Archive for November, 2009

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I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

What a perfect poem for a drizzly, gray day.  A day when school wheezes and grinds itself back into motion, inevitably, after a delicious three-day break.  A break that seemed to stretch out languidly into eternity, right up until the moment I realized I needed to get dressed for class.

Perfectionism and procrastination are a lethal combination.  I should vacuum or take a shower, but to do so correctly — the best, most deliberate and thorough way — would take a long time and more energy than I can summon at present.  So I wait and wait until the opportunity disappears altogether, and I have to smile and open the door to a dirty carpet or tie my hair back in a scarf and make the best of it.

This morning, though, I was showered and dressed and ready to leave a full half-hour before I needed to be.  So I stared at my reflection in the mirror, satisfied but not pleased, and removed a tiny glint of silver from my scalp.

One hair.  Barely more than an inch long.  I pulled it more out of curiosity than vanity (I actually think gray hair is very attractive) and turned it over and over in my hand, studying it.

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Toys for Thinkers

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

In honor of Black Friday (which I will celebrate not by going out and buying junk, but by staying home and sorting through all the junk I already own) I want to say a few words about toys.  Please enjoy this delightful one-minute dose of nostalgia, posted by my cousins at Z Recommends:

That’s what Legos used to be about: creating something unique, special, unexpected.  That’s why they were (and are) such a fantastic toy.  On the other hand, if you’re looking for Legos, you can also buy this:

Guggenheim

As much as I think Frank Lloyd Wright’s descendants deserve every penny they can milk out of his genius, I draw the line at paying $40 for a set of bricks that can really only build the Guggenheim Museum.  More and more of the Lego lines are like this — brand names like Star Wars and SpongeBob, with so many specialty pieces that there’s no imagination involved, just a one-time setup so it can sit on a shelf and grow dusty.

If you must buy toys, please, please get something that requires thought and creativity to enjoy.  I have several such toys in my studio, and they rarely fail to keep the attention of even the wiggliest little ones.  Besides which, they’re pretty.  And they don’t make any noise except the pleasant kind that comes from little hands going about the business of creation.

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Boring Old Facts

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Rod finds a teacher* who agrees with me:

“They can crack the alphabetic code,” he said. “But they can’t stay focused and comprehend what they’ve read. And if they run into something that doesn’t seem right to them, they simply don’t believe it. I’m not talking about differences of opinion; I’m talking about facts. They don’t even form an argument against it, they just decide that it doesn’t feel true to them, so it must not be.”

Last weekend’s conference was saturated with quotes like this. My favorite was from a teacher who discussed 1984: it’s fantastically depressing, he said.  It’s about guilt and shame and lies and it’s awful.  I love it.  But I don’t care whether you love it.  It’s not about that.  It’s about the value of the novel.  What is the value in reading about surveillance, government?  If you can see value in it, your personal feelings about the book are really irrelevant.

Another teacher showed us all this cartoon.  There were a few scattered giggles, and then he asked us (about 200 in that session) honestly, if we’d “gotten it.”  About 25% raised their hands (I was not among them; although I did know who was in the cartoon, I didn’t get the football connection.)  The presenter explained that although we were all [presumably] intelligent and literate, we were missing a meaningful connection to the work.  This, he explained was how kids could read “Catcher in the Rye” but not understand Holden’s struggle with identity.  They get the words.  They just don’t get the deeper meaning.

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“The fool saith in her heart, ‘There is no God.’”

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

And then, behold, the fool receiveth her parent conference schedule and doth discover that it is utterly blank, even to the last time slot.

And lo, she believed, and was exceeding glad; and she went forth with rejoicing and singing, and much triumph.

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Truth > Fiction

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

There’s no mathematical equivalent to “stranger than,” as far as I know, but I would argue that “greater than” is just as true.  Here’s another fun classroom activity I heard about at the conference, based on the children’s book “If You’re Not from the Prairie:”‘

If you’re not from the prairie, you don’t know the sun, you can’t know the sun.

Diamonds that bounce off crisp winter snow, warm waters in dugouts and lakes that we know.

The sun is our friend from when we are young, a child of the prairie is part of the sun.

If you’re not from the prairie, you don’t know the sun.

Students then brainstorm a list of things about themselves that they think would be difficult for an “outsider” to understand.  When we did this as a group, I came up with Byzantine chanting, having a stay-at-home mom, going to a tiny private school and living in Manhattan.  Then they choose the one with which they identify most closely (I just went with the first choice) and list both positive attributes (haunting, otherworldly melodies; a deep spiritual connection) and negative ones (a scale that’s difficult for Westerners to conquer; the ugly attitude of people who don’t like the sound.)  This is transformed into a memoir-type piece:

If you’ve never sung Byzantine chant, you don’t know what it’s like to fight with a scale the way an angry two-year-old fights with his older brother.  The notes slip in where you don’t expect them and squeal with shrill indignation when you tread on their toes.  You’ve never sung your way into a corner and then had to back sheepishly out of it, not sure where you took a wrong turn.  You don’t know what it’s like to have your accomplishments dismissed airily by people who say it sounds “ugly” and “weird.”

But, if you’ve never sung Byzantine chant, you also don’t know what it’s like to be physically shaken by a melody, right to the very tips of your tingling fingers.  You’ve never sung a sound you swear didn’t come from inside your own lungs, but from some celestial puppetmaster with a generous heart.  You don’t know what it’s like to luxuriate in the paradox of deeply loving something you still don’t fully understand.

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