The brain tumor came up last night in a good group of people, people I'd known anywhere from fifteen years to about an hour. Kellie started talking about this video, and how it had made her cry, and I should watch it. I was dubious--I don't really need to do any extra crying about brain tumors--but she tried to explain how it made her cry, then she just forwarded the link. Shark Bite Luv Fog, by Alex Mitchell. I was curious. I watched it. And yeah, I cried, but in that "You're awesome, man, you nailed it" kind of way.
I think this is the ziniest video I've ever seen. It's also beautifully composed, and I love the way Alex illustrates his story. He lays it out so well, image and word and the way it's told: scariness and changes and people and all the distances and the way something like this leaves your old self underneath but makes you into someone else at the same time.
[It makes me think about YouTube in a new way--as a DIY gallery for art. I guess lots of people have already figured that out, but it took this video for me to clinch it. This is the first I've watched that feels like deliberate and complex art, rather than cheap humor or accidental art. Those both have their place, especially on the internet, but--yeah. Impressed and happy.]
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
More than one home
From One Hundred Years of Solitude:
["...the wise Catalan had auctioned off his bookstore and returned to the Mediterranean village where he had been born, overcome by a learning for a lasting springtime." He leaves Macondo, goes home, and from there, writes letters to his friends left behind.]
One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.
["...the wise Catalan had auctioned off his bookstore and returned to the Mediterranean village where he had been born, overcome by a learning for a lasting springtime." He leaves Macondo, goes home, and from there, writes letters to his friends left behind.]
One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Mount Hood is Your Hood
A guy at red e today was wearing an awesome hoodie that said "Mount Hood is Your Hood," and I coveted it. I asked him where he got it, and he showed me how it was part of a fundraiser by Bark, a non-profit whose mission, according to their website, "is to transform Mt. Hood National Forest into a place where natural processes prevail, where wildlife thrives and where local communities have a social, cultural, and economic investment in its restoration and preservation." His sweatshirt came from an art auction whose contributors suggest that this is one well-connected nonprofit. As I was browsing their website, I saw that they must also have some really creative development people. How brilliant an idea is this?
[Photo source: http://photos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2009/11/tattoo_1.html]
Prove that you have human feelings/ Ere you proudly question ours!
I have a book from 1825 in my collection of old textbooks: The Historical Reader, Designed for the Use of Schools and Families. On a New Plan. Written by Rev. J.L. Blake, A.M., Minister of St. Matthew's Church, and Principal of a Literary Seminary, Boston. Because I've moved around so much, and especially since I started teaching, I've gotten much better at culling my books, but I mostly seem to cull useful ones that have served their purpose, and I keep the etiquette guides, the shorthand manuals, the children's biography of Richard Nixon published in 1970, after he was elected and before Watergate. I have too many old textbooks, among them The American Nation Yesterday and Today, For Seventh and Eighth Graders as outlined by the New York State Syllabus (1930); Here is New York City (1962); Foods for Home and School (1949); Citizenship Readers Good Citizens Club (1930); A Book of Americans (1933); The Girl Next Door (1948); Human Body and Health: Advanced (1908); Healthy Living, Book One (1918), and Historical Reader (1825).
The other day, browsing through my books, curious about what I have that I don't know of, I flipped The Historical Reader open to "The Negro's Complaint." There was no author included by the publisher of the book, but someone had written in Wm. Cowper. Googling the poem, I found this , and followed the link to John Newton, whose "horror stories of the Middle Passage play a part in Cowper's poem." There I learned that John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace," but he once was lost, and before he was found, he was a slave trader! This is an excerpt from his account of those voyages.
Later that day, my iPod shuffled up Sam Cooke and the Soul Singers' version of "Amazing Grace." I heard it in a different way from how I'd ever heard it before.
Postscript: Looking through Expressive Reading (1907), I found a very old fern between pages 22 and 23. The "Gettysburg Address" is a "gem of high literary value" recommended for eighth graders.
The other day, browsing through my books, curious about what I have that I don't know of, I flipped The Historical Reader open to "The Negro's Complaint." There was no author included by the publisher of the book, but someone had written in Wm. Cowper. Googling the poem, I found this , and followed the link to John Newton, whose "horror stories of the Middle Passage play a part in Cowper's poem." There I learned that John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace," but he once was lost, and before he was found, he was a slave trader! This is an excerpt from his account of those voyages.
Later that day, my iPod shuffled up Sam Cooke and the Soul Singers' version of "Amazing Grace." I heard it in a different way from how I'd ever heard it before.
Postscript: Looking through Expressive Reading (1907), I found a very old fern between pages 22 and 23. The "Gettysburg Address" is a "gem of high literary value" recommended for eighth graders.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The 21st century: Was-bands
I was not-really-on-purpose eavesdropping on a woman at Red E this morning, and I had to ask her: "Excuse me, but did you just say you're taking your wasband to the airport?"
She laughed. "Yeah. As in, was my husband. But not my ex-husband, he's not exed out of my life. He's my was-band."
She told me about how he's still so important in her life, they've been separated for about two years and are getting divorced, but they still have a joint checking account, they talk every day--and yeah, she's the one taking him to the airport. People who know her have warned her to be careful, he's her ex, she shouldn't talk to him, should just break it all off, he'll hurt her, she'll get hurt--but she said how it just isn't like that between them, it never has been and it's not going to be like that now. She said she loves him and he's a part of her, part of her life, and she wouldn't want it to be otherwise.
I said how I'd been curious because divorce is just such a part of our world now, it seems like we have to figure out other ways of relating to exes, especially when there are children involved. I know so many divorced or divorcing people with kids--friends, friends of friends, parents of students--and they're co-parenting, but the ground rules of their own relationship have changed, which affects everything. But I know at least one person with a sort of a was-band, a friend who recently went on vacation with her ex-husband and their son, plus my friend's girlfriend and the wasband's girlfriend. The woman with the was-band--whose name I never got--liked that story a lot.
She said, "Thank you for saying something, thank you for asking."
I told her I was glad I did.
She laughed. "Yeah. As in, was my husband. But not my ex-husband, he's not exed out of my life. He's my was-band."
She told me about how he's still so important in her life, they've been separated for about two years and are getting divorced, but they still have a joint checking account, they talk every day--and yeah, she's the one taking him to the airport. People who know her have warned her to be careful, he's her ex, she shouldn't talk to him, should just break it all off, he'll hurt her, she'll get hurt--but she said how it just isn't like that between them, it never has been and it's not going to be like that now. She said she loves him and he's a part of her, part of her life, and she wouldn't want it to be otherwise.
I said how I'd been curious because divorce is just such a part of our world now, it seems like we have to figure out other ways of relating to exes, especially when there are children involved. I know so many divorced or divorcing people with kids--friends, friends of friends, parents of students--and they're co-parenting, but the ground rules of their own relationship have changed, which affects everything. But I know at least one person with a sort of a was-band, a friend who recently went on vacation with her ex-husband and their son, plus my friend's girlfriend and the wasband's girlfriend. The woman with the was-band--whose name I never got--liked that story a lot.
She said, "Thank you for saying something, thank you for asking."
I told her I was glad I did.
Friday, November 13, 2009
After Tupac
I just finished Jacqueline Woodson's After Tupac and D Foster, and I loved it so much. I was too cool (or at least too "alternative") for 2Pac when he was alive, when I was in high school and then college. I don't remember hearing anything at all about his death--but he died less than two months after my father committed suicide, so it makes sense that it wouldn't have registered. Very little registered at that point.
As my music taste evolved, I did buy a Tupac compilation bootleg CD in downtown Brooklyn, and I've worn that thing out. But it's only got eighteen of his 393 songs (that's according to iTunes, and includes remixes and all that stuff--but he had a lot of songs) so after reading After Tupac and D Foster I especially had to go track down "Brenda's Got a Baby."
I didn't realize how intense a song this was while I was reading the book--I was assuming it was just coming across as so intense because the main characters in the book are twelve years old, and I thought "Father Figure" was intense when I was twelve. But--damn.
The main character talks a lot about how beautiful Tupac's eyes are: "He had the prettiest eyes of any rapper--they were all big and sad-looking and he had dark eyebrows that were so thick, they made you think about soft things." I can see what she means. She describes him singing in "Brenda's Got a Baby": "His eyes looked sad like he was really singing about the truth and somebody he knew real good."
"Dear Mama" is also really important in After Tupac and D Foster, and if I'd listened to it at twelve I would've probably loved it too--but coming to it in my 30's it feels sorta power ballad mushy. (This one was on my bootleg CD, so I knew it, but--yeah.) Of course, the video still made me cry watching it just now, right after reading After Tupac and D Foster. I knew it would.
I do love how much respect he shows to women in his music. This is probably my favorite Tupac song from my bootleg CD:
There's also a lot of talk about his trial in the book. The main character's mama says, "They say the judge didn't like the tattoo--didn't think it was something a person should have written on themselves. That's that boy's own body. ... It's not the judge's business. ... First Amendment says people got a right to freedom of expression without government interfering--everybody knows that. Judge doesn't like the way he looks, didn't like the way he was in the world, what he talks about, what's on his stomach...that's the crime here." The narrator says, "Mama wasn't a big Tupac fan, but she was a big fan of justice." ("The tattoo" was THUG LIFE--click on the image to see it bigger.)
Another girl in the book, D, says, "It's like he sees stuff, you know? And he knows stuff. And he be thinking stuff that only somebody who knows that kinda living deep and true could know and think."
Tupac was 25 when he died. That's eight years younger than I am right now.
As my music taste evolved, I did buy a Tupac compilation bootleg CD in downtown Brooklyn, and I've worn that thing out. But it's only got eighteen of his 393 songs (that's according to iTunes, and includes remixes and all that stuff--but he had a lot of songs) so after reading After Tupac and D Foster I especially had to go track down "Brenda's Got a Baby."
I didn't realize how intense a song this was while I was reading the book--I was assuming it was just coming across as so intense because the main characters in the book are twelve years old, and I thought "Father Figure" was intense when I was twelve. But--damn.
The main character talks a lot about how beautiful Tupac's eyes are: "He had the prettiest eyes of any rapper--they were all big and sad-looking and he had dark eyebrows that were so thick, they made you think about soft things." I can see what she means. She describes him singing in "Brenda's Got a Baby": "His eyes looked sad like he was really singing about the truth and somebody he knew real good."
"Dear Mama" is also really important in After Tupac and D Foster, and if I'd listened to it at twelve I would've probably loved it too--but coming to it in my 30's it feels sorta power ballad mushy. (This one was on my bootleg CD, so I knew it, but--yeah.) Of course, the video still made me cry watching it just now, right after reading After Tupac and D Foster. I knew it would.
I do love how much respect he shows to women in his music. This is probably my favorite Tupac song from my bootleg CD:
There's also a lot of talk about his trial in the book. The main character's mama says, "They say the judge didn't like the tattoo--didn't think it was something a person should have written on themselves. That's that boy's own body. ... It's not the judge's business. ... First Amendment says people got a right to freedom of expression without government interfering--everybody knows that. Judge doesn't like the way he looks, didn't like the way he was in the world, what he talks about, what's on his stomach...that's the crime here." The narrator says, "Mama wasn't a big Tupac fan, but she was a big fan of justice." ("The tattoo" was THUG LIFE--click on the image to see it bigger.)
Another girl in the book, D, says, "It's like he sees stuff, you know? And he knows stuff. And he be thinking stuff that only somebody who knows that kinda living deep and true could know and think."
Tupac was 25 when he died. That's eight years younger than I am right now.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Vocabulary
I am grading my students' projects that they completed after reading their independent reading books (of their own choice). One of their options was a vocabulary project: "Keep a list of words you don't know while you're reading your book. When you finish, pick 15 of these words. You must define them and use each in a sentence with context cues. Then create some kind of vocabulary activity that would help fellow students learn your words (a crossword puzzle, word find, fill in the blank using your sentences, etc.). Include an answer key."
I don't know how to grade these fairly, especially when the student's first language is not English, so that their only exposure to these words is probably through books.
GRIM: Harsh, forbidding.
"I'm so harsh with my brother, im grim all the time"
SACRILEGE: An act of disrespect or violence.
"Stop acting sacrilege to your brothe, so violent"
RIBALD: vulgar lewd humor.
"Your so funny, so ribald."
LITHE: easily bent or flexed.
"Metal can be very lithe while heated."
MANGY: affected with or resulting from mange. Example, chicken pox the holes from chicken pox.
"I have mangy skin due to the sun's rays."
I do know that I obviously need to point out that if they don't know the words in the definition for their vocabulary word, they have to look those up, or they aren't going to know what the word means! Also that they need to be careful about the spelling and punctuation of all the words they use, not just the vocabulary words. But beyond that, I'm at a bit of a loss. Suggestions?
I do really like this one, in spite of the "from" which I think is just a typo:
USURP (no definition given)
"I usurp my neighbor's land, to get back at him from using my lawn for a garage sale."
I don't know how to grade these fairly, especially when the student's first language is not English, so that their only exposure to these words is probably through books.
GRIM: Harsh, forbidding.
"I'm so harsh with my brother, im grim all the time"
SACRILEGE: An act of disrespect or violence.
"Stop acting sacrilege to your brothe, so violent"
RIBALD: vulgar lewd humor.
"Your so funny, so ribald."
LITHE: easily bent or flexed.
"Metal can be very lithe while heated."
MANGY: affected with or resulting from mange. Example, chicken pox the holes from chicken pox.
"I have mangy skin due to the sun's rays."
I do know that I obviously need to point out that if they don't know the words in the definition for their vocabulary word, they have to look those up, or they aren't going to know what the word means! Also that they need to be careful about the spelling and punctuation of all the words they use, not just the vocabulary words. But beyond that, I'm at a bit of a loss. Suggestions?
I do really like this one, in spite of the "from" which I think is just a typo:
USURP (no definition given)
"I usurp my neighbor's land, to get back at him from using my lawn for a garage sale."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
