The literary rabbit hole

When this long weekend dawned (we had no school on Friday) I felt the warm breeze that carries the promise of a literary retreat. "I get to read this weekend." I thought. "Read" in this sense refers not only to the action of reading commentary and school reading during the week, which is indeed enjoyable. On a weekend in a house to myself, though, reading means pursuing every whim, researching each writer, idea, piece of literature that crosses my path. I set down the rabbit hole of reading, and thanks to my computer and the public library there is never a light at the end of the tunnel signalling the cessation of searching. 

The opening to the tunnel often lurks surreptitiously, as it did that Saturday in June when I watched this video of Damien Lewis performing Antony's monologue from Julius Caesar; or two weekends ago when I was perusing an 11th grade American Literature text book and read this excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr's book Stride Toward Freedom (link is a classroom handout). 


In the first instance, I tumbled into an obsession that led me to reference Julius Caesar in nearly every conversation I had for the next two weeks. It also furnished reading material for the 13 hour flight from Amman, Jordan to Chicago, which I spent swiping back and forth on the screen of my iPhone in order to read the zoomed-in PDF pages of the play (Ben Gurion Security confiscated my larger e-reader devices). 

In the second instance, I read King's allusion to the verse in the gospel of John in which Jesus says to Peter "Put up thy sword!" (John 18:11). Fresh from a Quaker conference during which I mulled over a lot of theology and Christology, I recognised this command as an essential fragment of scripture for opponents to violence. (There was a bumper sticker on the car that I rode out to the conference in: "When Jesus said 'love thine enemies', I'm pretty sure he meant don't kill them.") 



For the rest of the weekend I thought about Jesus's command against violence, especially when Sunday's sermon covered what I consider a confusing text: Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). Yes, Mary gets the goods by listening to Jesus rather than cleaning house, but every church community I've ever felt good in had a crew of people serving as Marthas. Capital Church in Salt Lake City, with its tireless team of greeters, coffee makers, popcorn poppers, child care takers, flyer printers, providers of sweet-smelling foam soap in the bathrooms, is a prime example of a church well-endowed with diligent Marthas, who address all the decidedly non-spiritual touches which made the church building a warm space fit for community- (and spirit-) building. Anyway, the link back to Jesus and non-violence had to do with the reminder that violence, ("the sword") is wielded in many ways, especially against women, that don't involve a sword. 

Now for this week's tunnel, the opening to which was tucked into the practice test for the Indiana State CORE Teaching Assessment, the test I must pass in order to teach English in this state (the same one I was preparing for when I came across the King excerpt). 

The practice test I bought included the following excerpt. 

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.

To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What pray, is a few hours a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.

First of all, I got the question related to this text wrong on the practice test. I said that the passage indicated "a controlling ambition" in the main character, Caroline Meeber. To me she seems controlled by the ambition to leave her town and pursue life in the city. Despite her hesitations, she does what Joyce's Eveline cannot: she breaks the ties with home, and faces into the headwind of change.

The test said that this passage indicates an "internal conflict" which I thought was not very bold. Every main character has, at some level, an internal conflict (right? I'm actually not sure about that). And I don't sense a conviction in Caroline to stay where she is. A recognition of what one is leaving, even a recognition that it has been good, is not an indication of a desire to stay. I can say this with confidence after my recent departure from Palestine. 

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this extract, and found by googling a few phrases that it is from the book Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser. I had never heard of Dreiser before, so what did I do? Yes! And here's the article I found: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/21/the-cost-of-desire

When reading New Yorker articles, especially book reviews like this one, I am often awed by the journalist's apparent breadth of awareness, confidence in making bold assertions on the topic of six recently-published tomes he is reviewing, and ability to touch on several ideas central to human existence in a satisfying way without coming to a conclusion about any of them. And yet still they end the article in a way that makes my mind smile.

I was so smitten by this article that I looked up David Denby, who is now 72, and who was known primarily as the film critic of the New Yorker until 2012 or so, and is now a staff writer. (The article above was published in 2001.) 

I found quickly that he is also well known for writing the book Great Books in which he describes his experience of re-enrolling at Columbia College, decades after he graduated from that institution, in order to take the Literature Humanities course, whose syllabus consists of the pillar texts of the western canon, through a new lens. 

My friend Kaitlin actually gave me this book during our senior year of high school, once I had been accepted to Columbia and was looking with excitement at my very own pile of those Great Books. I don't think I made it past the first chapter of Denby's book. Which means I probably read as many words in that books as I read of most of the books on the course syllabus - not through any wilful neglect: I am a slow reader, and reading a book the size of Metamorphoses each week was not feasible. I think I learned more about Ovid ogling the ceilings of the Morgan Museum on Madison Avenue than I did in the Lit Hum classroom). 

Denby's most recent book is one I'd like to read in its entirety: Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-Four Books That Can Change Lives. Denby spent time in tenth grade literature classes to see what kind of readers kids are now that they have near-constant screen access. In this article, he explains his project, and provides a look at one of his classroom experiences in a Manhattan school. 

Denby finds that the kids are rather dark when writing poetry. (Truly, take a look at the excerpt in the above link, if only to read the poetry the students wrote in response after reading some poems by Sylvia Plath.) I have often been struck by the same darkness he notes. When given the chance to write poetry, no student writes pastoral reflections on the beauty of life; they recount the unforgiving realities of their lives. This was evident at Ramallah Friends School, where the students who submitted writing to the literary magazine wrote about the difficulty of life under Occupation, but it's also true in the other examples of tenth grade poetry I've read in Changing English articles. While the consistency of the trend is surprising, the fact that students write dark content somehow isn't. Why not flex one's ability to comment, with acid, if possible, on the many ways in which teenagers are wrangled like wild horses? 

The tunnel this weekend has had another branch. This one sprung from a podcast I listened to on the way to the Richmond Museum of Art. Actually, I should make this another post. 


This song is playing in the coffee shop where my jaw is contracting from the caffeine from the (single shot??) americano I just drank: 

Earlham College Leadership Academy

This week is the first of a two week summer school / summer camp that the Earlham MAT students help orchestrate for about 40 kids from area middle schools. It takes place in the morning, and involves typical camp activities like games and teamwork challenges and more academic skills like graphing and reading and analysing texts.

My partner in teaching is Mr. Bell, and we are having the opportunity to apply some of what we've been reading about in our lesson plans. We have a group of 7 students we are working (the self-named "Alpha Leaders"). As a group, they must prepare a presentation that presents some element of life in 2050. At the end of camp there will be a grand presentation of all the group projects, and each group must give some background information on the element of life they're focusing on, and what it will be like in 2050 based on their predictions. This is all about using past knowledge to make educated guesses about the future, one of my favourite academic tasks (as I have written about in reading drama especially).

Our group has a mix of ages, personalities, academic strengths and senses of humour. It is such a delight to be back in the classroom. Students are so great. Always surprising, amazingly smart, quick on the uptake ...

Recently I was reading an article by my favourite economist, Thorstein Veblen, who points out that 

"IT is one of the commonplaces of the received economic theory that work is irksome. Many a discussion proceeds on this axiom that, so far as regards economic matters, men desire above all things to get the goods produced by labor and to avoid the labor by which the goods are produced."

Veblen acknowledges that he is making grand generalisations, but is this not true? Going to work is, for the most part, seen as undesirable. 

Veblen points out that "The avowal does not cover all effort, but only such as is of some use; it is, more particularly, such effort as is vulgarly recognized to be useful labor." We do not shrink, for example, from "the effort that goes into war, politics, or other employments of a similar nature. And there is commonly no avowed aversion to sports or other similar employments that yield neither a pecuniary gain nor a useful product." 

This is surely true for students. They have boundless energy, which they happily expend on activities of their own choice, but somewhere along the line they learn that school work is odious. What I have enjoyed about working with the middle school students so far is that, while they may roll their eyes at the idea of doing a "useful" task, they quickly become invested in the actual work associated with it. Today during a graphing project, everyone was 100% engaged in a challenging and immediately satisfying task of plotting charted data on a line graph. 

I think it is one of the joys and challenges of teaching to come up with ways to stave off the perceived "irksomeness of labor" (Veblen's title) which creeps in through mediocre schooling. How do we do this? It shall surely be my lifelong challenge to find out. 

Certainly trying to incorporate student choice into the classroom helps. Can they choose some of the topics covered? Can they choose texts? Can they choose the subject and method for a presentation? 

Another source of irksomeness is boredom associated with listening silently to someone else, then having to do what they say. How a student's voice is involved in a lesson is key. I spoke about this with a friend, who pointed out that we should think about what verb we place int he blank in the following sentence: 

As a teacher I try to _______________ my student['s] voice.  

Do I give my student voice? 

Do I incorporate my student's voice?

Do I celebrate my student's voice?

Empower his voice?

Challenge?

Seek?

Listen to?

Is it enough to give a student voice? Is it too ambitious to hope to celebrate the voice of each student in a 25 person class? Certainly, my job is less irksome when the students are doing more talking. The MATs, in their feedback session this afternoon, acknowledged the glee they felt when students willingly participate in a lesson or discussion. There's no better feeling that knowing you've successfully gotten the students invested in the topic at hand. But if I've chosen the topic and questions, how much of their pure voice am I really honouring? I don't know the answers to these questions. 

Switching gears some, on the topic of irksomeness of the teacher's job, versus the joy of it:

When I made the decision to take on debt to pursue this program, a pragmatic friend told me that it was a fine idea, as long as I was ready to sacrifice the fun of pursuing whatever I want after the program is over, in order to service the debt. "You can't go get another passion job," was the friend's conclusion. 

This attitude aligns with the phenomenon Veblen identifies, but I rankle at it. Am I not pursuing this degree because I feel a level of passion about the job that the degree will permit me to do? Teaching is the passion job.

It is nice to feel as though my job is enjoyable when I do it well. If I plan poorly and it's just me and the sullen students in the classroom, it's irksome. If I plan successfully, and kids are engaged, it's energising and satisfying. I suppose we all have a level of influence over the irksomeness of our work, depending on our attitude and our preparation. I feel this is especially true for teachers. 

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

One of the joys of free museums is the opportunity to enter a museum with 35 minutes of free time and take a marvellous tour through the galleries that expose you to new artists and art forms. I experienced this joy today at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which is having its annual "Free Summer" days.


I'm attending the United Society of Friends Women International Triennial in Cedar Rapids, and this afternoon there were buy-in tours of area interests. I did not sign up, and held my own self-guided tour of downtown Cedar Rapids. The highlight was the small art museum, which I would not have visited were it not for the free days.

Here is a smattering.

This exhibit sought to answer the question, "What makes American art American?" What themes or ideas have inspired an art form that is notably different from that of other countries? In the 18th century American artists generally travelled to Europe to train in the art schools there, but by the 19th century (this same phenomenon happened in literature, actually) artists were basically conducting their own training here, establishing their own methods and techniques. 

These show a bit of the diversity in the museum's collection of the styles that emerged. I love that each of them, either in its style of its subject, is cheeky. I think cheekiness is a definite theme in American art.

The museum also had several pieces from Rodin's work representing important people in French cultural life. The pieces of Balzac, Hugo and Claude Lorrain evoked what must have been the larger than life personalities of these men. The whole placard on Lorrain is worth reading; I love that Rodin tried to let the light dance off the statue in a way that would mimic the effect Lorrain admired in the sun (which he is presumably observing); both the subject and the audience are enjoying the same light effect. That's cool.

One of the things I like about my one-time-local art museum The Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine, is the gallery devoted to the Wyeth family painters. There is something gratifying about looking at a family of artists, imaging these people in the same home, the love of their work being passed down as much across breakfast conversation and rural vista-viewing as in DNA.

A similar exhibit at the CR Museum of Art showed the Lasansky family, primarily father Mauricio and son Diego, print makers both.

There was a video which nicely showed the technique involved in making a print, which I hadn't known at all. I love this wall of Martin Luthers.

This bearded man is from Mauricio Lasansky, the father and "one of the most important print makers of the 20th century."

I didn't photograph this painting's plaque. Here is the info from the museum website, for this exhibit on the women of the collection. It's called Ladies of the Club, which I found diminutive, with a "ladies who lunch" connotation. This piece is by Ann Royer.

Art. A Marriott in the Mid West seems like it would be an artistic wasteland. And indeed it is, except for the market place packed in the suitcases of Kenyan and Jamaican Friends women. Also, the outfits of the Kenyan women make up for the deficit of any number of bland hotels along this state route. Not to mention the emotional power and spiritual heft of their singing, which we have been treated to daily.

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

One of the joys of free museums is the opportunity to enter a museum with 35 minutes of free time and take a marvellous tour through the galleries that expose you to new artists and art forms. I experienced this joy today at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which is having its annual "Free Summer" days.


I'm attending the United Society of Friends Women International Triennial in Cedar Rapids, and this afternoon there were buy-in tours of area interests. I did not sign up, and held my own self-guided tour of downtown Cedar Rapids. The highlight was the small art museum, which I would not have visited were it not for the free days.

Here is a smattering.

This exhibit sought to answer the question, "What makes American art American?" What themes or ideas have inspired an art form that is notably different from that of other countries? In the 18th century American artists generally travelled to Europe to train in the art schools there, but by the 19th century (this same phenomenon happened in literature, actually) artists were basically conducting their own training here, establishing their own methods and techniques. 

These show a bit of the diversity in the museum's collection of the styles that emerged. I love that each of them, either in its style of its subject, is cheeky. I think cheekiness is a definite theme in American art.

The museum also had several pieces from Rodin's work representing important people in French cultural life. The pieces of Balzac, Hugo and Claude Lorrain evoked what must have been the larger than life personalities of these men. The whole placard on Lorrain is worth reading; I love that Rodin tried to let the light dance off the statue in a way that would mimic the effect Lorrain admired in the sun (which he is presumably observing); both the subject and the audience are enjoying the same light effect. That's cool.

One of the things I like about my one-time-local art museum The Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine, is the gallery devoted to the Wyeth family painters. There is something gratifying about looking at a family of artists, imaging these people in the same home, the love of their work being passed down as much across breakfast conversation and rural vista-viewing as in DNA.

A similar exhibit at the CR Museum of Art showed the Lasansky family, primarily father Mauricio and son Diego, print makers both.

There was a video which nicely showed the technique involved in making a print, which I hadn't known at all. I love this wall of Martin Luthers.

This bearded man is from Mauricio Lasansky, the father and "one of the most important print makers of the 20th century."

I didn't photograph this painting's plaque. Here is the info from the museum website, for this exhibit on the women of the collection. It's called Ladies of the Club, which I found diminutive, with a "ladies who lunch" connotation. This piece is by Ann Royer.

Art. A Marriott in the Mid West seems like it would be an artistic wasteland. And indeed it is, except for the market place packed in the suitcases of Kenyan and Jamaican Friends women. Also, the outfits of the Kenyan women make up for the deficit of any number of bland hotels along this state route. Not to mention the emotional power and spiritual heft of their singing, which we have been treated to daily.

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

One of the joys of free museums is the opportunity to enter a museum with 35 minutes of free time and take a marvellous tour through the galleries that expose you to new artists and art forms. I experienced this joy today at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which is having its annual "Free Summer" days.

I'm attending the United Society of Friends Women International Triennial in Cedar Rapids, and this afternoon there were buy-in tours of area interests. I did not sign up, and held my own self-guided tour of downtown Cedar Rapids. The highlight was the small art museum, which I would not have visited were it not for the free days.

Here is a smattering.

This exhibit sought to answer the question, "What makes American art American?" What themes or ideas have inspired an art form that is notably different from that of other countries? In the 18th century American artists generally travelled to Europe to train in the art schools there, but by the 19th century (this same phenomenon happened in literature, actually) artists were basically conducting their own training here, establishing their own methods and techniques. 

These show a bit of the diversity in the museum's collection of the styles that emerged. I love that each of them, either in its style of its subject, is cheeky. I think cheekiness is a definite theme in American art.

The museum also had several pieces from Rodin's work representing important people in French cultural life. The pieces of Balzac, Hugo and Claude Lorrain evoked what must have been the larger than life personalities of these men. The whole placard on Lorrain is worth reading; I love that Rodin tried to let the light dance off the statue in a way that would mimic the effect Lorrain admired in the sun (which he is presumably observing); both the subject and the audience are enjoying the same light effect. That's cool.

One of the things I like about my one-time-local art museum The Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine, is the gallery devoted to the Wyeth family painters. There is something gratifying about looking at a family of artists, imaging these people in the same home, the love of their work being passed down as much across breakfast conversation and rural vista-viewing as in DNA.

A similar exhibit at the CR Museum of Art showed the Lasansky family, primarily father Mauricio and son Diego, print makers both.

There was a video which nicely showed the technique involved in making a print, which I hadn't known at all. I love this wall of Martin Luthers.

Art. A Marriott in the Mid West seems like it would be an artistic wasteland. And indeed it is, except for the market place packed in the suitcases of Kenyan and Jamaican Friends women. Also, the outfits of the Kenyan women make up for the deficit of any number of bland hotels along this state route. Not to mention the emotional power and spiritual heft of their singing, which we have been treated to daily.

Fiction for the Fourth

This weekend my roommate went back to Ohio to spend time with her family, and I had our 1840 house to myself. The rainy weather and the dark, log cabin interior to our house made reading the activity of choice.

For school, I'm reading Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence (reviewed along with other adolescent books here). It has raised a million questions about what it was like for my mother to raise three of us; by this book's calculation, adolescence begins at 10 and ends around 25, so she was dealing with three adolescents for a while, and is still dealing with one!




The book argues compellingly that the best thing we can do for teens is help them develop their impulse control. Self-regulation is key to success (not to mention safety) during adolescence and later in life. What's more, self-regulation can be taught, while intelligence cannot, really.


 

He also argues that the phenomenon which everyone will recognise of adolescence lasting longer, with twenty-somethings living at home and people delaying marriage and parenthood, can be a boon to society if managed well. He says that adolescence is a period of brain plasticity, during which we remain hyper impressionable. This can be good - the more different and challenging things we are exposed to as adolescents, the more open-minded we will be. Better to test and stretch the brain as much in its plasticity than to let it settle into an unchanging mass as early as twenty.




This made me feel like I want to keep traveling and teaching, two things which support brain plasticity in my experience. Challenge, surprise, dynamism, and constantly a flow of new people.




In school reading related to my other school, Richmond High School, I was enthralled by one title in particular that Meg, my mentor teacher, recommended I read from the tenth grade reading list. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is a memoir from a girl who grew up in a family that was constantly on the move in the western US. It is a recounting that emphasises, above all, that children can get used to anything, and will consider whatever they have as normal if their parents do (granted that they don't have easy access to peers to compare themselves to). It is a marvellous story which also brings home the importance of loving parents, when all kinds of other resources - money, jobs, extended family, schools - are not present.


In short fiction this weekend, I read "The Fugitive" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, a story of a young Mexican man in California, dealing with illness, and listened to this wonderful short story twice (when I listen to things, I really need to listen to them twice): Ben Lerner reading John Berger's "Woven, Sir." The discussions which follow, which always irk Monica for their high brow nature, are to me like mini lessons in contemporary literature, so I like them, even if they are stuffy. 

I also enjoyed sitting by the rainy window and having coffee in a new (well, old), and finally properly sized coffee cup which I found at a thrift store last week.