A Study Room of My Own

Of course, it is a study room that I share with another graduate student (my roommate, actually). But I went over there today on my lunch break to read a bit of Melville's Confidence Man* And I liked the room.

It's small. It has a nasty florescent light that make a nasty noise--but it also has lots of desk space, a little shelf to stick books on, walls for Post-it notes, a lamp left by a prior occupant. It's quiet, but it has the right feel to it. And I can shut the door and lock it. And best of all it's a room dedicated to studying.

My Study Hole (as I like to call it) will hopefully help me to get more work done. And since it's in the library, I can go find books as I read, if the material refers to one. I did this the other day and was very happy. Yay for a study room of my own!


*For the American Picaresque. Sorry folks, I have yet to do my fall lineup for classes. Also, I was tagged by Tim...guess I have posts for the next two days. Oh, and did you know that (according to the Elements of Style), when you refer to a book as I just did, you can drop any articles before the title? Thus The Confidence Man by Herman Melville becomes Melville's Confidence Man.

Life with a Cat

When living with a cat, one must accept certain inevitabilities. For example, objects placed upon a surface will somehow end up on the floor, but never while anyone is present. Glasses put on the nightstand before bedtime will prove irresistible; the cat will bat the glasses to the floor. Cats are awake just before the alarm, and sometimes figure out how to break into a room to become the alarm clock.

A cat is a creature unto herself. I do not own my cat; my cat resides in my apartment, and I do her bidding. Occasionally I wonder if cats actually love their humans. Rory certainly seems to express affection to me, especially at 5:30 in the morning when she gets the urge to stick her cold nose in my ear, or wash my face, or crawl under the bedclothes with me. It's very sweet, really, but couldn't she wait an hour?

The kitten, Rowan, also expresses affection by nibbling toes as I stumble to the bathroom, or barging in while I take a shower. ("Out!" I'll yell and flick droplets of water). Rory taught Rowan how to push open doors, and sometimes they team up to get into my bedroom early in the morning. Rowan just wants to play, not understanding that she can't pull things out of my book bag, bat my pens off of my desk, or chew on the corners of my books. She's especially needy if she's been left alone all night.

Rory greets me as I walk toward my apartment, her loud meows and jingling collar following me toward the door. I pick her up and she purrs enthusiastically, but really what she wants is her food and water, and some petting--afterward, she cries to be let back out.

It's startling to realize that my cat and I have a special bond, an actual relationship. She meows when she sees me because she wants my attention, even if Lance is already petting her. (She knows he's the one to beg treats from, though). She jumps in my lap, snuggles with me when I sleep, and looks to me as her primary human being. She'll even try to follow me to work, if I don't stop her by putting her in the apartment or leaving when she's not looking.

But still, she is a cat, and she has her independence and own pursuits. Life with a cat may entail finding lost items (my contacts case used to find its way from the bathroom to under the refrigerator) and putting up with a furry body stretched across a book, but it's also pretty fun--and in the winter, a cat in the lap is almost as nice as a roaring fire to keep you warm.

How Not to Write, Pt 2

Seriously, readers...you did not take up my call to shred terrible writing. Am I the only one who gets pleasure out of ripping into poor writing and making it better? (Perhaps I am.)

As promised, here is my edited version. I actually could do two--fixing this one while leaving the content largely intact, and then a total rewrite (with the addition of specific, concrete details). I'm too lazy, however, to do the total rewrite, so I'll just leave that one to your imaginations. However, I do make suggestions for good places to stick details.

This letter is in recommendation for [Student Smith], an applicant for the [People Who Gave Us Money] Scholarship.

I have known [Student] for 12 years in several settings: as a student at [X] School District, as a member the [Random Church] Youth Group, and as a [academic discipline] student at the University. I have had the pleasure of working with him as both a youth adviser and as a staff member in the [academic department].

Throughout high school, he consistently ranked at the top of his class. A constant favorite with his high school teachers, [Student] is well-known for his hard work and dedication in academics and extracurricular activities. [Here's a place for concrete examples--awards, etc.]

[Student] fills the roles as both a young leader and a devoted honor student; I have every expectation that he will be successful. As a leader, he sets an example for his peers, [actively participating in class and volunteering for projects]. Since entering the university, he has shown a remarkable level of interest and dedication to his college education. His above average GPA ranks him [nth] in the [level] class, proving [Student's] commitment to his academics and to his future career. I look forward to observing him further develop here at the university and as a future [career title].

I believe that [Student Smith] is an energetic, well-respected, and talented individual who represents the desired qualities in a [People Who Gave Us Money] Scholarship recipient. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

See? Isn't that a bit better? Even if it's too indefinite to be a good recommendation letter, at least it's more active and the sentences are not ugly, though perhaps just a little homely. It's assertive, and unlike the other one, is not repetitive and passive. Hopefully you think it is an improvement as well.

How Not to Write

I helped a friend proofread today a recommendation letter (via Google Talk), and I groaned about it because all the sentences were ugly, clunky, and entirely too vague for a recommendation letter. For one thing, such a letter should contain definite concrete examples of why they are such a great person. Another? Don't use the passive voice.

In the interest of providing concrete examples, I thought I'd post a version of the letter with all the identifying particulars left out to demonstrate how not to write.

I am writing this letter to give my highest recommendation in support of [Student Smith], a candidate for the [People Who Gave Us Money] Scholarship.

I have known Student for 12 years through a combination of ways. I’ve known him as a student through the [X] School District, with the [Random Church] Youth Group as his youth advisor, and last year he came to the [Academic Department] at the University as [department] student. In high school, he ranked one of the top students in the class all four years. This young man was always a favorite with all his high school teachers in the classroom, and he always worked hard with outside activities and projects.

[Student] has always exceeded all expectations as a young leader, an honor student who is devoted to his education, and I have every expectation that he will be successful with his life’s goals. Since coming to the department, he has established the interest to go beyond a remarkable level of interest and dedication to his college career proven by his GPA and ranking [nth] in the [level] class in the first semester. He has always been the type of student that shows leadership and sets a great example amongst his peers.I am confident that [Student] will provide considerable service again to any department and to the University and I am looking forward to seeing him develop here and as a future [career title].

In conclusion, I believe that [Student] is an energetic, well-respected and talented individual who represents the “best and brightest" of [academic discipline] students and is therefore worthy of your consideration.

Please contact me directly if you have any questions regarding my support for [Student Smith] and his application for the 2008 [People Who Gave Us Money] Scholarship.

I know where to start on this atrocity (and I already named a few ways), but I'm interested in what you think. How could this letter be stronger? I'll post a revision tomorrow.

Writing Tip of the Week

Rereading The Elements of Style has been a rewarding experience. I don't know why I love this book so much--but it is a wonderful (and funny!) guide to style. I kept reading snippets of it out loud to Lance as we drove home from our weekend. So here's the tip of the week:

6. Do not overwrite
Rich ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating. If the sickly-sweet word, the overblown phrase are your natural form of expression, as is sometimes the case, you will have to compensate for it by a show of vigor, and by writing something as meritorious as the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.
When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness. The click and flow of a word processor can be seductive, and you may find yourself adding a few unnecessary words or even a whole passage just to experience the pleasure of running your fingers over the keyboard and watching your words appear on the screen. It is always a good idea to reread your writing later and ruthlessly delete the excess.

I love White's description of being seduced by the keyboard. I know that I'll often add another sentence to a paragraph because I want the paragraph to look a certain way on the screen--silly, I know, but I usually edit everything viciously (because of Reminder 5).

I also learned something that I didn't realize when I took the grammar mastery test about the construction "one of those [NOUN] who"--you must use the plural form of the verb with it. I think that answers the only thing I missed.

Renewed Reading

As I was finishing up a reading packet for class tomorrow, I found myself struck by the absolute beauty of some of the sentences. We had three short readings, one of which ("The Philosophy of Composition by Richard Atlick and/or John Fenstermaker) was about good academic writing, and the other two concerned themselves with the literary "Canon Wars".

All three pieces were marvelously written, and often funny--Atlick/Fenstermaker used his footnotes to make funny jokes with an important point about the use of footnotes. I kept laughing the further I got through the piece--I'm sure Lance and his parents would have thought I was silly for enjoying a scholarly article so much. (Just as he laughs at me for adoring The Elements of Style).

It was in the last piece, (Katha Pollitt--"Canon to the Right of Me") when I discovered that I was highlighting a sentence just because it was such a well-crafted bit of wordsmithing that I remembered why I'm in graduate school in the first place--to read lovely bits of writing (poetical, fictional, or scholarly) and to admire that beauty and attempt to be like them. Spending part of last semester with Jameson didn't help, since his writing lacks the grace and elegance of more reader-friendly writers.

I'm glad that I am being told to leave behind the purposefully obscure, horrible pieces of writing. Even if I have to study them, I can mock their terrible writing and strive to be an academic that can pride herself on the quality of her craft. I would like others to read what I write and feel that sheer enjoyment of the well-written sentence, as well as learn something interesting. Those academics who feel the need to be obtuse are idiots. No one will ever appreciate their prose style, and fewer will understand their perhaps brilliant points than if they had chosen to write like Terry Eagleton or Jerome McGann.

It does me good to be reminded every now and then that I'm not going into English to study and learn more about literature--I'm going into it because I love the written word, and I love the beauty and power of well-used words.

E-Mail Etiquette

(After a scramble to look up how to spell "etiquette", I can now proceed with today's post).

With the advent of the Internet and the ease of electronic communication, e-mail* has been increasingly popular in the workplace. I work. Thus, I receive 50,000 e-mails a day (an exaggeration, yes, but sometimes it feels like that), and have daily opportunities to cringe.

One thing I really hate in an e-mail is when the sender puts their whole message in the subject line. Perhaps it's because I hate long subject lines; I think they should be short and to the point. Plus, then I have to go to all the trouble of opening the e-mail to find that there is nothing there. I'm annoyed--but maybe I'm just picky.

The other e-mail rules that I hate when people violate are when they give you a word. That's all the message is--a word or two. I'm sorry, at least take the trouble to type a proper salutation and sign off. It's communication after all.**

And finally***, the people who obviously don't read over their e-mails before they send them out. We've all seen them--horrible misspellings, lack of punctuation, or just fuzzy sentences that you think you know what they are talking about, but you can't be sure. A simple re-read would catch some of the mistakes. But in their hurry to type something out, individuals often forget that there could be someone who is judging them by the state of their correspondence. I'm always careful when I e-mail people because I know they are aware of me as an English major. I'm also careful when I e-mail other professionals or e-mail authority figures because I want my communication to reflect my quality of work and dedication to my job or pursuits. It's inevitable that we are to be judged based on our communication, and somehow running Spell Check in Outlook before sending an e-mail seems like such a simple step to prevent a bad impression.

*This is actually the proper way to spell the word, since it is a shortened form of "electronic mail". But in their haste, people don't ever put the hyphen. I put it as a small form of protest against careless writing.

**This rule doesn't count if the e-mail is part of ongoing correspondence. In that case, it's like a phone conversation.

***Don't EVEN get me started on those stupid forwards. Since I'm concentrating on e-mail in a professional setting, I'll pretend like those e-mails don't exist.

Cooking and Writing

I'm the sort of person who understands things better when words are involved. If I want to really learn something, I write about it.

Recently, I've become pretty interested in baking and learning more about baking methods. So I decided to start a new blog: Jenn's Baking Blog can be found following the link. I wanted to explore baking, but I didn't want to do it here, but I actually don't really like having more than one blog. But I felt that for its purpose--to learn more about baking and to play with recipes--a baking blog would be useful. And worth the separation factor.

This blog has been tremendously useful for helping me get out all my "I'm so excited! I love books!!!" emotions, so perhaps having a blog dedicated to my pursuit of more baking skills will be fun and help me learn better. This concept is probably why I'll make students write blogs for any freshman composition class/writing class that I teach--the act of writing, of having to set words to paper (or the screen) is as much a learning process as producing a more official piece of writing.

So mosey on over to the baking blog--when I make something yummy, I'll post pictures and possibly a recipe.

I am THE GRAMMAR MASTER

Well, sort of.

I stumbled upon this grammar mastery test on my daily Internet visiting. Since I pride myself on such things as my mastery of the trickier rules of Standard American English, I took it. I scored 48/50. Not shabby, though far from perfect.

As I was taking it, I actually noticed several problems. A few of the answers were identical, allowing me to rule them out, if I didn't quite know for sure. That must have just been whoever set up the test.

Something else was bothering me about this test, however. And then I realized--the sentences were designed to trip up the test-taker, not as representatives of good written English. Some of the sentences were far too complex and convoluted--if one of my students were to write like that test, I would scold them.

That's when it dawned on me about grammar education--we often teach students in a way that they should not write or would not use language. No wonder students often have a hard time grasping certain grammatical concepts. Grammar studies often operate in a vacuum, and students have no way to bridge from the abstract world of proper grammar to actual ways of speaking and writing. They can't make the connection, especially when we teach them using sentences that are unconnected to their daily modes of discourse.

Part of what I'm going to address in my thesis is the disconnect between freshmen composition and students' future writing. Students take freshmen composition, believing that they'll never again use those concepts, never making the connection between the skills taught in composition and the skills they need to be effective writers in the workplace. I hope I can find a way to bridge this gap, and help students be better writers and communicators.

This Blog Temporarily Interrupted By...

Work. And lots of it. For when you work in a Dean's office and students are panicking and need to get enrolled, they come to you. Also, professors come to you at the last minute and ask to change their class schedules.

I have class this afternoon. I'll talk about it tomorrow, possibly...

Good luck to those of you who are starting classes this week!

Wild Whirlwind of Work!

It's going to be a busy day. Actually, a busy next two weeks.

I'll be starting my fall classes next week. I'm excited, but when you work for a dean's office, it makes the first couple of weeks hectic as students try to get into their classes. It started yesterday as I alternated helping students and changing class information for professors and departments. I have no idea why they insist on waiting so long...but they do, and they will, and so I must trudge forth with a smile on my face. I enjoy helping these students, I really do. It makes me feel good when they walk away, their problems solved and questions answered, and they thank me for taking the time to help them.

So back to work with me!

Amusing Bad Grammar?

I've recently gotten hooked on this site, which is funny in this quirky way that I can't describe. I have to thank the Grammar Vandal for getting me to click over.



Why is it so funny? I don't understand. Is it because the poor spelling and funny ways of phrasing the captions are intentional? Part of it is the cute pictures of "kittehs" and other creatures paired with the captions.

I think I love it for the intentional use of poor spelling and grammar, and for the utilization of IM-speak. I've always enjoyed satires, and this one combines funny captions, cute picture of kitties, and satire. After all, if a person wrote in the manner of the image above, would they even be able to recognize perfect grammar if they saw it?

My roommate makes fun of me, but I like this site. What do you all think about it? I know it's the blogosphere craze right now, but I can't help but feel that it's popular for a good reason.

My Working Space

Something has been off since I moved and started graduate school. See, suddenly (because of the change in the nature of my living situations), I didn't have a desk anymore. So I would do homework on the couch, on the kitchen table, and elsewhere, but I always seemed to have problems studying for long. Part of it was the roommate factor, but part of it was the space itself. I didn't have a comfortable space in which to set out all of my school work, a space dedicated solely to reading and writing.

But that has changed. I bought a desk this past weekend, and yesterday I worked to set it up. When I sat down in the chair, I knew that this would be a place, in my room and away from the "social" areas of the apartment, where I could read, study, do my work. It's a nice desk; it has room for my laptop, and little shelves for my Post-it notes. I can line my research guides up along the back for quick reference. I actually have a place to leave my laptop, instead of whatever surface I can place it on in the living room.

We'll see how nice it is to have a nice, private space for working and reading. Hopefully it'll help me keep my head above water when it comes to my homework!

When Do I Start My REAL Job?

As some of you (my faithful readers) might know, I'm a part-time student and full-time university employee. Occasionally this causes some conflicts, such as when I don't finish all my homework and have to furtively read at work, or if I'm caught editing a paper when I have some down time. Part of my problem is that I don't see my current employment as my real job--I still consider myself a student first. The 40 hours a week I put in at the office are just what I need to do to pay for school and to eat.

Occasionally, I get tired of working the holding-pattern job and wish I could dive into PhD school. I think this feeling is especially acute when I'm either really busy from my classes and also when I'm not in class (no academia to distract me from working). I like my current employment. My co-workers are nice, the job itself has its challenges, and I get paid enough to live comfortably and go to Spain in December. So, really, it's not a bad deal at all.

But then I'm struck with the yearning to be able to dedicate all of my time and energy to being a graduate student. Even if I were to teach classes to pay for my student life style, I think I would still be more content. (Especially if I didn't have to take out loans or work another job). I love school, I love going to class, I get excited when I get to read neat stuff and find something interesting to say about it, and I love rubbing elbows with other students and professors. It's a satisfying state of existence. It's why I miss my undergraduate days.

So I tell myself that I'm lucky to have found a good job. And I also remind myself that I won't have terribly much longer (in the grand scheme of things) to work here until I can move somewhere new for PhD school. Sometimes, I just wish that day were coming much sooner.

So Long, Teachers...

(Playing Gator Golf with the Teachers: Brenda, Me, Wendy, Haydee)

Yesterday, it was time to say farewell to my teachers. They had a nice dinner planned for us all--everyone was dressed in their finest (except me: I didn't change when I got home because I was in a rush. Luckily I was at least wearing something respectable from work). The teachers had dropped by at work the day before to leave me with some gifts. I had planned to give them books I'd made, but I was waiting for the farewell banquet.

It was nice. I sat and listened them chatter excitedly in English and Spanish. I met more of the students in the program, which was lovely. Even though we were on campus, we had giant bottles of wine on our tables, which some of them drank liberally (Wendy, at one point, was deleting pictures from her camera and muttering about drunk people attempting photography). Oh, and the pictures. Everywhere you turned, digital cameras were wielded, and I was often asked to either take or pose for yet another photograph.

It was a nice way to say farewell, and also a way for the program participants to be recognized for their hard work and achievements. They received certificates (and took more pictures), and finally, at 10:30, I had to say my last goodbyes and head home. Wendy made me promise to come visit her in Mexico, and Haydee and Brenda also told me to visit, so I may just be making a trip across the border sometime soon.

I think I'll be a teacher buddy again next year. And if I have my own apartment, maybe I'll offer to be a weekend host! I had a great time; I really enjoyed getting to meet wonderful new people, and I hope I'll keep in touch with them as they journey back to Mexico to teach their students.

Genre Theories! (and Blogger Vistors)

I blame Secret Knitter for my lack of posts. Yeah, that sounds good...

Well, actually he is visiting the grand state of Arkansas, so I've been busy with showing him around my town (and making sure he's well fed), which has been loads of fun. Check out his recent posts for his take on The Natural State.

Monday, the day I took of to show Secret Knitter around, also was the day I had a class meeting, so I spent part of it finishing reading Amy Devitt's Writing Genres. This is an excellent book for introducing genre theory. Interesting to read, it touches on the major issues in genre theory right now, including the separation of rhetorical and genre theory. Good stuff.

And because I'm lazy, I'm just going to let you read the assignment I had to type out. It pertains to my thesis, however, thus you might be vaguely interested. We were asked to address three questions based on our readings: which genres are we interested in, what are the interesting questions, and where can I go for more information.

****

Which Genres?

I am interesting in the genre of student writing. Student writing and the assignments students are asked to complete for composition courses are particularly tricky to form into a genre because, according to Devitt and those she cites, the genre is itself unstable. Students from one class to the next rarely share the idea that their writings are linked in anyway, nor do they often see their writing for class assignments, be it composition or a lab report, as connected beyond the category of schoolwork.

I am also interested in the professional writing that engineering students will be asked to create when they enter the work force. Students may not see their freshman composition (or any writing they do in school, except for lab reports, perhaps) as pertaining to their future careers. However, as genre theories (and the concept of an underlying genre theory for writing) discussed in all of the readings, different forms of written discourse are connected and genres influence and shape that discourse. Devitt’s book is interesting in this regard because she discusses both the genres used by tax accountants and literary genres and believes that they share commonalities, at least as genres.

Interesting Questions:

Some questions that arise from my particular genre interests are as follows:

How can skills used student writing be transferred to professional discourse?

• What are the skills used (or presumably used) in student writing?
• What’s the purpose in an educational setting for student writing?
• It is it effective, educationally? (I.e. does it meet the goals set by the genre?)
• What are the intended goals set by the genre?
• How can we provide students with a meaningful rhetorical situation they can use to shape their writing?
• How can an understanding of genre help students?

Where to Go? (For Information?)

Devitt’s book has been particularly enlightening for my purposes. She discusses at some length the generic issues associated with freshmen composition courses and student writing—namely, the lack of genre stability and the issue of teaching students genre to empower their writing. Her research has directed me to other interesting articles and books such as David Russell’s work with activity theory and genre, and his book Writing in the Academic Disciplines: A Curricular History. The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre also provided some interesting articles and directions that I could turn to find more information on my particular interests and questions. Both volumes contain not only good information, but sources that I could read and study.

Student writing is increasingly important as more researchers (and universities) turn their attention to composition classes, student writing, and what students actually take away from these courses. Just from David Russell I find more sources dealing with questions on making composition more effect, and I believe genre in many ways comes to bear on that problem. Devitt’s chapter on teaching genre awareness in turn provides directions and ideas that will be useful to my own research.

Academia-Created Skeptic?

I would not generally call myself a skeptic. I tend to believe in concepts and embrace ideas easily, if they appeal to something in my head and my heart.

However, as I was telling Lance yesterday, the more I read, the more skeptical I get of certain trends. The biggest one is the tendency of dividing the world neatly into two halves: good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, etc. This dichotomous labeling of the world makes me nervous and makes me skeptical of anything related to it.

This skepticism is directly related to my growth and development as an academic. In literature especially, the interesting questions are not in dividing the work into neat labeled pieces; the "good stuff", the most intriguing ideas reside in the bits of a novel or poem where ideas are messy, mixed up, and a little uncertain. Milton's Satan isn't interesting because he is purely evil against God's purely goodness. He's interesting because he's a fallen creature, a tragic hero; he's someone the reader can sympathize with even while we are supposed to be loathing him. That's more interesting than a Satan who is so positively evil that his character only elicits hatred from the reader instead of sympathy.

I think this suspicion of pure dichotomies is why I stopped believing in God as my parents do, or practicing their brand of Christianity. At the risk of sounding heretical, I don't think good and evil can be so neatly divided, nor can be people be lumped easily into groups. The world should not be filled with people who are either moral or immoral, going to heaven or going to hell, devils or saints. The world is full of both beauty and pain, in all its messy gloriousness. And that messiness, that inability to be easily classifiable is what makes life so interesting, and the pursuit of the divine and spiritual so meaningful.

I was reading The Slacktivist's weekly exploration of really crappy literature, and his snide comment about the evangelical's negative, anti-intellectual attitude really made me laugh:

That last sentence is again, the major theme of the LB series: You may think you're intelligent and educated, but you're a fool if you don't realize that Tim LaHaye's "biblical" prophecies are the Most Important Thing Ever. You'll see. You're all like, "Oh, la-di-da, I'm an intellectual and I think the Bible is all about like, loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself," when you should be all like, "Tell me, Rev. LaHaye, sir, do you perhaps have some study tools for sale that might help me to prepare for the coming apocalypse, the coded foretelling of which is the primary purpose of scripture?" Your failure to appreciate my genius will be punished. You just wait.

His post today got me to thinking about the simplistic interpretations of both the world and the not-so-neatly-interpretable-Bible. Too easy, folks. Maybe that's why Bush scares me so much with all his talk of our "evil" enemies, and Americans as the knights in shining white, ridding the world of this evil. I think there's as much that could be labeled such in our own country that we could focus on righting, were we not so busy pointing our fingers at the Jews, the Muslims, or those damned intellectuals.

Books, books (and the World's Worst Poet)

It's that time of year again--the one where I get to buy my school books. Here was the semester's list:

• The Confidence Man (Herman Melville)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (H.S. Thompson)
• Angels (Denis Johnson)
• Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
• Fool's Progress (Edward Abbey)
• Vineland (Thomas Pynchon)
• La Perdida (Jessica Abel)
• Flaming Iguanas (Erika Lopez)
• Elements of Style (Strunk and White)
• Literary Research Guide (Ed. Harner)
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Ed. Joseph Gibaldi)
  
• Glossary of Literary Terms (Ed. M.H. Abrams)
• Chicago Manual of Style
• Chicago Guide To Your Academic Career
• Poetic Designs (Adams)

Sounds like I have an exciting semester ahead of me, no? I already had two of these books, but the rest totaled about as much as my tuition--though, I do have a tuition discount and all.

*********
How would you like the title of the World's Worst Poet? One William McGonagall (yes, he shares the name of a Hogwarts Professor) has been granted this honor. The Scottish are known to take their poetry seriously. After all, they produced the likes of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and the Scottish are a little touchy about appearing inept to the rest of the world. They had the English telling them for years that they were nothing but barbarians who didn't know how to open a book.

But seriously--a poet who had to take an umbrella with him to shield himself from rotten vegetables? He must have upset some readers. Also, I'm sure thinking that he was second to Shakespeare in genius didn't help. I mean, really. Even if you're good, you don't go around claiming that you're in Shakespeare's league. And judging from the samples of poetry, he really is a pretty poor poet.

O Muse!

I hereby sing the praises of ILLiad, our Interlibrary Loan system. You see, since I'm in grad school, I have to find all sorts of articles and do more research than was demanded of me in my undergraduate days. And I've become a frequent user of ILLiad.

I love it. It's a wonderfully efficient system--I can request everything online, and they usually get my requests back to me within a week, even if it's a book that's coming from another university. And articles? This is the best part of ILLiad: they send me a PDF copy of the article, so I can both save it electronically and print it off.

It makes the research process fun and painless. My library doesn't have what I need, and I can't find it online? No problem! Just plug the information into ILLiad from the ease of my home computer (or work, usually) and wait a few days. The literature shows up practically at my door!

I'm thankful for Interlibrary loan. And I'm glad that my university has a good system, since finding articles and books is a breeze.

Golfing Off (Teacher Buddy Update)

It was a cool July evening. Those two words don't normally go together when we're talking about Arkansas weather, but it had just rained and it was approaching dusk. Of course, the mosquitoes were out in swarms to make up for the lack of muggy weather.

I had picked up my three teachers (Wendy, Haydee, and Brenda) from their dorm. Wendy (whose parents liked the name, so she has a non-Spanish first name) was running late from her shower, so I was chatting with Haydee (pronounced Ay-day, in true Spanish fashion) and Brenda about their weekend trip to Eureka Springs and Talequah. The program they are participating in keeps them busy, shuttling them around Arkansas to various sites, getting them to social events with Americans, not to mention all of their classes, so they are having fun, but feeling a bit tired.

We went to play mini-golf, where my ankles were immediately attacked by mosquitoes--I didn't realize until we played our 18 holes that they had repellent at the club house. Darn. I'm not a very good player, but I did get two hole-in-ones, including the 18th, so I got a free pass! The teachers punctuated playing with taking photos: group photos, pictures of them in front of the animal statues (gorillas, giraffes, elephants). They love taking pictures--just like I did when I went to Mexico. I forget they are also tourists.

I love listening to them talk and talking with them. They are supposed to speak in English--Brenda scolded one person for talking in Spanish because she thought I didn't speak it--but they switch constantly between English and Spanish, often blending the two languages. If I were more fluent in Spanish, I suppose I could do it too. But it is certainly interesting to listen to and try to understand what they're saying.

We had ice cream at our local Shake's (formerly Shakey's), and then I took them home. It has been a fun experience getting to know them--Wendy has made me promise to come visit her sometime, which I plan to do. Vacation in Mexico...of course! She is from Yucatan, so it should be a good trip. They talked to me about becoming a teacher (I'm planning to teach on the college level), and they also talk to me about their culture and language. I think I'll definitely volunteer to be a buddy next year too.

Why Mark Should Read Lord of the Rings

As Secret Knitter (Mark) and I were going back and forth about what I should perhaps post today, this totally fun and random thought popped into my head. I should post reasons he should get Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and read them! He claims to have avoided them because of the fanboy aura and other assorted paltry excuses. Well, I'm going to give him incontrovertible evidence of why he should immediately go and read them.

• First, he should read The Hobbit, which is short, a fun read, and the best way to become intrigued in the world Tolkien builds further in his longer work. I love The Hobbit because it is a lighthearted tale, and as a reader, I just feel the fun Tolkien had while writing it.
• After reading The Hobbit, he may or may not be consumed with a desire to read more about hobbits. No matter; I don't expect him to suddenly become obsessed or anything. But he should at least now be intrigued by Tolkien's art.
• He's someone who makes a living out of writing about films, so I'm almost certain he's seen Peter Jackson's excellent renditions of Tolkien's work. If you've seen the films and liked them, then the books should be enjoyable too.
• Tolkien writes about all sorts of relevant and important ideas, like friendship and storytelling and love. Not to mention the inspiration notion of small heroic actions leading to the destruction of a great evil.
• Since he's a fan of Harry Potter, he really should get familiar with the father of fantasy literature.
• After he finishes the book, he can ask me about what I wrote my undergraduate Honors thesis about and understand what I'm talking about.
• The Lord of the Rings features some wonderful, memorable characters like Eowyn, Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, and many, many others. And not all of the cool ones are portrayed in the film, like Tom Bombadil.
• The last part of The Return of the King is my favorite part of the book. (When the hobbits return to the Shire). But he'll never understand why I love it so much unless he reads it...
  
• It's a damn good book, that's why!

If you all out there have any other reasons for why Mark should read The Lord of the Rings, please post. If you think I'm wrong for thinking he should read them or miss out on a major work of literature...well, the Eye is watching.

Lurking in the Library

I had to run over to the University library today to pick up a book (it has an essay I need to read on genre). Historically, trips to the library to "pick up a book" typically end with me carting home an armload. Today was not much different.

I picked up several books by Kenneth Burke because a professor had raved about him in class, and I was curious. I stopped myself from looking at any other books and still left the library with my bag significantly heavier. As I was leaving, I had to concentrate on just walking--rows and rows of books beckoned to me, tried to call me to them. The University Library has thousands of volumes, books full of all sorts of knowledge and interesting things. The library always reminds me that there is so much in the world I don't know and so many books I long to read.

I'm lucky to be a patron of both the university library and my town's public library (a fantastic place, by the way). And as I have to go pick up a reserved item at the public library, I get to visit them both, so...

Fun With English

I'm the sort of nerd who gets a kick out of certain words and phrases, especially when they convey an unintentional joke.

Take this phrase:

It was an unexpected surprise when a pair of baby twins was born at 12 midnight.

Do you see the joke?

Today's browsing was particularly fruitful in the usage department. Did I ever tell you that one of my favorite books ever is the Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (Thanks Noel for talking about that in class once.) I was particularly distressed when I moved to my current city, and I discovered it was missing from my library. I am excited because it is required reading for one of my classes in the fall. Well, in my browsing today I stumbled on this essay by George Orwell, which is both on the same lines as Strunk and White and applicable to today's politics. Here are his rules for writing:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I'm a big fan of clear, concise writing, so I like these rules. And the essay is pretty good too.

Another site I discovered with the Fun with Words site. I'll be checking that one out in a bit more detail later.

And finally, courtesy of my pal Secret Knitter, comes a link to an NPR story about a grammar vandal. A grammar vandal? I want to be a grammar vandal! I'll be listening to that here shortly, so hopefully it's good.

Well, enjoy the Fun With English Day!

How I Learned to Read

Thanks, Donna, for giving me the prompt for today's post. How did I learn to read? What's my reading story? Obviously if I can gulp down an 700+ page book, then I must love to read.

My love of reading began at a early age. One of my first memories is sitting with my mom and reading a book I was given. I don't ever remember not reading, and unfortunately my parents don't really remember when I first started reading. But I do recall being able to read before I finished kindergarten.

I was well on my way to chapter books like Charlotte's Web in first and second grade. We read Charlotte's Web as a class when I was in third grade, and since I already knew the story and also was a pretty quick reader, I was ahead of my classmates. They, of course not believing that I was actually reading, accused me of faking.

I've always loved reading. I would check books out from the library constantly; I loved library time in school. There has always been a pleasure and intensity to reading that I found inescapable. And I was hooked on it.

I volunteered for librarians starting in seventh grade. Working in a library was not just a way to get out of boring study hall; when you walk around a library (smelling the books, touching the spines, reading the titles), you pick up books that look interesting and read them. Once, while working in the elementary school library, I attempted to make it through the entire Newberry Medal winner list. I got pretty far, too.

Books have been a huge part of my life. I wish I could remember more details about my first book, or how I started reading, but all I remember is just loving it and reading more. And perhaps that's just enough.

Finished: HARRY POTTER and the DEATHLY HALLOWS

Yes, indeed. In one marathon reading session that had me rocking back and forth, laughing, gasping in shock, and finally crying through the last six chapters of the book (partly out of heightened emotions and sheer mental weariness), I closed the book with a satisfying snap. I knew it would be good; I was promised for two years it would be good. And the fact that I was so emotionally vested in these characters, that I was reacting to them as I would real people, told me that Rowling cast her charms well.

The book is that good. Now I wait until other finish, so I can gab about it to them. As promised, I reveal nothing here.

I'll chat a little instead about my path to Harry Potter. The first book in the series, The Sorcerer's Stone, was published while I was in high school. As part of an ultra-conservative household, I was forbidden to read them, and I complied. After some of my conservative luster fell away, I still balked at reading them until my sophomore year of college, when The Goblet of Fire was released. I then read all four books, and I liked them. I ended up doing my Honors sophomore lecture on the debate over Harry Potter--good books or evil? I concluded they were good books, but perhaps younger children should be guided while reading them. (Mostly because the conservative side of the argument was so blatantly ludicrous.)

I didn't attend a midnight release for the fifth or sixth. I eventually bought the fifth after reading a borrowed copy along with the others I didn't already have. I was hooked. The sixth I pre-ordered on Amazon and was pleased when it arrived that Saturday.

But the seventh, oh the seventh. As you can tell from the week's posts, I had been looking forward to the final installment. And it was worth the wait, let me tell you.

I wonder if Rowling will write anything else, at least something not connected to Harry Potter. She's a brilliant storyteller, but it might be hard to top her own magnificent feat. Of course, Tolkien was asked to write another Hobbit, and look what he turned out...

At Last: The Deathly Hallows Will Be Mine!

I apologize, dear reader, for not carrying through with my "Harry Potter Week". However, a nasty summer bug laid me out for two days, so I was not in the mind to amuse or occupy you with my wit. Or the borrowed wit of others, as I shall today.

I must say I am looking forward to reading Harry Potter. Do you think I can finish it off tomorrow, to avoid being pestered by the hyped up media, my roommate, and my boyfriend (who wants to borrow the book)?

The following is an amusing song that expresses the feeling of many Potter fans: http://www.brotherhood2.com/?p=158

Pretty amusing.

Anyway, on with some small chatter. I'm hoping that the media doesn't spoil anything for me. That's the problem with a book gaining such wild popularity is that everyone wants to read it as soon/fast as possible, then they want to gab about it. And for those who simply cannot stay up all night to polish off the 800-page book have their surprise spoiled. I read a NY Times book review about the novel, against my better discretion, but they had the good taste to not give anything away.

So I'll turn the question to you: the hype. Is the book worth all the attention? I give a grudging yes, because it is rare to find a work of literature that can so wholly capture the hearts and minds of such a wide audience. We're not talking one demographic--I'm a 24 year old English MA student, and I'm sure I'll be rubbing shoulders with a range of readers tonight at the midnight release party. There will be a lot of kids, sure. But all of my friends are also eagerly awaiting their copies.

Rarely do writers become such superstars. Even Salman Rushdie, who is a fantastic writer and deals with death threats on a regular basis, is still not as well known as Rowling. Even those who haven't read the Harry Potter books know who she is.

Well, talk. What's your opinion?

BONUS: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

One sentence summary:

J.K. Rowling must have cried her eyes out writing the end of this book.

Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos

In the spirit of wanting to make new friends and help people out from another country, I signed up to be a "Teacher Buddy". The role of the Teacher Buddy is to provide some social opportunities for a teacher from Mexico and/or Ecuador who are in Fayetteville for a intensive summer language and teacher training course.

I went last week to the welcome banquet and met my three buddies. All three are women in their late twenties/early thirties from eastern Mexico, and I think they are going to be a lot of fun to hang out with. We talked and talked until it was time to go home. They are supposed to speak English the whole time, but they promised to teach me a little Spanish to prepare me for my Spain trip.

I'm happy for the opportunity to meet people from other countries and share across cultures. Sometimes Americans get caught up in the idea that we have the best of everything--including culture--that we forget that other cultures have something wonderful to offer as well. It's often my opinion that many of the clashes between Christian and Muslim, for example, stem from an unwillingness to learn and share, and perhaps a fear of discovering that we're not so different after all.

War, Oppression, and Friendship: Hosseini's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

One eye on my soup, the other on the pages of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, I managed to finish this excellent novel just a short time ago. And so I decided to tell you all about it.

Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, brings the world of Afghanistan to life for his American audience, enchanting us with his descriptions of its beauty and richness, and wrenching our hearts as we watch it slowly destroyed through thirty years of conflict. In many ways it is a book to make us not forget about Afghanistan, a fear voiced by a character at the close of the novel, keep in our minds the effects of war and cultural strife that tore Afghanistan apart.

But it also a compelling narrative about two women, Mariam and Laila who are caught in the aftermath of war and violence, victims of the power shift from the Soviets to the Mujahideen, who then fell into civil unrest and sectarian violence, followed by the rise of the Taliban and the restrictions they enforced. Mariam is married off at fifteen to Rasheed, a violent, ill-tempered man who forces Mariam to dress in burka and punishes her because she cannot carry a child to term. Her silent, long-suffering character is juxtaposed with Laila, the young, beautiful girl who is love with Tariq, her childhood friend who lost a leg to a land mine.

Mariam is reclusive and shy, while Laila is able to go to school and have a public life. But it all changes the day that her parents are killed when a rocket blows up their house; fourteen year old Laila survives and is nursed back to health by Mariam and Rasheed. Rasheed decides that Laila either needs to marry him or leave; he refuses to pay for her upkeep any longer. Laila agrees--but only because she discovers she is pregnant with Tariq's child, who she has been told is dead, and cannot make it to the Pakistan border.

As the narrative continues, Mariam move from enemies to friends who both suffer at the hands of their violent husband who insults, beats, and abuses both women. It is their friendship that sustains them both, giving love and purpose to Mariam's life and offering Laila love and support in turn.

The novel is not without its faults, but I found it compelling and captivating. It was hard to put down, and I feel offered a window into life in Afghanistan in the turbulent years leading up to 9/11 and the events following. It's a great read, and I recommend it if you need something good to fill up your summer evenings.

Currently Reading

• I'm currently re-reading the entire Harry Potter series. I just finished up The Goblet of Fire, and am about to jump into The Order of the Phoenix. I'm constantly amazed at Rowling's skill at writing and her ability to compose a compelling story. I love that she plants little clues to things that become important later in the narrative (either within the same book, or in a later one). And I'm really looking forward to learning what is between Snape and Dumbledore in about two weeks.
• I'm also currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It's his second novel, following the hit The Kite Runner (which I've also enjoyed). Thus far it's pretty interesting, and I've certainly been reading it quickly. (It's my "work" book, so I don't have to lug Harry Potter around. Those later books are heavy).
• I'm enrolled in a genre theory independent readings course, and we're reading something called The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre. I'm supposed to find ways to apply it to my thesis--which won't be hard, considering I'm dealing with basically transitioning between genres, and I want to use an informed concept of genre to formulate the class.
• I've also picked up several knitting books from the library, trying to devise ways to use up my stash of mediocre yarn so I can buy pretty, nice yarn. Mmm, knitting.

Anyone else got lots on the summer reading list? Tell, tell!

Thesis--Approved!

I had a meeting with my independent readings course yesterday, and with my professor that hoped would be my thesis adviser. He likes my topic! So I'm going to start moving forward with it. One question I hope to answer is why do we need freshman composition? I challenged a fellow MA student yesterday when she gave the trite, pat answer of "to make well-rounded individuals". I think that answer is too easy, I declared. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm guessing it involves both giving students skills they need to be writers in their profession, and the desire to create an educated, reading public. I want students to realize that they have to read the world around them in the way they read a book. Student empowerment through literature, perhaps?

And I hope I did not offend anyone with my post yesterday. I certainly did not wish to imply that all Muslims were like the narrow-minded people quoted in the article I linked to. I realize that Muslims and Christians come in all varieties of tolerance and acceptance--and I'm sure that being Muslim is difficult in the world we currently live in and is enough to make anyone sensitive to perceived attacks on her beliefs. I was just saddened by the way that an author of great talent is treated for receiving an honor he deserves.

Writing Martyrs

Salman Rushdie was knighted recently in Great Britain, setting off reactions from the Muslim community. In retaliation, the fatwa was renewed. Rushdie's life is now in danger because he dared to write a novel about the nature of religion and happened to use Islam as his target.

In this article, the Muslims come off as big whiners--after all, religions are often the target of authors. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy attacks Christianity in a very pointed way, as does Towing Jehovah. I'm sure there have been lots of angry people who condemned those books. But nobody wants to kill them.

The death threat is similar to the fundamentalists who want to bomb abortion clinics and the like--they feel that if they can remove the source of that which is to their beliefs (Salman Rushdie, doctors who preform abortions), then their belief systems will be in some way validated as the one true belief system.

In his talk on the role of the writer (which I attended), Rushdie described writers as people who push the establishment, which always pushes back. Depending on the skill of the writer and what they are pushing, it can be a big push with a big reaction, or merely a small push. I wondered at the time if this was merely a romantic notion of authorship--my jaded, postmodern self didn't think that a writer could make that big of a difference. But then I was struck by what Rushdie has endured for writing The Satanic Verses--persecution, death threats, forced hiding, and when honored with knighthood for his contribution to art the leaders of Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc call for its revocation--I realized that he is living this idea. Because he dared to push the establishment, many Muslims around the world hate him, and many want him dead.

Art isn't tame. It's a dangerous creature, capable of sparking debate, controversy, and anger to those who are willing to use their art to push politically, socially, or culturally. I use this site to keep track of literary censorship in schools, and it's amazing how much art can anger and upset parents and school administrators.

So perhaps artists (and maybe comedians too: see John Stewart and Steven Colbert) can keep pushing the establishment toward change. Rushdie is willing to risk his life to push, and even if he is honored in the attempt, he still has a violent and upset group of people after him.

News Bulletin

It was an exciting day:

• Lance and I have been planning to go to Spain for a while. Yesterday, we bought our plane tickets to do it! We'll be heading out after Christmas and coming back just before school starts. (Unfortunately I have to still use my passport with the horrible, horrible photo. "So?" you say to yourself, "Everyone's photo is bad". Well...my photo was taken when I was about 50 pounds heavier, so I really, really detest this passport photo. But I'm also cheap, and it doesn't expire until 2012. Drat.) So exciting!
• We have a new kitten. My roommate and a friend of ours found a little flea-bitten calico kitten and decided to adopt her. We are currently defleaing her. Her name is Rowan. Rory hissed at her and flopped down on the floor to keep an eye on her. Rowan hisses only at people (until you pet her, and then she purrs) and was merely curious about the other cat in the house. This should be an entertaining adjustment period.
  
• My dad quit smoking! Considering he's been smoking since the age of 17 (he's in his fifties now), this is a huge accomplishment. And it's also encouraged my mom to take some much needed steps toward improving her own health. Yay!
• It's pay day. I've only got one month left until I'm completely out of debt.

I decided to share with you all the exciting things going on in my life over the past 24 hours. It's been fun.

The Apostrophe War

I had a brief hiatus. My brain was not feeling up to thinking up something to write, so I didn't, but here's a new post.

Lance and I took a trip for a wedding this weekend (I was a bridesmaid). We made a gas stop, and I decided to take the opportunity to use the bathroom before we got on the road for the three hour trip. While in the ladies room, I noticed an amusing conversation on a sign from the management. It ended with "Thank's". I chuckled over this for a minute, but I was also amused by some handwritten comments on the sign.

Someone had taken a pen and scribbled out the obviously wrong apostrophe and wrote "NO APOSTROPHE". Someone else had later scribbled "Who cares?" The third (or possibly fourth) conversant added tartly, "The small percentage of Americans who are actually educated".

There's a weird tension that I run across in the attitudes toward being educated. For example, my mother always wanted me to use proper grammar so I wouldn't sound uneducated (and perhaps have ignorant parents), but she would mock or deliberately misunderstand any signs I showed of participating in higher education. (She hates discussions, for example, which I think are integral to academia). If you don't speak standard English, you could be labeled a hick (in Arkansas) and basically be called ignorant, stupid, or uneducated, but if you use a wide range of words, people laugh at you for being a nerd or a show-off.

Gerald Graff in Clueless in Academe (and probably some of his other books) addresses what he sees as America's anti-intellectualism. Aren't we a nation that prides itself itself on being full of working men (and women) who pull themselves up? Isn't that a part of the American dream, to go from nothing and work hard to make yourself into a success?

People want to be successful, but they don't want to be seen as too smart or intellectual. My mom called me an egghead because I got some of those glasses with the dark frames. It was a slight insult, an acknowledgment that I was purposefully adopting the nerd look (if that's what I was doing). My brothers and parents used to either imply or directly state that though I was "book smart", I had no "common sense", as if those things were mutually exclusive (I believe I was naive at that point in my life, but I'm fairly sure I've got a good measure of sense along with my book-smarts).

In one of my education classes, our professor asked us if we'd rather be highly gifted or of average intelligence, or if we'd rather deal with students with genius-level IQ scores, or those with below average scores. I immediately said that I'd rather be highly gifted, and that I'd rather work with intelligent students (but praise those who have the patience and love to work with students who are not so privileged); however, to my shock, many of my other classmates said that they would not like to have a high IQ because people who did were unable to socialize properly, were somehow outside of society, were nerds who didn't live in the same world they did, even though our professor told us that research shows that those with a high IQ are usually highly socialized, able to move successfully in the world, and typically function as normal individuals. But those students could not get out of their minds the image of the nerd: the awkward, unsociable individual who is out of touch with pop culture and society, the one who plays video games and chess, and wears dark heavy framed glasses and pocket protectors.

There is a strong anti-intellectual streak in American culture. Perhaps that's why we have the president that we do.

However, the apostrophe war in the bathroom stall gives me (a little) hope that people do care about education, about being intelligent citizens. We may not all be grammar nerds (or nerds in general), but we can still care about the "life of the mind", improving ourselves through education, and being intelligent, capable individuals who can make the world better.

Because Wikipedia is Just Too Liberal

It's every conservative person's nightmare! Access to free information that people can edit? Yikes! The liberals will take over everything!

So they started the much inferior Conservapedia. And what they post is slightly terrifying for its closed minded talk and refusal to face the fact that not all of the liberals are out to destroy the truth. Their motto? "A conservative encyclopedia you can trust. The truth shall set you free." Their logo has an American flag as the background.

One: I don't trust any information because it's conservative or liberal. I'm suspicious unless the information is backed up and substantiated to my satisfaction. That's how you end up with mass genocides and other atrocities: blind trusting.

Two: The writing is terrible*. As in a fourth-grader wrote most of the articles.

Three: The articles are laughable. Check out Pat Robertson for example--the quotations (which they misuse throughout the article) are enough to make you fall out of your chair laughing.

Four: Their rules. (Also known as commandments). They're even better. My personal favorite is that "CE" and "BCE" are unacceptable because they remove the historical basis of "BC" and "AD" (maybe they don't realize that "AD" is anno domini, not "after death".) But I guess they don't understand that not all historians would feel comfortable using a dating system that is based on one religion. Read the comments--they are a hoot.

Five: Obviously bias means nothing to the writers. Because truth must be biased toward the conservative mindset, no? (Why did they feel the need to include that Nancy Pelosi is one of the richest members of Congress?). And obviously they have no better opinion of Hillary Clinton.

Well folks, I'll leave you to it. I simply wanted to shake my head at the anti-intellectual, anti-science madness of this site, where terms such as "objectivity" and "evidence" are disregarded. Luckily, RationalWiki was created to refute their unsubstantiated claims. Check out the Slacktivist's comments on it.

*My original intention was to bash their writing, but I got carried away with myself. Oops.

Wanted: Coherent Narrative

I went to the drive-in this past weekend (yes, we have a drive-in! It's awesome!) to see Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End. We had seen Dead Man's Chest the year before, so we thought it was fitting.

The movie was awful. It was made tolerable by quantities of Jack Sparrow's favorite beverage. Parts of it were certainly entertaining, but we kept asking each other, "What just happened?" and declaring "I don't understand what's going on!"*

I don't normally delve into the world of film (not my expertise), but the third film brought something to mind that I wanted to explore: the power of good storytelling. Good storytelling (visually or verbally) is more than just shiny flashy pretty things and catchy words. It requires a coherent narrative. And that coherent narrative was something that the third Pirates film was lacking. The first film was fun, had a fun story, and was thoroughly entertaining. The second and third? A ploy for more money because the structure broke down somewhere in the second one.

Let us compare it to another famous series: Harry Potter. It comes easily to mind because for one, I'm rereading them, and for another, they are one of the bestselling series of all time. Each novel has a self-contained narrative arc, but the series works together to form a whole, coherent narrative. Little things that showed up in one book return later. J.K. Rowling doesn't just randomly spring twists on her reader; she carefully sets them up so that the reader says to herself, "Ah! I remember Mrs. Figg now! That's why she's there!" Rowling is clever with her storytelling, and she is a master of the art of storytelling.

When creating a good story, remember: you can't just spring things randomly on your viewer/reader--if you want to surprise them really well, you set it up before hand so that the surprise is even better because the evidence was right under their noses. And it doesn't come from nowhere and entail the characters acting in ways that the reader/viewer doesn't expect.


*What was up with the random wedding in the middle of the battle? And how many times did each character double-cross the other characters? And WHY did Calypso turn into a bunch of crabs?

Who Was That Masked Ad?

Newspapers have a great and interesting history. They are cheap and easy to publish and disseminate, so political movements have used them to spread their ideas. Both conservatives and liberals, people with good ideas and crazy make use of the glory of newsprint to get people fired up for change.

But today--in my mailbox I get something that is called "Citizen News Weekly". Sounds like a potential fun, liberal newspaper, right? Ohhh no, it's not. It's a piece of crap Hynudai advertisement that is pretending to be a newspaper. I was neither entertained, convinced of a political ideology, nor amused by this ploy.

I hate advertising sometimes. It takes perfectly legitimate forms of expression (and the conventions associated with those forms) and twists them to catch a potential consumer's attention. I don't like being tricked, or having my own understanding of my culture and society used against me.

What I really hate is how it seems that our energies and impulses toward activism and world change are being absorbed and thwarted by consumerism. We no longer have the same vigor for activism because we're selling our ideas for security, for nice things, for having what we want. And I implicate myself in this--it's easy to go to the Gap and buy a nice pair of jeans without thinking of how little workers in China are getting paid to provide me these comfortable pair of jeans.

I didn't exactly mean to go on an anti-consumerism rant, but it's difficult when you love forms of expression for their rich history, just to see them co-opted by advertising. And I realize that papers are full of advertisements, but this one purposefully set out to trick me into thinking it was an independent paper of the same ilk as our Free Weekly, which is dedicated to the community. It hoped to use my knowledge of that form to convince me I need a new piece of crap car (because that's what Hyundais are). And it kills trees just to tell me something I have no interest in.

I hate advertising.

Making Things

I'm a creative person. I like thinking up good ideas for papers, writing them. I do a little creative writing on the side.

But I also make things. Like a skirt. I made myself a long black skirt for a wedding I am in next week. And while it could be better, it looks pretty good for a first attempt at skirt making. I used this book, which teaches you how to make skirts without patterns. I am inordinately proud of my skirt, and might make another this week out of some linen Lance bought for me from Ikea.

I also make books, as I've shown before. So now I'm going to post pictures of a book I made for the same wedding as the skirt!


(longstitch binding)

Here's a better shot of the spine stitching


(spine)

I picked a cool endpaper too!


(Chinese character paper)

I started making books last August and have really progressed--this is one that I figured out how to make myself! It's a neat skill to have, and I love making books for friends.

100th Post! (And Thesis, Perhaps?)

It's only fitting that on my 100th post, I would tell you, my dear readers, about the brilliant idea (at least brilliant by comparison to the NOTHING I had before) I have had for what to write my thesis on. This will soon become a recurrent theme, I fear, so be prepared. But for now, simply celebrate or offer your thoughts on my thesis idea.

I work for the College of Engineering. I am an administrative assistant who is in touch with both professors and students on a daily basis. Several of both have opinions that they like to share with me about English literature and writing.

I've been contemplating going for a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition, which means I perhaps should move in that direction during my MA days. That's when the idea occurred to me (this past weekend, actually, around breakfast time): What if I were to do research on creating a freshman composition/writing class geared toward engineers (or other technical/science fields) to teach them the skills they need to use for their professional lives? It wouldn't be "technical writing" per se, but help them realize that the same skills that go into writing an academic essay are the same that they will employ when writing a lab report or a project proposal.

The project would have several parts. In the first, I would examine the need for freshman composition in the first place (which obviously I would argue there is a need for it). Then I would do research on alternative methods of teaching such a class. I'm planning to interview several of the engineering professors, and perhaps some engineering firms/employers and students to further assess what the class should contain, then I would build a syllabus, reading list, and prospective course to teach.

I'm really excited about this project because I can see the implications for my university for one, but it might perhaps be of interest to other programs as well. A little tweaking, and the same concepts could be applied to other programs of study. I'm also excited because it is a lot of fun to design a class--I loved the one that I did for my professing literature class. It was a lot of fun, and my professor really loved it.

Anyway, there's the thesis idea. I've pitched it to my potential thesis adviser and am now awaiting a reply. And I've already mentioned to the engineering professors I want to use in it, and they've all been excited as well, so I have a feeling this is going to be my project! Yay for thesis ideas!

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass, an amazing book by Philip Pullman, is being made into a movie. The site looked pretty neat, so I went and played for a while and created a daemon, which in the novel is the manifest part of your soul as a creature. The site lets you take a personality quiz, and then assigns you a daemon. Mine is a tiger--but it might be wrong. So in my sidebar, you can click and take a quiz to see if I'm right!

Edit: apparently the sidebar quiz is a little funky, so here's a direct link to take it...

Podcastin'

I've been delving wholeheartedly into the world of podcasts. I think they're great--and if I ever got my iPod an iTrip, I could listen to them while riding in the car on long trips.

The newest podcast that I've encountered is The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Many will know Garrison Keillor as the host of A Prairie Home Companion (which I adore). The Writer's Almanac is a daily podcast, about 6 minutes long, that gives a bit of literary history and concludes with Garrison Keillor* reading a poem. I love it--you should check it out. Today is Anne Frank's birthday, so the episode was about her life and now famous diary. Yesterday's poem "The Calf Path" by Sam Walter Foss was a hilarious poem. You can check the website for transcripts of the episodes as well, if you prefer to read the poems as well as hear Garrison Keillor read them aloud.



(*I find myself at a loss when I try to type just "Garrison" or "Keillor" or "Mr. Keillor". No matter what I try, I seem to only be able to refer to Garrison Keillor as his full name, Garrison Keillor.)

Knitters' Coffee Swap--Received!

I got my package from my pal! (after an unfortunate delay and a re-addressing incident).

(goodies!!!)

Thank you, thank you, RACHEL! It was fantastic--it contains a ton of coffee, 4 skeins of really nifty yarn (2 skeins of sock yarn! And some great Nashua wool/alpaca)! That green round disc on the front is a pocket mirror, which I'm happy about because I've been wanting one to stick in my purse, since I don't wear makeup. And the other is wonderful arty buttons. Instant City, the book in the back, is a literary journey through San Francisco. There is also a project bag (you can barely see it peaking out) for socks, a journal, a David/Amy Sedaris book, and a Knit.1 magazine. I feel so spoiled--thank you again. It was totally worth the wait.

Step Away From the Credit Card (NOT BUYING IT)

Could you go a year without shopping? While you could still buy essentials (non-processed food, soap, toilet paper, etc), what would it be like to go an entire year without shopping for new clothes, new books, and anything else strictly unnecessary?

Judith Levine in her book Not Buying It takes on this task: to go one year without shopping. She recruits her partner Paul on the endeavor, and they vow to only spend money on the necessities (no processed food or sweets count). So no eating out, no picking up a little something, no shopping for new clothes, no shopping for gifts. The experiment spans 2004--the last presidential election--and she structures the book in a diary format with each month forming a theme about consumerism and buying.

Levine explores the nature of consumerism and American culture's shopping habits. She also takes a look at what it is to need and to want, to shop consciously, and to understand the implications of spending on the global community. She learns that the public systems (libraries, art, etc) are in serious disrepair from a citizenship that is reluctant to pay taxes. Levine also reads a lot of anthropologists, philosophers, talks to individuals who take part of movements like Voluntary Simplicity and Buy Nothing Day. Levine participates in 2004 Buy Nothing Day (here's a photo from the event she describes):

(Reverend Billy nails the Nine Theses Against Corporate Rule on a New York McDonald's)

Not only an exploration of her own habits and impulses as a consumer, Not Buying It is a book about seeking alternatives. She talks to anyone from an average consumer to a man who lives off of less than $5,000 a year. She talks to individuals who want to simplify their life in a Thoreauvian gesture, but can't quite do it.

The book's strength is in the way it looks out. Levine uses her experiment as a personal starting point or as a place to ground these larger questions. Capitalism within the United States is spinning out of control and we're buying it. We're buying the idea that it's normal and natural to want things, to want to make money. We're also buying Bush's declaration that the best way to recover from September 11th is to buy more stuff. (We have to show the terrorists what they're missing in typical imperialist style). Levine doesn't want to buy it anymore. Her experiment helps her grow in many personal ways, but she points out that when she wasn't spending on herself, she was donating more to helping others. She was involved more in the public (free) sphere of her community. Perhaps we all could do so much.

I picked up this book because even though I readily contribute to the consumerist lifestyle (and love to shop), it bothers me. I may have more disposable income now than ever before, and while I am donating to good causes and using my spending to speak (by buying organic, shopping locally, etc), I'm still participating more than I would like. I went to Wal-Mart to shop yesterday for the first time in a long time and realized that I lost the ability to shop there. The choices overwhelmed me, and I would pick items up and put them down again. The book interested me because I wanted to read books that would enrich my life in some way and perhaps steer me toward a simpler--and better--way of living.

A List

Good:

• Fresh fruit (Mango, strawberries, etc.)
• Ginger/cinnamon
• Coffee (with cinnamon and cream)
• Brown Cow Cream Top (Plain)
• Jasmine #12
• DVDs on sale (Thank you, Target)
  
• Lance
• knitting (being done with all my swap projects)
• friends (you know who you are)
  
• Random Chat Buddies
• The Decemberists
• Heather Dubrow's Genre
• my kitty
• running/iPod with sport kit
  
• Knitters' Coffee Swap
• Friend with flea medicine
• New apartment--room with light!
• Friends with babies
• Bachelorette party
• Ginger spread (I love you, Ginger People)
  

Bad:

• Still not being done with Dubrow's Genre
• Kitty has fleas (drat)
• new apartment still a little messy
• too many projects, not enough time
• up too late, up too early
• no run today yet...
• More books than I can ever read!

Excellent, more good than bad...and none of the bad are too terrible...

I'm Smarter Than My Computer

Grammar Check and I are both lovers and enemies. Like Spell Check, Grammar Check is both a useful and debilitating feature on Microsoft programs. Usually I roll my eyes at the suggestions Grammar Check gives me, (and occasionally yell "That's not a frackin' fragment!!), but in the end I feel good because I know things that a computer can never know.

Grammar Check reinforces that language is more complex than even a machine can understand. See, while language has rules that a programmer can use to define language in a system, language also has exceptions to those rules. And a computer has difficulty understanding embedded phrases. So, for example, if I say "Here are the civil engineering summer and fall updated reports", grammar check wants to replace "are" with "is" because logically, the subject of "are" follows directly after, right? And "civil engineering" is singular. However, what the computer doesn't realize is that "reports" (plural) is actually the subject of the verb, thus the verb needs to be plural. But I imagine in order to define such an easy concept (for our language instinct carrying brains) requires impossible programming rules, since it can change on a whim.

That's why Grammar Check and Spell Check have to be used carefully. While they can be useful for catching a misspelled word or an accidental misuse of tense, ultimately computers can only understand the basic logical framework of language. The complexities and twists and turns that we instinctually make as native English speakers is impossible to define for a programmer (though, I hear they are getting closer). When it comes to language and grammar, we are always smarter than our computers (even if we can't always spell properly--but don't forget about those tricky words!)

If you are interested in more about language, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. He's a really smart, really easy-to-read guy, and as language has always fascinated me, I adored his book.

What's in a Name...(THE NAMESAKE)

I once read the chapter "The Circle and the Square" from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, where Lame Deer comments on how white people's names have no meaning. Which, while not precisely true, hits on something in American society: naming. We name our children because we like the sound of it or after someone who has meaning in our lives. Rarely do we consider what the name itself means; my name means "fair" or "white" derived from the Welsh Gwenhwyfar/Guinevere, and I know my parents didn't think of that when they named me. They just liked the sound of it.

Although our naming has become aesthetic or a sign of individuality (you've seen the names in the paper), other cultures still put a lot of care and consideration on the naming of their children. The meanings of names and the effects names can have on their bearers is a major theme in Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake. The novel follows the life of Gogol Ganguli, an American boy born to Bengali parents. The novel brings in the cultural gaps between foreign parents and their basically American children. Gogol is named such when the letter containing his name is lost between Calcutta and Boston; his father chooses to name him after Nikolai Gogol, the Russian writer who is significant to him as a sign of life in the midst of death.

Gogol grows up never understanding the significance of his name, and growing to hate it. His parents intended Gogol to be his private pet name and Nikhil to be his public name, but as a young boy, Gogol doesn't understand why he has to switch and the American school system doesn't understand Bengali custom, so Gogol sticks. He switches to Nikhil legally when he begins his freshman year at Yale and hopes to make a leave Gogol behind.

Gogol learns about the origin of his name and begins to feel differently about his namesake, finally reaching an understanding of his family's Bengali heritage, his own name's worth, and learning who Gogol is in the process. The novel closes with him in harmony with his family and his name--one of the best conclusions to a novel. I finished feeling closure and satisfied, as well as walking away with some ideas to think about my own family.

The novel was moving and an intriguing examination of not only the significance of names, but the relationships between parents and children and the culture gap between the two. I had a hard time with Lahiri's style at first--it's spartan and often feels a little choppy--but her ability to spin a story and to describe the world pulls the reader in and keeps her transfixed. By the end of the book, I was entranced, and I think I'll be looking for more of her works.

Weddings and Death

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, written in engaging journalistic styles. Recently, I completed One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead, who writes for The New Yorker.

Mead examines the culture surrounding the modern American wedding, including the concept of "Bridezilla", which she sees as an indicator of how the industry is influencing the way Americans get married. With an average of 25,000 dollars spent on a wedding, those involved in providing the products for the event are part of group that wants to make sure the consumer--brides, especially--feels they need to spend, spend, spend in order to create a successful ceremony (and hopefully a successful marriage). "Bridezilla" is a fabrication of the wedding industry because while she is fearsome to behold (and not entirely an invention), she is their best consumer because she is willing to pay for what she wants. And she wants a lot.

Pointing out the rising divorce rates and uncertainly surrounding marriage, Mead demonstrates how Americans are emphasizing the actual wedding ceremony. Marriage is no longer a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, from virginity to sexual experience (for a growing number, anyway); it is no longer a movement from the parents' home to a home of one's own. For couples who co-habitate before getting married, there may be few differences between being unmarried and marriage. Culturally, weddings have begun to take the place of this ritual transition, with all its perceived traditions (which were actually created by the wedding industry itself).

Mead could have easily taken a sarcastic, condemning tone on some of the gimmicks and blatant consumerism taking place in the weddings she attended researching for her book. And occasionally she points out the almost ridiculous choices people make for their weddings. However, she is often moved in spite of herself; even though she may barely know the bride and groom, she understands that underneath the spending and irrational consuming, there can be true sentiment and drama at a wedding ceremony.

She closes her book by briefly discussing gay marriage and commenting that if heterosexual couples had to fight for the right to be married in the same way homosexual couples do, then perhaps we would think differently about marriage. It was a subtle political commentary, but I thought an effective way to end the book. (In the epilogue, we learn that she got married in the course of writing and researching, and that her own ceremony was small, but what she wanted).

I've been enjoying my non-fiction books. I spotted the title of this one in a New York Times article, and since I know lots of people who are getting married (and I will presumably get married at some point), it sounded interesting. And it turned out to be so--I recommend it, even if you are married already, but are interested in culture and consumer sorts of things.