Sunday

I'm back from church and about to settle down with a good book, but I have a few links to share first:

Last night was Earth Hour. People around the world were supposed to turn out all "non-essential lights" between 8:30 and 9:30. We didn't even have city power at all during that hour, but it wasn't through any particular eco-consciousness of our local utility company, but because we just generally don't have power at that time. I didn't find out about it until the hour had already started. I felt briefly self-righteous, though, especially when I read that Rush Limbaugh was planning to light his house - actually, he said all five of his houses - up like a Christmas tree. Way to be an ugly American. This article says that an hour of darkness illuminated the minds of the participants. In that case my mind must be really, really illuminated. That makes me happy.

Today at the New York Times site, they are featuring a video about an NGO working in Haiti. I can't link to it directly, but if you're reading this after it's not available there any more, you can also look at the organization's website here. Here are two young American girls putting their money and their lives where their mouths are, and doing it in a less than glamorous way. (Hint - toilets are involved.)

My husband asked me this morning if I had read Three Cups of Tea. Uh, yes, I not only read it, I reviewed it here on this very blog! So if you, gentle reader, like my dear husband, do not remember this post, here it is. Read it and then go read the book!

Here's today's collect from the Book of Common Prayer:

Fifth Sunday in Lent

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and
affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may
love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that
which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and
manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there
be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Amen.

Poetry Friday - Soliloquy of the Solipsist

Since I was thinking about Sylvia Plath this week, I looked for some of her poems online and found this link to many of them. I wanted to post one today and eventually chose this.


Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.


You can find the rest of the poem here. I enjoyed the mordant wit of the last stanza.

It's hard to keep biography out of my head as I read, and I particularly found that to be true of Child, which seems to be about trying to be a good parent while depressed, and struggling with the difference between the idealized mother in one's head and the "wringing of hands" that is actually happening.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Goodbye to Nicholas Hughes

I was surprised to see Sylvia Plath's name in the "In the News" sidebar on Google News this morning, and then sad when I learned why. Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, just killed himself, 46 years after his mother's suicide. While the post I just linked cautions against considering him an "inevitably tragic figure," I imagine the suicide of a parent is a wound that never goes away.

I remember reading Plath in college and writing an insufferably arrogant essay about how "self-indulgent" her poetry was. I was still a teenager then, and not much had happened to me; I am not as quick now to shrug off people's deep pain and struggles. Clearly her son had his own pain and struggles. This article about his death doesn't even include his own picture, but hers. I prefer this one, which describes his own achievements apart from being the son of a famous poet who died when he was a year old.

Reading Update

I've been an absent blogger lately, and one of my readers has even complained. Given how few readers I have, this is a serious matter.

I don't have much to say, but here's an update on what I've been reading lately.

Book #5 of the year was a re-read - Twilight. Well, half my students were reading it, and putting pictures from the movie as the wallpaper on the classroom computers, and writing about Edward. Like most books that are almost entirely plot-driven, this one didn't hold up as well on second reading. I think all the books are funny, and I enjoy the satirical comparison of "normal" teenage life with what Bella is experiencing - like the prom scene. My favorite scene in the whole saga is the one in Breaking Dawn where Charlie, Bella's father, has just been filled in on the whole alternative world of vampires - information he'd just as soon not know. He deals with his new knowledge by...sitting down to watch televised sports. (I also read the draft of Midnight Sun, available here. Again, all the kids were doing it!)

Book #6 was Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt, a memoir about his thirty years teaching. McCourt's writing is wonderful and vivid as always, except that I get irritated by his lack of quotation marks - but that's just me. Here's a taste:

Every moment of your life, you're writing. Even in your dreams you're writing. When you walk the halls in this school you meet various people and you write furiously in your head. There's the principal. You have to make a decision, a greeting decision. Will you nod? Will you smile? Will you say, Good morning, Mr. Baumel? or will you simply say, Hi? You see someone you dislike. Furious writing again in your head. Decision to be made. Turn your head away? Stare as you pass? Nod? Hiss a Hi? You see someone you like and you say, Hi, in a warm melting way, a Hi that conjures up splash of oars, singing violins, eyes shining in the moonlight. There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore. . . . You might be one of those cool characters who could saunter up to Helen of Troy and ask her what she's doing after the siege, that you know a nice lamb-and-ouzo place in the ruins of Ilium. The cool character, the charmer, doesn't have to prepare much of a script. The rest of us are writing. . . . Dreaming, wishing, planning: it's all writing, but the difference between you and the man on on the street is that you are looking at it, friends, getting it set in your head, realizing the significance of the insignificant, getting it on paper. You might be in the throes of love or grief but you are ruthless in observation. You are your material. You are writers and one thing is certain: no matter what happens on Saturday night, or any other night, you'll never be bored again. Never. Nothing human is alien to you. Hold your applause and pass up your homework.

McCourt is great on the mind-games teachers play, the way you find yourself playing to one particular student, imagining what he or she is thinking, only to find afterwards that you were completely wrong, totally misjudged the situation.

Book #7 was The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. I liked this one fine, but I thought the press it got was exaggerated, and so did my highly literate 11-year-old.

Book #8 was Flush, by Carl Hiaasen. My seventh graders are currently enjoying this one. They think it would make a good movie - and for sure, it would. The characters are memorable and the kids can all picture them in their heads. The book was the source of a great minilesson on character development last week. This is a lot of fun and non-stop action - just what that class loves.

Book #9 was Hero-Type, by Barry Lyga. This one is thought-provoking, the story of Kevin Ross and his journey from nothing to hero and back again. I'd hoped this would be a read-aloud for my eighth graders, but eventually decided to pass because of a little too much "mature content." The ending, though, blew me away with a spiritual sensitivity I did not at all see coming.

Book #10 was Alabama Moon, by Watt Key. I enjoyed this book - it's the story of Moon, who lives in the woods with his slightly wacky survivalist father. After his father dies in the first chapter, Moon is on his own and has to make his way in a world that's different from the one for which his father prepared him. Moon is 10, and I found him a little too mature in spots, but he's a strong character and I think kids will want him to succeed.

I'm reading several books right now and I hope the next Reading Update will not be quite so long in coming.

Barbie - Evil or Neutral?

I've never been much of a Barbie fan, but when my daughter had a period of six months or so when she liked Barbie, we just went with it. Someone gave her one, and I think I picked up some at a yard sale. She played with them for a while, and then lost interest.

Of course I have read about the criticisms of Barbie and how she ruins girls' self-esteem. I was interested to read this article, which says that we can't blame Barbie for the damage society does to our daughters - or for the damage we ourselves do to them.

What do you think?

Theme Day - Glass

It's the first of March, and today's DP blogs' theme is "Glass." You can see thumbnails of the participants' photos here.

Asparagus Standoff

This headline, Cypriots and UN soldiers in asparagus standoff, raised some Veggie-Tales images in my head, but apparently it is a very serious situation. I never knew that

asparagus harvesting has never been for the faint-hearted with pickers crawling into dense thorn bushes to pick the delicate shoots from the undergrowth.

Poetry Friday - Late at Night in Bed

It's been a long time since I did a Poetry Friday post of my own, as opposed to just linking you to the list of other people's posts. This week I have no excuse at all, since I have been on vacation. I finished all my grading last Saturday and have been able to relax completely. It has been wonderful!

And yet, as this poem reminds me, I don't ever relax completely. I am always alert, listening for what is going wrong, or what might go wrong in a minute. Just last night I was tiptoeing around while everyone slept, checking on the children, checking on the quiet empty living room.



Late at Night in Bed
by Gregory Djanikian

My wife tells me she hears a beetle
Scurrying across the kitchen floor.
She says our daughter is dreaming

Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids
Are fluttering like butterflies.

What about the thunder, I say,
What about the dispatches from the police car
Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale?

She tells me there’s a leaf falling
And grazing the downstairs window,
Or it could be glass cutters, diamonds,
Thieves working their hands toward the latch.
She tells me our son is breathing too quickly,
Is it pneumonia, is it the furnace
Suddenly pumping monoxides through the house?

So when my wife says sleep, she means
A closing of the eyes, a tuning
Of the ears to ultra frequencies.

(It is what always happens
When there are children, the bed
Becoming at night a listening post,
Each little ting forewarning disaster.)



Later in the poem comes my favorite stanza:


My wife stirs, Be glad, she says,
Sound doesn’t carry far, that you don’t hear
The whole of it, cries in the night,
Children in other cities, hurts, silences.


Indeed, I am glad that I don't hear all of it, for what I do hear is quite enough to keep me listening, and worrying, and fretting, and praying.

Here's the rest of this wonderful poem. And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday

Here's this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

Storybook Ending

I loved this article by Edwige Danticat.

Blog Break

So, you miss a day or two of posting, and before you know it, it's been two weeks. I didn't intend to take a blog break but it looks as though I did anyway. Last week I took a quick trip to the States, and as usual, preparing to have a sub and then clearing up after having a sub took more time than the trip itself. I still haven't finished all the grading but the end is in sight now.

I had a wonderful time; I hung out with a friend who used to live here and the two of us went to a teacher retreat together. I visited a bookstore (and came back laden with some new choices for my students), Wal Mart, Target, an international grocery store and more than one restaurant.

I also got to visit a state-of-the-art middle school and drool over Promethean boards and carts full of laptops and wireless-enabled hallways and tens of thousands of dollars worth of musical instruments. I might be tempted to be discontented with the resources in my school after seeing these things, but when I compare my own classroom to those of the vast majority of the teachers in this country, many of which don't even have walls, I can't complain.

I came back to students who were happy to see me and my ordinary life goes on. It's always nice to have a change and a break, and mine did me good.

Reading Update

Book #1 of 2009 was Son of the Mob, by Gordon Korman. I picked up this book because of an article I read in a teacher magazine about pairing classics with YA books. This was supposed to be a great companion for Romeo and Juliet. It's the story of a mobster's son who falls for an FBI agent's daughter. It was OK, but not great. I put it in my classroom library and while several kids have started it, I don't think anyone has finished it.

Book #2 was The Splendor of Silence, by Indu Sundaresan. I enjoyed the portrayal of India in the 40s, in the last days of the Raj.

Book #3 was His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. I bought this for my classroom based on a review I read, but I don't think it is going to hold the interest of most of my students. It moves a little too slowly for them, and the vocabulary is too challenging for most in my opinion. However, I enjoyed it myself. It's a bit difficult to classify - sort of an alternative history, except that it's fantasy. Perhaps one of the jacket blurbs (quoted from Time magazine) says it best: "Enthralling reading - like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher Paolini." Set in the Napoleonic Wars, the series imagines an Aerial Corps which consists of valiant aviators flying dragons. Ultimately, though, I found it a bit difficult to suspend disbelief. Not about the dragons - that part I accepted willingly and with great delight. No, I just couldn't swallow that the mores among the aviators are so - well, 21st century. Laurence, coming in from outside, fights against his shock - but he isn't shocked enough. Yes, this is the period of Jane Austen, and judging by the things her characters get het up about, Laurence would not adjust so easily. That said, I will probably read the rest of the series if I get the chance. The book is great fun and I am probably being ridiculous to ask for social verisimilitude in a dragon book anyway.

Book #4 was a wonderful book called Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. To make reference once again to a blurb on the book: "A reader doesn't have to have any interest in Christian missionary work, anthropology, or the hill tribes of Thailand to be riveted," says The Christian Science Monitor. As it happens I'm intensely interested in the first two, and it didn't take a big stretch to become interested in the third. Mischa Berlinski is in Thailand because his girlfriend is teaching at an international school. He finds out about a mysterious story - an anthropologist shot a missionary. Soon he is enthralled and must find out more and more. The reader quickly feels the same way. I loved the sardonic, yet sympathetic portrayals of all the different kinds of characters. Some examples:

Gunther the yoga teacher knew all about the Walkers: he, too, had heard stories...."I haff never met them," Gunther said. "But I hear so many things. I do not like this kind of Christian who liff in a big house with so many servants, and then tell the people how they must liff. Is that for you to be a Christian?" Gunther looked at me severely. I shook my head. Gunther himself lived in a big house with many servants and told many people how they must live, but it did not seem the right moment to mention that.

Tom Riley knew the Walker story well, having passed many long evenings in the company of one or another of the Walkers as they went from lonely Dyalo village to lonely Dyalo village, preaching - and in preaching, like war, you get to know folks.

...the fourth-grade teacher at Rachel's school, a quiet Burmese woman...broke her wrist in a tuk-tuk accident. Mr. Tim...asked me to take over her class while she convalesced, and for a week I taught school, an experience so exhausting that I didn't think once of anthropologists or missionaries, just savages.

...she induced in Martiya [the anthropologist] a considerable sense of First World guilt and discomfort. (This discomfort was intensified by Lai-Ma's habit of taking Martiya aside and saying, "Oh, I am tired! How my bones ache! How I wish I were rich like you and could do nothing all day!") Hauling just one plastic petrol-jerry of water up the hill was enough to exhaust Matiya, but Lai-Ma would inevitably carry two, one in each hand, and on her back in a plaited basket, a dozen hollow bamboo tubes each overflowing with water, the whole heavy load held in place with a tumpline across her forehead....Matiya felt like a freeloader every time she saw her in the course of the day.

While this is an intelligent book and was a finalist for the National Book Award, it's also a great story (unlike another book I abandoned halfway through this week because in spite of all the rapturous comments on the back, there just didn't seem to be much of a plot). It is surprising, and funny, and heartbreaking. I recommend it highly - it's certainly the best book I've read so far this year!

Theme Day - Paths and Passages

Eric shows us a passage from Madame Bovary. Other DP bloggers have different interpretations of today's theme, Paths and Passages.

Poetry Friday

Overheard

In my classroom today, I heard a student say to another, "No, I'm sorry, I can't come to your party because I don't get along with you."

You have to admire that kind of candor.

Sunday Morning

Well, the electricity is fixed (hooray!) and I'm staying home from church with a sick child (boo!). I've been looking at the Obamameter, which is tracking which of President Obama's campaign promises he has already kept, is in the process of keeping, doesn't keep, compromises on, and so on. On day five in office, he's already kept five of his promises and fourteen are in the works. One of the ones in the works is getting his daughters a puppy. Come on, sir! Let's get moving!

Saturday

As usual, I am working in my classroom on this Saturday morning, trying to get caught up, plan for next week, and generally get my head together. This has been a bit of a hectic week, but I had several examples of what we as teachers always want to see - kids engaged with the material, or at least engaged by or with something.

One day this week we had some visitors to the campus and my administrator brought them in to visit my room. Not always the most risk-free thing to do when I'm teaching seventh grade, but this time it was wonderful. The kids were working in groups, everyone was on-task, and there was a low, purposeful buzz, rather than a roar of random racket. It's always fun to show off your students at their best.

Another class had a bake sale this week and it was not an unqualified success. Because of all the conflict among the kids in the class and the time we had missed already while the last brownies were sold, I threw out my plans and we brainstormed how the next bake sale could be better. The enthusiasm of the kids was good to see, and eventually most of them had stopped throwing blame and were coming up with great ideas.

In my ESL class, a simple activity where the students had to identify linking verbs and action verbs somehow engaged everyone. The kids were yelling back and forth, "AV!" and "LV!" and having earnest (and loud) arguments in their first language about which answer was best. I called it Grammar as a Combat Sport but one of the kids called it Extreme Grammar and I liked that even better. Afterwards we had a good discussion about how at times when we are emotional about or interested in what we are doing, our heart language (in their case not English) comes out of our mouths much more readily than our educational language. One of the students said that when she tells someone in her own language about an event, it feels as though the other person was there, whereas when she speaks in English there's more of a distance. Almost nobody at our school speaks English on the soccer field.

Each of these incidents reminded me how much I love teaching and, especially, how much I love teaching these particular kids, each one of whom is unique and full of potential.

I'm about to go home, since all my lessons for next week are done and my copies are made. I have plenty of grading but I can do that at home. We are having electrical problems at home again so I probably won't be online much for the rest of the weekend and won't have the time to read today's Saturday Review of Books.

Have a good weekend!

Poetry Friday - Praise Song for the Day

I am sure I won't be the only one to post Elizabeth Alexander's inauguration poem for today's Poetry Friday. I heard lots of complaints about it, but I think it's beautiful. Here's my favorite stanza:

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

And here's the rest of the poem.

Here's an article from a Minneapolis-St. Paul paper where local poets reflect on the effect of poetry at an event like the inauguration.

And I'm wondering, why have only Democratic presidents, so far, had poetry at their inaugurations? (Kennedy, Clinton twice, and now Obama.)

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Pilgrims, by Tiel Aisha Ansari

Tiel Aisha Ansari wrote another poem that I loved. This one is about faith.

Inauguration Day

I missed most of the festivities the first time around, since I was teaching. As the excitement was building, I was intercepting a note which read, in part, "Who do u like?" But as soon as possible, I was online watching snippets of video. I still haven't heard Obama's whole speech but I read the text of it. And I did get to watch live as the new president and his wife walked down the street, looking relaxed and happy (and surrounded by security personnel who didn't look at all relaxed or happy).

It was an exciting day. I would love to see the enthusiasm and goodwill of today last into the months and years ahead.

Betancourt and Johnston

I just listened to a remarkable podcast. Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist who was kidnapped in Gaza in 2007, was interviewing Ingrid Betancourt, who was held for six years by Colombian radicals. Either one of these people would have been an interesting interview subject, but the combination of the two of them reflecting on their experiences and what they learned from them was amazing.

I was brought to tears several times, particularly when Betancourt talked about how important faith was for her, when they both discussed the importance of the radios they were allowed to have and the messages they heard over them, when Betancourt told of learning about the death of her father by reading a piece of newspaper with which her captors had wrapped vegetables, and then at the end when the two of them imagined a kidnap victim listening to their discussion and gave some words of hope for that person.

They came across as two gentle, reflective people, forever changed by a horrible experience, but not embittered.

Here's an article about the interview, with links where you can listen to or watch it. I highly recommend it.

And Again, It's Poetry Friday

Another whole week with no post! I have to remedy this soon! Meanwhile, here's the Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday

We went back to school this week. It's been a good week but a busy one, and once again I have no Poetry Friday post. But here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Mourning

I saw the thumbnail of the picture above (a Reuters photo) on Google News and it looked like a flock of birds, as all the hands of these mourners fluttered. Here's the article about the latest suicide bombing in Baghdad. "Female suicide bomber," says the headline.

When will all the senseless killing end?

Reading List

Over at Semicolon there is a special edition of the Saturday Review of Books. People are linking to their reading lists from 2008. You can take a look here.

Here's my list:

Book 1
Books 2 through 5
Books 6 through 8
Book 9
Books 10 and 11
Books 12 through 16
Books 17 through 20
Books 21 through 24
Books 25 through 41
Book 42
Books 43 through 48
Books 49 through 55
Books 56 and 57
Books 58 through 60

Sorry not to take the time to list every title, but I really shouldn't have even done this, since I'm supposed to be getting ready for school to start again on Monday! Most of these posts have at least a little bit of comment on the book, though some of them are just lists. I do enjoy keeping track of the books I read so that I can look back on them, and I'll be doing the same this year. I've finished one already...stay tuned...

Poetry Friday - Leisure

Yesterday I posted about my word for this year. It's a very simple one: LOOK. Poetry is written by people who look, people who notice the things that others walk by without taking a second glance.

I thought about this poem during our beach trip just after Christmas. The country where I live is a place in which staring is not considered rude. We had a gentleman come and sit on the beach and stare at us. We were the only people there, and he was looking right at us, so I don't think he was there for the scenery. At first I felt a bit annoyed, and then I started thinking of the opening words of the William Henry Davies poem "Leisure."


Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.


You can read the rest of the poem here.

I don't have a lot of time to stand and stare; I spend most of my days rushing around accomplishing the work on my to-do list. This year I want to take more time to pay attention.

Here's today's roundup.

One Little Word: LOOK

At the end of 2007 I read about choosing "One Little Word" as a focus for the new year. I had my students think about it last year (they came up with many great suggestions) and presumably I thought about it too but I don't think I ever chose one. If I did, I clearly didn't focus on it much since I don't know what it was!

This year it's time to pick a word again. My word for 2009 is LOOK. I want to remember to pay attention, to notice what's going on around me and to celebrate it, instead of constantly rushing around to take care of the next thing that needs to be done. I have a wonderful family - I need to LOOK at them and appreciate them. My children are growing up - I need to LOOK and see where they are now and realize what a gift each day with them is. I teach amazing students - I need to LOOK and see them, rather than just rushing through what we need to accomplish each day. I need to LOOK around this amazing country where I live and see what is beautiful about it.

This is the oldest of ideas, that life goes by quickly, and then is gone. We all know this, and yet we forget it day after day. This year I want to remember it. I want to LOOK.

The sign at the top of this post says: "Please stop and take a look." That's what I want to do in 2009.

Happy New Year!

The DP Blogs have a theme day today, as they do the first of every month. This month's theme is the best photo of 2008. You can take a look at the thumbnails here.

Out With Blue Iris, In With Mimosa

Here I thought I liked purple just because, well, I liked it. Turns out it was just in the Zeitgeist. Blue iris, a purplish color, was chosen by the Pantone Color Institute as the color for 2008 but the yellowish mimosa is the color for 2009. I don't think I'm going to fall for mimosa, but it may be that I have no freedom of choice faced with the mighty Pantone Color Institute.

Here's an article that explores the whole purple phenomenon a little more.

Reading Update

Book #58: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Book #59: Plagiarism: Why it Happens and How to Prevent It, by Barry Gilmore

Book #60: The Host, by Stephenie Meyer

The reviews are going to have to wait until the new year, but it's looking as though this is going to be the end of my reading for 2008.

New Year's Eve

We got back from the beach last night to find electrical problems in our house, including a fire that had apparently taken place sometime while we were gone - a surge protector under our bed was melted and a charger was blackened but not destroyed. The electrician (to whom I am planning an ode) came over right away and set things to rights.

Now I am unpacking and putting away and listening to a Christmas present from my husband, English Majors: A Comedy Collection for the Highly Literate.

Poetry Friday

Here's some poetry for Boxing Day.

The Divine Gift of Hope

These words were shared at our Christmas Eve gathering earlier this evening.

Merry Christmas!

This is what I'm hoping to get read over Christmas break! And not pictured is what I'm reading right now, Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Think I'll succeed? No, neither do I.

Angels in the Architecture

The other name I considered for my blog was "Angels in the Architecture," a quote from Paul Simon's song "You Can Call me Al." When I typed that phrase into Google, though, I found that many others were already using it. I think that God has built glimpses of Himself into the architecture of our universe, and that often we, as the Book of Hebrews puts it, "entertain angels unaware." (I doubt that any of that came into Paul Simon's mind at all.)

I don't think of angels as adorable little cherubs but as messengers of God. C.S. Lewis says somewhere that in the Bible angels always say, "Fear not," whereas angels in paintings often look as if they were saying, "There, there." I think Tiel Aisha Ansari has it right in her poem "Living with Angels," which you can read here.

At this time of year we see representations of angels all over the place. They are a reminder that God is near.

Saturday Review of Books

Take a look at today's list of reviews.

Poetry Friday - Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

For Christmas Day: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
BY CHARLES WESLEY

Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinner reconcil’d.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Joyful all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies,
With the angelic host proclaim,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Christ by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail, the incarnate Deity,
Pleased as Man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Immanuel!
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

Stephenie Meyer on Time Magazine's List

She's one of the People Who Mattered. After looking at her blurb you can scroll down to see a list of all the others, and the runners-up, plus a link to the article about the Person of the Year.

You Can Say "Merry Christmas" in 13 Languages

You can say "Merry Christmas" in: English Spanish Japanese French German Italian Swedish Portuguese Greek Hawaiian Dutch Latin Esperanto

How Many Languages Can You Say "Merry Christmas" In?

I'm saying it a lot today, since this is our last day before vacation!

Growing Old Gracefully

Recently an actress who is about my age appeared on the cover of a magazine wearing very little. I was interested to read that this was apparently some kind of empowerment thing, since she's getting older and yet can still look good. It reminded me of the ad I saw for "Self-Esteem Workshops" put on by a certain soap company whose billboards are supposedly empowering for women because they show non-models in their underwear. I wonder what exactly the workshops involve. I will believe that all of this is about empowerment about the time we see some powerful men posing on billboards and magazine covers in similar attire.

Meanwhile I was reading this article about beauty, and growing older, and plastic surgery, and such. There are some empowering suggestions at the end in case anyone is feeling old.

Reading Update

Book #56 was Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Ruth Van Reken (in this article) wrote that this book "could serve as a textbook in the TCK syllabus, a classic search for self-definition, described in living color." I found the book compelling reading. Obama writes about his childhood, trying to figure out where he fit as the son of two people from different parts of the world, his early work in Chicago, and his trip to Kenya, where he made contact with the Kenyan side of his family. His world is a complex place, and he is well aware that things are rarely as simple as they seem.

Book #57 was a very different book, but also one that embraced and celebrated complexity. The Blood of Flowers, by Anita Amirrezvani, is set in seventeenth century Persia, and tells the story of a young girl who is buffeted by circumstances but who ultimately makes the best of things. If this sounds like an old, old plot, it is, but the setting was new territory for me. Amirrezvani shows us a world where women, particularly poor women, lived by a series of very strict rules, and men, particularly rich men, could do exactly what they wanted. The narrator, who is never named, makes carpets, coloring them with many different plants, hence the title.

Here's a conversation the protagonist has in the story:

"Often, we must live with imperfection," she said. "And when people worry about a stain on their floor, what do they do?"

Despite how I felt, I had to laugh, for I knew what she meant. "They throw a carpet over it," I replied.

"From Shiraz to Tabriz, from Baghdad to Herat, this is what Iranians do," she said.

Here's another passage:

I did not reveal that I was the carpet's designer and knotter. I thought if she saw my callused fingers or looked closely at my tired red eyes - if she understood the fearsome work that a carpet demanded - its beauties would be forever tarnished in her eyes. Better for her to imagine it being made by a carefree young girl who skipped across hillsides plucking flowers for dyes before settling down to tie a few relaxing knots in between sips of pomegranate juice.

I knew otherwise: My back ached, my limbs were stiff, and I had not slept enough for a month. I thought about all the labor and suffering that were hidden beneath a carpet, starting with the materials. Vast fields of flowers had to be murdered for their dye, innocent worms boiled alive for their silk - and what about knotters! Must we sacrifice ourselves for the sake of rugs?

The book does a good job of showing how precarious life was - and in many places still is - for women without the protection of men. Poverty is presented in vivid detail, and the lengths the protagonist is forced to go to in order to survive are difficult to read. The realities of poverty make this book a timely one in spite of its historical setting. Replace "rugs" with just about any other commodity you can think of, and people are sacrificing themselves to make it in a factory somewhere in this world. Replace Isfahan with any city in the third world, and there are people living there in conditions remarkably similar to those described in the last third of this book. And yet the book is not all about suffering, for there is great satisfaction in creating beauty, and sometimes that is enough to cover up at least some of the imperfections of life.

Gift Idea

If anyone is looking for a gift for me, I'd really like a clock like Mrs. Weasley has. This is from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

Mrs. Weasley glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. Harry liked this clock. It was completely useless if you wanted to know the time, but otherwise very informative. It had nine golden hands, and each of them was engraved with one of the Weasley family's names. There were no numerals around the face, but descriptions of where each family member might be. "Home," "school," and "work" were there, but there was also "traveling," "lost," "hospital," "prison," and, in the position where the number twelve would be on a normal clock, "mortal peril."

In a later book all the hands are pointing to "mortal peril," and isn't that sometimes how it feels to be a mother worrying about your family? My students identify with Harry and Hermione, but I identify with Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley.

So what book-inspired gift would you like? It can either be something that only exists between the pages of a book, or just something that you read about in a book that people could actually buy you, should they be so inclined.

Saturday Review of Books

Take a look!

Memo to Suzanne Collins

I can't tell from your website if you are working on the sequel to The Hunger Games. If you are not, please get started immediately. Many eighth graders are desperately awaiting the book, and some appear to be nearly in physical pain. Take pity on them. Write, Suzanne, write!

Poetry Friday - Schoolsville

I'm grading this week, or I should say I will be grading, since I'm writing this post (and most of this week's posts) on Sunday afternoon, my lips and tongue still tingling pleasantly from a lunch of beef curry. I don't do schoolwork on Sundays, and it's lovely to have a guilt-free afternoon, even though I have large stacks of papers in the corner of the room.

Thinking of school and students leads to this poem by Billy Collins. I love his imagination, and I think I, too, have by now taught enough students to populate a small town. Or at least a village.


Schoolsville

by Billy Collins

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,
I realize the number of students I have taught
is enough to populate a small town.

I can see it nestled in a paper landscape,
chalk dust flurrying down in winter,
nights dark as a blackboard.

The population ages but never graduates.
On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park
and when it's cold they shiver around stoves
reading disorganized essays out loud.
A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags
into the streets with their books.

I forgot all their last names first and their
first names last in alphabetical order.
But the boy who always had his hand up
is an alderman and owns the haberdashery.
The girl who signed her papers in lipstick
leans against the drugstore, smoking,
brushing her hair like a machine.

Their grades are sewn into their clothes
like references to Hawthorne.
The A's stroll along with other A's.
The D's honk whenever they pass another D.

Here's the rest of the poem.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Corruption

Yesterday one of my eighth graders told me that the "Something of Illinois" had been arrested. When I found out what had happened to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, I explained it to the student. I defined the word "corruption" and told her what Blagojevich was accused of.

I can't decide if it's a good or bad thing that she learned the word from a situation in another country. Her country is always on Transparency International's list of the most corrupt countries in the world, but this arrest reminds all of us that people are people, temptation is temptation, and corruption happens everywhere. At least in the United States you get in trouble if you are found out.

Privacy? What's That?

As though life as an expat were not fraught with enough stresses, now I find that we have, in fact, no right to privacy whatsoever. And I'm not just speaking of being stared at everywhere I go - I already knew I didn't have any right to that kind of privacy.

No, I'm talking about the courts' latest decision that Americans living overseas are fair game for spying, and no warrant is necessary (though there is still a requirement of "reasonableness," whatever that may happen to mean in any given situation). I read about this here.

As an American living abroad, I consider it my patriotic duty to release my cellphone records immediately. So here, for the sake of national and international security, is a summary of my recent calls. All conversations have been translated into English.

First of all, probably 40% of the calls I receive are wrong numbers. Someone will demand to speak to Mimi, or Jean, or Fanfan, and then I will inform the caller that that person cannot be reached at this number. Usually the person then hangs up, though sometimes he or she (usually he) wants to talk to me instead, since I'm there. In that case I hang up in short order. I even get wrong number text messages, including one I have saved because I find it quite poignant: "I'm waiting for you under the stairs." I assume that the sender of that is no longer waiting there, since it's been several weeks now, but I wonder how long he or she did hang out under those stairs, thinking the message had been received by the right person.

I receive many phone calls asking when I will be home. Others are of the "I'm at the grocery store and what do we need?" variety. I also get calls asking for money, accompanied by heart-rending stories of woe. Last week I got a call that was a first for me - a student had a punctuation question. I enjoyed that one - it's seldom I get asked something that I can answer so quickly and easily, and with such confidence that I am correct.

As for the outgoing conversations, I make my share of the "When will you be home?" calls. Then there are the "We're going to be late because the car broke down" and "Can you please come pick us up because we are broken down?" calls. And the "Our power is out - could you please come fix it?" calls. It's been a while since I've had to make any "We won't be having school today" calls (though the last few times I've been doing that more by email).

Yesterday I had some calls to and from Santa, but that was not a code-name. I was trying to coordinate the "Pictures with Santa" booth at our Christmas Bazaar at school. My first Santa had to take someone to the hospital and was late because of that and my second was at a rehearsal for a Christmas concert and also arrived late. This was all high drama for me, but probably not so much for anyone who might want to tap my phone.

So you see, spy-type-people, monitoring my calls will be more likely to put you to sleep than to net you any interesting information. But if you still want to, go ahead. I have nothing to hide, and maybe you'll learn something about punctuation!

Extra Morning Excitement - Just What I Needed

Thanks a lot, whoever scheduled a LOUD, bouncy rock concert at 8 AM today. I enjoyed the music in our chapel this morning, but the whole time my inner grouch/old lady/party pooper and above all TEACHER kept thinking about what it was going to be like to teach those ramped up kids later. The lead singer of the band even commented that he used to teach but had quit "because of seventh graders," looking at my kids and the excessive amounts of fun they were having. Later he appeared to think better of his comment (maybe he thought he would discourage the seventh graders and make them feel bad about themselves - since he doesn't know them he doesn't realize how impervious they are to that type of remark), and said to the seventh graders that as they grew older they should never lose what they had right now. I hope they listen to that about as much as they usually listen to what I say to them - that is, not much. (I want them to retain their enthusiasm and energy, but there are some other behaviors which I am hoping age and maturity will rid them of.)

As we left the chapel, I asked one of the members of the band to say a word of prayer for the poor sap who would be teaching the seventh graders right then, namely me. He laughed. Easy for him to do. Then I headed towards my room, pep-talking myself all the way.

Apart from a stray scream when the band members walked by the window later in the period, things went not too badly. I am Teacher - hear me teach!

LOL

Can someone explain to me why the emphatic form of LOL, laughing out loud, is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL? I say this based on my observations online and in my students' writing. (And yes, many of them include LOL in their written dialogue in early drafts.) Surely the emphasis should be on the second L, since you are laughing extremely LOUDly. I hereby decree that it should be spelled LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Also, have you heard kids actually speak this expression to one another? I have, and I find it quite odd. Some speak each letter separately and some pronounce it "loll." It makes me think of what I heard Garrison Keillor say once, that the true sign of an intellectual is mispronouncing words "because we're basically readers" and if you've never heard a word pronounced you won't know how to say it. By the same token, my kids are taking what they have learned in print (even if it was online and not in a book) and moving it into their own writing and speech. This means that they are readers!

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Obama Not "Too British" After All

Read this article in a BBC voice to get the full effect.

There Are No Ordinary People

Something that was said in church on Sunday reminded me of a quote from C.S. Lewis. I looked it up when we got home and it was even better than I remembered it. (It's from The Weight of Glory.)

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption....Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."

To the list of the things we do with our fellow humans, I would add "teach," as at this point in the semester it is easy to lose all patience with excited, sugar-addled, Christmas-anticipating middle schoolers. This passage is a great reminder to me of what exactly we are dealing with when we spend time with other people.

O Lord, How Shall I Meet Thee?

Today in church we sang the following hymn, which was new to me, and which I thought was beautiful. We sang it to the tune of "All Glory, Laud and Honor" (St. Theodulph). The original German words were written by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676).


O Lord, how shall I meet Thee, how welcome Thee aright?
Thy people long to greet Thee, my Hope, my heart's Delight!
Oh, kindle, Lord most holy, thy lamp within my breast
To do in spirit lowly all that may please Thee best.

Love caused Thy incarnation, love brought Thee down to me;
Thy thirst for my salvation procured my liberty.
O love beyond all telling, that led Thee to embrace,
In love, all love excelling, our lost and fallen race!

You need not toil or languish nor ponder day and night
How in the midst of anguish you draw Him by your might.
He comes, He comes all willing, moved by His love alone,
Your woes and troubles stilling; for all to Him are known.


Here's a link to all the verses.

Saturday Review of Books

Here 'tis.

Poetry Friday

I have a busy day ahead of me and a busy weekend, too. I have 84 papers to grade and more coming in today, plus a nightmare - I mean, Christmas event - at school. All that to say that I will not be posting anything for Poetry Friday, but here's the roundup anyway.



Theme Day - Circles/Spheres

It's the first day of the month, and you know what that means - the Daily Photo blogs have a theme day. This month's theme is circles or spheres. Here you can see thumbnails of the participants' photos.

The President is a TCK

I have been following Barack Obama's career with interest ever since I first heard of him. Part of that is the Kenya connection, which of course attracted my attention. But another part is that I identify with him as a third culture kid, someone who spent part of the developmental years living in a country other than the passport country. I have been thinking of him as the first TCK president, but I hadn't heard anybody else say that until I read this blog post. And just now I read an article written by Ruth Van Reken, one of the co-authors of Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, where she details some of the TCK characteristics of Obama. It's a fascinating read.

Just Stay Home

In the wake of the terrible attacks in Mumbai, the Telegraph has an article in its travel section on twenty places you really shouldn't travel. It was interesting to me to see how many of these countries I have friends in. (And one of the twenty is quite well-known to me.)

Message from the travel section today: don't travel. Stay home. Preferably under your bed.

Trampled

Every year I read about people getting hurt and killed in stampedes at religious shrines in different places in the world. When I read about yesterday's Wal Mart deaths, I thought that at least when people are killed during those religious festivals, they die doing something they believe in, something that matters to them.

Then it hit me. Consumerism is a religion. And Wal Mart is one of its temples.

Saturday Review of Books

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday - My Deliverer

I remember the first time I heard this song, sung by true poet Rich Mullins and written by him with Mitch McVicker, and realized that Jesus went to Africa. I knew that before, of course, having heard the story my whole life, but somehow hearing these words brought it home to me. He went to Africa.

As Advent approaches, and suffering abounds in this world, and not only in Africa, I am listening to this song and affirming, "I will never doubt His promise, though I doubt my heart, though I doubt my eyes..."


My Deliverer

Joseph took his wife and her child and they went to Africa
To escape the rage of a deadly king
There along the banks of the Nile,
Jesus listened to the song
That the captive children used to sing
They were singing

My Deliverer is coming
My Deliverer is standing by...

Through a dry and thirsty land
Water from the Kenyan heights
Pours itself out of Lake Sangra's broken heart
There in the Sahara winds
Jesus heard the whole world cry
For the healing that would flow from His own scars
The world was singing

My Deliverer is coming
My Deliverer is standing by...

He will never break His promise -
He has written it upon the sky...

I will never doubt His promise
Though I doubt my heart, I doubt my eyes...

My Deliverer is coming
My Deliverer is standing by...

He will never break His promise
though the stars should break faith with the sky...

My Deliverer is coming
My Deliverer is standing by...

My Deliverer is coming.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Psalm 107

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
and his mercy endures for ever.

Let all those whom the LORD has redeemed proclaim
that he redeemed them from the hand of the foe.

He gathered them out of the lands;
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.


Some wandered in desert wastes;
they found no way to a city where they might dwell.

They were hungry and thirsty;
their spirits languished within them.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

He put their feet on a straight path
to go to a city where they might dwell.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy
and the wonders he does for his children.

For he satisfies the thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things.


Some sat in darkness and deep gloom,
bound fast in misery and iron;

Because they rebelled against the words of God
and despised the counsel of the Most High.

So he humbled their spirits with hard labor;
they stumbled, and there was none to help.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

He led them out of darkness and deep gloom
and broke their bonds asunder.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy
and the wonders he does for his children.

For he shatters the doors of bronze
and breaks in two the iron bars.


Some were fools and took to rebellious ways;
they were afflicted because of their sins.

They abhorred all manner of food
and drew near to death's door.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

He sent forth his word and healed them
and saved them from the grave.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy
and the wonders he does for his children.

Let them offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving
and tell of his acts with shouts of joy.


Some went down to the sea in ships
and plied their trade in deep waters;

They beheld the works of the LORD
and his wonders in the deep.

Then he spoke, and a stormy wind arose,
which tossed high the waves of the sea.

They mounted up to the heavens and fell back to the depths;
their hearts melted because of their peril.

They reeled and staggered like drunkards
and were at their wits' end.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper
and quieted the waves of the sea.

They were glad because of the calm,
and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy
and the wonders he does for his children.

Let them exalt him in the congregation of the people
and praise him in the council of the elders.


The LORD changed rivers into deserts,
and water-springs into thirsty ground.

A fruitful land into salt flats,
because of the wickedness of those who dwell there.

He changed deserts into pools of water
and dry land into water-springs.

He settled the hungry there,
and they founded a city to dwell in.

They sowed fields, and planted vineyards,
and brought in a fruitful harvest.

He blessed them, so that they increased greatly;
he did not let their herds decrease.

Yet when they were diminished and brought low,
through stress of adversity and sorrow,

(He pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes)

He lifted up the poor out of misery
and multiplied their families like flocks of sheep.

The upright will see this and rejoice,
but all wickedness will shut its mouth.

Whoever is wise will ponder these things,
and consider well the mercies of the LORD.

You Are a Tuna Fish Sandwich

Some people just don't have a taste for you. You are highly unusual. And admit it, you've developed some pretty weird habits over the years. You may seem a bit unsavory from a distance, but anyone who gives you a chance is hooked! Your best friend: The Club Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Turkey Sandwich

What Kind of Sandwich Are You?

I think it's pretty funny that a tuna sandwich is "highly unusual." If you want something slightly unusual for lunch (by American standards), try inarizushi, or gimyet, or ceviche. A tuna sandwich is just plain and ordinary.

The rest of it is probably true, though - about how weird I am.

Reading Update

Book #49 was The Group, by Mary McCarthy. This book came out in 1963 and was already a bit of a historical novel at that time, since it deals with the lives and preoccupations of eight classmates at Vassar, the class of 1933. I found it a bit turgid in places. (Here's a sample passage: "Her eyes, which were a light golden brown, were habitually narrowed, and her handsome, blowzy face had a plethoric look, as though darkened by clots of thought. She rarely showed her emotions, which appeared to have been burned out by the continual short-circuiting of her attention. All her statements, cursory and abbreviated, had a topical resonance, even when she touched on the intimate; today she made Helena think of the old riddle of the newspaper - black and white and red all over. She spoke absently and with an air of preoccupation, as though conducting a briefing session from memorized notes.") Still, it is a fascinating look at the ideas, attitudes, and concerns of a particular class of women at that time, touching as it does on birth control, mental illness, infant routines, and many other topics. I read that McCarthy based several of the characters on her own friends, and when they recognized themselves they were understandably put out. 

 

Book #50 was The Hunger Games. This was recommended on someone's blog and I ordered it because it sounded like something my students would like. After reading it I saw that Stephenie Meyer is recommending it for readers of her books who are now hunting for something else to read. It's not much like the Twilight books but it's just as absorbing. The story is set in a dystopian future United States, now called Panem and divided into twelve districts. Once a year, two "tributes" are chosen from each district to appear in a televised contest called the "Hunger Games." It's the ultimate reality show, a combination of entertainment and punishment for a long-ago uprising against the Capitol. Many of my eighth graders are enjoying this book and already asking when the next one is coming out (it's supposed to be the first of a trilogy). I'm surprised by how many errors have made it into the text - pronoun errors, problems with mixed-up tenses, that kind of thing - but I have a feeling there will be many more reprintings where these can be corrected.

 

Book #51 was What Child is This?, by Caroline Cooney, whose books are popular in my classroom. This is different from her others I've read. It's a sweet Christmas story about foster kids. I liked it very much - a quick read and an uplifting one.

 

Book #52 was Elizabeth George's latest, Careless in Red. While the last book in the series was a virtuoso performance, I'm glad to be back with the familiar characters. Great stuff, as always.

 

Book #53 was The Year of Fog, by Michelle Richmond. I expected this book to be a page-turner, but it was much better written than I thought it was going to be. It's about a child disappearing, yes, but also about memory and how people cope with loss. I saw a review comparing it to The Deep End of the Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard (the book, not the movie, which wasn't nearly as good), and I think it's a good comparison. I stayed up very late finishing this one and then couldn't sleep for hours thinking about it.

 

Book #54 was the third in a trilogy about the Trojan War. The author died before finishing it so I had resigned myself to not getting to finish the trilogy, but his wife finished writing it. I was sorry that it had been so long since I had read the first two books, since they were not fresh in my mind at all, but I loved Troy: Fall of Kings. Again, I loved the way you see the myth developing even as the real events take place - Odysseus figuring out how he's going to retell the story, for example, and the discussion of Helen and how the soldiers remember her. Practically everyone in the story has a different fate from his or her namesake in the original story, so you have to keep reading to the very end instead of thinking you know what's going to happen. And the ending is the best part, with all the many, many threads brought together. Even the Trojan Horse isn't what you're expecting, and wait until you read what happens after the sack of Troy! My only complaint - way too much fighting - is an unfair one, given the subject of the book. And it's the same complaint I have about the next book...

 

Book #55: I finally finished reading The Iliad! I thought that since I keep holding forth about it with very little knowledge to go by (here, for example), I really should read the original. I'd read excerpts but this is my first time through the whole thing. And yeah, there's too much fighting. I got tired of reading exactly where the sword or spear went into every single person and how his innards fell out. Blech. However, there are wonderful, wonderful things in this book. I guess that's why it's still read about twenty seven hundred years after it was written. These characters, mortal and immortal, are finely drawn individuals. Helen points out all the Greeks to Priam and tells him all she knows about each one. Menelaus wants to show mercy, but his brother Agamemnon mocks him until he kills Adrestus. Andromache begs Hector not to go fight, leaving her a widow and their son Astyanax fatherless. Astyanax recoils in horror from his father,

terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest, the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror - so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed, his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector, quickly lifting the helmet from his head, set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight, and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms, lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods: "Zeus, all you immortals! Grant this boy, my son, may be like me, first in glory among the Trojans, strong and brave like me, and rule all Troy in power and one day let them say, 'He is a better man than his father!"

Zeus tells Hera how much she appeals to him by listing all the other women to whom she's superior, in a moment that made me laugh out loud. He even takes a moment to mention the "marvelous ankles" of one of his former loves, all to finish up, "That was nothing to how I hunger for you now!" We learn about the fine points of chariot racing, the burial customs of the Greeks and the Trojans, the amazing armor that Hephaestus makes for Achilles...a whole epic's worth of memorable moments. Not that I have anything to compare it to, but Robert Fagles' translation is readable and beautiful. I highly recommend that you read this, one of the original classics.

Future Shock

"This is a story with no clear outcome," I read last night.

Which story? Twilight? No. The story referred to in this article is the report just brought out by the Intelligence Council, which suggests that the influence that the United States has in the world will decrease in the future.

I don't know about you, but I'm not completely startled by this news. After all, from history we know that empires rise and fall, influence grows and shrinks, and countries that ruled the world 150 years ago have much less clout today. We also know that even a group of people with such an awe-inspiring name as Intelligence Council can't predict what will happen tomorrow, let alone in the next 20 years. Sure, they can look at trends, and they can use their knowledge of the present to infer things about the future. But ultimately, they don't know the details.

The part I thought was most interesting about the report (OK, about the article about the report - I didn't read the report itself, and judging it by the article is a bit like judging a novel on students' notes from a lecture on it, rather than by reading the novel, but never mind that) was that "while American power and influence are projected to decline, America's burdens are not." In other words, while the U.S. will be less able to control outcomes, everything that goes wrong on the planet will still be blamed on the U.S., so things will be pretty much the way they are now. (I know, I know, many of the world's problems are the fault of the U.S., but give us a break sometimes, world, OK? Not all evil is made in the U.S.A.!)

There's more interesting information in the article. It is, I admit, a little bit scary to imagine the kind of world envisioned by these academics, where people fight over resources which are becoming increasingly scarce. (Already happening now, by the way.) However, reading this also makes me think of the guy who visited my elementary school many years ago and talked about the world in "the year 2000," which seemed to us inconceivably far away at the time, and how each person on earth would have about a square foot of space to stand in by then. Or the person who came to my husband's high school and talked about how in the future people would have so much leisure time that they would have no idea how to fill it all. (I'm still waiting eagerly for that problem to develop in my life.) So I'm not going to lose too much sleep worrying about this. I'm sure the future holds many exciting and wonderful surprises, too. And meanwhile, let's all continue to do whatever we can to make the world better.

The future is, indeed, a "story with no clear outcome." But really, couldn't all the best stories be described that way?

Poetry Friday - Steps

I've been reading Naomi Shihab Nye's collection Fuel and it has many wonderful poems in it (though I find the cover image quite creepy). One of these wonderful poems is called "Steps" and it begins this way:


STEPS

A man letters the sign for his grocery in Arabic and English.
Paint dries more quickly in English.
The thick swoops and curls of Arabic letters stay moist
and glistening till tomorrow when the children show up
jingling their dimes.


My favorite lines are in the third stanza:

"One of these children will tell a story that keeps her people
Alive. We don't yet know which one she is."

Now I think of those lines when I look at my students. One of them will, we hope. We just don't know which one.

You can read the rest of the poem here, because a group called STEPS, which studies colonial and transnational studies in Switzerland, is using it on its home page. Very appropriate.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Hey, Amy, Look What I Did!

Back in July Amy had a contest and I won! She said she'd make me a new header, but I fiddle-faddled about and didn't let her know what I wanted (because I had no clue) and hemmed and hawed when she sent me samples and dragged my feet about upgrading my blog to the new kind of templates, because I thought it would be too complicated...

Amy was very patient with this not-exactly-early-adopter person, and today, on my day off, look what I did! And look at Amy's great design for my header! Isn't it pretty? Thanks, Amy.

(There are still some things I don't get about this new-fangled template, like why it says that Jess hasn't updated her blog in three months, when really she wrote something on Saturday...)

A Post-Racial Society?

Right after the election I read a comment online by a man who said he couldn't understand why people were getting so excited about the race of the winner. If we live in a post-racial society, he opined, it shouldn't matter.

I snorted and said to myself that anyone who lives in the United States and considers it a post-racial society is probably white. I later expressed this opinion to a friend whose skin color is darker than mine. She agreed and added, "And on crack!"

And then I read this profoundly discouraging article about the uptick in racially-motivated crime after the election.

A post-racial society? Maybe sometime in the future people will be judged, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." But I'm afraid that day is not yet.

Poetry Friday

Here is the roundup. I guess this wasn't the week for me to do my own post!

Bwana Obama

Wednesday was a holiday in Kenya! People were celebrating the election of Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya, to the office of the President of the United States. Here's an interesting article about the attitudes of Kenyans towards Obama. Here's an expat's view of all the hoopla (the last several posts are on the topic so I've just linked you to the main blog). And here's a photo essay that the BBC ran earlier this week.

Poetry Friday

Here's today's roundup. Some day I'm going to do a Poetry Friday post of my own again.

Theme Day - Books

I was away from my computer on the first of the month, so I missed the DP Blogs' theme day. And what a theme for me to miss: Books! Here's a link to the thumbnails of photos taken around the world of this lovely subject.

A Couple of Election Links

I've kept pretty quiet about the election so far, and I intend to continue that, but I just can't resist posting two links.

Here's what Jim Wallis has to say about Focus on the Family's "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America."

And here's John Piper's take on how Christians should vote.

I sent in my absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago and will be watching the results tomorrow with great interest.

Just How Low Does the Love of God Reach?

In church on Sunday we sang a well-known hymn, but the words were slightly different from what I had learned. The original text goes like this:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen could ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.

The version we sang (lyrics courtesy of iWorship, a company that produces song-lyric videos that can be played on a screen so that nobody needs a hymnal) went like this:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen could ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hill.

Huh? The lowest hill? For one thing it doesn't even rhyme, and for another, isn't a hill, by definition, elevated? What on earth is "the lowest hill?"

This could be a typo, or it could be a certain squeamish sense that we shouldn't sing about h-e-double hockey sticks in church. Jesus had no such compunctions in the New Testament, and I for one need a love that reaches to the lowest hell. The lowest hill just doesn't cut it.

This song has a refrain that never fails to make me smile. I don't usually see it printed with a comma, so it reads like this:

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

To me this means that the love will endure the song - that is, in spite of how out of tune, insincere, and generally unpleasant our song is, God's love will endure. That is certainly true, but I think what the author intended was:

It shall forever more endure,
The saints' and angels' song.

"The saints' and angels' song," in the second version, is an appositive, meaning that the love of God IS the saints' and angels' song. Also true, but I like the wrong version better.


Here's the whole song in the Cyberhymnal. (Warning - this link plays music!)

Poetry Friday

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

I Hope Not

A piece in the October 6th New Yorker begins this way:

"I have a theory that life is junior high," Tom Brokaw said last week, roaming the stage of the Metropolitan Ballroom at the Sheraton. "Everybody's trying to get to the right tables, hang out with the right crowd, say the right things, and emerge saying they're part of the 'in' group."

Hm. Maybe his life is junior high. I'm glad mine isn't. I spend most of my days in middle school, and while I love my students, I am frequently happy that I'm not in that age bracket any more.

Poetry Friday - What Travel Does

Today I read Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "What Travel Does" with my eighth graders. It is in the book A Maze Me. For copyright reasons I won't post the whole thing. The poem speaks of the effects of travel on several different people. Here's one, at the beginning of the poem:

My uncle comes home from Siberia
describing the smoked caribou leg
still wearing its hoof
left on the drainboard
week after week,
small knives slicing
sour red flesh.
He becomes a vegetarian.
But he misses the spaciousness.
It wasn't crowded up there.
He ran into a polar bear
the same way you might run into your
mailman around the block.

Other effects of travel include a love for bright colors and an aching sense of the injustice suffered by others. Buy the book and read the whole poem!

The effects of travel (or living as a foreigner) are sometimes bewilderment and confusion. It was good today to read this fun exploration of some of the other (mostly positive) ways we are changed by interaction with other places and people and to be reminded of how that has happened for me throughout my life.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday, a day late, and mini-update

Here's yesterday's Poetry Friday roundup.

I'm still spending most of my time working, though I did listen to the debate Thursday night and today I'm taking a break to go to the dentist! Fun, fun! Next Friday is the last day for my kids to turn in all their writing, and I've been swamped by drafts.

Theme Day - Lines

Today's DP Blog theme is "Lines." This lends itself to many interpretations, and the talented photographers had a lot of fun. You can see thumbnails here.