Mix Tapes

Yesterday I got the BEST thing in the mail. Amilynne sent me a mix tape. This was in response to an urgent SOS because the mix tape that she gave me when we saw each other in August has begun to self-destruct in my car tape deck. It's all I've listened to in my car since I got it, and it's starting to go. So last night I called Ami and said "Hey! I got your tape!" and she said "Pop it in!" and I said "No, I think I'll save it for the car--I'm going to watch I'm Not Scared tonight and then go to bed." "Oh." I could hear that she was a little disappointed that I hadn't popped it right in. But here's the deal: it's for the car, and it's not like I won't be SOSing in 2 months saying "Help! This tape is starting to warp! Make me another!"

But I couldn't wait. I popped it in when we got off the phone. It's magical. Where else can you listen to Brian Jonestown Massacre one minute and Bert and Ernie the next, and not much later you hear the Smiths? She even has Counting Crows on there, and I don't remember her liking Counting Crows.

I fell asleep in the middle of I'm Not Scared.

There is something about a mix tape. I've made lots of them; I've gotten lots of them. You're always in the mood for one. And somehow they end up getting shared around. Mix tapes are for being in love, for declaring independence from being in love, for letting friends know you miss them even though you live far away, for cool things you do with friends like roadtrips or climbing water towers. And sometimes exchanging them with your sister is just a hats-off nod to the enormity of her disc collection--so good you want it all; so big you know that in all of the Christmasses at Dad's you'll never get it all burned. I've got one mix tape from a friend I used to work with. She's a Beatles fan, so there's some of that, but nuttiest of all is an old recording of "When It's Springtime in the Rockies." I was singing it one day--she was like "Woah! My grandpa used to sing that to me when I was going to sleep!" and I was like "My great-grandma wrote the words."

I caught an interview on some talk show with Quentin Tarantino. When asked what he does to show a girl he's interested, he says he makes a mix tape. Woah. That would have to be the #1 reason to get up close & personal with Quentin Tarantino. He's got to have the bossest music collection around. That would be one heck of a mix tape.

All About Eve

No. All about Amilynne.

Amilynne is in class right now. She feels sad that I haven't posted many updates about her. She's right. I should definitely talk about her more.

We just spent a few minutes on the phone. Ami has seen I ♥ Huckabees. She reports that there is a Kafka moment and that it is the funniest movie in a long time. I must say that a Kafka moment is enough to get me into the theater, although I must also say that a Kafka moment is the reason why Amilynne and I should see this movie and our brothers should not. I do still need to see it myself. Something about fall and school, I tend to miss a lot of the shows I would really love to see.

Amilynne got to go see Senator Kerry do his campaign song-and-dance on Friday. She came away all signed up to help with the election. What a good little trooper Amilynne is! I've been looking at the Senator's website. His stance on education makes me hopping mad. He says that teachers aren't treated like professionals because they aren't paid enough and because they don't have enough responsibility. What? Not enough responsibility? Is that why I have to sleep for a week solid after school lets out for the summer? Because tonight I'm going to go see I ♥ Huckabees instead of writing the test I'm giving to my first years? Dad told me that Teresa Heinz Kerry said that Laura Bush had never had a real job. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure she was a teacher once upon a time. The Kerrys can take their opinions about teachers and shove it.

Sorry. I got off track. I'm writing about Amilynne.

Amilynne made me another mix tape. The one she gave me in August has not left my car stereo and is about worn out. I gave her some constructive criticism for this one: no Missy Elliott. Apparently she took the constructive criticism and I am looking forward to a real boss tape.

The Suicide of Ajax by Exekias, c. 540 BC. 

It's All About the Greeks

I picked up a copy of the complete plays of Sophocles. I haven't read Greek drama since my freshman year in college, when I had a fantastic Intro to Classical Lit class from Dr. Timothy (I think that was his name) Winters. He was so good that when he picked up and moved to some college back east the next year, there was a real temptation to switch to classical studies, pick up, and follow. We read the Orestia of Aeschylus. I remember really liking it, and I just dug open my treasure chest of files of notes from my undergrad work and found that the person I would have liked most to play was Clytemnestra. (Side note: there is nothing happier than my treasure chest of files of notes from my undergrad work. Everyone should get the chance to major in Humanities at least once--completely impractical, but what a richness, having the charge to study the best work and greatest achievements of humanity. It makes my soul soar just to think about it.)

At any rate, it's Sophocles I've got now, and not knowing which play would be best, I started with the one at the front: Ajax. Now. I do love the tale of Ajax. There is a fantastic Greek black figure vase by Exekias where Ajax is planting his sword in the ground to fall on it. I'll have to try to post an image. So back to Sophocles. Let me just say that for "saying it like it is" in a very straightforward yet naked with feeling way, it's all about the Greeks. And it's because of the whole strophe-antistrophe chorus thing: they have the ability, within just a few lines of dialogue, to lay bare a hidden agenda or emotion or to state the epiphany of the whole play. How do we know how deeply Ajax's wife dreads his death? She says how much, but rather than saying it to herself and sounding like an introspective fool, she talks it out with that most perceptive chorus. (Could the Greek chorus be the predecessor to modern psychology?) It doesn't just work with the wife; it works with the brother as well: Imagine! A manly way to express one's deepest griefs, fears, thoughts, and feelings!

It is no wonder that terms as singular as drama and pathos come from the Greek. The theater is their ballgame, and they describe it best.

Black Elk Speaks

Today I finished reading Black Elk Speaks, a narrative by Black Elk, a Lakota medicine man who tells about Custer's Last Stand and the Wounded Knee Massacre. A link to read it online can be found by clicking on the title of this posting.

The book is fascinating because of its details about what it means to be a visionary in Native American cultures, and because of its descriptions of everyday and special happenings at the end of the ninteenth century as native peoples experienced the injustices and changes related to the settling of the West. Black Elk talks about so many battles, and I found it amazing that he lived through all of them.

It was good and thought-provoking reading. And I so enjoyed having it online so I could just look up a chapter while I ate my lunch.

But I never wanted to see the underside of a semi

A lovely day today (yesterday now, I guess). Thomas and I headed for the hills for some autumn foliage viewing. On the way west, we stopped for gas and found gelato! The skinny's on the other blog (linked by clicking on the title of this entry). We then headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway and drove south. We dodged random showers and some clouds, but found mostly sun and a lot of breezes causing showers of leaves to fall on us on our way. We did a bit of walking at a couple of spots. We found one overlook, Big Spy Mountain, which was better viewed from the hill that the trail didn't lead to. Then we found Crabtree Falls and hiked up partway, but darkness was starting to fall and I wasn't sure I remembered how to get back to the main highway and we decided to make sure we got out while it was still light.

Then we hit the traffic. BLAH! As soon as we hit Hwy 81, we were at a standstill. It took us two hours to cover the 8 miles to the next exit. Needless to say, we hadn't planned for that slowdown. At fault was a wreck almost to the next exit: what we saw was a tow truck attached to a semi on its side with its wheels facing us. Scary! Well, best guess was that at some point it was across most of the road, because traffic was so stopped for so long. After we'd been in the traffic jam for more than an hour, a police car came by on the shoulder. Another one followed half an hour later, along with a big-blinking-arrow-sign truck. It was so nice to finally pass it all and be moving forward. By the time we were arriving home, we had started to run out of music to listen to, and I had brought the music, so you know how long that takes.

Red Skies at Morn...

... teachers be warned. I drove to work today with a most beautiful sunrise all around me. The skies were pink and orange and the trees in silhouette were still leafy and as I was crossing the bridge I thought how glad I was not to be a sailor.

Can I please be a sailor? No rainstorm, thunderstorm, or squall can compare with a roomful of 25 tenth graders taking the PSAT.

Gentile reader, you may wonder what tenth graders are doing taking the PSAT. Isn't that an eleventh grade thing? Well, I asked, and apparently all of the tenth graders are taking it this year too. What a waste of money.

You see, they haven't grasped the idea that standardized tests have a schedule and that they must be silent while they take them. There was also a guy who wanted to go to the bathroom as soon as I restarted things after the bathroom break. Too bad. If this had been an SAT session, I would have ejected about ten of them.

I wonder how much of a pay raise teachers could have had if they weren't wasting money having the tenth graders take the PSAT.

Too yummy for a title

I just had the great joy and privilege of introducing ten teenagers (my 3rd year class) to the bliss that is Nutella. Y-U-M-M-Y, or, put simply in Italian, che buono! Every job should have moments as fulfilling as this. It seriously reminds me of the day before I came home from Italy when Roberta Z. made me eat Nutella crepes. I had sworn not to eat the stuff because of its devastating effect on waistlines. The crepes were good. I didn't make crepes for my students--we had Bistro Cornbread crackers, which are super yummy with Nutella. But to make up for it, they got lemon Loacker too. They had to earn it by using various forms of the partitive to ask for it. (Repeat: Vorrei un cracker con della Nutella. Vorrei qualche biscotto. Vorrei un po' di tutto.)

Which reminds me that a while back I was watching a Will and Grace rerun and Grace was smacking on some lemon Loacker. Hee Hee!! It wasn't a product placement at all--you had to recognize that bright yellow bag in her hand. And recognize it I did.

Well, I was pretty good and only had half a cracker with the Nutella stuck on the knife scraped onto it. Then I had my lunch of a sandwich, an apple, and some edamame. Now it's back to work. We'll see how long the Nutella stays locked in the closet.

www.nutella.it

3-Way Calling, Ad Infinitum

Tonight all of my family was on the phone together! First it was Dad and Ami and me, then David called and Dad called him back. We needed Alan! I tried to explain to Ami how to go get him. Dad and David kept talking over me... Ami eventually hung up on us trying to get Alan, so I took the opportunity while I was getting her back to explain the process to her without male intervention. ;) It worked, and we were all on the phone together. It was like Christmas.

The best part is that now that we've done it, there is no excuse not to do it again. I love talking with my family! We laugh and joke and have such a good time. I would say that the only thing better is actually getting together, but this does have some advantages: 1. No one is sneaking off to their room to read a book or to the family room to watch TV; 2. No poking (except mental poking); 3. It sure costs a lot less! Hooray for good phone plans!

Little Miracles

This afternoon as I was doing some correcting after school, I had my door propped open and two of my former art history students stopped by to say hi. The first one had a locker outside my door last year so I used to see her all the time. (She was my student two years ago.) In fact, earlier today while I was standing in the hall between class changes I was thinking that I hadn't seen her for a while. She's the nicest girl and it was great to talk to her. A little bit later, another girl stopped by with a friend. I asked her how she's doing and she said that sometimes she misses art history class. That about floored me. I mean, I worked really hard on those classes, and I think that some students got to a point where they were thinking about art and were able to recognize basic formalist characteristics in it, but I didn't think anyone would ever tell me that they miss the class sometimes. That was so fulfilling because above all I want for my classroom to be a safe place where everyone has the respect and nurturing they need to have the confidence to learn. And I think that both of these students were responding to that more than they actually responded to the subject of art history. It was such a nice end to the school day.

Mirah

Ok, please follow this link and download the song "Cold Cold Water." I was listening to Launch tonight while lesson planning and this singer came on with an Italian song that I teach my students (it's a fun WWII song that the Communist party has picked up as its unofficial anthem...)

Anyway so I went online searching for the song, and I found this page, and this song rocks. The other one is good, too, but "Cold Cold Water" is where it's at. Let me know what you think.

http://www.epitonic.com/artists/mirah.html

Stove Top and Politics

John Kerry used the phrase "Islamic Muslims" in the debate! He also threw the word "kill" into the mix a few too many times, as in "hunt down and kill the terrorists". (Due process?) That said, Bush's domestic policies aren't working, we should not have raced into Iraq only to let Bin Laden escape (we all know exactly WHY Mr. Oilman attacked Iraq), and I'm angry that the national defecit continues to mortgage my future. Both candidates are idiots for putting the No Child Left Behind act into play-- (Nice concept--if it didn't fly in the face of IDEA, deny critical thinking skills, and act as cover for a huge movement to move public school monies into private schools.)

Enough politics.

Last night I was making Stove Top. Apparently they won a "best pre-packaged stuffing" award. But I have to wonder... is their stuffing the best, or are we just so innundated with it that we think that's how it should taste? Don't get me wrong. I adore Stove Top (except for the little dry onions that don't really blend in) but my dad's fresh stuffing is so good that I have to believe that someone could get a little closer to the real thing.

As a side note, tonight I called in about jury duty for the last time. They don't need me. Thank heavens! I have a test to give tomorrow.

Magic Car Crystals

So if you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, you'll remember the scene where Napoleon is about to try the time machine: Kip is all ready to plug it in and let it rip, when Napoleon stops him and says, "Wait! I almost forgot the crystals!" He dumps some little crystals into a receptacle at the top of the time machine and the rest is history.

My car's name is Mary Jane. She is the best car! She is a replacement for Juanita, my first car. Juanita made me really happy for about nine days, when she stopped on the freeway with a clogged fuel injector. Juanita made me nervous ever after, and she died in a freak accident at 1:00am, getting rear ended and pushed into the car in front in a rainstorm. Both of the other cars sped off. Juanita never started again.

Mary Jane is a Corolla. She runs and runs and runs. She drove all the way to Virginia, then last summer she took me on a fantastic roadtrip to Minnesota. She's had a tire with a small leak that's been giving her the blues, but she handles it like a trooper. She has little stash places for coins. When I lived in Texas, I rarely used them, but here in Virginia where I have to cross a toll bridge every day, the quarter slots are in constant use. That is where the magic crystals come in.

When the Texas quarters came out this summer, I lucked out and got two rolls fresh from the mint! So I reserved the quarter slots by the emergency brake for Texas quarters: a sort of good karma token for Mary Jane since she's a Texas car. This is real magic, not the fake new-agey stuff like crystals. This is four-leaf clover and rabbit's foot material.

Hopefully by next summer, Mary Jane will be able to have the tune-up and new tires that she needs, and then we'll be off again, taking another roadtrip. Driving west, across Tennessee, into the sunset, back home.

Another too-short weekend

I will say right now that if you are looking for sunshine and angels in this post it ain't here. It's 7:07am on a Sunday morning and I have just put in my second load of laundry. Yes, I woke up before 5:30, which is a bad, bad way to have a Sunday morning start. At least I'll have fresh towels when I get in the shower.

Teaching is tough on the system. In addition to doing laundry, I've spent this morning working on a Jeopardy game to review before a test I'm giving to my 3rd years. I still have lesson plans to make for this week. I spent yesterday trying to attack some really dry reading for my reading fundamentals class. The weekly journal on the reading is due in less than 2 weeks, and I need to post some thoughts on it on the discussion board. I hope when I'm a professor I remember that assigning a journal along with a discussion board both on the subject of the reading is redundant.

I admit that the one good thing about the text is that it has little glosses on the side about things to expect when teaching second language learners to read English. That is its redeeming factor, and it will most likely provide the subject matter for each journal entry/discussion posting. It also gives me something to think about on a foreign language teacher level.

Well, laundry needs to be moved and I've got a Jeopardy game to finish.

Never Had It

So my favorite childhood (circa 6th grade) joke is ruined. Here it is:

Q: What do a nun and a bottle of 7-up have in common?

A: Never had it, never will.

And yet this summer a new 7-up appeared. A 7-up to compete with Mountain Dew. A 7-up with caffeine. And it's emerald green.

Emerald green! Thomas's roommate Rob had consumed at least a whole case of it, then last Friday or Saturday I was over and Thomas offered me a can with a glass. I poured it out and Rob just stared--he had previously had no idea of its brilliant sparkling color. I'm not joking when I say emerald!

Flavor? 7-uppy Mountain Dew. Limier to go with the color, maybe? And the label is upside-down. 7-up has been turned on its head.

Apparently the new 7-up is only available on limited release. We have it here, but it's not yet available back home in Idaho--the 7-up company is probably well aware of the backlash a caffeinated version of its caffeine-free flagship might encounter there.

What do I think? I'm just bummed that my joke is ruined. The nuns stand alone.

Formatting Issues

The fact that the long web address in the previous post messed up the look of the blog by shoving column 2 way down below column 1 is driving me crazy! Oh that I were a web designer!

Hero

I've actually been trying to get this post finished and up for about a week. Things have been hectic! I guess if I didn't take extra Arabic classes there would be more time to finish things up, but sometimes you do things for yourself.

At any rate, last weekend I saw Hero, and what a movie it is. A warning if you haven't seen it, I'm going to write liberally, which will most likely include spoilers. You may want to stop here.

Overall, it was one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. The others that come to mind for sheer cinematographic (is that a word?) beauty are Legends of the Fall and Seven Years in Tibet (mind you, I said "cinematographic" beauty, not beauty of fake accents). Both of those were breathtaking, but in a "Wow what great shots of those amazing mountains" kind of way. Hero is different. The beauty is orchestrated and arranged with intentional color. I saw one other Chinese movie several years ago (I wish I could remember its name) that also used flowing, brightly colored silk--in fact it was set in a silk dyer's workshop--and it had fantastic scenes of this beautiful hanging silk, which ultimately went up in flames. At any rate, these three movies are the only ones I can think of that rival the visual beauty of Hero.

(Bonus observation: Possibly the most beautiful thing in the film? The banners of the emperor's army with a red flower followed by a string of stars.)

That said, It's the symbology of the colors that I want to get into, because there is no way that these were arbitrary. Jet Li, the unnamed assassin, first approaches the emperor wearing black. In his story of defeating the other three assassins, they all wear red. Then the emperor's reinterpretation of what may have happened casts the people (and even the library) in blue. The unnamed assassin retorts with what really happened, and everyone is wearing white until within that version Broken Sword tells his story of meeting Snow, in which everyone wears green. It's then back to white as events unfold and word of the unnamed assassin's death reaches Broken Sword and Snow.

Here are some sites I consulted about color symbolism:

http://www.qi-whiz.com/McFengshui/color.html

http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm

Therefore, I think it breaks down like this:

Red: prosperity, visibility, energy. This is the version the unnamed assassin would like the emperor to believe about his rise to prominence above the assassins. Here he actually defeats the others and claims to be a faithful servant to the emperor.

Blue: knowledge. As noted, even the library changed colors this time. This is the emperor's best guess as to true events. Blue reigns over the realm of ideas in an etherial manner, which I think would hold true in both western and Chinese color readings. (And by the way, if the banners weren't the most beautiful thing in the movie, people in blue fighting over a mountain lake was.)

White: bare truth, in a way. This was the hardest to pin down, but it seems to symbolize all of the straightforward realities of life: certainly death and a struggle against forces greater than one's own, but also purity: this is the color of actual events and of people acting after their ideals.

Green: new life, harmony, hope, and family. This is the history between Broken Sword and Snow, and a rememberance of a time when the world was wide open to possibility.

Black: harsh reality, and ultimately death. Assassins bringing death wear black. The emperor and his army wear black. Black always spreads across the screen as the ultimate, unescapable fate.

I can't wait to have this one for my DVD collection.

Mumtaz!

Tonight I attended a free Arabic class. Hooray! I had such a good time. This is a beginner's class, which is good because I really don't remember any Arabic at all from my classes 6 years ago. But little by little as we went over the first 5 letters of the alphabet and some basic greetings, I started to remember things, and as I walked out my brain was quickfiring vocabulary. Ok, maybe not quickfiring, but a few synapses were reconnecting, and that's a great feeling.

The Arabic class is my reward for finishing my homework in my other class. Learning a skill like speaking a language is so satisfying--much better than reading about research or falling asleep to crazy made-up case studies. I have such a hard time staying awake with that! But with language learning, I always have something new to test my brain and to stretch my concept of the language. It's tremendous.

Hooray!

Hang the Jury

As though there weren't enough to do anyway.

It's the first month of school and I've been placed on alert for jury duty. When I got the first notice in July, I tried to be excused on the grounds that finding an Italian-speaking substitute teacher would be next to impossible. I also pointed out that I'm working full time and working on a master's degree. The case failed to convince, and I've been assigned.

I therefore spent a large chunk of time creating substitute lesson plans for use in the case that I am called. The problem lies in the fact that this early in the school year, there is just too much to do, and I will really have to re-do substitute lesson plans each week in the case that I am called. I don't want to be called, but it miffs me terribly that all of this planning is for nothing. How dare they place one's life in limbo!

Ok, so there are worse things that could happen than jury duty. But I still hold that teachers are serving the community better in class than they are in a courtroom, so at least during the school year, leave us off of jury duty, and we'll do our best to keep the students out of the courtroom.

Back to "Normal"

School has started. All of the kiddies are back, syllabi are distributed, and now it's just how many months to June 22? Actually, it's funny how normal it all feels. Even though I have made an art of sleeping in all summer, it just feels natural to be back with the students. The first couple of days back are the best! It is so great to see the students you know, and the new haircuts, and the new glasses, and they are so happy to see their friends again, and anticipation is high. As a teacher, it is so hard to hit the right tone--to inspire both excellence and the fear of God on the same day, and to suppress my delight when students walk back in the room after a summer off. As icing on the cake, my homeroom students are finally juniors, which means they have learned to sit still. Hooray!

The school board implemented a new dress code this year: the students have to tuck their shirts in. So we spend the whole morning yelling "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" before they go to class, then in class we say "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" and between classes we yell "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" and they think they can untuck the second they're out of sight. I am so hoarse. Hopefully my voice will heal and I'll be able to speak loudly all day very soon. The second the students are gone, I pull out big bunches of grapes for lunch because they are little bombs of moisture to soothe the throat.

In all, it looks like it will be a good year. My classes are smaller than I would have them, but it looks like a good year nonetheless.