All: I Guess It Wasn't His Time Yet

Check this out.

(And don't forget to check out BBC radio while you're over there.)

All: Sunday Night TV

There's a new show premiering tonight on FoxNews at 10 p.m.  It's called The Half-hour Newshour and it's the conservative answer to The Daily Show.

The early reviews aren't great, but we should watch and see for ourselves.  There's too much anger on the political scene today, so a humorous, satiric look at poltics and the news can only be a good thing, right?  If you go to the article in the link, you'll find links to a couple of clips.

Also, (and this is for Block 2, but you'll be getting it later in the semester, Block 4), tune into BET around 11:30 p.m. to see Geoffrey Chaucer's Pardoner in action.  He goes by the name of Robert Tilton these days, but it's basically the same schtick.

And, of course, I daresay you're all as sad as I am to realize that the final two episode of Reba air tonight on the CW (7:00 and 7:30).  Alll I can say is, thank goodness for syndication.

All: At Least We're Not Last!

When I was a kid, on Halloween when we went door to door saying "Trick or treat for Unicef!", holding out our little orange boxes for spare change that went to help poor, sick children in foreign countries.  

Now to be fair, when you see the United States listed by UNICEF as 20th out of 21 nations as far as the well-being of children, that's in industrialized nations. We're still way ahead of the thrid world nations. 

The run down:

CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE
1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom
Source: Unicef

What exactly are the criteria they used?
 

Block II: Regarding Ghosts

I guess that when I conceive of myself, I picture myself wearing clothes. But I don't get why a ghost should be a self-conception as opposed to an actual entity.  And if an actual entity, I just wonder where the clothes are coming from?

Well, excuse my skepticism.

Here's something you may like that I stumbled across some time ago.  It concerns a phenomenom/mirage known as "after-death communication" (ADC).

Actually, I had a similar experience.  My mother was a great bird-lover, and as you are all reminded on the hour, so am I.  My special totem has always been the red-wing blackbird.  On the first Valentine Day after my mother died, there suddenly appeared on my back lawn a flock of no less than 50 - 75 redwings.  Coincidence?  

All:A Winter Classic

 I hope Mrs. Morrison made you all read John Greenleaf Whittier's "Snowbound" last year.
What??  You didn't, or you just don't remember?

Well, it's all about a real New England nor'easter (one with snow, I mean, not sleet) remembered from boyhood.  The storm starts around sunset, goes all though the next day and night.  On the following morning, it's time to dig out.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"
Well pleased (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.

The snow is so deep that they have to dig a tunnel through it on their way to the barn to tend to the animals.  But still there's time for fun, too.

And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp's supernal powers.

(Remember all the fun you used to have as a kid playing in the snow, them coming inside to hot chocolate and grapefruit!)

That night, the family gathers by the fireside (in the children's rooms snow is blowing in between the clapboards).  To pass the time, they talk.  To each other!  They begin to tell stories.  Father, of course, goes first telling about sitting "down again to moose and samp/In trapper's hut and Indian camp" up on Lake Memphremagog when he was a young man.

Mother goes next, with some family history of

how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.

Whittier's uncle was there, a "simple" man who never travelled more than twenty miles from home in his life, but who knew as well as any man the natural world in his own backyard.  A maiden aunt, a sweet woman who never found a man to marry her, was there, as well as the local schoolmaster.  (In lieu of paying taxes, a family could offer to board the school teacher.

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the local school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth's college halls.

There was another visitor there, too, a strange, exotic woman who cast a strong spell over the young Whittier.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold. . .
She sat among us, at the test,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways. . . 
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The vixen and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak of feint
The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
The raptures of Siena's saint.

And, of course, in any nostalgic look back at the past, we're likely to feel the presence of the mortality paradox.

Gathered around the fire that night were two of Whittier's sisters.  The older,

A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice. . .
How many a poor one's blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

And the younger

Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?

It's only in his memories that Whittier can see them now, as well as most of those people around the fire that night.

I have logs already to go in my faireplace.  After lunch I will set them ablaze, and I'll be sitting around spending a stolen afternoon with my wife and my son (and missing my older boy, already away from home at college).

Enjoy your day off, class.  Try to enjoy every day.

All: "24" and Civil Liberties

Since September 11th, depictions of torture have become much more common on American television. Before the attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, “the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes.” The Parents’ Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has counted what it says are sixty-seven torture scenes during the first five seasons of “24”—more than one every other show. Melissa Caldwell, the council’s senior director of programs, said, “ ‘24’ is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture.”  

(from "WHATEVER IT TAKES: The politics of the man behind “24.” by JANE MAYER)

I mentioned this in Block IV yesterday (I think - maybe it was Block II), how Mr Welden was  telling me that although Jack Bauer himself sometimes has to tromple on certain civil liberties in the name of terrorism, that actually a theme of the show seemed to be that even in these uncertain times we must respect human rights and civil liberties.  That's what makes us Americans, after all.

This week's issue of the New Yorker has an article about "24" and the man who created it, Joel Surnow.  While Surnow's number one concern is audience-share, it tunrs out he's not so concerned with civil liberties as Mr Welden seems to think.

The series, Surnow told me, is “ripped out of the Zeitgeist of what people’s fears are—their paranoia that we’re going to be attacked,” and it “makes people look at what we’re dealing with” in terms of threats to national security. “There are not a lot of measures short of extreme measures that will get it done,” he said, adding, “America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He’s a patriot”. . .  
Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a “right-wing nut job,” shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture, he said, “Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?”

Does it matter?  It's just a tv show, right?

Well, take this quiz:  Rate these in order, from most to fewest.

a.  number of readers of the New York Times
b.  number of readers of George Orwell's 1984
c.  number of viewers of "24"

Block II: There's No Day Like a Snow Day. . .

but that doesn't mean we can't still learn!

Okay, so nobody knew who Benny Goodman was. Here's Benny Goodman (playing the clarinet -- about halfway through). That's Gene Krupa on the drums. (He used to be somebody, too.)

And you barely knew who Joni Mitchell was. Here's Joni singing "A Case of You" (live) in 1983. (Here are the lyrics, if you're interested.)

And here's a song of Joni's that I love, "River" as performed by another Canadian, Allison Crowe (lyrics here). It's from an album called Blue, which, if I could only have one Joni Mitchell album, would be the one I would choose (Hejira being second).

I once tried to play this for a class, but they were all talking, so I pulled the plug. They didn't deserve it. Here's the good thing: you only have to listen to this if you want to (and if you talk through it, I'll never have to know).

Block IV: This American Life

You can read this, too, if you're in Block II.  We did this today in Block IV; you'll be getting it later in the year.

Okay, remember that radio story about "that guy"?  It's from a radio show called "This American Life".  Check it out.

Here's one of my favorite episodes: from November 2, 2001.

Act Three. People Like You If You Put a Lot of Time Into Your Appearance. To prove this simple point, a familiar one to readers of any women's magazines, we have this true story of moral instruction, told by Luke Burbank, in Seattle, about a guy he met on a plane who was dressed in a hand-sewn Superman costume. (13 minutes)
 

All: Poetry Goes Hollywood

Here's a fun site that a just found. It's a partial list (I'm sure there are many more) of poems that have appeared in movies. I don't believe there is category at the Oscars for this: There should be.

One of my all-time favorite poets is Jane Kenyon. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read that her poem "Let Evening Come" appears in the 2005 film In Her Shoes starring Cameron Diaz. I doubt that you could have made me watch that movie before tonight.  Now I might have to.  (Not in class, though.  Don't get any ideas.)

(If you ever wondered what it was like to be clinically depressed, try "Having it Out With Melancholy.")

But I'm depressed enough.  Let's try something that's very seasonally appropriate.

February: Thinking of Flowers

       by Jane Kenyon

Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;

Seniors: Shadowlands

Check out this essay from the Journal of Religion and Film (who knew?) about the film we've been watching, Shadowlands.

Here are a couple of excerpts that I find especially pertinent.

"Something must drive us out of our nursery into the world--we must grow up!" becomes the film's C. S. Lewis dictum. This statement very much summarizes the plot of Attenborough's story. The "something" that drives Lewis out of his cloistered and safe world--his nursery--into the real world of open spaces full of bright joys and dark shadows is love; the something that forces the man to grow up is intense suffering and tragic loss--pain. Attenborough illustrates this humanizing journey through careful attention to Jack's progressive relationship with Joy, his detached professor to human being relationship with a student, his increasingly intimate relationship with Douglas, and his maturing relationship with God.

And. . .

Lewis queries, "Why love if loving hurts so much? I have no answers; only the life I've lived. Twice I've been given a choice: the boy chose safety; the man chooses suffering." The film in its entirety answers the "Why love" question. It proclaims that it 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all; indeed, pain and suffering is part of the living experience. As Joy puts it, "it's part of the deal." To further clarify, safety provides only that - safety. Accepting the risk of suffering, however, provides the possibility of experiencing great joy. Furthermore, the film, and specifically Lewis's "I have no answers" concluding statement reiterates the thinking of a previous great intellect: "There lives more faith in honest doubt...than in half the creeds."

All: Bad Writing ~ Good Book

This is some bad writing. It's from a professor of American history at the University of Hartford.

History-making heroism, Stephanie Capparell means to demonstrate in this admiring account of the Pepsi-Cola Company’s pioneering — but largely unsung — “special-markets sales staff,” ought not to be measured solely by the fame it attracts. She’s right. Inconceivable without the giants of the ballpark and the ring, demonstrations and courtrooms, the movement for African-American civil rights depended even more on the mostly unknowable actions of millions, black and white, who created new ways of thinking and working and acting within and across racial lines.

Whoa! This is way too complicated. Professor Goldstein is trying to squeeze too much information into one sentence.

History-making heroism, Stephanie Capparell means to demonstrate in this admiring account of the Pepsi-Cola Company’s pioneering — but largely unsung — “special-markets sales staff,”ought not to be measured solely by the fame it attracts.

In red is the basic sentence. In orange is a descriptive clause, which could easily be its own sentence. In yellow, a descriptive clause within the descriptive clause. William Faulkner can do these, and make it work. Most of us can't.

She’s right. Inconceivable without the giants of the ballpark and the ring, demonstrations and courtrooms, the movement for African-American civil rights depended even more on the mostly unknowable actions of millions, black and white, who created new ways of thinking and working and acting within and across racial lines.

Red: a long descriptive clause referring to "the civil rights movement". But until we know that, its hard to figure out where the sentence is going, and how the two parts of that (giants. . . ring/ demonstrations. . . courtroom) go together. Orange: the core sentence. Yellow: another descriptive clause, chock-a-block full of action ("thinking" and working and acting").

Here's paragraph two.

“The Real Pepsi Challenge” begins with a creative, dynamic white New York businessman, a politically connected, progressive Republican turnaround specialist named Walter S. Mack Jr., who took over Pepsi in 1938. Mack, in his own words “an unrepentant capitalist and a liberal” who enjoyed playing, as Capparell puts it, “scrappy David to the Goliath that was Coca-Cola” (Pepsi’s 1939 sales were under $5 million, compared with Coca-Cola’s $128 million), decided to strengthen Pepsi’s hold on the “Negro market.” Pepsi’s 12-ounce bottle, twice the size of a Coke, sold for the same nickel, which made it more popular among poorer people; according to Capparell, Pepsi had “survived the Depression by appealing to Negro consumers.”

Again, this is way too complicated. Always remember the acronym "KISS". (Keep it simple, stupid.) That applies to good writing, (in terms of organization as well as word choice), and often to life, as well.

That being said, if you can read the whole review, the book sounds very interesting. We know about Brown v. Board of Ed., and the Montgomery bus boycott, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This tells about a big part played behind the scenes by a major corporation -- a story of which I was unaware. This book is going on my personal summer reading list.

Seniors: Sunday NY Times ~ Dick Cheney is Lord Voldemort?

On Friday we were talking about Harry Potter (the seventh and final(?) book in the series is due out on July 21st). Nicholas Kristof, writing today (Sunday) on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, cites Harry Potter.

A reader named Melissa S. e-mailed to say that she explains Iraq policy to her 8-year-old son in terms of Harry Potter characters: “Dick Cheney is Lord Voldemort. George W. Bush is Peter Pettigrew.” Don Rumsfeld is Lucius Malfoy, while Cornelius Fudge represents administration supporters who deny that anything is wrong. And, she concludes, “Daily Prophet reporter Rita Skeeter is Fox News.”

Kristof had written an earlier piece which asked readers what parallels to our current struggles in Iraq can be found in classical literature.

If you are interested in seeing what other people had to say, go here.

Some suggestions that we may cover this semester: Beowulf, Macbeth, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, "Ozymandias", Slaughterhouse 5.

Some you may know from last year: The Great Gatsby; The Scarlet Letter, "The Raven", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Fall of the House of Usher", Huck Finn, The Catcher in the Rye.

Others that you may know (some of them "borderline" classics): The Lord of the Rings, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Animal House, Yertle the Turtle, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Juniors: Riding the Rap

Dale Crowe, Jr., is a "punk" ("somebody who won't grow up").  He refuses to take responsibility for his own actions.

For instance, he attributes the fact that he's going to jail for five years to "a broken taillight", ignoring the fact that he was driving drunk, or that he punched a cop in the first place.

And when it comes to drinking, he claims he had "like four beers."  The police report said something different -- that his blood alcohol level was 0.19.  How drunk is that?

Very.