Episode 6: The Literary Life of Mary Jo Tate

Today on The Literary Life, your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins sit down for a chat with their friend and fellow reader, Mary Jo Tate. As well as being an avid reader, Mary Jo is an author, editor, teacher, book collector and single mother to 4 young men. A veteran homeschooler, Mary Jo is the author of Flourish: Balance for Homeschool Moms, and you can learn more about her and her work at FlourishAtHome.com. In this interview, Angelina and Cindy talk with Mary Jo about her own background as a reader, beginning with her childhood memories of books. They discuss the influence of family, librarians and teachers on the life of a young reader. Mary Jo talks about different seasons of her reading life and gives some advice for the busy, exhausting time as a mother of young children. Another topic of discussion is how Mary Jo's education and profession grew out of her love of literature. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 7 (May 28): Gaudy Night ch 8-15 Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night, ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis Andrew Lang's Fairy Books The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald At Home in Mitford by Jan KaronS Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson It little profits that an idle king,  By this still hearth, among these barren crags,  Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole  Unequal laws unto a savage race,  That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.  I cannot rest from travel: I will drink  Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd  Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those  That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when  Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades  Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;  For always roaming with a hungry heart  Much have I seen and known; cities of men  And manners, climates, councils, governments,  Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;  And drunk delight of battle with my peers,  Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.  I am a part of all that I have met;  Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'  Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades  For ever and forever when I move.  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life  Were all too little, and of one to me  Little remains: but every hour is saved  From that eternal silence, something more,  A bringer of new things; and vile it were  For some three suns to store and hoard myself,  And this gray spirit yearning in desire  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.           This is my son, mine own Telemachus,  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild  A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees  Subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere  Of common duties, decent not to fail  In offices of tenderness, and pay  Meet adoration to my household gods,  When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.           There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:  There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,  Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—  That ever with a frolic welcome took  The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed  Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;  Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;  Death closes all: but something ere the end,  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  'T is not too late to seek a newer world.  Push off, and sitting well in order smite  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  Of all the western stars, until I die.  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.  Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'  We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts,  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB