

“the infinitely numerous and apparently inconsequential ordinary ones, which taken together, are far more effective and significant. After all, memorable events are memorable just because they are exceptional. To imagine that they are important just because they are memorable and noticeable would be like concluding that because only treetops are visible on a distant hill, nothing exists there but trees.”

Prosaics assumes that

“[order] is always the result of work. It is never given, but always made.”

 

“Whatever wholeness we achieve requires enormous work, which is the effort of life; and that work is never complete . . . . [We work] to develop the habit of evaluating and correcting ‘the tiny alterations’ of our thoughts moment to moment.”

 

“[Creating good] demands energy, like the moment-to-moment conscientiousness of a good mother.”

(above extracts from G. S. Morson (Autumn 1988), Prosaics: An approach to the humanities, American Scholar.) 

Our most common, ordinary, daily life experiences take place at home—in families. By applying the philosophy of prosaics, the work of family and all of our interactions therein become the most effective and significant of all we do.

I really loved this last issue of Seeing the Everyday. It is so pertinent to the work I am engaged in as a mother and wife, and it both encouraged and inspired me to make some improvements. I love the quotes, the anecdotes, the essays at the end. Thanks for all your work with it.

- Kathryn Ward (Washington) in response to Issue 6