To Much To DO.
I am having a blast teaching a class about South Africa, but I'm spending an awfully lot of time getting ready for it, along with a new class in Humanities: the Renaissance forward. I love both classes...the content is much fun and the groups of students I have are spectacular. But I'm not writing. I'm simply doing work.
I did dream a good story the other night. I got up and wrote it down before I forgot. I think it will be worth pursuing. I just need time. Time.
BLOG REALLY START HERE:
In the meantime, I'm thinking about heroes. How almost all heroes (probably all) have feet of clay.
How did this rumination start? Well, LanceArmstrong may have set it off. I'm not sure. I think I knew all along that he had to be doping. It's the lying that makes him less heroic in my opinion. That's another story, though. But his faults don't entirely negate the amazing feats he accomplished. They just make him a less-than-admirable human being becuase he lied. He still rode faster than anybody else, doping or not.
Here are people I've been teaching about: Martin Luther (We just did the Reformation aspect of the Renaissance last week). Did you know that he wrote scathingly about Jews and Muslims? Yeah, he stood up for people and for some sort of reasonable way to change religion, but he certainly wasn't perfect.
Gandhi: Who could be the more perfect hero, right? Gentle, passive resistance, civil disobedience to affect change. But did you know that Gandhi was an absolute adherent to the caste system in India? The caste system that treats the Untouchables as less worthy than dogs? He's not quite so perfect, either.
Hoppie Groenwald: he's fictional, but a powerful character in the book we're reading in my South Africa Class. Hoppie is the person who changes the protagonist (Peekay)'s life. Hoppie is kind and smart, and insightful. A good soul. But he's a product of his time and racist as all-get-out.
Think about it. John Edwards. Bill Clinton. John F. Kennedy. Michael Jordan. Every hero who outstretches human possibility and does great good or inspires greatness on this earth is still human. Somehow we lift people to hero status and then we expect them to be perfect. It's not possible. NOT Possible.
That was part of my problem back when I was a pastor's wife.
I believe that if you're passionate and capable of great good, you may also get in trouble for being too passionate. Passion and compassion are usually inextricably linked. That can lead to human problems.
It's the way of the world. But the rest of humanity who wants a hero doesn't easily tolerate fallibility in its heroes.
Think about that. Does ANYBODY qualify as a perfect human and a perfect hero?
Maybe we need to rethink what admiration means.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Yikes, it's going to be a busy semester...and The Power of One
Yikes. Two new classes are going to make this a very busy semester. However, I've met all my classes now, and I think every one is going to be an interesting, delightful group. All very different, all challenging in different ways, but all fun. But busy.
I guess I'll determine to write a blog at least once a week, hopefully more, and not kick myself if all I can do is once a week.
We're reading The Power of One right now in my Humanities of South Africa class. I love that book. I have read it about four times, I think, and every time I marvel at the voice and the story. Bryce Courtenay, the author, just died in November, so I'm feeling as if reading it this time is a bit of a tribute to him.
I was surprised that only three people in class knew what Apartheid was. That's sort of shocking, but on the other hand--I have plenty to teach in there. It will all be new material to most of them (not all!), I guess.
In Comp, we're reading A Lesson Before Dying. I've taught that book so many times, I only have to skim it to go through quizzes and to lead discussion. I feel as if I know it by heart. Maybe I should change to a different book, but it's so good and so powerful, and it introduces students to some ideas that they haven't known before. Love the book So for now, I'll keep on with it.
Speaking of all that, I sat down to write a chapter review for Intro to Humanities. I better get on it.
A Youtube about The Power of One--but not the book; just a good video
I guess I'll determine to write a blog at least once a week, hopefully more, and not kick myself if all I can do is once a week.
We're reading The Power of One right now in my Humanities of South Africa class. I love that book. I have read it about four times, I think, and every time I marvel at the voice and the story. Bryce Courtenay, the author, just died in November, so I'm feeling as if reading it this time is a bit of a tribute to him.
I was surprised that only three people in class knew what Apartheid was. That's sort of shocking, but on the other hand--I have plenty to teach in there. It will all be new material to most of them (not all!), I guess.
In Comp, we're reading A Lesson Before Dying. I've taught that book so many times, I only have to skim it to go through quizzes and to lead discussion. I feel as if I know it by heart. Maybe I should change to a different book, but it's so good and so powerful, and it introduces students to some ideas that they haven't known before. Love the book So for now, I'll keep on with it.
Speaking of all that, I sat down to write a chapter review for Intro to Humanities. I better get on it.
A Youtube about The Power of One--but not the book; just a good video
Sunday, January 6, 2013
The Rider by Tim Krabbé
Book Review, or maybe book rave?
The Rider by Tim Krabbé. Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition 2003 (Originally published in the Netherlands in 1978).
The Rider wins my heart. This novel, by Tim Krabbé and translated from Dutch, is like watching a classic one-day race from inside the peleton. For anyone who’s ridden a bike competitively, or ridden “over your head” to keep up with buddies, or seen black from cranking up a hill so big you think it’ll kill you, you will understand this book. The translator Sam Garrett did a beautiful job because the language and metaphors are spot-on. Krabbé has nailed the physical and psychological agony and joy. Some gems:
Despuech, who has just made a break but obviously won’t stay away off the front.: Despuech is crazy. Despuech is only showing us that he doesn’t stand a chance in hell. He knows it too, but still it’s a fact: he has to choose between finishing at the back after shining, or finishing at the back after not having shone at all. Dozeas of riders are now thinking the word ‘Despuech’, and people along the route will clap for him. And later all the riders will slide right over him, like a net over an undersized fish.
Gradually I find a cadence. Climbing is a rhythm, a trance; you have to rock your organs’ protests back to sleep.
I shift down. Forty-three nineteen: the gear of champions. How the hell do I keep talking myself into racing?
Gerrri Knetemann: “You guys need to suffer more, get dirtier; you should arrive at the top in a casket, that’s what we pay you for.”
Asked about the pain of getting dropped, Knetemann say, “It’s too bad, sir, but at a certain point you just can’t do it. And when can’t do it any more, you get dropped. Too bad. Nothing to make a fuss about.”
Perhaps I love this book so much because the protagonist narrating the story is a journalist/writer turned cyclist at age thirty. I fancy myself a combination of those two, so I particularly loved this little soliloquy: “I believed that, while cycling, I would come up with thoughts and ideas for the stories I’d be writing the rest of the time. Fat chance. The rest of my time I spent jotting in my cycling logbook and keeping statistics on my distance and times, and while cycling I thought of nothing at all.
Ha!!
Fear of heights, multiplied by my velocity. Don’t look to the side. The wind blows right through me…
Descents scare me, I’m the worst downhill rider here…
A sign. It says that the speed limit here is 60 kilometers per hour. My brain flashes a joke for my approval: point at that sign and waggle my finger at the others. Joke rejected.
Curves.
Yup. there we go.I think of coming down a mountain in Eastern Washington State in a small group ride from the The Bicycle Butler bike shop. Switchbacks and all, the pack flying. I was in my drops, aero, keeping up, and then--a switchback, I braked—out of instinct and self-preservation—I slowed, and I was dropped like a wounded bird from the flock.
...saw a rider meticulously peeling a banana with both hands on a downhill stretch at 65 kilometers an hour…
Comments like those about the “up-and coming Hinault” and anectodes of cycling history woven in the consciousness of the rider—the narrator—all in the course of a 150 km race make us as readers feel part of cycling history, part of this race in 1977
Who the hell goes cycling on a hot day like this?
The book’s opening will grab you, if you are one who identifies with the story, or if you are obsessive about any passion in your life. The narrator looks up from his gear at the spectators. "Non-racers…The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
Perhaps that’s the crux of it. When cycling becomes so central to our core that a life without it seems empty: there, I figured it out. That’s why I love this book so much.
The Rider by Tim Krabbé. Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition 2003 (Originally published in the Netherlands in 1978).
The Rider wins my heart. This novel, by Tim Krabbé and translated from Dutch, is like watching a classic one-day race from inside the peleton. For anyone who’s ridden a bike competitively, or ridden “over your head” to keep up with buddies, or seen black from cranking up a hill so big you think it’ll kill you, you will understand this book. The translator Sam Garrett did a beautiful job because the language and metaphors are spot-on. Krabbé has nailed the physical and psychological agony and joy. Some gems:
Despuech, who has just made a break but obviously won’t stay away off the front.: Despuech is crazy. Despuech is only showing us that he doesn’t stand a chance in hell. He knows it too, but still it’s a fact: he has to choose between finishing at the back after shining, or finishing at the back after not having shone at all. Dozeas of riders are now thinking the word ‘Despuech’, and people along the route will clap for him. And later all the riders will slide right over him, like a net over an undersized fish.
Gradually I find a cadence. Climbing is a rhythm, a trance; you have to rock your organs’ protests back to sleep.I shift down. Forty-three nineteen: the gear of champions. How the hell do I keep talking myself into racing?
Gerrri Knetemann: “You guys need to suffer more, get dirtier; you should arrive at the top in a casket, that’s what we pay you for.”
Asked about the pain of getting dropped, Knetemann say, “It’s too bad, sir, but at a certain point you just can’t do it. And when can’t do it any more, you get dropped. Too bad. Nothing to make a fuss about.”
Perhaps I love this book so much because the protagonist narrating the story is a journalist/writer turned cyclist at age thirty. I fancy myself a combination of those two, so I particularly loved this little soliloquy: “I believed that, while cycling, I would come up with thoughts and ideas for the stories I’d be writing the rest of the time. Fat chance. The rest of my time I spent jotting in my cycling logbook and keeping statistics on my distance and times, and while cycling I thought of nothing at all.
Ha!!
Fear of heights, multiplied by my velocity. Don’t look to the side. The wind blows right through me…
Descents scare me, I’m the worst downhill rider here…
A sign. It says that the speed limit here is 60 kilometers per hour. My brain flashes a joke for my approval: point at that sign and waggle my finger at the others. Joke rejected.
Curves.
Yup. there we go.I think of coming down a mountain in Eastern Washington State in a small group ride from the The Bicycle Butler bike shop. Switchbacks and all, the pack flying. I was in my drops, aero, keeping up, and then--a switchback, I braked—out of instinct and self-preservation—I slowed, and I was dropped like a wounded bird from the flock.
...saw a rider meticulously peeling a banana with both hands on a downhill stretch at 65 kilometers an hour…
Comments like those about the “up-and coming Hinault” and anectodes of cycling history woven in the consciousness of the rider—the narrator—all in the course of a 150 km race make us as readers feel part of cycling history, part of this race in 1977
Who the hell goes cycling on a hot day like this?
The book’s opening will grab you, if you are one who identifies with the story, or if you are obsessive about any passion in your life. The narrator looks up from his gear at the spectators. "Non-racers…The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
Perhaps that’s the crux of it. When cycling becomes so central to our core that a life without it seems empty: there, I figured it out. That’s why I love this book so much.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Lois Lowry
I'm so behind blogging...so much to do, so much to say.
I have more pictures to post of my visit to Crestview and Indian Hills in Clive, Iowa, but I'll do that after finishing final grades....this is too time-consuming.
I do, however, want to mention that after Lois Lowry's live online booktalk through School Library Journal, I quickly ordered Gathering Blue (which I had started and never finished), Messenger, and her latest novel in the series, Son.
Image lifted from Amazon, obviously:
I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know these four books were a series. Not having gotten far enough in Gathering Blue to see the connections (which were sort of magically aha-inspiring when I got there), I didn't know that an answer existed in the universe as to what happened to Jonas and Gabe at the end of The Giver, which I've read many times. I love that book so much, I even required it a few times when I taught Humanities Critical Thinking at SCC, in hopes that the idea of treasuring knowledge and learning might sink in.
So, in between grading and the frantic pace of December in a college, I did plow through the last three books. Lois Lowry is a master of character and what I would call magical realism. She creates a dystopian world but makes the characters so heroic and human, even with their gifts, that I couldn't put down any of the books.
Son was truly a crowning end to the series. It's an epic struggle of good-heartedness against controlling society and against evil (is there a difference?). In the Ceremony of "Twelves"--the ceremony where Jonas was named "Receiver" from the "Giver," Claire is named "Birthmother." Birthmothers' job is reminiscent of "Handmaid's Tale" by Maraget Atwood. When something goes terribly wrong with the birth, Claire is deemed unfit for her position in the community and cast out of the birthmothers' dwelling. In a new position, no one remembers to give her the daily pill that eradicates emotion and desire. Hence, she longs for the son she's never seen. The longing leads her on a quest that reaches the edge of the Community and beyond. Gripping, chilling, delightful, tragic, and heart-warming. Worth every second of reading.
The novel is richer if you've read the whole series--or at least The Giver, but it's a stand-alone story if you haven't.
I wished for just a little more conflict toward the end of the book, even though the tension all the way through made me want to yell the truths at the characters (the only book in the series where dramatic irony pulls us along--we know much more than the characters in this story). So the wish for more conflict wasn't due to a lack of it in the book. It's just that the final "battle" seemed almost too easy...I wanted it to demand just a little more...but who am I to be in the least bit critical of a master storyteller like Lois Lowry???? The book was masterful, powerful, horrifying and wonderful.
Any fan of The Giver should read the entire series.
I think I admire her so much, and love her characters and stories so much that she may have moved up onto my pedestal with Harper Lee and Barbara Kingsolver Dennis LeHayne and Marguerite Henry and Lois Lenski and Carol Ryrie Brink and Mary Calhoun and Astrid Lindgren and Sarah Pennypacker: enduring, forever-favorite writers of stories I love.
I have more pictures to post of my visit to Crestview and Indian Hills in Clive, Iowa, but I'll do that after finishing final grades....this is too time-consuming.
I do, however, want to mention that after Lois Lowry's live online booktalk through School Library Journal, I quickly ordered Gathering Blue (which I had started and never finished), Messenger, and her latest novel in the series, Son.
Image lifted from Amazon, obviously:
I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know these four books were a series. Not having gotten far enough in Gathering Blue to see the connections (which were sort of magically aha-inspiring when I got there), I didn't know that an answer existed in the universe as to what happened to Jonas and Gabe at the end of The Giver, which I've read many times. I love that book so much, I even required it a few times when I taught Humanities Critical Thinking at SCC, in hopes that the idea of treasuring knowledge and learning might sink in.
So, in between grading and the frantic pace of December in a college, I did plow through the last three books. Lois Lowry is a master of character and what I would call magical realism. She creates a dystopian world but makes the characters so heroic and human, even with their gifts, that I couldn't put down any of the books.
Son was truly a crowning end to the series. It's an epic struggle of good-heartedness against controlling society and against evil (is there a difference?). In the Ceremony of "Twelves"--the ceremony where Jonas was named "Receiver" from the "Giver," Claire is named "Birthmother." Birthmothers' job is reminiscent of "Handmaid's Tale" by Maraget Atwood. When something goes terribly wrong with the birth, Claire is deemed unfit for her position in the community and cast out of the birthmothers' dwelling. In a new position, no one remembers to give her the daily pill that eradicates emotion and desire. Hence, she longs for the son she's never seen. The longing leads her on a quest that reaches the edge of the Community and beyond. Gripping, chilling, delightful, tragic, and heart-warming. Worth every second of reading.
The novel is richer if you've read the whole series--or at least The Giver, but it's a stand-alone story if you haven't.
I wished for just a little more conflict toward the end of the book, even though the tension all the way through made me want to yell the truths at the characters (the only book in the series where dramatic irony pulls us along--we know much more than the characters in this story). So the wish for more conflict wasn't due to a lack of it in the book. It's just that the final "battle" seemed almost too easy...I wanted it to demand just a little more...but who am I to be in the least bit critical of a master storyteller like Lois Lowry???? The book was masterful, powerful, horrifying and wonderful.
Any fan of The Giver should read the entire series.
I think I admire her so much, and love her characters and stories so much that she may have moved up onto my pedestal with Harper Lee and Barbara Kingsolver Dennis LeHayne and Marguerite Henry and Lois Lenski and Carol Ryrie Brink and Mary Calhoun and Astrid Lindgren and Sarah Pennypacker: enduring, forever-favorite writers of stories I love.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Connecticut school shooting
The news is mind-blowing: Shooting at a Connecticut elementary school..
It's so bad, I am at a loss...
Who could shoot a kindergartner? I guess the same kind of person who can abuse a child...
What is wrong with this world?
I don't remember being this shaken by national news except three in my life:
When President Kennedy was shot
When the Challenger blew up
When the World Trade Center blew up
This seems somehow even worse because the disregard of the murderer is so personal and so cruel and so lasting and inflicted by choice.
The world is screwed up beyond my ability to believe.
In the meantime, my heart is breaking for those moms and dads and sisters and brothers and little kids who watched their classmates get shot.
I'll write more when I have more to say or make some sense out of it.
It's so bad, I am at a loss...
Who could shoot a kindergartner? I guess the same kind of person who can abuse a child...
What is wrong with this world?
I don't remember being this shaken by national news except three in my life:
When President Kennedy was shot
When the Challenger blew up
When the World Trade Center blew up
This seems somehow even worse because the disregard of the murderer is so personal and so cruel and so lasting and inflicted by choice.
The world is screwed up beyond my ability to believe.
In the meantime, my heart is breaking for those moms and dads and sisters and brothers and little kids who watched their classmates get shot.
I'll write more when I have more to say or make some sense out of it.
Monday, December 10, 2012
"Gasland" and "Girl Meets Boy"
Have you seen GASLAND?
I finally watched it last night. The documentary had been on my "to watch" list since I heard about it. School and other obligations have kept me from watching a single movie for a long time.
Holy smoke. I want EVERYBODY in the country to watch this movie. The destruction of water systems, drinking water, livelihoods, farmland, human health to say nothing of ANIMAL health, is devastating. And the oil and gas companies don't seem to care because they're making soooo much money.
I finally watched it last night. The documentary had been on my "to watch" list since I heard about it. School and other obligations have kept me from watching a single movie for a long time.
Holy smoke. I want EVERYBODY in the country to watch this movie. The destruction of water systems, drinking water, livelihoods, farmland, human health to say nothing of ANIMAL health, is devastating. And the oil and gas companies don't seem to care because they're making soooo much money.
While I was watching the movie, I kept thinking, this is the new dystopia. We are creating the world we've seen in the
Dystopian stories. It's like the world from "The Road" or from "Hunger Games." Frack enough of our countryside, and it looks possible.
I wish I were kidding.
And the new Matt Damon movie, Promised Land will be in Theaters everywhere January 4. We all better see it if we want to keep our country.
On a BRIGHTER NOTE, my short story "Mars at Night" is part of "Girl Meets Boy" and Kirkus Review named it one of "Best Teen Books"!! Whooeeee! (Scroll to the bottom).
Do the two tie together? Yes...actually, the characters in my story "Mars at Night" live on. Some reviewers said they "need their own novel." Well, I've shifted and twisted them, and moved them from rural Iowa to rural Minnesota, and they have new names, but essentially, I think they will live on...and instead of fighting the invasion of hog factories ("Mars at Night") which is a moot point--it has happened; big factory farms have won except in small range-free and organic farms; what Maddie and Ben have to fight: Fracking and Frac-sand plants. Stay tuned.
On a BRIGHTER NOTE, my short story "Mars at Night" is part of "Girl Meets Boy" and Kirkus Review named it one of "Best Teen Books"!! Whooeeee! (Scroll to the bottom).
Do the two tie together? Yes...actually, the characters in my story "Mars at Night" live on. Some reviewers said they "need their own novel." Well, I've shifted and twisted them, and moved them from rural Iowa to rural Minnesota, and they have new names, but essentially, I think they will live on...and instead of fighting the invasion of hog factories ("Mars at Night") which is a moot point--it has happened; big factory farms have won except in small range-free and organic farms; what Maddie and Ben have to fight: Fracking and Frac-sand plants. Stay tuned.
Crestview and Indian Hills
I lost my phone, and therefore all my photos. I'm hoping to get some photos I can upload here from the schools in Clive, Iowa because those two days were a BLAST.
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