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Catholic Homeschool Articles, Advice & Resources

Dr Mitchell Kalpakgian

Dr Mitchell Kalpakgian

Author Bio and Books

Author Bio and Books

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Dr. Mitchell A. Kalpakgian is a native of New England, the son of Armenian immigrants. He earned his B.A. in English from Bowdoin College in 1963, his M.A. in English from the University of Kansas in 1965, and his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1974. He taught at Simpson College (Iowa) for thirty one years, at Christendom College (Front Royal, Virginia) for two years, and at Magdalen College (Warner, New Hampshire) for two years. From 2007-2009 he was a visiting professor of Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander.

Dr. Kalpakgian designed Seton’s Shakespeare course and is instrumental in grading the Shakespeare and other high school English courses at Seton Home Study School.

During his academic career, Dr. Kalpakgian received many academic honors, among them the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship (Brown University, 1981), the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (University of Kansas, 1985), and an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Children’s Literature.


My Series


My Books

The Virtues We Need Again: 21 Life Lessons from the Great Books of the West [Paperback]
Mysteries of Life in Children's Literature
The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization [Hardcover]
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An Armenian Family Reunion
Manners in Modern Life [Hardcover]
The Marvelous in Fielding's Novels [Paperback]

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Below is a list of his articles, the most recent first.

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The Best Wine May be Served Last...

When Things Just Don’t Make Logical Sense

by Mitchell Kalpakgian | The whole episode made no sense to him, and he was at a loss for some possible explanation for his great frustration. The only comfort his mind offers is the knowledge that the accident was not a great tragedy. He acknowledges with gratitude the escape from other “torments and evils to which even this wasted wine would have seemed a wretched jest.”

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Wonder is the Beginning of Knowledge

Wonder is the Beginning of Knowledge

Contemplation is a form of looking inspired by wonder that moves a person to continue looking at a great work of art or to remain thinking about a great idea, divine miracle, or mystery.There is so much to see or know that one lingers to see more and to think more deeply.

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Judging and Being Judgmental: How To Do It?

Judging and Being Judgmental: How To Do It?

Of course civility dictates that a person strive to make a good appearance that befits the occasion in an honest expression of who he or she is, and the person in the role of judge must take into consideration the fact that a first impression may be insufficient grounds for a correct interpretation.

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The Danger of Taking Yourself *Too* Seriously

The Danger of Taking Yourself *Too* Seriously

It is possible to take many things too seriously. Coaches and athletes can take winning too seriously (It’s only a game). The avaricious and the miserly who worship gold take money too seriously (It’s only metal or paper). Politicians can take elections and political power too seriously (They are not the salvation of the world). Scholars can take learning too seriously and presume that man is god and that human knowledge supersedes divine wisdom (“Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out,” Solomon states in Ecclesiastes).

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Glamor or Gratitude: Which Makes Us Happy?

Glamor or Gratitude: Which Makes Us Happy?

In Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows Mr. Toad, the owner of Toad Mansion and the great traveler on the Open Road who is always on a new vehicle going to faraway places, cannot comprehend how Mr. Rat can find contentment in a simple cottage on the river where he dwells all year and never explores the wider world of new sights and foreign lands: “You surely don’t mean to stick to your dull fusty river all your life, and just live in a hole in a bank, and boat. I want to show you the world.”

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Dealing with Tragedy: Lessons from Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’

Dealing with Tragedy: Lessons from Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’

While it is a most human to desire the ideal, seek the best, and have the highest goals, all human lives suffer damages and require rebuilding. The unfaithful husband or wife, the deaths and illnesses in a family, the rebellion of the prodigal son or daughter, the loss of income or work all inflict destruction of some kind that forces another beginning, a fresh approach, a new idea, or the exercise of a heroic virtue.

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The Human Touch: What King Midas Didn’t Get

The Human Touch: What King Midas Didn’t Get

While everyone has heard of King Midas’s avarice and his desire for The Golden Touch that transforms everything he touches into gold, not everyone has heard of The Leaden Touch. In Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book one of the children who hears of the famous story about King Midas, remarks, “But some people have what we may call ‘The Leaden Touch,’ and make everything dull and heavy that they lay their fingers upon.”

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Self-Possession: Why We All Need It

Self-Possession: Why We All Need It

Two great ancient philosophers, Marcus Aurelius in Meditations and Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy — two works renowned for their great wisdom and moral power — teach the importance of the virtue of self-possession. Both writers observe that no persons can control the outside events that surround them.

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Splitting Wood, 5 Brothers and a Brickmaker

Splitting Wood, 5 Brothers and a Brickmaker

In the folk tale, five brothers all choose their profession and perform their work with success and prosperity: a brick maker, a mason, an architect, an innovator, and a critic. However, only the oldest brother unites vocation and avocation, and only his work has effects for the future and for heaven.

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Good Character, Will Power and a Flying Trunk

Good Character, Will Power and a Flying Trunk

In the story the merchant’s son who wasted his money finds himself in desperate circumstances until a friend gives him a magical flying trunk. When he flies with it and descends from the sky, he introduces himself as a Turkish god who has come from above to marry the king’s daughter. Honored with this privilege, the king gladly agrees to the marriage: “Yes, you shall certainly marry our daughter.”

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