I'd Rather Be in Italy

Story for a Full Moon

2012-01-08T21:34:00.003-05:00

I love Italo Calvino's stories. Tonight I ran across news that an album of music inspired by If on a winter's night a traveler... will be released this week, and the samples sound lovely. I'll write more once I get my hands on the whole thing. I hadn't heard the following story before, but I thought this little film was just beautiful.

The distance from the moon - Italo Calvino

Mountain Vistas

2011-12-30T21:02:00.009-05:00

So yesterday I was flying over the Rocky Mountains. They are so beautiful. I was flying home after visiting family for Christmas. Of course, once I got off my diet of work-related stress, my body relaxed so much I spent much of my time away feeling sick, but I also did a lot of hard playing with my nephew and niece. They are two fun kids. My nephew is sweet as can be, and my niece is a spunkcat! We spent a lot of time laughing and coloring and having fun. Yesterday before I flew out we played "camping," which I hope is what we will be doing the next time I go home.

Also on this trip out, my sister-in-law treated me to a pedicure, which is something I've never managed to do before. Very nice and enjoyable. We've decided that it needs to be an annual girls'-day-out activity - hopefully next winter my sister and our to-be sister-in-law will be there too.

And we managed to see the new Muppet Movie. It earned my laughter and my tears and my stamp of approval - finally something with the Muppet name has been created with Muppet spirit. Which may be the biggest compliment I could pay for that one.

So it's winter, and I find myself less talkative. At least today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be more loquacious. Anyway, the vacation was all-too-short, and yesterday I found myself flying over the mountains. Which leads us to today's song. Make yourself happy and blow up the video - whoever put this one together did a beautiful job. And the view at 1:34 reminds me of home. Not in winter.

Midlake - Core of Nature

I tried rutabagas.

2011-11-27T21:26:00.008-05:00

The secret is that Garrison Keillor made me do it.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Writer's Almanac. I find the information fascinating and I love to read the poems again afterward, but I am not the president of the Garrison Keillor fan club. I just disagree with his way of reading most of the time. Too slow. Too many pauses for breath. Tone of befuddlement, especially in situations where befuddlement doesn't work. And yet, I have to listen. I like most of the stories, and the poetry! It's all about the poetry. And yet... there is this one other issue. Of course, a few years ago I wrote a poem about it:

*****

Why I really regret having picked up the habit of listening to Writer's Almanac every morning

When, standing in the bookstore aisle, I open up somewhere in the middle of a new book of poetry to peruse and test its waters;

When, settling in with a new collection, repetition and flow wash over me (O that this poet's words were mine!);

When, pencil in hand, I dot the final line of my own feeble attempts, scanning back over my own lines with some satisfaction;

Elation! Joy! Soaring! But too soon,

that crazy Writer's Almanac theme music

(zippy from the end of the show, not slow and plodding from the introduction)

rips through my mind announcing

the end of the poem.

Garrison has finished his reading for the day.

Time to put the poem down. I am off to

Be well, I set my hands to

Do good work, and I try to figure out with whom I would like to

Keep in touch.

Oh, wait. I had more poetry to live.

Lost, I search vainly to figure out where I was.

*****

So last Tuesday, Garrison read a poem about rutabagas. And I was so taken in by the description of them as having a

"...dug-up texture,

the hint of dirt

that couldn't be baked away,"

that I went out that afternoon and bought two rutabagas.

When I started peeling them, I was shocked at the thick layer of paraffin coating them. I cut them into large cubes and roasted them with cubed pork loin and with other vegetables: sweet potatoes, baby red potatoes, carrots, garlic, and mushrooms.

The rutabagas were a delight. They tasted just like the poem said they would. Point Keillor.

Here is a song from a Christmas album I downloaded this afternoon. I may post more from it while the holiday season is on. I liked the Christmas albums so much I went back and downloaded everything Amazon had by them. I think this is a band I will enjoy getting to know better. Anyway. Enjoy the surprise halfway through this one.

Future of Forestry - Joy To The World

Leaves

2011-11-25T05:21:00.004-05:00

So it's fall and the trees have been very busy dumping their leaves. Thanksgiving is always a reference point for me. It seems like my first few years living here, there were still lots of leaves left on the trees as we rolled into the last part of November. This year, definitely not. We have had some early cold, and most of the leaves are down.

I write about this because my new classroom has me parking on the back lot of the school now rather than the front, and in the back lot, there is a tree with different leaves. In the front it's all maple and other super-broad-leaved trees; in the back there is a tree with smaller, skinnier leaves. (Sorry, I do not know which trees are which, so you'll have to believe this rudimentary description.) They are rounded at the base, about three inches long and 1/2 inch across, and they form a slight point at the end. Go figure. Anyway, this tree must have dropped millions and millions of these little leaves. They are all over the back of the lot, and when it rains, they coat your car like fur.

But what struck me was walking out to my car in the rain the other day - the sound of the rain drops hitting the leaves was so staccato, like a million rattlesnakes rattling, just beautiful - and so different from the normal sounds of rain hitting pavement or (more silently) grass. It reminded me of rain in the forest - it reminded me of the green expanse beyond the city that houses most of my life. I felt wonderful and alive.

The next day when I got in my car after school, more leaf madness. As I drove along the street, one of these leaves flew up from the vent area below the the windshield wipers and behind the hood, and started to dance across my windshield. Because it was damp, the ends stuck to the glass, but the middle rippled and waved and forced slow movement upward toward the top of the car. When I came to a stop, it fell, and it blew away.

Hooray for leaves. I will be glad in the spring when they come back again. I'll have to take a closer look at that tree so I can figure out what kind it is.

Bing Crosby - Autumn Leaves

An Introduction

2011-10-20T23:59:00.002-04:00

Tonight I met a new poet and I am reduced to runny-nosed tears reading her beautiful, beautiful work. If you haven't already, please meet Wislawa Szymborska. I won't clog up this meeting chatting away - here she is:

Under a Certain Little Star

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.

I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.

Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.

Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory.

I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked per second.

I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first.

Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.

I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping in at five in the morning.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.

Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.

And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,

forever staring motionless at that selfsame spot,

absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.

I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.

I apologize to big questions for small answers.

O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.

O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.

Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train.

Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.

I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.

I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.

I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,

because I myself am an obstacle to myself.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,

and later try hard to make them seem light.

Translated from the Polish by Magnus Jan Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

Not Johnny Cash

2011-10-17T20:36:00.002-04:00

Before I even get started, let me just say that I am running in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation these days. I don't know what that has to do with anything, it's just that I figure it must have a lot to do with everything. Go figure. So maybe I overreacted, but I don't think I did.

Well. Here we go then. So anyone who sort of keeps up with this blog has figured out that I really like music and that I try to keep up with some small fraction of music coming out of Italy. Usually this is an enjoyable endeavor - one that sends me hunting for downloads and gets me trying to sing along. And I have found so much wonderful music this way. Usually it is wonderful. Every once in a while it's disastrous.

Like today. Early this morning, I turned on Italian radio and one or two songs later, I heard a very familiar guitar riff - the opening to Solitary Man. Which is one of the great songs in the whole universe. Except then, it was being sung in an Italian translation that just completely failed at doing it justice. It was more a song of "please don't leave me" and "what would I do if you left me too" than a song of resignation to the singer's own solitude. I couldn't believe the gross distance by which this one missed the mark. A shame.

You know, I don't think that sleep deprivation is forcing me to over-exaggerate at all. It really was horrible. So let's just make a rule that when Johnny Cash does a song, no one really needs to come behind him and do it again. He was just too spare and poignant to need a redux.

Ok, and yes, I do know it was originally a Neil Diamond song. But let's be real. It's a Johnny Cash song down deep through and through. Sorry, Neil.

Johnny Cash - Solitary Man

What has been playing in my head for days

2011-10-06T03:49:00.003-04:00

At work, I've been streaming a lot of Italian radio. This because I'm teaching fewer classes but experiencing a much higher workload, and music has always helped keep me concentrating when at the computer. Finally, though, I'm finding that locating and downloading Italian music is becoming much easier and much less expensive than it has been. So when I heard this song, I zoomed right over to Amazon and downloaded it. And now a couple of songs on this album are on a continual loop in my head. They're quite catchy.

A note, though: I was promoting listening to Italian radio with my college class the other night and during the break I turned it on, and of course some old 70's - early 80's song that sounded not-so-great was playing. I tried to pass it off saying that with the time differential, it was the middle of the night there---but let's be real. Quite off-putting.

Modà - Sono già solo

Medieval Weapon of Choice

2011-10-02T07:52:00.004-04:00

I love catapults. This morning's Cul de Sac cartoon got me wishing (again) for a great big full-size catapult of my very own.

Why do I love catapults? Because I seriously rolled off the couch laughing the first time I saw this:

SNL - Yard-A-Pult

It's the dog that gets me. I talked about that one for years - I think it's the funniest thing SNL has ever done.

When I was in Torino years and years ago we visited a beautiful park (Parco del Valentino) by the Po that has a replica of a medieval village. There we found a weaponry shop and they had the most fantastic catapult - just big enough to have some torque, maybe a 15-inch arm - for sale. It wasn't just that it was a catapult - it was beautifully styled with rope and wooden wheels, etc, so it was captivating in a way your amazon.com balsa catapult-from-a-kit could never be. (They also had a little guillotine, which to me is much more scary but almost as cool.) Sadly, I was in no position to buy it, but the last time I was in Italy I did get an itty-bitty working catapult pencil sharpener at the Colosseum. Yes, I realize that catapults have nothing to do with the Colosseum, but that is the souvenir I bought there. It's about big enough to launch an M&M. Mostly it has been used to launch wads of paper at my webcam when Skyping with my nephew and niece.

Wow. I've got to get back to Torino.

Hooray for the catapult and its family of flinging weapons. I can't embed it, but here is a great video for the road - a British medieval weapons enthusiast with a great big trebuchet. Enjoy. Really.

And how about a song?

Elizabeth & the Catapult - Taller Children

Dear Elizabeth Warren,

2011-09-24T08:48:00.002-04:00

please run for president. I'll pull for you 100%.

Thanks,

Melissa

So Much for September

2011-09-23T19:19:00.007-04:00

Well, it must be September and the start of school because this blog has not been updated for a while. So here are some of the happenings and the ideas kicking around my head for the last little bit:

I watched the Emmy Awards last Sunday and realized that I was actually more interested in them than I was in the Academy Awards last spring. Read: TV is more interesting than movies. Sad to say it, but let's face it: Modern Family and The Daily Show are the BOMB. Both shows are so smart and funny, with real things to say about the world we live in. Now, I have certainly not sworn off movies altogether, but movie theater movies? In 2011 I have gone out to see Harry Potter 7.2, Thor, and The Help. So I have been trying to figure out why I have arrived at a point where a sitcom is more engaging than a film. There are a couple of possible reasons: a TV show obviously offers more time for character play - (not necessarily character development) - and I really like to laugh, but I find most comic movies sophomoric. Let's face it - smart movies aren't usually funny, but smart TV can be.

[Side note: Not that movies are bad. The Help was so very awesome. I cried through at least six napkins and walked away with purpose. Loved it.]

Jon Stewart, I love you. Still.

I am teaching some great students this year, both at the high school and at the university. Switching to teaching was the best career move I could have possibly ever made. Once upon a time in college, I wanted to study Italian teaching, but they refused to let me do it because it wasn't one of six approved teaching languages. Well, phooey on you, university where I did my undergrad, I got what I wanted in spite of you. :P

One of the students in my university class gave me props this week for knowing how to spell Megadeth.

I had to switch classrooms this year and even though Back to School Night has come and gone, I still don't have my classroom put together the way I would like. Why on earth not, you ask? Because that will require borrowing a tall ladder from the custodians and taking a big old chunk of time to take many, many trips up and down it to hang up my flags and posters. And that has not happened yet. It may not happen this year. I did finish getting fresh paper up on most of the bulletin boards on Wednesday, and I saw one spot of the top of my desk yesterday.

I switched rooms because I am now helping to coordinate one of the programs at my school, and I needed to be next to the program offices. My new responsibilities have been quite overwhelming, and I don't feel that my feet will ever hit the ground again. I am one of those crazy cartoon characters suspended in midair with my feet churning in circles. Don't get me wrong - I am loving so much about this: the organizational aspects of my new responsibilities, the people I'm with whom I'm working more closely now, and the sense that I will really be able to help make the school work - I've just got a nice big learning curve stretching forward as far as I can see.

This has been a week of my sister and me calling each other to say "You've got to hear [insert crazy wonderful radio show] on NPR!" Fresh Air had an interview with Maurice Sendak (author/illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are). It left me in tears in the parking deck and almost made me late for class - but I could not turn the car off. I don't always like Terry Gross (she can insert way too much of her politics into her interviews, and she is too left-wing even for me) but this was a beautiful, thoughtful, and artful interview that really explored aging and loneliness while still celebrating life and Mr. Sendak's work and genius. Amilynne had me listen to this commentary from Marketplace on the "class warfare" currently underway. Also, Writer's Almanac had two beautiful poems: Unveiling, which immediately invoked images of the little yellow circular "kid's table" in the basement of my grandparents' house, and The Love Nest, which has one of the most delicious metaphors I've ever heard to make you gasp at the very end. Seriously. If you don't gasp just a little, you're probably dead. I ♥ NPR.

Speaking of NPR. One of their regular reporters is a former high school classmate. Pretty nutty to be getting ready to go to high school in the morning and hear the voice of someone you knew a million years ago in high school reporting or interviewing someone really important. Yeah.

I think that's about it for the moment. Blitzen Trapper has a new album out. Would you like a song?

Blitzen Trapper - Girl in a Coat

Tonight I hated heading home

2011-09-01T00:17:00.003-04:00

but there's work in the morning, you know?

The Smiths - There is a Light that Never Goes Out

Hope is a Rare Bird

2011-08-01T20:49:00.003-04:00

and it was showing off its lovely plumage this evening. The NY Times reports that Gabrielle Giffords arrived at the Capitol to vote for the debt ceiling bill that finally appears to be receiving enough bipartisan support that we may avert the crisis of a default. I am so happy for her and for her loved ones.

$25 of Good for FREE

2011-08-01T17:35:00.002-04:00

Usually I am not one to boast about bargains on my blog, but I just joined Kiva and made a $25 loan for free! You can too. Here's the link: http://kiva.org/invitedby/melissa5486. As of now, there are about 3,700 free $25 loans available. I have a feeling that they will be long gone by the August 13 deadline.

I am excited, too, because the loan I picked was for a weaver in the Philippines. My dad has some beautiful woven runners and place mats that he brought back from there before I was born. Eye-dazzling.

I'm not going to be wordy so I can publish and get the word out. Have a great time finding someone to help.

Now is that kind of time.

2011-07-25T21:52:00.004-04:00

Happiness and joy to you. Much is afoot. Now is the preparing time, the waiting time. Let's just say that the past weeks have not been blog-friendly. Yes, I am sleeping again. Yes, there is too much to do to fit into a day. On days like this, I search my music program for "baroque," hit shuffle, and play.

So let's try it on YouTube.

Trevor Pinnock - Ramcau, La Villageoise

Lost

2011-07-10T08:05:00.002-04:00

Only three hours of sleep last night.

Mannaggia la miseria.

The Dandy Warhols - Sleep

I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A

2011-07-09T12:23:00.002-04:00

I have had the worst insomnia for the last two weeks - basically since the start of the summer class I am teaching. It seems that the only time my body wants to sleep is from 6-11 a.m. - precisely when I need to be moving on teaching days. Apart from about two nights in the last two weeks when I think exhaustion drove me to sleep earlier, I can fall into a light sleep from about 3-6, but real restful sleep seems only available in the mornings. Hooray, then, that today is Saturday and I slept in until eleven. I feel more alert than I've felt in days.

Yes, I am a nightowl, but this is rediculous.

So I haven't been ignoring the blog, I just haven't been able to concentrate enough to put anything coherent together.

This summer, I was supposed to be reading Paradise Lost with Amilynne. She waited for two months to read it with me. Summer finally started and I gave her the go - and I got to page 2. She texted me the other day that she has finished it. I just told her that it wasn't happening for me. So last night I looked around the book shelves with free eyes - for the first time in 2 1/2 years, I am letting myself choose a book I really want to read, not something related to work (although I have read some fabulous books for work in the last couple of years). I decided on Il barone rampante by Italo Calvino - a book I have tried to start about four or five times and failed - and last night it was like the story reached out and took me in. The description of a sister who cooks every strange animal of the forest into really sadistic presentations for her family, and of the two little brothers who desperately plot to set a barrel of snails free had me - I was retching at the descriptions of her past presentations of snails.

The book has been translated into English as The Baron in the Trees and is available on Amazon. If you order it and start reading it right away, don't tell me the ending - I'm not the fastest reader in Italian, but I'm getting much better.

Italo Calvino is one of my favorite writers - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is one of my all-time favorite books. His books take the normal to a point of absurtidy - the whole time you're reading, you're thinking "Is this really what's happening?" and it really is.

Here's a song that sounds like insomnia to me.

DM Stith - Easy to be Around (Diane Cluck cover)

Endorphins.

2011-07-07T23:18:00.002-04:00

I'm feeling them from my walk this evening. I feel kind of "yay" and that is good.

In general, summer is "yay"-making, and right now that is definitely how I feel.

Tonight's walk took my most awesome take-a-walk-motivating friend and me around an island in the middle of the river. And it was the perfect time of evening: the sun was about the right height in the sky to still be daytime but it had lost the worst heat of the day, the water was blue, the swimmers were out on the rocks. Looking at it for a while, I thought how I would like to take a sketchbook there and do some drawing; maybe I will sometime.

Time to schedule another beach trip.

Summer is the best.

Janis Joplin - Summertime

3 am Bonus Track

2011-07-03T02:56:00.004-04:00

OH! I just found the most wonderful, lovely, lovely, lovely thing. Oi. Who would have ever thought this song would make you want to jump up and dance your feet off? And yet it SO works.

Mumford & Sons - England (cover of song by The National)

Tags: Mumford and Sons Unplugged, Mumford and Sons, Music Videos, Live Performances

Summer Dessert Recipes

2011-07-03T01:15:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I went to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for desserts for a 4th of July cook out. I had a box of graham cracker crumbs in my basket and midway down the dairy aisle a lady stopped me because she had a recipe that used graham crackers, and was what I had the same thing as what she needed? I was a little surprised when she started digging into her wallet and pulled out a folded up recipe - for Chocolate Eclair Cake. Oh! My enthusiasm for it must have been evident, as soon we were walking the aisles together to find what she would need to make it.

This seems like one of those recipes that belongs so firmly back home, but here it was, and I guess that in the age of the Internet, there is no recipe that will not travel.

Do I dare say I enjoy talking with other people at the grocery store? Please don't take me for a loon, but the one place in this world where I can shoot the breeze is waiting in the checkout line. Don't ask me why; I am at ease there in a way I will never be at a party. Maybe because we all know we'll be out of there in five or ten minutes. Maybe because food is interesting and that's the topic at hand at the grocery store.

So, what am I up cooking tonight? A Junior Mints Cheesecake. They had the recipe on the box years ago, and it is a winner. You will like it for sure. Here's the recipe.

Junior Mints Cheesecake

6 oz. Junior Mints (4 - 1.6 oz. boxes)

3 pkgs (8 oz. ea.) cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

Graham cracker or chocolate crumb crust for a 9" springform pan*

1. Place Junior Mints in freezer

2. Preheat oven to 350F. With electric mixer or in food processor, combine cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Pour into crust.

3. Chop cold Junior Mints and sprinkle onto cheesecake.

4. Bake 40 to 45 min. or until just set. Cool on wire rack, then chill several hours or overnight. Makes about 8 servings.

*NOTE: for crust, combine 2 cups crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar, and six tablespoons melted butter or margarine. Press into bottom and - if there is enough - up sides of pan.

Delicious. Tonight, just for fun, I also scooped out the guts of a vanilla bean and threw them in with the vanilla extract. Somehow I don't think I did wrong. It smells pretty good in the oven. Of course, I'm baking this at 1:30 a.m. because even with an air conditioner, who wants to bake during the day in the summer?

Well. I should run - I've got dishes to do and a lesson to finish prepping for church tomorrow. Would you like a song? The National has fallen off the front page again, so here is something from them.

The National - The Geese of Beverly Road

It's made me cry

2011-06-27T09:50:00.002-04:00

Today's song is the shortest little thing but it digs very deep. I love the pounding old upright-sounding piano and the drumming on something solid instead of a normal drum.

I could never do chords on the piano. Too much to keep in mind at one time. I did one piece that was one page of crazy chords. It was so frustrating to me until my piano teacher pointed out that if the chords were all strung out in arpeggios like the music I preferred to play, it would be several pages long.

I am sad today because one of my good friends is moving away. It seems like moving is what people do. The bright side is being able to meet lots of good people as they come and go - the hard part is wanting to extend the time allotted to the friendship and knowing that change is inevitable. I know that I am not one with the right to complain, as I have certainly been the one who has had to move and leave close friends behind in the past - but that bit of reason doesn't really give much comfort as someone else's car pulls away.

Magnolia Electric Co - It's Made Me Cry

These things mean summer to me:

2011-06-26T06:55:00.008-04:00

Some things on this list are memories and may never happen again. Others are ongoing. A few are new with the intention of carrying forward...

reading late, late, late into the night
star-soaked skies viewed far from civilization
the Tetons: camping, walking, canoeing; buffalo, deer, marmots, bears; skipping rocks and reading in the hammock
road trips
the beach
soaking thunderstorms on August afternoons
sleeping (and freezing) on top of the water tower
cold, yummy things on sticks: popsicles and ice cream bars
books: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and Dreams of my Russian Summers by Andreï Makine
five-week classes to take or teach
smelling like a campfire
walking my groceries home in the middle of the night
hours and hours and hours to just listen to music
season passes to Six Flags - meeting there after work for a few rollercoasters and some barbeque
sunburns and mosquito bites (it can't all be good)
riding in the tractor with grandpa or going with the uncles to move sprinkler pipe
sparklers
the smell of freshly cut grass
housecleaning (yeah, I know that probably shouldn't be a seasonal activity...)
4-H projects
Mom sewing new clothes for the next school year
the garden: herbs, strawberries, squash, tomatos, peas, beans, rhubarb
running through the sprinklers
dancing salsa and merengue in the church parking lot
Dad sneaking downstairs on the morning of the 4th of July to jolt us out of bed playing Stars and Stripes Forever as loud as the boom box would go
Ferragosto and empty Italian cities
Las Vegas, St. George, hiking up the Virgin River and floating back down again, the Painted Desert, Lake Powell, Flagstaff, the three mesas of the Hopi reservation, and of course the Grand Canyon - all within reach on a day off at Jacob Lake
drawing - and maybe this year I'll go get a chunk of clay to play with on the patio.

Summer is good - so vital to have my blood pressure fall a few points for a part of the year, and it is beautiful to recharge and have time to follow a muse. What a lovely time of year.

Alphaville - Forever Young

And then it was over...

2011-06-22T05:49:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was the last day of school for the kids. I should have everything wrapped up in the next couple of days. Liberty and Freedom. Hooray and Amen.

Dave Matthews Band - Cry Freedom

Oh Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

2011-05-28T15:45:00.002-04:00

I love westerns.

Not exclusively. But let Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood gallop around on a horse with a cowboy hat and a pistol hanging off his belt - let the good guys be good and the bad guys be ruthless - I'd hate it in real life, but I love it in the movies.

Wednesday afternoon I turned on the radio, which I usually listen to mainly in the mornings, and on NPR they were reviewing the new album by Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, Rome. The inspiration? Ennio Morricone. Che bello! The samples they played were very nice - Jack White sings on the album (Yay!) as does Norah Jones (meh - Ok voice, but usually boring - I've never really warmed to her, but she really sounds all right on this album). So I've had westerns in my head for a few days. My only complaint now that the album is downloaded is that it's way too short (35 min). But if that's what they had, everything else seems pretty tight. Better 35 tight minutes than 50 minutes with 15 of filler.

This week I also got an email from a friend with some music to listen to. One of the songs got me poking around YouTube to hear more by the artist, Lykke Li. And one song, The Only, sounds so much like it belongs on the soundtrack of a western - maybe because I was already in that mindset because of the Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi album, or maybe I would have heard that in it anyway. Anyway. Downloaded that album too. I actually had to do some poking around to find The Only because it was a bonus track somewhere along the way, but I did find it.

So you know I can't listen to all this music and then not watch a western. This afternoon I watched High Noon. I haven't watched it since my freshman year in college. It was required for the civics class all freshmen had to take. I don't remember liking or disliking it then, but I was probably more concerned with passing notes with my two friends with whom I was taking the class, and besides, when you are one of 900 in a big auditorium watching a movie in class because it's supposed to teach you something about your civic duty, well - let's just say maybe that it is less of a good movie in freshman civics and an awesome movie for a Saturday afternoon when you get to care more about the story line, gape at how gorgeous Grace Kelley is, wonder if that bad guy is Jude Law's father (of course not, but hey), and figure out what makes the High Noon ballad so cool (the underlying beat is like a souped-up tick-tock as we roll ever forward to 12:00). It's a great movie.

Anyway. Hooray for westerns. I think I'll move The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly up to number one in my Netflix queue.

Here is my favorite western-themed song of all time.

Mirah - Cold, Cold Water

A Cover Hits It Right On

2011-05-22T14:35:00.004-04:00

Here is something delightful I have come across.

Beck's Record Club - Mystify

Would you like to compare it to the original?

INXS - Mystify

One after the other, back and forth - both very nice. I must say that there is one on YouTube with INXS with the replacement lead singer, and it's just not worth listening to. The cover above is much better. I don't blame INXS for wanting to go on, but Michael Hutchence was one of a kind.

So Very Awake

2011-05-21T23:32:00.004-04:00

I was lolling off into the wonderful folds of sleep tonight when... gunshots. Summer must be approaching. The first few times this happened, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor, terrified. That was a long time ago.

Now I'm just awake.

My apartment complex is so stupid. I used to keep a really great patio garden, but about 1 1/2 years ago they made me get rid of it. So now I have no reason to go out on my patio. Well, when I used to go out on the patio, I was visible and it was visible that I was around. More than once, people who I suspected of acting shadily disappeared when I went out to water the plants. Not like that ever stopped nighttime shots from going off, (nor did it stop the Sunday afternoon shooting four or five years ago), but I think it did make some difference. Now I don't have much reason to do much outside of my apartment. Stupid management decision.

When I die, I hope there are sleep-like waves of peace before the bright light of whatever happens next. I'd like to pause and catch my breath before rushing into my fate.

I really wish I were asleep right now.

Coldplay - Death And All His Friends

Head in the Past

2011-05-20T21:13:00.003-04:00

So I have spent the last month being kind of wrapped in this sorta-90s nostalgia. And it has left me wondering if I really have any idea of what the 90s were about. It was kind of an excellent decade in many ways - book-ended largely by the fall of the Berlin wall on the outset and 9/11 as it faded into memory. And what was in between? The Internet and cell phones and PowerPoint and grunge turning to indy.

My students asked me this week how apartheid could have lasted so long. I didn't know what to say. I told them about how exciting it was when Mandela got out of prison, and I told them that up until just before then, the Cold War really took up all of our attention. I tried to tell them that growing up in the Cold War meant we really were afraid of nuclear bombs being launched. I suppose that it's like when my parents tell me where they were when Kennedy was shot, and all I can do is nod my head.

I don't understand my wish to revisit the 90s beyond that - it's not like fashion was great or anything - but it was the reprieve when a lot seemed possible in the world. And whether that was a function of the age or of my being younger I don't know. The acid-burned edges of globalism in 2011 mean that hope rises in one spot and leaves another altogether.

So here is some music. From the 90s of course.

Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites

Sometimes a song just grabs you...

2011-05-14T07:58:00.003-04:00

...and so you get the music first today. I really haven't listened to anything else since one of my friends posted it on Facebook a couple of days ago. Blow the video up full-screen because the sculptures are soul-smashingly beautiful.

Duran Duran - Before the Rain

Shivery lovely, no? Here's your test. Did you see the sculpture with the lightest, most subtle line of stars in the most soft bas relief in a band like a necklace hanging from her neck? If not, stop reading, blow the video up to full screen, and watch again. Once you've seen it, you can move on. Or not. I can't stop listening to this song, and maybe you'll be trapped in it too.

Would you like more cemetery? Here is my favorite. Please excuse the jerkiness of the pictures. It really wasn't like that when I made it, but it's something I've noticed about work from Microsoft's PhotoStory 3 when posted on You Tube. The cemetery is Staglieno in Genova. The music is Foo Fighters.

I cannot believe we are looking at the midpoint of May. May is the most glorious month of the year, and yet the workload is so intense that I always feel like I'm missing it. I love the spring when it can still be a little chilly-to-fresh and before the humidity sets in! I need to go find a mountain trail to wander or something. Actually, I need to catch up on my correcting and make some lesson plans for next week. Hmmm. And therefore miss May. Actually, I am at least going to get out of the house today and go see Van Gogh on IMAX. Should be delightful. You have a delightful day too.

How to Mosaic Like a Ravennan in 8 Simple Steps

2011-05-04T19:11:00.011-04:00

Today I got to tell one of my students about the mosaics in Ravenna. We were doing this exercise that mentioned them - something about "How many tiles might there be in the mosaics of Ravenna?" And the answer would be millions and millions, of course. Ravenna. What a wonderful city. Seriously. Glazed tile mosaics. I don't know how to improve on that idea. What a glow.

Would you like to know how to make a glazed tile mosaic? Here are instructions, straight from Ravenna. First, your tools and materials:

Now, the eight easy-to-follow steps:

And when you're done, it should look like this:

or this:

or maybe this:

Yeah.

I bought a scarf with the pattern of the arch on that last one. Gotta love a good gift shop.

Wow. So Ravenna is definitely a city to visit. Shed a tear for Dante's exile, see some amazing art, ride a bicycle around the city center for free, and maybe if you're lucky the woman selling candied almonds that are so very fresh and tasty will be out by the piazza when you are wandering around at night.

Must finish my plans for discussing some Hobbes in class tomorrow, so again I leave you with a referential song of the day.

Midlake - Head Home

Challenge:

2011-05-02T00:09:00.002-04:00

Let's remember where we are tonight as vividly as we remember where we were on the morning of September 11th. Because we shouldn't only remember the tragedy.

Sting

2011-04-30T11:18:00.003-04:00

"You know, I look at the papers, I'm not really inspired by things. I'm inspired by the people around me. That keeps me going." -Sting

Sting - We Work the Black Seam

All Young and Beautiful

2011-04-30T00:59:00.003-04:00

I am up very late, which is probably not what I need after getting up very early this morning to check out the royal wedding. I only got to see bits and pieces as I got ready for work, but I have checked out the highlights on YouTube and I must say it was all very lovely indeed. It was a very nice way to start the day.

This evening I felt like trawling through some music I haven't listened to in a while. I had completely forgotten this song. Enjoy it.

Annie Lennox - Keep Young and Beautiful

Hot-Cha!

2011-04-27T19:45:00.004-04:00

***A warning: I'm talking politics again, so if you are one of my dear friends who loves me in spite of rather than because of my way of looking at the world, feel free to just not bother with this post. Or you can just skip down to the nice tune at the end.***

Hooray! I really was pleased today when President Obama announced that in the important work of government, it's annoying to have the media clogged with "sideshows and carnival barkers" (NYTimes). How nice to have a president who can turn a phrase. This just in time for news to break that Fatah and Hamas have been in talks with the new Egyptian power brokers (again, NYTimes). Because, you see, important things are afoot in this world, and maybe we should be able to have access to news about them.

Apropos, this morning on NPR's Morning Edition there was a fascinating commentary about how to revive the evening news: cancel fluffy entertainment "news" shows and put the real news in its place. The argument from Eric Deggans, a Florida media critic, is that with people coming home from work later, the real news needs to be on when we are home to see it. Could one dare to wish for a world where average people actually took an interest in world events over gossip? Maybe insipid conspiracy theories like the "birther" foray would have less traction in a less gossipy arena.

Wish. Wish. Wish.

Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now

Because Sometimes It's Too Hard to Stay Awake

2011-04-25T23:26:00.001-04:00

The Dandy Warhols - Sleep

Melancholy, Day 5

2011-04-22T18:20:00.004-04:00

I spent today waiting for the inevitable: Monday.

Yeah. I know how crazy that sounds. It was a Friday off. And all I can do is think about the week ending and going back to work.

I did clean the oven. So please note the line in today's song about having one's head in the oven, because mine was there.

I've also been reading Ethics for the New Millenium by His Holiness The Dalai Lama. His ideas about reality remind me of the description of right-brain world that Jill Bolte-Taylor experienced when she had a stroke that knocked out the left side of her brain off and on over a broad stretch of time. A mass recognition of such a reality would surely change the way we treat each other: if we are who we are because we are in relation to everything else, and we would cease to identify the boundaries between ourselves and others as such a hard line, we might feel more empathy toward each other and find ourselves less able to defraud each other in the little ways that happen every day.

I was discussing with my dad my disenchantment with the idea of the free market system as something righteous and moral. All things being equal, I'm sure it would be a nifty system. The problem is, all things are never equal and have not been from the beginning. The free market system has no mechanism in place to say that if an employer buys a person's full-time employment, that person must be paid enough to live on. And yet in an ethical system, I don't know how that observation could be overlooked. If you buy the labor of someone's life, they should be able to live off of selling that to you. I am tired of seeing poverty entrenched in families and so unwilling to let go. I am tired of seeing the champions of capitalism buy influence and use it only to shore up their own position.

I am not trying to say that free markets should be replaced with some other system. I just think we need to recognize that it is not an ethical system and that in recognition of our common humanity, we must put safeguards in place to abolish exploitation.

Time to put my head back in the oven.

The National - Conversation 16

Elsewhere. Day 4

2011-04-21T14:42:00.005-04:00

There are things that make me remember my best friend growing up. She passed several years ago, but so many things bring her back, and sometimes very urgently. Today it was changing the sheets on the bed. I remember that when we were quite young she showed me how her dad had taught her to make nice corners with the sheet, which was something he had learned in the military. I remember being a bit incredulous that her dad would care what the corners looked like, especially since they were hidden under the bedspread. Of course, now I corner my sheets, but I don't do it ever without thinking about her.

I am getting the feeling of panic again - scratching at the mechanism that keeps time rolling forward. I haven't accomplished nearly enough this week. About the only thing I have accomplished has been giving my mind a couple of days of rest. I guess that's something.

On another note. I was talking with a couple of my students last week about music - and about how consistent the 80's 1-2 1-2 beat was, and how it lasted a whole decade, and how I did like it then, but I'm not thrilled to see it coming back en force. Why not have more bands like The National? With talented, inventive drummers? What? The world is short on talent?

Then pardon me while I enjoy the drumming here.

The National - Runaway

Inspired - Day 3

2011-04-20T11:59:00.002-04:00

Here is something good. I will resist my urge to pontificate about how this good thing came out of a time before too much standardized testing and I will just point out my awe that it is surviving, especially when 4th graders have a lot of testing on their plates.

John Hunter, Public School Teacher, on the World Peace Game

Lost in Thought...Day 2

2011-04-19T15:53:00.002-04:00

Off to teach. A quick admission, though: I didn't get through half of that to-do list yesterday. I got caught up by a book...surprise surprise. Roots by Alex Haley.

Here's a gift for you!

Basia Bulat - If It Rains

Happiness Day 1

2011-04-18T07:28:00.004-04:00

It is wonderful to look at a day from its beginning and find several tasks to be done but nothing scheduled - no rush to get here or there, just the leisure to complete things as I will. It's even more buttery to feel like this on a Monday.

Here are the things I need to do today:

go to the school to pick up the jump drive I left there last week
go to Trader Joe's for some groceries
run some mail to the post office
cook some pork chops for the freezer
correct some projects for the college class that I couldn't work on over the weekend because they are on the jump drive I left at the school
work on a unit planner that is seriously overdue, but that also requires that troublesome little jump drive
go outside for some air before the weather turns so humid I won't want to
clean a room of the house.

That last one is a daily goal for the break. Let's see how it goes. Honestly, if I can clean 3 or 4 I'll be happy.

Things I have already accomplished:

reading comic strips for the day
turning on some music

I guess I'll go get a shower.

Barenaked Ladies - Pinch Me

and I should have posted this as soon as I saw it...

2011-04-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

Short note

2011-04-14T21:07:00.002-04:00

I just want you to know that I am very proud of my awesome students. Here's to them.

Glazing

2011-03-27T20:41:00.004-04:00

So I haven't been posting much this month. I guess I had so much bottled up in me a few weeks ago and when I got that out, I didn't have much more to say. These weeks have been. Simply that.

I went back to pottery class this last Monday, and I have to say that got me through the week. I still have a couple of pieces that I'm not sure what to do with as far as glazing goes. Especially a piece that I threw on the wheel that was off centered but I think its imperfection is interesting if not beautiful. Its form is so rough that I don't know whether I want to glaze it at all, or just keep it terra cotta. The mask I did is like that, too - I'm afraid that if I glaze the face it will look strangely garish like a Greek marble with paint still on it. (Not to compare my efforts with anything from ancient Greece!) So there are some decisions to be made, and I don't want to inexpertly ruin what at this stage looks pretty good. At any rate, one or two things are done, so hopefully they will be fired soon and I can post pictures.

(There is one piece - a box - that is just ugly. I don't know what I will do with it when it's finished, as it's not anything to which I feel attachment.... live and learn, I guess.)

Here's a pretty good song I heard this morning.

Radical Face - Glory

Dear Monday,

2011-03-13T22:22:00.000-04:00

I HATE you. Will you just...not?

To the Detractors

2011-03-06T17:55:00.014-05:00

Dear talking heads and political posturers,

I have had it with your assault on teachers and public schools. I want you to know that I am thankful for my public school teachers who instructed and inspired me, and that I go to work every day with the goal of instructing and inspiring my students.

I am tired of being slandered and maligned. I am not a thug out to game the system. I have a master's degree, and I got straight A's in grad school. My workday stretches far beyond my contracted hours. I prepare lessons for six different classes at the high school where I teach. I have built a website of study tools for my students because I don't teach commonly taught subjects and appropriate quality tools can be hard to find.

Your laws mandating testing have glorified mediocrity, encouraged cheating, and moved money from the classrooms to the companies that make the tests. Your push to pay teachers based on their students' performance (à la Race to the Top) will only drive the best teachers out of the low-income areas (like the district where I work) where they are desperately needed.

I love teaching, but the stress from the politicking is a nightmare. I have news for you: I am not just a babysitter; I didn't get into teaching for the cushy pay; I take work home every night and weekend, and I teach at a local university year round (read: I WORK SUMMERS). It started off as something to do purely for enjoyment, but with a freeze in pay for four years, it has also become a way to make ends meet.

I want you to know the truth: I work with many great teachers, including a number who have been mentors, heroes, and sounding boards for me as I have learned my craft. We don't deserve to be painted with broad strokes as the foundational problem with society or with the economy. We rightfully take pride in the successes we achieve. Many of these successes are difficult to quantify and difficult to attribute to one pinpointed cause. But aren't we all made up of layers of experience? Shouldn't we work to educate the whole child: not just to improve skills in mathematics and reading, but also to encourage ingenuity, ethical behavior, civic involvement, cross-cultural understanding, and curiosity?

And please, don't call me a snively whiner for standing up for myself and my profession. I do a good job, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't. Don't tell me that I should shut up and be thankful for my job. I am thankful for my job. I feel incredibly blessed to have such rewarding work. I also worked very hard to qualify to be where I am. And one of the greatest difficulties in my job, especially in light of the push toward mediocrity brought on by misguided reforms like No Child Left Behind, is teaching my students that such hard work really is irreplaceable in the end. So I'm not going to shut up and let you make my job even harder.

Tomorrow I will go to work and I will teach, not to impress you, but because I know my students are deserving of my best efforts on their behalf. If you're at all interested in improving the future, you'll stand behind us. If not, you'd better get out of our way.

Wow. I fell asleep.

2011-02-28T05:55:00.004-05:00

So much for Oscars 2011 - I was happy to get a couple of phone calls and to watch on mute for a while, and when my dad called and woke me after The King's Speech won top honors, I just turned it off before the 5th graders could get started.

At least Anne Hathaway wore her best dress at the beginning so I didn't miss that. Here are the best pictures I have been able to scrounge off the Internet. Because she's busy hosting and the pictures aren't taken from the TV camera's angle (WHY NOT?), there really isn't a picture where she does justice to the glamor of the dress, but it really was beautiful.

By the way, it's Givenchy, as is the Cate Blanchett one I posted previously.

Top Three Dresses from the Red Carpet

2011-02-27T20:28:00.006-05:00

Pictures stolen from NYTimes.

#1 - Nicole Kidman

#2 - Amy Adams - the picture doesn't do the beautiful sapphire color justice.

#3 - Cate Blanchett

And as I have been posting this, Anne Hathaway has come out to present in the most beautiful beaded gown - I'll post a picture when I find one.

Princess dreams are still alive!

Hanging In There...

2011-02-27T20:10:00.002-05:00

I was just rewarded for continuing to watch the show. Just as the cut to commercial became imminent, we got a glimpse of Nicole Kidman and her dress - jaw-dropping Dior. She is always among the best dressed, but this has some sparkle that is just incredible.

(BTW, the beadwork on Cate Blanchett's dress earlier was also gorgeous.)

Oscars 2011 - Red Carpet Now Underway

2011-02-27T19:36:00.006-05:00

The pre-game show (red carpet) has been on for just over half an hour and I am considering turning off the TV.

You see, when the Academy Awards are on, I want the best of Hollywood glamor and glitz. I want to gape at America's de facto royalty. Movie stars. Maybe a couple of rock stars. And I do not care about:

Facebook-submitted questions from other schmucks like me who are not Hollywood types;
Seeing the green room;
Interviews with nominees' mothers;

and Most Of All:

A hoard of 5th graders in brightly colored T-shirts.

Yeah. I said it. When it comes to turning the Academy Awards into the People's Choice Awards, I'm not amused. We'll see if I have the stomach to see it through, but right now, it's a big thumbs down.

(P.S., though - Marky Mark was just on the red carpet and he is such a class act. Compliments unbounded to him.)

Why I'd Rather Be in Italy

2011-02-21T09:20:00.002-05:00

Here is the winner of this year's Sanremo song competition:

Roberto Vecchioni - Chiamami Ancora Amore

See, English can't do this. American culture can't do this. We are too fragmented. We look for 20-something idols, not for the paced wisdom and beauty of a poet-professor in his sixties. I know that Italy is not perfect, and that this song is based in many of today's urgent problems there - but hey. Let me wrap myself up in a culture that can produce such passion without withering, without looking behind its shoulder at those who would ridicule such a sentiment - let me wear my heart on my sleeve and face the winds that will come.

Enjoying a Day at Home

2011-02-19T17:03:00.003-05:00

No, I haven't really accomplished anything today. I figured out the next month's round of bills. I did a little bit of junk room clean-out. And that's it. You just need do-nothing Saturday at home every once in a while to drop the stress levels and give your head a break from the game.

I was listening to Columbus radio - CD101 - today and this song came on. I can't believe all of the good music that you can't find on radio around here because we just don't have a good alternative station. Anyway. The song is from 2005, but it's new to me. Enjoy.

She Wants Revenge - Out of Control

A Little Traveling

2011-02-15T01:01:00.005-05:00

Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans

I just got back from a weekend in New Orleans. What a fantastic place. My last visit there was pre-Katrina, and I've never been there in the winter before, but the city just wraps me up and makes me love it. I was there for work, so my adventuring happened before and after meetings.

My flight there was cancelled Thursday so I got in later than I would have liked. I was traveling with another teacher, and we went for some seafood that night, which was delectable. Then I went to bed pretty early since I had to register for my sessions first thing Friday morning. Meetings all day, then homework to prep for the Saturday sessions - I finally got out at about 7:30pm Friday night. Since lunch had been pretty heavy, I wound my way down to Café du Monde and got some beignets. They are really tasty. I remembered that they were tasty, but really, it was that first bite that reminded me of just how good New Orleans really is. It was also curious to note that I had ordered hot chocolate instead of milk - it was actually chilly - something I had definitely never experienced before there. Anyway, I had broken out something to read and I just relaxed over my tasty little dinner, then I went and wandered around the quarter for a moment. I must be older now, because I definitely preferred Rue Royale to Bourbon Street - art shops over bawdiness. Right behind the cathedral was the most awesome busker - this petite girl with the scratchy voice of a catfight and an accordion. I would have loved to have just hung out listening, but since I was on my own I judged it better to keep moving, although I did circle around several times to see what she was playing. I also enjoyed looking into the lit shops, especially the windows of glass. I found this jellyfish lamp:

kind of fun.

Saturday morning I got up early and went back to Café du Monde, then took my breakfast up to the promenade along the river and watched the water in the morning. There was actually frost on the wooden railroad ties I crossed! Anyway, I missed sunrise, but the morning was clear and lovely. On my way back to the hotel, I stopped in St. Louis Cathedral, listened to a few minutes of mass, and took in the inside of the cathedral from the back pew.

Saturday afternoon was a real treat. Thomas's mom came over from Mississippi with a friend who had grown up in New Orleans, so I got the chance to experience the city beyond the French Quarter and its immediate surroundings. We went to Metairie Cemetery to see some of the monuments, to the sculpture garden at City Park, drove around to see houses in the Garden district, and ate the most incredible dinner at a restaurant called Mandina's on Canal Street. If you are reading this, you have GOT to go to New Orleans and eat at Mandina's. The wait was at least 45 minutes, but the food was to die for - Italian influenced New Orleans. We ordered a bunch of food and shared it all - fried shrimp and Italian sausage for the appetizer, a cup of oyster and artichoke soup (killer amazing!), a roast beef sandwich, and their Saturday special Creole Eggplant - baked eggplant, shrimp, crabmeat, and ham - that was so out of this world.

Anyway, here is a cool sculpture from City Park:

Leandro Erlich, Window and Ladder - Too Late for Help, 2008. It had originally been installed in the Lower Ninth Ward. There were no strings attached - it leans like this anchored underground. Pretty cool.

It was late and the ladies had to get back home, so they dropped me at the hotel. My intention was to go wandering again, but stepping up onto the curb, my foot hit a slick spot of something and I went down into some kind of a painful splits-like fall. There were some very nice people who helped me up in spite of the fact that when someone falls in New Orleans the basic assumption is a diagnosis of over-imbibing. It's been two days and my leg is still in constant pain. I wobbled around to get souvenirs for the nephew and niece, then went back to the hotel and straight to bed. My attempt to get up the next morning and repeat the trip to Café du Monde was met with frustration - I was hobbling around like my leg was broken - and I admitted defeat within two blocks. I settled for breakfast at the convention center, which at least featured slices of King Cake. And that was it - one more session, and a flight home.

So hooray New Orleans. I'm ready for my next trip back.

Trouble, Set Me Free

2011-02-06T23:16:00.004-05:00

So I was in the mood for this song:

Cat Stevens - Trouble

and I opened up my music program and searched the title and you wouldn't believe how many trouble songs there are! About 500 million or so.

Tonight was the Super Bowl and I am sending out many thanks to Great Britain for sending the Beatles and Doctor Who across the pond so I didn't even have to realize the Super Bowl was happening, aside from some status updates on Facebook. Which is a nice way for it to be. Next Big Event: the Oscars, which are much more fun.

Jedi Knight, Thank You Very Much

2011-02-05T07:41:00.001-05:00

Via: Online Schools

For everything else, there's...

2011-01-19T21:58:00.004-05:00

Just a little something that cracked me up - and then makes me cry because it's so true. Clever, clever Mike Luckovich.

A quiet day

2011-01-17T21:08:00.005-05:00

I love these days. Mildly productive, yet still restful, and with the world a little better arranged than it was when I woke up.

I need more days like this.

When I woke up this morning, my brain was still buzzing from the Golden Globe awards last night, and in my mind I was composing a post mourning the end of Ricky Gervais's status as a funny comedian. I'll just say that he was terrible and that it was disappointing because I had been looking forward to seeing him host the show.

As far as fashion goes, I will also note that the scallop-shell-top dress that Jennifer Love Hewitt wore had even me wanting to peek over the edge and see to what extent she was really covered inside.

Anyway, even though the Golden Globes are generally fun, they really are, to me, just a get-ready-for-the-Oscars event. Though I'm not happy about this year's hosts for the Academy Awards - James Franco and Anne Hathaway - but they may surprise me pleasantly since Ricky Gervias was such an utter letdown.

Anyway. I thought I was in a peaceful zone where I was done thinking about that. Guess not.

So here is a beautiful song for today. With some noise in the middle. And a peaceful finish.

Shearwater - On the Death of the Waters

Hope.

2011-01-11T09:30:00.005-05:00

Here we go.

Although I try not to make it the point of my blog, I am a person with very strong opinions politically. And the shootings in Arizona, with the senseless massacring of bystanders and the audacity to target the type of politician who doesn't pull bull-headedly to one extreme or the other, who seems to take public life responsibly and reasonably - well, it sends me to despair.

Thank heavens for the positive signs in the recoveries of so many of the victims, including Representantive Gabrielle Giffords. And to me, the best sign is the one in the Steve Benson editorial cartoon above: her ability to give a thumbs up.

During my last year of my undergrad work, my dad had to undergo brain surgery. Yes, his was more medical - probably due to a fall on ice - he was not shot. I can't imagine the horror. But I do remember these little things: after waiting by the bedside for hours, having the little hand signals. The news today reported that Ms. Giffords had tried to pull her breathing tube out. I remember my dad doing the same thing. He hated it. The worst thing for him was when they had to bind his hands so he couldn't pull it out.

So news reports about Ms. Giffords's condition leave me in tears because they bring back these memories of such a scary time. I was blessed to see my dad make a great recovery. I truly hope our her family will be blessed to see Ms. Giffords recover as well. I hope she will be fully able to return to her public life and that she would make that choice: we need her voice of balance now more than ever.

Dear January,

2011-01-03T20:54:00.003-05:00

I remember that for a couple of years when I first moved here, I used you to clean up the house. That habit has obviously gotten away from me.

Two days ago, my calendar for the month looked pretty empty. Then pop,pop,pop... here's a girls' night out, there's a make-up class to glaze pottery, and I see that this will NOT be a January in which I make any progress on cleaning the house.

Things could be worse.

A Happy New Year to you.

Best,

Tori Amos - Winter's Carol (no embedding - you'll have to click.)

New Temptation

2010-12-04T20:15:00.002-05:00

So Amazon now has an Amazon.it.

I must remember that $1 ≠ €1. And that shipping is still prohibitive. How long until Italian Kindle books become available in the US?

I could spend so much money there. Ack! I need to get off the computer and go read some of my stacks of Italian books that I have collected but not yet read - or there will be no justification for further shopping.

Happiness calls for The National. If this one doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you may be a cyborg.

The National - England

A Few Words on Ohio

2010-11-27T16:29:00.004-05:00

I came to Columbus for Thanksgiving.

I am knocking on Winter's door. The snows seem not too far off. It is definitely long-sleeved t-shirt weather and although yesterday the skies were blue, today they are a smear of grey. My brother and I took advantage of the blue-sky day yesterday and drove to Kirtland: my first ever travels to an Eastern U.S. Mormon history site. I was surprised at how hilly the area around Kirtland was. The temple there is a beautiful building, and we had a very good tour guide. Afterward, we went to the Johnson home where Joseph Smith lived for about a year.

Well. Columbus has a great Italian food scene. Last night we got takeout from Carfagna's Kitchen. Homemade pastas, great sauces. I got the Carfagna's combination - lasagne, gnocchi, a meat raviolo and a cheese canolo. I was in heaven. I got their creamy pomodoro sauce instead of the regular marinara, and I could not believe how wonderful it was. So today we went to the original Carfagna's, an Italian grocery. It was so much fun. They had so much wonderful stuff - if I lived in Columbus, it would not be hard to live una bella vita all'italiana, except for the whole not-sure-I-could-find-a-job-teaching-Italian-here thing. I came out with snacks for my brother's afternoon watching football (Brigham Young v. Utah State) - a box of breadsticks and some prosciutto di San Daniele, some Genoa salame, and some cheese: principe, a pecorino from Sardegna, and smoked scamorza, which was my favorite cheese when I lived in Italy. (My all-time favorite cheese now is vento d'estate, which is cured in hay and tastes like the summer wind it is named for.) I also picked up some gelato from a company in Cincinnati: burnt sugar and star anise. Wow.

Columbus also has a pretty good radio station: CD101 which used to be on 101.1 but now is on 102.5, just because. So I have heard some good music here. Most notably, Mumford & Sons. I'll post some below. Mumford & Sons wowed me with the inclusion of a banjo in the lineup.

Mumford & Sons - The Cave

Mumford & Sons - White Blank Page

My brother is down in the basement watching the game. In spite of the fact that I am listening to music on my headphones, I can tell how the game is going from his shouting and screaming at the TV. I just don't get football. Anyway, after the football game, it's to Target to replace the MP3 player that has died (I'll need it for the return trip) and then Harry Potter. Funny to think that 10 years ago, I was at the midnight showing of the first movie, and now here I am lollygagging more than a week after the release of the latest show in going to see it.

Well, here is a big thumbs up to Columbus. I must admit that despite having never wanted to visit the Midwest when I was growing up, I have been most impressed with my travels in Ohio and Indiana. It is a lovely stretch of the country, homey and cosmopolitan all mixed together. Very nice, indeed.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

2010-11-20T23:51:00.002-05:00

Yeah, not exactly. You see, mine is more of a destino meraviglioso or something like that. Even though I have no idea yet what the destino is. But life the past little while has had a decidedly wonderful cast to it and the world, though not supersaturated in color, has been beautiful. They predicted that because of drought conditions over the summer the fall would not be as colorful as usual, but let me say the trees have not disappointed, nor have the skies ceased to be varicolored, nor have long-sleeved T-shirts been any less cozy to wear.

Tonight I went to a program of American opera arias and scenes. Almost all of the program was music I hadn't heard before. One was strikingly beautiful - here it is on YouTube, although the woman playing Marianne (the crying one) is very hard to understand as recorded here. (I must say, too, that I think the singing, acting, and staging were better in the production I saw tonight- especially the girl who sang Dorine - the maid - who was the outstanding performer of the evening).

No More, Pale Moon - from Tartuffe, by Kirke Mechem

Also very powerful this evening was a scene from The Consul. Here is what I can find of what they performed tonight, pieced together.

The thing is that these are just the first half of Act 1 scene 2. The second half was incredible. So you know I am on the verge of buying a DVD of this opera so I can see the entire performance.

Anyway. So that's how it goes. Who knew American opera had such possibility?

One more as a send off. "What a movie!" from Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti.

A link worth posting

2010-11-17T22:50:00.001-05:00

Dear friends, click on this link and see a 3-year-old reciting poetry. Sadly, it won't let me embed it.

***LINK to see a 3-year-old reciting poetry***

Yeah. That was good.

Still here.

2010-10-29T21:22:00.002-04:00

I've been busily buzzing around. In some ways, I feel like I've never been better, and in others, I don't know when it has been worse. I finally got my hands on Where the Wild Things Are and I was watching it - Catherine Keener is a superb actress. She is on the phone being told that she has messed up something with her work, and when she gets off the phone, she seriously does this noise that is somewhere between an exhale and a groan and it is the reality of life choking all of the air out of her. It was so real. It made my throat tighten just to watch - and then I realized how much life has been choking the air out of me lately. Bewilderingly much.

So here is a song for the last few weeks.

Midlake - Bring Down

Dilemma

2010-10-24T07:55:00.002-04:00

Reading A Brief History of Time, and trying to picture space-time. I did have a strange moment this morning when I was thinking about it and it was like my brain just clicked to nothing for an instant, but as soon as I realized that my brain had clicked to nothing, there something was again.

I got up and downloaded this one this morning. Amazon had another Low track, Monkey, for free, and I got that one too, but in checking out the album this one just grabbed me.

Low - Sliver Rider

Ending Banned Books Week

2010-10-02T10:55:00.005-04:00

Dismay! What is it with these states where I have lived?

You know, not every book is perfect for kids. One of my favorites, The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine, really isn't one I feel like I must recommend to young people. And I don't run around shoving Anne Frank into young people's hands: fortunately, it has never been my role to have to read something so horrifying with children. But should people read The Hakawati? If they respect tight storytelling, yes. Nor would I rip it out of a young person's hands.

It is incredible to me that the extremists who want government to tell us what to read come from the same contingency that does not want government ensuring that every citizen have access to healthcare.

Yeah.

The Magnetic Fields - The Book of Love

And for Good Measure:

Nataly Dawn - The Book of Love

Open Letter

2010-10-02T06:49:00.003-04:00

Dear Frank,

You are brilliant on both sides of the camera. You are a creative genius and you bring that out in the rest of us. And you are fun. And I am terribly lucky to know you.

♥Melissa

3-in-1: Banned Books Week 2010

2010-09-30T05:08:00.007-04:00

I have been a bad blogger, and I have neglected my reposting of Banned Books week! So today, please enjoy 3 books in one update:

That one addresses one of my living nightmares: in this post-modern age, discrimination has been reversed and then re-reversed. It's 2010, people. Shouldn't we just get along?

(If I didn't have to get to work this morning, I would insert here a rant about Israel's continued settlement building in the face of peace talks - much to the world's dismay. Yesterday I read an op-ed proposing that Palestinians hit the streets demanding to be able to vote in Israel because the Israelis settling on their land have that vote. Wouldn't that be a nice thing to see.)

(I could also rant about France kicking out the Roma.)

Next.

The people who would ban the dictionary would probably be the same people insisting that English be the only language spoken in schools. Just sayin'.

And.

Yeah. Brown Bear is an inane book. There are lots of way better books out there, but reading specialists love it for its alliteration! Except in Texas, apparently. But the Texas Board of Education makes lots of decisions with which I don't quite agree. Take their decisions regarding the history curriculum over the last year for example.

Well. I've got to go fight the madness.

Modest Mouse - Float On

In the spirit of Banned Books Week,

2010-09-27T20:47:00.004-04:00

I am still reposting today's comic strip even though I have no interest whatsoever in reading Twilight AT ALL. But I do think Liz is funny with her T-shirt at the end.

Hooray for books. Right now, I am reading another set of short stories spun into a novel. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by Yiyun Li. It is a treat I get to read while on hall duty. Thankfully, my hall duty this year has so far been low traffic enough that I've been able to read a bit. And it is a good read. I'm sure I'll write more when I'm done (I'm about halfway now).

Well. It's the beginning of the week, so there is more work to do. Ha! That's the beginning, middle, AND end of the week! I thought of a fun new game for practicing semi-modal verbs today, but now I have to make it. Always the challenge: doing the work to implement the good ideas. I also want to get it made in time to get it laminated before using it Friday. The race is on. Many of the students have seemed quite motivated lately and I want to keep that as long as possible.

Here's a song to enjoy. A high-octane take on the Italian folk style.

Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta

Queen Victoria Presents: Banned Books Week

2010-09-26T08:17:00.004-04:00

Oh, I do love my comic strips. And The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is one of my favorites. This week she is celebrating Banned Books Week, with her usual aplomb. I expect I'll be reposting all of them, but if you want to read them on the GoComics site where I find them, here is the link.

I can't wait to see what Pab has going on for the rest of the week.

Ha! Gary and Elaine are at it too!!!!

2010-09-20T17:51:00.002-04:00

More cheese fun for this great day. Enjoy.

Happy Donald Hall Cheese Day

2010-09-20T16:36:00.003-04:00

I love fortuitous coincidences. Today is the birthday of Donald Hall, former poet laureate, and Amilynne and I have given it the name Donald Hall Cheese Day in honor of his greatest poem, O Cheese.

And here is the Pearls Before Swine comic for today. Also genius.

So why is Donald Hall's birthday such a great day? Because it has undergone natural nachofication.

Or maybe it's been fonduified.

Whatever suits your fancy.

Happy Birthday, Donald Hall.

O Cheese
By Donald Hall

In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.

O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die.
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.

Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy;
Pont l’Evêque intellectual, and quite well informed; Emmentaler
decent and loyal, a little deaf in the right ear;
and Brie the revealing experience, instantaneous and profound.

O cheeses that dance in the moonlight, cheeses
that mingle with sausages, cheeses of Stonehenge.
O cheeses that are shy, that linger in the doorway,
eyes looking down, cheeses spectacular as fireworks.

Reblochon openly sexual; Caerphilly like pine trees, small
at the timberline; Port du Salut in love; Caprice des Dieux
eloquent, tactful, like a thousand-year-old hostess;
and Dolcelatte, always generous to a fault.

O village of cheeses, I make you this poem of cheeses,
O family of cheeses, living together in pantries,
O cheeses that keep to your own nature, like a lucky couple,
this solitude, this energy, these bodies slowly dying.

I Am Not a Big City Girl

2010-09-18T14:09:00.005-04:00

Last night I was looking at the homepage for Lapham's Quarterly. Their new issue, coming out soon, has as its theme "the city." Not to get off the point, but I really do have mixed feelings about cities. Well. I should be specific. I have very mixed feelings about one very big city in particular. New York. Everyone acts like "ooooOOooooooo. New York." And I just want to say that there ARE other cities and other places that are NOT cities besides New York. I get tired of every TV show that wants an air of the cosmopolitan being set there. I get tired of every cop show being set there. I get tired about hearing about its news and about its mayor. And I really, really hate the "Start Spreadin' the News" New York song. With a bottomless loathing. You know, there is a big, wide world outside of New York. And yet, I do like it fine. I like that you can find a newsstand with Italian magazines. I like that it has museums. I like that I could go a thousand times and still always find something new to do, and I like that I've only really been there once so the vast majority of the thousand times are still ahead.

Anyway. Lapham's Quarterly. And they have a bit about the sense of the blasé that tends find root in city dwellers. Funny how I don't find ennui in the woods. Here's Pliny the Younger:

"Oh, sea and shore, veritable secret haunt of the muses, how many thoughts do you suggest to the immagination and dictate to the pen!"

I am feeling homesick for the mountains. The real ones. With granite peaks well above the tree line and glacier-fed lakes at their bases. For the dry air that fortifies the lungs. For family that fortifies the soul.

The Rosebuds - My Punishment for Fighting

That autumn feeling is here.

2010-09-12T08:06:00.003-04:00

We've been lucky to have a couple of days with highs in the 80's - not exactly crisp, but with a drop in the humidity, and with the lower angle of the light hitting the leaves in the trees in the park on the way home from work, it harbors tidings of fall. Fall is not my favorite season, spring is, but I do love fall too, although it carries in its colder air the barren winter chasing on its heels. It is a time for closing up: I imagine myself with an old wooden 2-part door (you know, the kind on Snow White's cottage) and as autumn comes I shut the top half against the cold.

The start of school went off all right. Now it's busy busy busy.

Tori Amos - Black Dove

Oh, Nick Cave, I Love You.

2010-09-04T07:41:00.003-04:00

So I am still working on the morning disc. And I had a problem accessing the file for the one song on Nocturama that I had downloaded years and years ago. So I decided to just get the whole album. So I am listening to this song for the first time, and I just plain have to say that I love Nick Cave. Unabashedly. Wow.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life

Not much

2010-09-04T05:48:00.002-04:00

I am really trying to make myself wake up. So I am continuing the waking up song hunt for the new waking up CD. This song will definitely make the final cut.

Ian Brown - Time is my Everything

So you would not believe the mess my classroom is in for today being the Saturday before the start of school. I have at least a few more hours of physical prep to do, plus the planning. There are also tests to be written on the readings the students were to do over the summer. This was the best-organized set of summer reading assignments I have given yet: I really hope the students did them and retained their skills over the summer.

Well, cheers for Ian Brown. That song is super good. Now I must be off to getting myself ready for the day.

Vacation Time

2010-08-26T02:54:00.005-04:00

So for vacation this year, there was some camping and some mountain time, but mostly there were the nephew and niece. Their mom spent some days working at their dad's office, and I got to be the babysitter. It was fantastic.

The days started out with a bottle for the niece and Sesame Street for all. And on the very first day, they played one of my very most favorite clips:

And this is the song I have been singing in my head for three weeks.

While babysitting, I also introduced the kids to the Carmen-singing orange (see the previous post below), which is the most brilliant clip ever on Sesame Street. Or on just about any show, for that matter.

So one day, the kids and I were watching clips on the computer when their mom came home. We were watching and singing along to Ricky Gervais and the Letter N Lullaby. Then they wanted to show their mom the orange. So we clicked to that, and as the orange started to sing, so did my niece. Never mind that the song is in French. She just made it up the whole way through. Although she hit the "La Moo" part as well as the best of us at that age! Her mom was doubled over in laughter, and I was stifling it pretty well, because with the little performer sitting on my lap, I didn't want to burst in to laughter and make her stop. It was terribly cute.

So now I am going through nephew and niece withdrawal. I can't wait until Christmas to see them again.

Do you want to make a 4-year-old laugh and laugh?

2010-08-18T02:41:00.001-04:00

or make his 2-year-old sister wonder watch wide-eyed, wondering what on earth...?

That last post really worked.

2010-07-27T22:18:00.003-04:00

In the last two days, I've been called "sweetie" and "baby." Both better than "ma'am."

Today I have been listening to Zoltan and his Gypsy Ensemble. There is a real struggle in this music, and a brief triumph before the next struggle. My heart definitely identifies with it.

Zoltan and his Gypsy Ensemble - Dve Gitari

Just Don't Call Me "Ma'am"

2010-07-22T15:41:00.007-04:00

A List Compiled by Melissa and Amilynne

Terms of address preferable to "Ma'am":

1. Miss

2. Lady

3. Love

4. Hon (especially from a waitress)

5. Bella (and I don't mean Twilight)

6. Doll

7. Poppet

8. Yo

9. Chica

10. Y'all

11. Doc

12. Your Excellency

13. Toots

14. Sis, Sista, even Sister

15. Babe

16. Dear

17. Darlin'

18. Sweetheart / Sweetie

19. Sug (like Nancy Gribble says it)

20. The bread, the knife, the crystal goblet, and the wine

21. The wind in the orchard

22. Teacher lady

23. Missy

24. Hey you

25. Number 37, Number 37 to the counter please...

The Pretenders - Angel of the Morning

And summer starts to feel frenetic...

2010-07-21T22:02:00.004-04:00

We are on week four of summer vacation, and I am starting to feel like it is running out. I even received an email from one of my high school students who is getting started on her summer assignments - if the students are prepping for back to school, time is getting short. To point, I bought school supplies today: a billion 2-pocket folders. Because if you give the students something in a folder, they know it's important. Obviously you can't use this trick every time, but for something that absolutely must not be lost (like summer assignments) it's essential. I'm also stocked up on kleenex.

Anyway, the clock is ticking. And I'm looking around the apartment I have been so dedicated to organizing this summer and I am wondering if it will happen. And I am looking at the crates of books to read this summer and I don't know who is going to read them, but it probably won't be me for a while. Progress is being made, but nothing is close to completion.

So would you like to read an oh-so-funny blog? Here it is: Catalog Living. The idea is that Elaine and Gary live in the catalog rooms, and their story unfolds. It definitely made me laugh.

How about a song that makes me laugh?

Gogol Bordello - American Wedding

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

2010-07-17T23:51:00.007-04:00

*********SPOILER ALERT*********

I'm going to write about the book I read today. This means spoilers. Don't read this post if you don't want to know.

I feel like I should sit down and write a formal English paper with a thesis and backing arguments. It's just what it feels like you should do after reading a book like this.

But I won't.

Let me tell you why I think In Other Rooms, Other Windows is important. As well-written and alive as it is, I think the themes that come to light upon examining the meta-structure of the narrative are an indictment on the (Western, and especially American) reader.

The book begins with stories of the servant classes. The first story, Nawabdin Electrician, describes the robbing of a servant whose creative on-the-side enterprises fall outside the law. He is a father who has a hard time providing for his wife and twelve children. Next, Saleema recounts the life of the "underprivileged" in Pakistan - generations affected by drug abuse, and a girl who appears to step up, only to be dragged backward in the end.

The next two stories tell of the poor who make claims, successful and otherwise, of reaching the upper reaches of society.

The only story narrated in the first person is About a Burning Girl, told by a judge. Amilynne pointed out to me that the judge being in the first person opens the way for interpretation that judgement would be made on the other characters in the book. Additionally, as the judge and his family do not appear to be relations of characters in other stories, they are uniquely qualified to judge the other characters, although a certain level of self-interest (although not really corruption) is present in that the judge's wife is very attached to her servant and does not want to see him punished for murder. That the only "I" of the whole book is a judge, though, makes the judge the only character to interact directly with the reader, and opens up the possibility of the reader being judged by him (or by the book) as well.

The reader should take this as a warning, but foolishly continues along, enjoying one more story of a servant who tries to find happiness beyond her station.

And then the book shifts gears, and Our Lady of Paris, the story of Sohail and his American girlfriend Helen unfolds not in Pakistan, but in Paris. In Our Lady of Paris, Sohail's mother, who believes firmly that Helen and Sohail have cultural incompatibilities that would make for a miserable marriage, masterfully breaks them up.

Then comes the emotional tour-de-force. Lily is told in two parts, each as long or longer than the other stories in the novel. The first half is an exhilarating account of a party girl (educated in the West) who, after a serious car crash, believes she has a chance at a clean slate. She falls in love with the most manly (also Western-educated) man (who takes her on a romantic picnic in his manly jeep, carrying his manly pistol and binoculars, takes a manly swim in a dangerous river, and then quotes her poetry in a manly way - remind you of someone else you may have seen recently?)

Yeah. So at any rate, in the first half of the story, they fall in true love and get married. And I am not a girl who likes chick lit, but let me tell you, I about had an estrogen overload by the time we hit the mid point. And, not knowing that this was a story in two parts, and knowing the average length of the stories leading up to this one, I was actually ready for this story to end happily ever after and mark a sea change in the direction these narratives had been heading.

I was so naïve, and so ripe for an emotional devastation. Maybe I have been watching too much of the Old Spice channel on youtube. Let me tell you, I think that Mueenuddin, as author, judge, and executioner, had me right where he wanted me.

Of course the party girl resents her newly antiseptic married life. Of course she wants to party it up with her pals from her wild single days. And of course she has meaningless sex with the first party guy to walk in.

But that's not all. She then goes and reads what her new husband (who in normal life seems a little less manly and a little more boring) wrote in the journal he showed her but asked her never to read.

And *BLAM*! There go some more lives down the toilet.

Yeah. That's the American version of lives down the toilet. Let me remind you that even though both Lily and her new husband had lived in the West, their marriage fell apart in Pakistan. No Vegas.

I had to put the book down. My reaction was visceral - as described in my previous post on the book. I had to go away for a couple of hours because I could not face whatever would come next.

And it ended with the story of another low person raised up to be a servant. But this time, he was not a trickster. He had chosen to beg in order to be free of the infighting and bullying he had been subjected to by his stepbrothers. He had left behind disappointment and was living life on his own terms. He expected nothing, lived simply, and had only a box of a shack that he moved from place to place. This story also has an American - Sonya, who had eventually married Sohail from the story of Helen in Paris. Sonya is well suited for life in Pakistan, although that does not make it easy. She is disturbed by the everyday corruption that she sees everywhere, and she has to escape to her own little world from time to time when it becomes too much. There is never a real explanation, though, of why Sonya was better for Sohail than Helen would have been.

At any rate, Sonya the American winds up giving Rezak the former independent a position as a servant, and she pays pretty well too. And this ruins Rezak's life.

The end.

So at this point, we are only left to ask why: Why these stories? Why these characters? Why in this order?

And at least for me, I had a bit of a light bulb go off.

I loved reading the stories at the beginning. In my mind, the characters were caricatures of foreign people doing foreign things. I got to see a big feudal farm and how the people attached to it survived. Some got shot, others slept their way to a position, but they were people I didn't have much in common with, interesting, and subjects of some good stories, but that's that.

But the more western these characters became, the more I felt what they felt. I could see myself in the Loire valley. I could sympathize with the westernized party girl who wanted to reform herself but found habits stronger than will. These are characters I've met before - characters I am trained to understand.

But then, when I feel the most attached, one more foreign protagonist appears. My life is nothing like Rezak's, although I do like to avoid conflict. But I do not understand living in a box - in fact, I am peering in, much like the people at the party who make a little trip to see the box. How am I going to experience his story?

Most naturally, from eyes like Sonya's. Which means that I did not feel sick after reading Rezak's story, even though I recognized the tragedy in it.

What Mueenuddin appears to be saying is that no matter how sympathetic we may feel we are to another person or group - no matter how many experiences we share or cultural practices we adopt - we are still judging and judged as outsiders. We still respond most sympathetically to people who are like us. We still see people unlike us as a "wonder" - or an other - in another room. Even the use of the word "other" in the title signals us to the realities of cross-cultural relations in a multi-caste world.

And in vein with the tone of the stories, there is not much hope for any one group to dissolve the barriers and see the lives of the people surrounding them. Much more impossible, and here is the book's inherent paradox, is understanding the lives of anyone half a world away, especially through a story. We are left with metaphors and empathetic feelings, but we will always, always, see the world through our own culture and experiences. And I just don't know exactly what to make of that.

Book Day

2010-07-17T21:59:00.005-04:00

I had been up about ten minutes this morning when Amilynne called me. Which was pretty funny, since I always worry about calling too early and waking her up. I thought it was pretty good that she figured I would be awake before 9am on a Saturday.

After greetings, she quickly got down to business. She had gotten up at some unholy hour of the early morning (2am? 3am? - hours when it is appropriate to go to bed, not to get up) because she was reading a book and she was dying to have someone with whom to discuss it. The book is In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. All Amilynne had to say was that it is Jhumpa Lahiri-good (if you haven't read her yet, start with Interpreter of Maladies), and I downloaded it to my Kindle (my awesome new Kindle 2.0!) and have spent the day reading.

Oh, it has been lovely, lovely prose, delightful characterization, rich descriptions, entertaining allusions. But it has been sad. The book is an interlocking series of short stories set in Pakistan, and no one is very happy, and those that do become very happy then become devistatingly, destructively unhappy, and everyone seems to be either a manipulator or a manipulated. And the first few stories, that was great, but every story like this, and all stories different, portraying different views of a multilayer society, and it is very overwhelming.

And that's where I am now. A couple of hours ago, I finished Lily, the penultimate story, and it has absolutely shredded me up. My brain feels dead and I don't want to breathe. I had to stop. And there's one more to go, and I just don't know whether it will also kill me a little inside, or what my state will be when I am done with it.

Here is a song for Lily.

Dave Matthews Band - The Dreaming Tree

A busy, busy day, so now let's dance.

2010-07-13T21:24:00.004-04:00

It was a very busy, very satisfying day.

Here is some gypsy-flamenco type music, just because it feels like a let-loose type of evening.

Gypsy Kings - Baila Me

Another Case of Mistaken Identity

2010-07-12T17:29:00.005-04:00

I don't know if you've noticed, but I am absolutely inept when it comes to remembering names. I seriously have to meet someone as many as six times before I can put face and name together. The base of it is a difficulty in remembering people's faces. Some faces stand out, of course, and I remember them even without meeting the person, but more often I can't form a picture of someone until we have met several times. At that point, I can start putting a name to the face.

And all of this can all add up to painful social situations.

Today I was in the bookstore, and a woman and I were about to cross paths. I stood back to let her pass, but instead, she asked me how I was and how my classes were going.

Cue the spinning world. I could not identify the woman; I had no idea that I knew her. And what was worse, my brain simply could not find any reference point for her. I was floored.

I feebly tried to come to and ask her how she was, but by this time, she had seen that I was lost and she had moved far enough away that chasing after her to say, "Hey! Wait! Who are you?" would not have worked.

And so I left the bookstore and went back to my car.

And my brain was still churning. And after a while, it found a possible match: the new professor who will start teaching Italian with us in the fall. But the match didn't fit easily - I tried to think about the woman's face, her haircut and the color of her skin, the fact that she was wearing glasses - and it was only a weak match with the new professor. So then the self-doubt did the rest of the work and made a fit.

By early evening, I had convinced myself enough, and I decided to call the new professor and apologize for my brutta figura - the bad impression I had made.

So I tried to call. And after I asked for the professor, the call dropped. I tried to call again, but no one picked up. I called my dad to tell him about the huge mistake I had made. And then a miracle - the professor was calling on the other line. And you know that when I apologized for my behavior in the bookstore, she told me that it couldn't have been her - she had been home all day.

The positive twist to the story is that the new professor and I will be going to lunch tomorrow. That will be fun, and this will be meeting number four, so hopefully I will not make any more identity mistakes about her.

But I still don't know who the woman in the bookstore was. My brain has hit on another possible match, a woman with whom I took many classes in grad school, but I am not listening to my brain try to fit the puzzle together this time. I can't believe I wouldn't have known this woman if I had seen her. And besides, I don't have her phone number to call and apologize.

Merz - My Name is Sad and At Sea

How to wake up a sleeping bear without getting caught in its teeth

2010-07-11T22:35:00.002-04:00

I'm putting together a new playlist to put in the alarm clock CD player - music that will be good for waking up to. This is tricky. If it is too harsh, even if it's a song I like, I will be grumpy by it and soon I will hate it. If it is too slow, I'll get introspective and I won't get out the door on time. If it's aggressive, I will be aggressive.

Here is a song that will almost certainly make it to the final cut. You knew Sir Paul could come up with something worth waking up to.

The Fireman - Sing the Changes

The Crash

2010-07-10T21:46:00.004-04:00

There is a little story to tell. I have committed to a major purging in the house. I've lived here for quite a while, and to say that stuff has started to accumulate might not be strong enough to put it lightly. So there have been several trips to the dumpster, and yesterday I loaded my car up with things to take to Goodwill.

I had parked behind the apartment for easier access to haul everything up to the car. As I was walking up, two little boys were riding their bikes, and one hit the back of my car. The other boy spun around to see what had happened, saw me approaching with my arms full, and started taunting the smaller boy, who had been knocked from his much-too-big-for-him bike, "You hit her car! You hit her car!" He was pointing wildly at me to make sure the little boy knew he wouldn't escape. I got to the car and the little boy said, "I hit your car with my bike." I asked him if he was all right, since I had seen him fall over. He seemed none the worse. We talked for a minute, and he told me that the day before he had been in a car accident, which sounded pretty nasty, with his aunt. He kept saying that he was sorry and I kept trying to reassure him that I knew it was an accident. He walked me around to show me right where he hit and to show me that there weren't any dents. I honestly can't imagine that a little guy like that would have the power to do more than what a door ding would do. He showed me my tail light, and it was unscathed, and suggested that we check his bike and make sure it was ok too. So we looked at his bike, which was also fine. So he started to get back onto it, promising me that he would be careful. I said, "I know you will. Just keep your eyes open." At that point I about split laughing - he opened his eyes so so wide! He wanted to show me that he would not close them. The other little boy had his eyes wide wide open too, and away they went up the parking lot, circling each other to make sure they were both keeping their eyes open... too cute.

I just keep thinking about how big and scary cars were when I was a kid on a bike. I remember one time distinctly refusing to cross the street on my bike until a car had gone by, while the car was stopped waiting for me to go. The driver got out of the car and told me that she could see me and she would not hit me. I wasn't taking any chances. I knew she wouldn't hit me on purpose, but... they're not called accidents for nothing. The woman finally went on her way and then I did too.

Anyway. Stories and whatnot. I guess I'll go back to cleaning.

How to have a spectacular day

2010-07-10T09:02:00.003-04:00

This may or may not be my favorite song. If it isn't my favorite song, I would be hard pressed to name for you a song that I absolutely like better. There are a few songs that I like as much.

One day in Genova, we were in a store that had a lot of stores connected to it. This fantastic world beat music came across the way from a music store. It wasn't this song - it was the first song on the disc with this song. I beat a quick path to the music store to ask what it was. Before long, I owned the disc. I'll admit that, contrary to mission rules, I listened to it before I left Genova.

I cannot sit still listening to this song. The words are of a fisherman trying to catch sardines, dreaming of his life if he could pull in the elusive golden fish. It's about the rhythm of the sea, and the traditional trying to make its way in the modern.

And it ends with a flute party.

And it's one way to set the tone for a spectacular day.

Fabrizio De André - Le accigughe fanno il pallone

Update on Italian class

2010-07-07T22:48:00.003-04:00

Today class finally settled into a pattern that I like. We've been so busy reviewing everything from 101 that we have done work work work every day. Today we were able to stretch out and do some enrichment work and some reading and some watching of a video clip, not to mention some good interactive practice of many of the topics we're learning now. Afterward, two of the students stayed back and we worked on making sense of some pronouns.

The fascinating thing is that no matter how many times you use a particular video clip or read a particular section of the book, no two classes will treat the activity the same. Teaching is a lot of planning and then a lot of curve balls thrown into those plans. I really love teaching these summer classes. I get my best ideas in the summer, and since the class meets so frequently the students maintain an elasticity from day-to-day that allows for a lot more experimentation.

Today we were reading about the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. What a beautiful part of the world. The countryside is so green, with the Alps so unbroken and massive in the background. Most of what I've seen I've seen through a train window, but it is beautiful. And Venice, of course, casts a spell on you that never rubs off. I would love to be in Venice right now. It would be great to have a little apartment there for the summer. To wake up and read for a while with Venice outside the window, then to walk around and explore for a while, then to take a nap in the warmest part of the afternoon, wake up, and start the reading/wandering cycle again. If that were my life, I might die of contentedness.

Wow. I might die of contentedness right here and now just contemplating that life.

Pretend that the bridge below is the bridge that carries you across the lagoon to Venice. It so totally isn't, but it's ok to pretend anyway.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk On the Ocean

Jovanotti

2010-07-06T20:38:00.011-04:00

The great thing about adding music to these posts has been the realization that I could blog for a LONG time and never mention everything that is good. Because here I am, posting one good thing in one category each time I post, and there is a whole world of great things beyond music that I am not posting.

Today one of my students brought in a stack of CDs to class for me to hear. I know it's quasi-lunacy, but two of the discs were of Jovanotti, whom I recognize in passing, but whose discs I've never really sat down and listened to. I was enjoying the two borrowed discs so much that I went online and downloaded Safari, which came out in 2008.

So here are some things to love about the Italian language. If you just hear it, it is beautiful. To me, it's the most beautiful language to listen to on earth. It can be smooth or staccato, it has a beautiful rhythm, and it lacks the hissing "s" sound at the end of every plural word. Then there is the understanding side of it, the technical, logical side that surprises completely and yet makes so much sense. And the flipside of the technical - the precise honesty of sentiment that sounds so cheesy in English but is just how it is in Italian. Italian is like Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch. Do you think he didn't know what he was doing? He did - he just did it in a country that pooh-poohs honest exuberance.

Ok. I know that the above was just the worst paragraph ever written, but the simple truth is that Italian blows my mind and brings my deep layers to the surface.

Here is a good song from the newly-purchased disc. Please notice the view of the Tetons from Oxbow Bend 41 seconds into the song. There aren't very many places in the world that can compare with that view.

Jovanotti - Fango

♫ I still owe money, owe money, to the money I owe...♫

2010-07-03T22:27:00.002-04:00

I noticed this morning that with my next post, The National would disappear from my page. Which is not permissible, as they are still the band I am listening to the most these days. So I had to decide which song to post today, and as the lyric which is the title to this post describes my life now and forever, choosing a song was not hard. To my brother in Ohio, no, I am not posting this as a threat against your state.

The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio

No, Animal Lovers, I Did Not Have the Schiacciata.

2010-07-01T07:42:00.006-04:00

Last night I went out for pizza. When we got there and were seated, the server brought us our menus, and I almost died laughing. Please see the description of the schiacciata:

Yeah. I apologize for the fuzziness of the photo, but I was shaking with laughter as I took it.

(Just what is a pizza doe? Is it a pizza-cooking deer, or some strange new genus wherein the yeast gains consciousness, takes control, and prances off into the moonlit forest glen? If there is a pizza doe, is there a pizza buck and a pizza fawn named Bambizza? Is a flattened pizza doe roadkill?)

It was all too much. With images of a flattened and halved pizza doe dancing in my head, I went vegetarian and got a mushroom pizza. It came out normal and round. And tasty.

Here is a forest song. If I became a wolf, I would definitely hunt pizza does.

Blitzen Trapper - Fur

And as a bonus, here is an Italian song that the Blitzen Trapper song brings to mind. Although its tone is much more cynical.

Fabrizio de André - Coda di Lupo

Moving In

2010-06-27T23:08:00.003-04:00

My junk room is a source of deep despair.

It's the second bedroom in my apartment. It was supposed to be a place for making stained glass windows and painting masterpieces.

It's a junk room.

Sometimes you really need someone to come in and say, "Look, honey - give it up." Maybe not exactly in those words, but with that sentiment. You see, in the closet of the junk room have lived all of the cardboard boxes it took to move me into this apartment. They have been waiting around for me to leave this apartment, but I haven't done that yet. And this spring, a friend with fresh eyes came in and urged me to give it up.

So I have. The boxes are out of the closet. I'm starting to go through other boxes in that room that have been taking up space for years. And maybe someday I will have my project room instead of a junk room. Maybe in time to work on something before the end of the summer.

Devendra Banhart - A Sight to Behold

Guitar Guitar Guitar

2010-06-18T22:39:00.003-04:00

I watched This Might Get Loud again. It's a fun and fascinating documentary of a meeting of Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White, and their guitars. The Edge played an early take of the guitar for this song and counted it out. It makes a smile break out on my face just thinking about it.

Hooray for rock and roll.

U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name

How the Cookie Crumbles

2010-06-15T17:06:00.004-04:00

Today's song is a bittersweet little number. You just tell me you didn't make these plans with someone when you were nineteen or so.

Slow Club - When I Go

The best things in life...

2010-06-11T00:27:00.004-04:00

I just downloaded this awesome song on Amazon. For free. Get it while the getting's good. For the record, his album Science is also very nice. I'll have to look into the rest of this album.

Thomas Dybdahl - I Need Love, Baby, Love, Not Trouble

Unpopular Opinion

2010-06-07T19:02:00.011-04:00

There is a lot going on all at once that seems to be related but may not be.

Since the "Peace Flotilla" was taken over by the Israeli military, the crazy seems to be screaming at a higher pitch than usual.

Yeah. So there was no way for this to have played out well. The "Peace Activists" couldn't have thought that Israel would let them through. Else the blockade would cease to be a blockade. Duh. It is senseless, though, for anyone to act as though they were doing anything different from eco-activists who chain themselves to trees. They were in a ploy for attention. Period. And when it turned chaotic and deadly, well, I guess that's what happens when you try to run a military blockade.

But on the other hand, a different story has been splashed across the news today. Helen Thomas. I have known her face since I was a kid - way longer than I have known who she is - she was always right there on the front row of the White House press room, even back when there were few enough channels that you could find them all with a dial. Anyway, in the last week or so, she stuck her foot in her mouth and is having to retire. Of course, lots of people recover from stating unpopular opinions, but her unpopular opinion was that the Jews should leave Palestine. And since she said it, her career is over and she is being marked a bigot.

Of course this coincided with the "Peace Flotilla." And I wonder if she wouldn't have been able to recover from it if the Flotilla had not floated.

I am troubled at the clamor for blood that follows anyone's statement of an unpopular sentiment. I see a big difference between disagreeing with the Jewish settlement of Israel and hating Jewish people. Disagreeing with a state does not equal hating an ethnic group. Take Italy. I am forever baffled at Berlusconi's hold on the country's leadership. His self-interested manipulations of the law allow him to get away with outrageously criminal behavior. And yet he keeps winning elections. Does this mean that I hate Italians? Of course not. Yet my opinion is that the way the country runs has fundamental moral flaws.

Let's come a bit closer to home. Cuba. As a nation, we don't even have diplomatic dialogue with Cuba. Yet no one is going to say of those who defend the status quo that they hate Cubans. Or Venezuela? They did elect Chavez in (at least the first time). Do we really hate ourselves when we disagree with our own country?

We are never going to make it as a multicultural globe if we continue to take statements of opinion and make of them more than there is: if we look to be hurt and hated. I think Helen Thomas knows that the state of Israel isn't going anywhere. Nor is the United States of America going anywhere, in spite of being at its core a settlement on land previously belonging to someone else. Her comment wasn't smart. It didn't do anything to advance cooperation or peace or tolerance. But when people feel that a whole nation can't stand the criticism of an opposing journalist in another country, they devalue that nation's overall power and come off basely too.

**note: it took me a month to put my ideas into semi-adequate words. I am actually publishing this on July 11, 2010.**

Virtually dead

2010-06-06T19:44:00.004-04:00

I just had a screaming moment in my brain. The New York Times has a new series in its op-ed department called The Stone. It is a forum for current philosophers to throw their problems at us. Today the series is in its third installment. I'll come back to it in a moment.

My talents for procrastination have turned this into laundry night. I hate doing laundry. Well, I don't actually hate doing laundry - I hate having to go into the laundry room. It is foul. Imagine the foulest place and this beats it by a factor of twenty. And tonight when I went it, it was super foul. It reeked of pot and was dirty with ashes strewn about and - a new low - someone had graffitied the walls. I would take a picture to show it to you, but it is foul and offensive, and I don't want it on the walls, much less on my blog.

So, freshly discouraged by this experiment in hell that is my neighborhood, I came in to the apartment, put on some Smiths, and went to the New York Times for some brain fodder.

The Stone had been updated, and today's update is: Should This Be the Last Generation? Ha! And it is chock full of "reasons" ("reasons" that are full of navel-gazing crap, by the way) for sterilizing humanity and letting this be the end.

And then, as I was reading it, Reel Around the Fountain came on. "It's time to tell the world / of how you took a child / and you made him old." And my head started to scream. It was too much. I finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four today. Too much.

I am frustrated. Frustrated by the people who do have children and don't take care of them. Frustrated by the prevailing attitude of Clockwork Orange-style thuggery in the name of individual freedom. Frustrated that I don't have a place to live that puts some distance between me and this.

Someday when my life warrants an equal and opposite reaction to the one I've had today, I'll probably burst of happiness.

The Smiths - Reel Around the Fountain

Just music

2010-06-05T19:35:00.003-04:00

Ok. I have found the perfect fusion music. The title of the album is Un turco napolitano a Venezia - a Neopolitan Turk in Venice. And it is a wonderfully balanced mix of middle eastern instrumentation and Italian (Neopolitan).

This is not the most middle-eastern song on the album. In fact, it sounds downright Italian to me. But it is a great performance.

Gerardo Balestrieri - O guappo 'nnammurato

Now the sound quality on this one is downright awful at times, but it is more the mood of most of the album. It's beautiful.

Gerardo Balesrieri - Maruzzella

Ok. Compare it to this. This album came out back in the day of cassette tapes, and it is still one of my favorites. It has a permanent place in my car. Anne Dudley (of Art of Noise) and Jaz Coleman went to Egypt to compose and record. The result was Songs of the Victorious City. No long road trips without it.

Anne Dudley and Jaz Coleman - Ziggarats of Cinnamon

Why have a mind if not to question why?

2010-06-04T22:57:00.004-04:00

OK. So once upon a time Smithsonian magazine was a big, thick wonder of goodness. Beautiful pictures, stories that went on for pages, thought-provoking content. Then I subscribed. In 2001 or 2002 or so. And the magazine's quality began to plummet. Fast. I began to be bored with it and I subscribed to Harper's for a year or two. Until I realized that I hadn't read Smithsonian in a couple of years, and that I was really only interested in about 25% of the content in Harper's. I finally let both of the subscriptions run out in about 2007 or 2008. And I have not subscribed to a magazine since.

Until this evening. (Or writing about my magazine subscription history would be very anti-climatic, wouldn't it?) Tonight I subscribed to Lapham's Quarterly. Hooray! Writing culled from across civilization, juxtaposed in thought-provoking ways. Clever charts and the warmth of general smarminess about being literary. One topic per magazine. And I have spent hours reading the content they have posted on their website. So I did it. A one-year trial.

Will it be worth it? Stay tuned...

Tonight's song is old. From the soundtrack to Yentl, but all I can say is that since I was very young this song has been infused into my soul. I should wake up to it every morning so I don't forget the purpose of my life so easily. Forgive the sound quality on the embedded copy, but the movie is gorgeous. To hear it with better sound quality but with visuals of poorly transcribed lyrics, catch it on YouTube here.

Barbra Streisand - Where Is It Written?

What a beautiful day off this has been.

2010-05-31T19:33:00.008-04:00

Seriously.

I got up a little after 5am and got my morning Internet jolt. I found a new band to like. (The) Dimes. On their last album, they had the The, but it seems to be dropped on their latest effort. Anyway, I was looking at NPR's music pages and found that they had the song of the day today, "Save Me, Clara," a song to the founder of the Red Cross. I was intrigued, and I went looking on emusic and saw that their album has a Boston theme. It's called The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry. So I wondered if they were a Boston band, but no, they are from Portland. I listened a little and decided to download it. A little later, I was back reading and found that their previous album, the one in which they are The Dimes, also has an interesting concept - one of the band members found a box of old 1930s newspapers in the attic, and they read them and wrote songs about what they found. There is even a song about the riots after the Sacco and Vanzetti trials.

But here's the deal. This band is perfect background music. When you listen to it, you can think, "Hey! That's clever! They're singing about Thoreau and Alexander Graham Bell!" and then it fades back into the background, and you can keep on with whatever else you are doing. Sometimes it reminds me very much of Michael Penn's album in the 80's, which I loved dearly. Just a very basic acoustic guitar, unobtrusive yet pleasant voice, very level intensity throughout. Background music.

Which left me free to do much today. I made some marinade and got some chicken ready that I will cook in a little while. I cooked some breakfast and cleaned things up in the kitchen. And I read.

I ran into some very interesting things today. New York Times has a new op-ed column called The Stone that is about philosophy. Today's article was about stoicism, where it comes from, and how it is basically the attitude that soldiers are expected to carry into their work. The problem, though, is that when they come home, remaining stoic isn't a good option, nor is dropping the stoicism and seeing their wartime acts in an at-home moral/ethical lens. Even if they played perfectly by the rules.

I have also been reading some literary theory. Amilynne convinced me to buy a new anthology. I was flipping through it yesterday and started reading some gender theory by Judith Halberstam, from Female Masculinity. She presents a lot of really interesting ideas about the effect of a third (or a fourth, or a hundredth) option in a binary system. I also went online and found an interview with her where one of the things they talk about is how the relationship of power to intellect or stupidity isn't necessarily intuitive - about the power of stupidity.

And then I have been reading Nineteen Eighty-Four. And all of these ideas crashed together and started to synthesize and I am having so much fun! Stories of dystopia are so fantastic for chasing the ends of ideas. And I am loving Nineteen Eighty-Four anyway. When I was about ten pages in, I could tell that if it continued as it was going, it would become one of my very favorite books. I am almost 2/3 of the way through and I still love it.

The best part of the day, topping even the brain-popping joy of new ideas, was talking with Amilynne on the phone. While we were talking, she was looking at an assignment she had given her students for The Old Man and the Sea. She was so funny - confessing that before she handed the books out, she went ahead and highlighted her favorite quote in ALL of the copies of the book. So her students wouldn't miss it. And somehow that idea showed up in all of the projects! Incredible! But really, from what she was describing, her students really connected with the book. I wish I could take English from Amilynne. I definitely had some excellent English teachers growing up, but a class with Amilynne would be a treat. Maybe when she is a fancy ivory tower college professor I'll go take a summer class from her. That would be a superb treat.

Anyway. I would love a week like today has been. But it is time to cook the chicken and then make sure I am ready for school in the morning.

Song of the day (put it on in the background, then go do something else):

The Dimes - Susan Be

Ok. And would you like a treat? Blitzen Trapper's new album, Destroyer of the Void, which will come out June 8 can be streamed in its entirety on NPR until its release. Yippee!!!

I could tell you about lots of things.

2010-05-28T22:07:00.002-04:00

Maybe I'll tell you about some of them.

Hooray, the 3-day weekend has begun!

How did I celebrate its onset? I watched Vertigo on streaming Netflix. Vertigo has been on my to-watch list for years and years and years. Frank has had a framed movie poster of it since college. When I first saw the poster, I asked him something along the lines of whether it was really such a good movie. His response reflected his disbelief that I had not seen the film. That, as I mentioned, was years and years and years ago. So tonight I was on Netflix and realized that it would no longer be available for streaming after the end of the month. So I figured I would inaugurate the weekend by watching it.

And while, yes, some of the plot twists were really fun, I couldn't get over two things:

1. Kim Novak. Ugh! She has one of those faces where the cheekbones are way full and they sink in to a pointed chin at some mighty crazy angles. And the painted-on crazy fat eyebrows only made it worse. I couldn't stop looking at her eyebrows! and then it occurred to me: she looks like Linda Evangelista in those horrible horrible L'Oreal Visible Lift commercials. Same facial structure. I actually had to check Wikipedia to make sure they weren't related.

Don't they kind of look like they're trying to get peanut butter off the roofs of their mouths?

Kim Novak

Linda Evangelista

2. As though the eyebrows weren't bad enough, I could have lived with them if she had just had some spine. What an awful character she played! And yes, I realize that this is an old movie, but wow - talk about unable to do anything without a man pulling the strings.

So although the animated opening and dream sequences were very cool, Vertigo didn't do it for me. I'll stick with The Birds and Psycho. And I still have Rear Window and North by Northwest on the list to see.

*****

There are some activities that are very calming to me and yesterday I enjoyed one of them: running my car through the car wash. Why, you might ask, would such an activity be calming? Well, when I worked at the rental car company after college, sometimes the best part of the day was sitting isolated in a car with a buffer of water all around - no one could possibly pop in with a problem that needed attention there.

I should indulge in a car wash more often, even though of course the fact that I washed my car yesterday unleashed a weekend of thunderstorms. We have been on a crazy schedule at school to accommodate all of the state testing going on, and that has meant three-hour-long classes in the morning. Which means spending lots and lots of time with my hardest class. It has been awful. Yesterday was one of the days that that class met. Which meant the onset of an all-day migraine. I swear it melted away as soon as I got into the car wash. Really.

One day when I was in the carwash I had the greatest idea for a story. Someday when I write it, I'll share.

*****

I think I'm done buying books for a while. It's going to take a little while to get through the ones I have bought. This week the Borromini book came. Genius, genius, genius. I want a trip to Rome.

*****

Shall we have a song of the day? I downloaded this album last night. It was just the suggested album on the front page of emusic when I logged on, and I liked it, so I got it. This morning while getting ready for work, I had it playing and this song caught me. Then I was on the npr website later today and found a video.

Listen to it on the embedded video below. Then, if you like the song, see the more literal video on npr. But really, just listen to it first.

Josh Ritter - The Curse

Crates

2010-05-16T18:43:00.004-04:00

It is the end of the semester at the university. While I very very very much love teaching there, this semester I taught two sections and having double the correcting to do while spending twice as much time in class was difficult. (Spending the time in class was not the difficult part. I love the part of teaching that is the teaching! Finding time to do the persuant paperwork was the hard part. It feels like the end of four months of chasing my tail.) Anyway, now I just need to get caught up at the high school, and it will be time to start thinking about packing things up there. Only five more weeks there, and it will be back to the university.

The other thing to try to fix now is the disaster that is my house. Maybe I have mentioned that I am not the best housekeeper in the world. There are enough interesting things to do in life that housekeeping just fails to make the cut. Some progress on this front had been made as recently as February or so. But we all know that if I can make progress, I am just as capable of double regression. This time it came in the form of books. (!!!) I came into a LOT of Italian books - Italian textbooks, Italian readers, books on Italian study, etc. etc. etc. They have been sitting in the living room for about a month, and with the end of the semester, I finally felt that maybe I could figure out what to do with them. So yesterday I went to Staples and bought six filing crates. Because I figure this way I can stack the books in a corner or something. Really I don't know what I'm doing, but it seemed to make sense at the moment. And I really didn't think I would need all six, but my motto (and the root of all my troubles) is buy too much so you don't have to go back for more.

Between the Italian books and the Theory of Knowledge books I am starting to accumulate, I have seven crates of books in my living room right now. And I think I will probably need at least one more by the time I finish accumulating the first wave of Theory of Knowledge books. The end of which I ordered this afternoon - it should be arriving over the next couple of weeks.

It's overwhelming and crazy exciting all at once to think of how much reading I have to do. I need to go on sabbatical. Which is long overdue. I mean, wouldn't that mean take the seventh year off? And I'm finishing my eighth - not to mention the three pre-teaching years. How glorious would it be to have a year off to study and prepare and think uninterruptedly?

Ha ha. Yes, we know I would spend most of my time surfing the Internet and rotting my brain. Maybe I had better stick with the panic tide of ever-crashing deadlines. Sure, the heart attack will come a few years earlier, but in the end I will have gotten something accomplished.

Would you like a song? note: for this one, be sure you hang on for the instrumental finish.

Beirut - St. Apollonia.