The 'rebirth' of ancient letters and wisdom marked a revolutionary change of the European mind, but it remained limited to the contemplative pleasure and edification of quietist poets and scholars until it merged with the assertive defense of sovereign independence of the increasingly rich, powerful, and confident merchant cities of Italy.
Conventional wisdom marks "Porgy and Bess," created by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward in 1935, as the first important American opera (it took a long while for anyone to treat it as more than a musical).
In Freshman: The College Student's Guide to Developing Wisdom, Mark Matlock, an ordained minister and youth pastor recommends When God Writes Your Love Story to college students.
In his book The Little Red Book of Wisdom, Mark DeMoss offers this advice: "In going about the work God gives us, we must treat every person well, regardless of station or potential benefit to us.
It is Mary's "strong, original opinions" and her resistance to "conventional wisdom" that mark her as a genius.
She gives it the extra wisdom that marks "Drowning Ruth" as the chilling, precociously good start to a bright new novelist's career.
Ironically, circumcision, converted more than a century ago from a religious tenet to medical wisdom, has marked generations of males born in the United States not as the children of Israel but, in Lincoln's astute phrase, God's 'almost chosen people.' ".
But it's fascinating to see Charles M. Schulz developing the gentle neuroses and acid wisdom that would mark the strip's brightest, pre-bipedal Snoopy period.
Taking the foundations laid by artists like KRS One and Public Enemy who 2Pac references on 'Words Of Wisdom' the album marked rap's more militant mindset at the turn of the decade.
Yates will be 79 this year, but why should anyone see that as other than a mark of wisdom and maturity?
Personally, I'm glad that it is now possible for those of us with less faith in His wisdom to make a mark for ourselves.
