Everything under the sun is in tune

Whaaaaaat? Did you guys see Oliver Sacks on Jon Stewart? I NEED to read his new(ish) book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. There's also a special airing on PBS tomorrow at 8 PM. They show a clip where Sacks' brain lights up a teeny bit when he listens to Beethoven, but produces a ton of activity when he listens to Bach, including, remarkably, in his amygdala. I had an old professor that used to say, "There is no other composer. Bach is the only composer." I conceded his point then, as I do now.

I love Oliver Sacks and I've always loved nonfiction science. I read his Island of the Colorblind many years ago, and then fell off following his titles. Here's a great opportunity for me to get back into this genre. If I haven't said so before, if I wasn't an English teacher, I'd probably be a Science teacher (just like my mom).

Ragamuffin, Barefoot Irreverence

Last week, I was stuck with my last period of the day for LIKE 20 HOURS. I had them all morning for state testing and then for the full double period in the afternoon. Of course, this class is my cross to bear. I know this is dramatic, but it is also true.

We spent our afternoons doing nothing particularly intellectually stimulating, as per, more or less, our administration's suggestion. We decided to watch Freedom Writers, which held their attention to a much greater extent than my choices--August Rush and Ghostbusters. Figures. I'm happy to report that they found the husband in the film just as irritating as I do (ah, but this is another post).

By the time we finished the movie, even my most stubborn, smarty-pants student told me "this is a good movie." Better yet, the kids were clamoring to read the book that Erin Gruwell and her students put together, The Freedom Writers Diary. My two most reticent readers were the most excited to read it. Funny what a little profanity and violence will do to inspire some reading. . . who am I to argue? When my period 9 is asking for a book, my period 9 is getting the book. So, this weekend, I marched myself--a dedicated little literacy soldier in the pouring rain--to the bookstore to buy two copies. I figured while many of them said they wanted to read it, they would be whistling a new tune come Monday. O how wrong I was. The entire class shot up their hands when I asked who wanted to read the books.

The solution? The time-honored pick-out-of-a-hat. I knew I would rig the results if given the chance--I have a soft spot when my struggling students show this much enthusiasm--and I knew that wouldn't be fair, so I asked our librarian to do the honors. Lo and behold, my honesty was rewarded: it was my two struggling readers' lucky day! If you ask me, it was no coincidence.

Picture this: two way too cool eighth grade boys, sitting side by side with their hoodies and their iPod ear buds slung over their shoulders and their extra-super-coolness, comfy amidst my grungy, thrice-hand-me-down classroom pillows, nestled under the counter, reading. Not just reading. Reading aloud to one another, taking turns, paragraph by paragraph. Repairing meaning, helping one another with difficult vocabulary, stopping to comment on the text, engrossed. In the zone. I wish I took a picture.

And this morning? "Ms. [Me], we're on Chapter 9! . . .Oh, and I did my other reading homework, too."

My heart is smiling today. I'm making readers of them yet.

Oh, and I ordered four more copies of the book (used copies this time, I'm wising up after all).

Even Bloggers Get the Blues

I know you are all impressed by my stunningly creative post title. Thank you, thank you. I just started the book--a 1977 copy from my mother's bookshelf and the first book in a while that she cautioned me against losing or wrecking. And I see why!

For starters, I want to say that if I were a writer, I would want to write just like Tom Robbins. Many a professor has either marveled or cringed (or both) at my ability to craft meandering sentences that, while remaining grammatically correct and while avoiding the status of run-on, could be much aided by a period, semicolon, dash (my personal favorite) or colon here or there. And while I was thoroughly not Faulknerian by any stretch of the imagination, Tom Robbins is slightly so, with a deliciously mild hippie--hear that, NOT hipster, hippie--edge.

Most impressive to me, thus far, though, is Robbins' acute and eerily applicable portrayal of economic, political and social realities of America. (No way, TPBN, you say, you? Enjoying the political and social implications of a book? Get right out of town. . .).

Here are some passages which I expect will become most cherished and dear to me:


So Sissy lived in Richmond, Virginia, in the Eisenhower Years, so called as if the passing seasons, with their eggs hatching and rivers rising, their cakes baking and stars turning, their legs dancing and hearts melting, their lamas levitating and poets doing likewise, their cheerleaders getting laid at drive-in picture shows and old men dying in rooms over furniture stores, as if they, the passing seasons, could be branded by a mere President; as if time itself could toddle out of Kansas and West Point, popularize a military jacket and seek election to Eternity on the Republican ticket.

Faulknerian, indeed. And beautifully so. This idea of not defining time and nature and the minute details that encompass human life simply by, in his words, mere external circumstances such as Presidency is of great interest to me. We get so wrapped up in the states of our political reality that selves get lost and people are forgotten--even by the candidates chosen to represent them, at times.

But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.

I like this because we tend to think of those who take traditional paths to "successful lives" as those who have done the right thing, but really what they've done is behave conventionally. And I'm not proposing that there is anything wrong with a little conventionality, but by the same token there isn't so much wrong with unconventionality. I love the last sentence. It's undeniable. If you consider yourself "successful," imagine all of the ways in which you life could be different if you hadn't chosen the path you did. Maybe in some ways it could be way worse, but maybe there are sources of happiness that could have been pursued had you not made it to where you are today. Or maybe not. But the mere act of thinking about it makes true that last sentence. I know I'll remember those words the next time (yes, I admit it has happened before and will happen again) I begin to judge someone's choices or lifestyle.

And then, there's this really long passage from which I will take only a small, wonderful example of Robbins' mastery of his art:
With me, something different and deep, in bright focus and pointing the way, arrived in the practice of hitchhiking. I am the spirit and the heart of hitchhiking, I am its cortex and its medulla, I am its foundation and its culmination, I am the jewel in its lotus. And when I am really moving, stopping car after car after car, moving so freely, so clearly, so delicately that even the sex maniacs and the cops can only blink and let me pass, then I embody the rhythms of the universe, I feel what it is like to be the universe, I am in a state of grace.


Amazing, right? Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe Robbins is being funny here, and satirical and whatnot, describing hitchhiking in such an overzealous way. Well, even if he is, my highest hope is to one day feel about my own life's calling and passion something like the way Sissy feels about hitchhiking. I know I'll get there. And if we've learned anything here at O.T.L., we've learned that authorial intention means nothing, right friends?

Happiness Is a Warm Book (Or a Whole Stack)

While I'm working on Camilo Mejia's Road From ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia: An Iraq War Memoir, I have a new stack of books to look forward to, thanks to a bday gift certificate from my sister. I resisted the urge to spend it on books for the classroom library. Here are the newest additions to my rather unkempt bookshelf:

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris--can't wait for this! I read When You Are Engulfed in Flames over the summer and was so addicted I was sad to finish it.

Rimbaud Complete, the complete poetry & prose of Arthur Rimbaud--French anarchist and poet who quit poetry at 21 and died at 37. I couldn't resist!

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited by Ilan Stavans and including the Elemental Odes. Nine hundred+ pages of Neruda = love.

Orientalism, by Edward Said--I studied excerpts in great depth in college for postcolonial studies but never owned the book myself. I employed the lens of this theory to analyze the seemingly innocuous Magic Tree House book series by Mary Pope Osbourne for a seminar. Loin clothed Masai warriors and magic carpet rides and anthropomorphism, o my.




Sundays are so bittersweet, aren't they?

Me: 1 (Well, $50) Barnes & Noble: 0

Upon receipt of a$25 gift card--a graduation present--I stifled my conscience and headed over to the Barnes & Noble site to bask in all of the corporate conglomerate goodness. I filled my virtual cart in a flash, as I am wont to do, and felt the satisfaction of clicking the "place my order" button.

All was good and well in my world as I anticipated the arrival of my items. Then the shipping confusion ensued. I was in no hurry, and my items arrived within what I would consider a typical shipping time frame. Me and Man's Search for Meaning and Less is More: Teaching Literature with Short Texts Grades 6-12 were all very happy together.

Two months pass. . .

Alas, a B&N email heralded the unexpected and much welcomed news: "A refund has been processed for the item(s) below. Credit has been issued to the original form of payment that you provided. If your method of payment was a credit card, that amount will be reflected on a future credit card billing statement."

Fortunately, I had decided to hold on to that gift card though it was spent down to the last penny. Don't ask me why--they usually go straight in the trash. But I didn't have time to contemplate. I scurried out to Barnes & Noble in a thunderstorm to spend my extra $25 immediately, lest they discovered their error.

Here's what I bought:

for self:

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (after reading wayyy more than my fair share of an online excerpt. O how do I love Amazon Reader? Let me count the ways. . .)


for classroom library:

Nothing But the Truth, Avi -- A Newbery Honor Book

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (ok, this is sort of for self too. I so love the Poirot mysteries.)

Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli



A few notes on my purchases:

-This is the first I'll be reading of Avi's. I've heard so many great things.

-Agatha Christie books were such a hit with the students I worked with for my junior year practicum a while back. I think it's important to encourage students to cast a wide net when it comes to considering genre, and mystery is one that I personally can't help but love. And the Christie titles offer plenty of challenge to those readers ready to try out some adult fiction.

-I know it seems like I'm spending a lot of time on the WWII era books and/or books that examine the struggles faced by people of Jewish decent, what with Letters from Rifka and my review a while back of Man's Search for Meaning (Frankl--not for my classroom lib, of course, though I'm sure it would be great as a high school title), but I want to be able to provide students with a wide perspective if/when we examine the Holocaust and literature related to it, and this means having plenty of resources for them and being personally informed, too.


Thanks, B&N, for the extra $25. I'm sure you won't miss it.

Now, back to the booktrader!

Your thoughts on any of these titles?

Happiness is a Warm Book

I've started David Sedaris' latest, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and it is FABULOUS. I'm not even sure how to express how much I love this collection of essays, or why. Maybe it's the stream-of-consciousness narration, maybe it's the irreverently loving pictures he paints of his life and the lives of those close to him. Maybe it's that I truly haven't read a book in a while that makes me not just giggle but let the ugly laugh (similar to the ugly cry) escape in the emptiness of my bedroom, to the point where my dog cocks his head inquisitively and says to himself "this woman is flippin crazy, how did I end up with her?"

So, yeah, needless to say, I can't wait to jump back into this book. Will do a full review when I finish.

Embarrassingly, I haven't read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim yet. It's now at the top of my Amazon wish list, though.

Any other favorites of Sedaris that I shouldn't miss?

Happiness is a Warm Book

Ok, so Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is admittedly not a book one might describe as warm. It details Frankl's existence in 4 concentration camps throughout Nazi Germany, his eventual freedom, and the psychological states associated with various aspects of his journey and the journeys of other survivors of the Holocaust. Part memoir, part theory, this book has really provoked me to reflect on my suppositions of what it means to have meaning in one's life.



Frankl--a psychologist--details, in the second half of the book, his theory of logotherapy. Logotherapy--from the Greek, logos, for meaning--represented a major break from the Freudian psychoanalysis vein of psychology/psychiatry of the day--thank goodness for that, for Freud was nothing if not a misogynist.

The theory of logotherapy, in short: "in comparison with psychoanalysis, [it is] a method less retrospective and more introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future." (98).

Frankl's theory appeals to me, in part, because of the shift in onus of responsibility it necessitates. Instead of a somewhat fatalistic understanding of meaning as something that transcends our comprehension far into adulthood--something that puzzles and vexes the soul--Frankl's ideas suggest that we must actively construct and recognize the meaning that lies in every single day of our lives, the meaning unique to each individual. The meaning is there; all we need to do is take a moment to accept that it may not be as grandiose or as elusive as we may have hoped. After all, if I'm absolutely sure the meaning of my life is far beyond my capacity to understand, I'd might as well bury my head in the sand and not bother about acknowledging it. This view, contrary to Frankl's ideas, breeds powerlessness and hopelessness. And it also breeds annoying, spoiled college students who whine about what they want to "do with their life," as if they should be handed, on a silver platter, the magical key to a life of ease and happiness. Quite on the contrary, Frankl's theory effectively negates the idea that our lives cannot be meaningful in the midst of suffering.


Frankl insists (discussing his time in Nazi prison camps, amongst his fellow prisoners), "We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." (77).



I am appreciative of what Frankl espouses not least of all because the meaning becomes very concrete and to some degree very controllable. One cannot choose one's circumstances, but one certainly can decide upon one's reaction to them--a theme that runs throughout the book. Not only can one control the reaction, but the degree to which the circumstances will fortify one's life--one's perspective, one's sense of self, one's ability to navigate the joys and disappointments life presents. And there is no secret formula. One must conduct oneself honorably, one must move through life with a sense of duty to others.

As a first-year educator embarking on a very new and in some ways scary journey, Frankl's words resonate with me. You see, teaching is in some ways an isolating profession. Students aside, people don't generally wander into your classroom to ask you about how your day is going or how your lesson worked out (mentorship for year 1 notwithstanding). There is a responsibility, because of this degree of. . . well, privacy, really, for the educator to be accountable to herself. I do not have to answer to my colleagues as to whether or not I'm really working as hard as I should be--but I certainly have to answer to myself, every single day and every single time my head hits the pillow. One of the reasons I chose this path is because it is one that requires the individual, that requires me to honor myself and the commitment I've made each and every day. I have to honor my students with my dedication and preparation. But it is only I who will truly know whethere I've chosen right action of which Frankl speaks.

I still don't think I'm quite getting at the core of what I like about Frankl's no-nonsense approach to meaning. Your thoughts?

Currently Reading...

Image bn.com


I'm headed to Maine for a super fantastic exciting literacy retreat at the end of June, and in the meantime need to finish this and Friedman's The World is Flat. The two complement one another well, as the former takes on the unique demands placed upon a post-Information Age U.S. worker and the latter is a history lesson in how the economics of globalization has set the stage for individual actors from every single corner of the world to take advantage of opportunities for success.


Basically, Pink's premise is that the combination of outsourcing/globalization (a mix of "Asia" and "Automation") with the presence of greater wealth, "Abundance," has freed up Americans to move from the Information Age into the Conceptual Age, in which right brain capacities or aptitudes will be in higher demand than ever before. Businesses will seek out employees who can do more than complete logical, sequential tasks that can now be done by lower-wage workers or software programs. Gestalt thinking has far outweighed the importance of specialized knowledge. The relationship between consumers and businesses is changing--more emphasis will need to be placed on the intricacies of the relationship between business and customer; consumers now seek products (basic products, not even luxuries only afforded to the wealthy) that go beyond function--that are aesthetically appealing (when was the last time you couldn't find a designer collaboration in most mainstream stores, from Target to Bed Bath & Beyond to Kohl's?). All of these marketplace demands require workers who can put the special abilities of the right brain to work in harmony with the left-brain thinking that has propelled us through the Information Age.


Pink offers 6 right brain capacities that will be necessary to successful interactions withtin the new, post-Information Age: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Thus far I am enjoying pondering the implications for educators that underly these 6 principles of A Whole New Mind, while simultaneously cringing at the elitism and ethnocentrism I'm detecting. Each chapter is appendixed by a "portfolio" section that offers suggestions for improving one's capacity for each of the six aptitudes. While I find some of the portfolio suggestions uniquely accessible (drawing, writing and game suggestions as well as exercises in empathy-building), others are downright out of reach of a good portion of the population (far-off museums, expensive design magazines, elaborate classes and workshops). I don't doubt that Pink's intentions are good, but I'm not convinced that the presence of "Abundance" in some households extends to free up the general populace to pursue the prescribed right-brain strengtheners.


As far as ethnocentrism goes, Pink seems to suggest that low-wage earners from other countries simply are not capable of the kinds of right-brain thinking at which Americans will excel. He leaves no room for the possibility that individuals working for low wages in positions that require left-brain thinking might be imaginative or creative, and might put their personal talents in right-brain thinking to work as well as any American could.


More on A Whole New Mind as I consider more thoughtfully the implications of Pink's work for today's students and teachers. . .