Memory Month

Ooh, I like this meme:

Today, July 1st, marks day one of Mega Memory Month!

Participants now have 31 days to pack into their minds whatever it is they’ve selected to memorize: a poem, speech, passage of Scripture, or song lyrics.

The month is in motion, so it’s time to begin.

Refer back to the main Mega Memory Month page for July 2009 for suggestions and directions. There you will find a Mr. Linky to link a blog post announcing your plan. You may also explain in the comments, Twitter, or Facebook what you’re intending to memorize. If you will be tweeting or updating your efforts on other social networking platforms, please leave some kind of link for us to find you.

Don’t forget that Tuesdays will be the day we post Progress Reports. I’ll have a Mr. Linky on those days if you choose to write something up.

I missed the start, but I think I'll try to catch up.

Here are St Thomas Aquinas's rules of memorization -- it's funny, but this comes off totally as if he's a visual/spatial thinker. But I think he was working from a tradition. Here's Memory Palaces.

Doing this will have a double benefit to me. Not only will I practice my own (middle-aged, fading) memory, but since I want my kids to do some memorization, I will get a personal sense of the challenges and rewards.

Now I just have to decide WHAT I'll memorize. I think on my old blog I mentioned this gentleman who came to Liam's college. He was an actor who has memorized large sections of the Iliad and now recites it for audiences. He writes of how he began the project:

Very painfully, I began memorizing The Iliad as mental exercise in the hope of improving my memory. It took about 3 years to memorize Book One. As I became aware of The Iliad as a one man performance I began to work faster. It took a year and a half to memorize Book Three and the same to memorize Book Twenty-four. I’m now working on Book Two.