Itching to be launched, released and freed. Pining to lift up, unburdened. Dying to walk aimlessly – on purpose. This is how I feel at the moment, when finals are the only things stopping me from the total relaxation and carefreeness that come with the winter break. Already I’ve caved in a little, indulging myself in something that was once thought to be just one of many threats to man’s sanity: reading.
If I remember correctly from what one of my favorite professors told me of the people of the earlier ages, several ways a person could grow insane, or mad, include: love, compulsive reading and yearning for knowledge. With regards to love, a person may have too strong emotions that he or she can’t handle when in love with someone. In many Shakespearean plays for example, there are countless characters who kill themselves for their long lost love, or who faint at the thought of losing their lover. With regards to reading, a person may not be able to stop themselves from taking in those word-filled pages, as if they were addicted to them. Yearners for knowledge or wisdom literally couldn’t live their life without learning. All these people’s felt deeply unsatisfied, and so the process of satisfying themselves took over their lives and inevitably caused them to go insane. This is actually one of the reasons I didn’t want to be a philosopher. I didn’t want to go crazy. I knew that changing the way I view the world so drastically by looking at it with philosophical, logical eyes would corrupt, and essentially end, my ignorant bliss. But still, it’s nice to tap into that mode or – more accurately – rush, of trying to satisfy your insatiable soul, every once in a while. Doing so breathes excitement into life, as well as rebelliousness, and lends a check on the list of things to do in life before you die.
I’m not saying I’m on the road to insanity – oh, hell no – I’m just saying that sometimes it’s fun to engage in some indulgence when you have the time . . . as I do during the winter break. “Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil.” Oh how there is a big BUT for all those who are imperfect. Temptation is everywhere. It’s outside our bodies and inside our minds. It’s as strong as the Hulk, yet so subtle; you could imagine the Hulk wearing an invisibility cloak so that when it passes by, you feel a slight swish against your body that piques your curiosity. And then you follow it. Several times I have been tempted to buy things right after I get my pay check. And during those times I’ve caved, to be honest. In fact, I’ve found it hard to go straight home after tutoring because Borders or Barnes and Nobles are along the way. That and the fact that Ate Sherry often picks me up from my tutoring area and I drop her off at either Borders or Barnes and Nobles so she could study there with her friend, Jeremy, before I drive myself home. But while I’m there, I kind of do a little shopping – for myself.
So, when I walked into Barnes and Noble today, with a fresh twenty in my pocket (my hand of course was in that pocket, holding the twenty, for I knew I won’t be able to touch it for long), I felt my heart pumping as a waft of fresh new books entered my system, clouding me with regret from the soon-to-be indulgence.
Needless to say, there are several new additions to my humble library in my room. Some contemporary, some science fiction, and a coming-of-age book (I have a soft spot for that subject). They only further what books and anthologies of short stories I have already on my bookshelf, accrued from semesters of English classes. In an attempt to combat the short attention span I have when reading, I made sure that the new books I have bought will only encourage me to read more books instead of short stories because, you see,if you give me a book, chances are, it’ll collect dust unless it’s super interesting to me; but, if you give me an anthology of short stories, I’ll most likely devour it -- however slowly it may take me, for I do like reading a little each night so that I have some more reading the next night.
There is a method to my madness, but no, I’m not going insane like those earlier people.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Literary paper on Susan Glaspell’s, "Trifles" and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants”
This was one of my favorite papers I've ever written for one of my favorite professors. Before reading, so that you have a sense of what I'm talking about, allow me to give you some background summary of what the works are about.
Susan Glaspell's Tifles, written in the early 1900s, flows with the characteristics of most modernist works through the way readers are intended to view the characters: by seeing the inner workings of the minds of the characters by means of the inferences made and the implicit nature of the dialogue. Trifles is a one-act play that tells the story of a murder and the searching of the farm house of the murderer, Minnie, who killed her husband, John Wright. Interestingly, through the conversations held between the wives of the male investigators, we learn the real truth behind the crime -- something their men have overlooked.
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is, like Glaspell's work mentioned above, a modernist piece, in that it also has an implicit color. In fact, the reader must infer from the extremely allusive dialogue what the whole conversation between the man and the woman is about. What are they actually talking about when the woman mentions the simile, "hills like white elephants"? What implications does that have on the way men view the world and all human circumstances in comparison - or contrast - to the way women view the world? The setting takes place in a train station alongside a long and lonely road in a desert-like area, with hills, in the Ebro River valley of Spain.
Bernadette Tinio
Professor Scheckel
EGL 218
30 April 2010
Girl Talk
The early 1900s was a period of time in American history that just got out of an old-fashioned ideology of the 1800s, which was the cult of domesticity. The cult of domesticity embodied the concept of the woman as being a mother and wife who was religious, pure (specifically, chaste), submissive to her husband and who worked in her own domestic sphere while her husband worked outside with public affairs. Modernist works that were created at the turn of the century illustrated and revealed the latent and yet instinctual strength of women above the man, or, viewed from a different perspective, the shortcomings of the man. In any case, the women in some modernist works are seen to have more power over their male counterparts. This can be shown in a variety of ways, particularly in language – what is said, what is not said, how information is communicated. Thus, language has grounds in innate feeling. The women in Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants” are able to show their power through silence, language and the withholding of information because they take advantage of the power of intuition.
One way the women in Glaspell’s one-act play show their power is through their silence – through the inability of the men to hear them – through their withholding information. This is seen after they discover the dead canary and deduce through intuition that John Wright had killed it by wringing its neck and that he, therefore provided Minnie reason for her to kill him. Mrs. Hale says to Mrs. Peters, “My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a – dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with—with—wouldn’t they laugh!” The men physically cannot hear the women because they are in different parts of the Wright’s home; this is how they are silent. By being silent this way, they are withholding evidence. This shows the women’s power over the men by revealing the fact that they have arrived at the truth (that Minnie killed John Wright, only because he took away her happiness and freedom which are symbolized by the bird) before the men did and that they have chosen not to tell them because they (the men) would just “laugh.” Their silence, therefore, becomes a mask because they know information that the men do not know and they do not share it. They are showing their power precisely by not showing it; they are asserting their power in secretive ways by hiding behind the mask and choosing what to tell and what not to tell the men. They arrive at the truth through intuition and signs of feelings, like the broken bird cage, the killed bird and all that it symbolized. Meanwhile, the men have a literalist view, needing to see physical evidence, rather than signs of feelings, and they need to find a motive for legal reasons, to tell in court. This motive functions similar to a story or a performance; but, it is fake, whereas the story of the women is true because they ground their evidence in feelings.
Women in Glaspell’s play do not only show their power through their silence; they also show their power through giving false information, and in the process we see the different modes of perception from the men and women. This is seen when the County Attorney, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale talk to each other:
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries.] Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?
MRS. PETERS We think she was going to—knot it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. [Seeing the birdcage.] Has the bird flown?
MRS. HALE [putting more quilt pieces over the box.] We think the—cat got it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [Preoccupied] Is there a cat?
[Mrs. Hale glances in a quick overt way at Mrs. PETERS.]
Instead of withholding information, the women provide the Country Attorney with deceiving information: instead of telling him the truth behind the birdcage, they tell him a lie (the cat got it). Like the women’s silence when the men could not hear the women’s arriving at the truth, the giving out false information is a form of the mask. The women know the real truth and they are masking it with a cover-up. They know information that he does not know and they take advantage of it by choosing what they decide to tell him. Not only does this passage show the women’s ability to show their power through deception, it also reveals the ideology under which the men view the situation. Here, the evidence is right in front of the County Attorney; but, he does not see it because he sees the evidence as an object with a simple assumption (the bird flew away). He sees no signs of feelings. As representative of men, he has a literalist view; they have the kind of view William Howells would support, which is one where the reality is “out there,” rather than in the mind, and it is something tangible. The women have a view that is more similar to the Jamesian ideology of realism, which is that the reality is different for each person and it is what the mind portrays as reality; reality is what one feels to be real. Minnie’s reality is hidden in the signs of feelings that the women found. Therefore, the women get to the Truth through intuition.
Unlike the women in Susan Glaspell’s play, Jig, the girl in Hemingway’s story, shows her power by having a point of view that leans more towards modernist and Jamesian ideology and using it through language; however, she shares the source of power with Glaspell’s women – intuition. At one point during Jig and the American’s dialogue, Jig, after walking to the other side of the station and taking in nature, starts a quick, terse conversation with the American in which they do not seem to be talking about the same thing, although Jig knows what they are both talking about. By saying, “No, we can’t,” consecutively in response to what the American says, Jig asserts herself with intuition. Proof of her intuition is in the fact that she starts this conversation right after looking into nature, the source of her truth. In nature Jig finds the truth because she sees fertility and new possibilities that there could be should they keep the baby. The phrase, “No, we can’t,” has an aura around it that makes it just the same as saying, “I just know.” These two phases derive from intuition in that the speaker (Jig) is certain, based on gut feeling. Also, as seen through their conversation, Jig’s perspective is both modernist and Jamesian. She shows signs of modernist thinking because she is isolated in that she has a reality that is so subjective that the American cannot penetrate and feel what she is feeling. She shows signs of Jamesian thinking because her reality that she makes in her mind – the white elephant as a symbol of new possibilities instead of the obvious and commonplace sign of burden (which is the point of view of the American) – is projected in the nature she sees in front of her. It is because she uses these ideologies that she works on intuition and is therefore closer to the truth than the American is. Using these ideologies, she shows her power by telling him frankly what she means, but he does not understand her still. This is the power of language – she is using it strategically to assert her power that she knows the truth, the possibilities, and that he does not know and even still, she chooses not to tell him directly, but ambiguously and sincerely.
This concept is made even more explicitly at the end where Jig shows her power through her ambiguous language. The ending, from the time he walks through the barroom to when she answers that she’s “fine,” is particularly ambiguous because we do not know if Jig has decided to have an abortion or not. Only she is the true conductor of the train, meaning that the train symbolizes her as she is in the conversation, the decision-maker. Everyone else, especially the American, is waiting for her to make up her mind; but, the train never comes. Her ambiguity is her power. The train’s not coming, therefore, symbolizes how her and the American’s conversation is not going anywhere, as far as he knows, because she is the one in control and she has not made clear her decision, if she has made it or not. He comes out of the bar that is filled with people waiting for the train, and asks her if she feels better. It is important to note that she does not answer clearly, with a certain yes or no answer; rather, she simply and obscurely rejoins that she “feel[s] fine,” which is not exactly better or worse, according to his question. Her ambiguous answers are the mask in action because she knows what is going on (she knows his limitations in seeing the obvious burden of a baby and she is aware of the endless possibilities that also comes with having a baby, which, to her that is the truth) – after all, she is the one who is going to make the decision – and she is able to understand that and tell it to him in a way in which she maintains her power.
It is interesting that the women do not overtly show their power, but assert it underhandedly or implicitly through lack of words, deceiving words and ambiguous phrases. They are able to use their intuition and it is their intuition that their power comes from. Why do they not show their power in an obvious manner? That is, why do they not tell the men, clearly, what they are thinking of? Perhaps it is because they know that they (the men) will not be able to handle what their (the women’s) intuition has lead them to – the Truth. Their being silent is similar to the true witness who cannot say the truth of what they have seen; they cannot speak except in poems and songs. In regards to the women, if they do speak, their men may not believe them, just as if the true witness spoke, we know it is not the real truth. The only difference is that the women may be speaking the real truth. Songs and poems are different from men or rather, women in the Hemingway’s story and Glaspell’s play did not have another medium of communication, such as songs and poems, just language between them and the men and that is what they use, that is what they manipulate. Language can take many different forms, just as the mask can be applied to different situations. Silence, deception and ambiguity can be different forms of the mask.
Susan Glaspell's Tifles, written in the early 1900s, flows with the characteristics of most modernist works through the way readers are intended to view the characters: by seeing the inner workings of the minds of the characters by means of the inferences made and the implicit nature of the dialogue. Trifles is a one-act play that tells the story of a murder and the searching of the farm house of the murderer, Minnie, who killed her husband, John Wright. Interestingly, through the conversations held between the wives of the male investigators, we learn the real truth behind the crime -- something their men have overlooked.
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is, like Glaspell's work mentioned above, a modernist piece, in that it also has an implicit color. In fact, the reader must infer from the extremely allusive dialogue what the whole conversation between the man and the woman is about. What are they actually talking about when the woman mentions the simile, "hills like white elephants"? What implications does that have on the way men view the world and all human circumstances in comparison - or contrast - to the way women view the world? The setting takes place in a train station alongside a long and lonely road in a desert-like area, with hills, in the Ebro River valley of Spain.
Bernadette Tinio
Professor Scheckel
EGL 218
30 April 2010
Girl Talk
The early 1900s was a period of time in American history that just got out of an old-fashioned ideology of the 1800s, which was the cult of domesticity. The cult of domesticity embodied the concept of the woman as being a mother and wife who was religious, pure (specifically, chaste), submissive to her husband and who worked in her own domestic sphere while her husband worked outside with public affairs. Modernist works that were created at the turn of the century illustrated and revealed the latent and yet instinctual strength of women above the man, or, viewed from a different perspective, the shortcomings of the man. In any case, the women in some modernist works are seen to have more power over their male counterparts. This can be shown in a variety of ways, particularly in language – what is said, what is not said, how information is communicated. Thus, language has grounds in innate feeling. The women in Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants” are able to show their power through silence, language and the withholding of information because they take advantage of the power of intuition.
One way the women in Glaspell’s one-act play show their power is through their silence – through the inability of the men to hear them – through their withholding information. This is seen after they discover the dead canary and deduce through intuition that John Wright had killed it by wringing its neck and that he, therefore provided Minnie reason for her to kill him. Mrs. Hale says to Mrs. Peters, “My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a – dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with—with—wouldn’t they laugh!” The men physically cannot hear the women because they are in different parts of the Wright’s home; this is how they are silent. By being silent this way, they are withholding evidence. This shows the women’s power over the men by revealing the fact that they have arrived at the truth (that Minnie killed John Wright, only because he took away her happiness and freedom which are symbolized by the bird) before the men did and that they have chosen not to tell them because they (the men) would just “laugh.” Their silence, therefore, becomes a mask because they know information that the men do not know and they do not share it. They are showing their power precisely by not showing it; they are asserting their power in secretive ways by hiding behind the mask and choosing what to tell and what not to tell the men. They arrive at the truth through intuition and signs of feelings, like the broken bird cage, the killed bird and all that it symbolized. Meanwhile, the men have a literalist view, needing to see physical evidence, rather than signs of feelings, and they need to find a motive for legal reasons, to tell in court. This motive functions similar to a story or a performance; but, it is fake, whereas the story of the women is true because they ground their evidence in feelings.
Women in Glaspell’s play do not only show their power through their silence; they also show their power through giving false information, and in the process we see the different modes of perception from the men and women. This is seen when the County Attorney, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale talk to each other:
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries.] Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?
MRS. PETERS We think she was going to—knot it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. [Seeing the birdcage.] Has the bird flown?
MRS. HALE [putting more quilt pieces over the box.] We think the—cat got it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [Preoccupied] Is there a cat?
[Mrs. Hale glances in a quick overt way at Mrs. PETERS.]
Instead of withholding information, the women provide the Country Attorney with deceiving information: instead of telling him the truth behind the birdcage, they tell him a lie (the cat got it). Like the women’s silence when the men could not hear the women’s arriving at the truth, the giving out false information is a form of the mask. The women know the real truth and they are masking it with a cover-up. They know information that he does not know and they take advantage of it by choosing what they decide to tell him. Not only does this passage show the women’s ability to show their power through deception, it also reveals the ideology under which the men view the situation. Here, the evidence is right in front of the County Attorney; but, he does not see it because he sees the evidence as an object with a simple assumption (the bird flew away). He sees no signs of feelings. As representative of men, he has a literalist view; they have the kind of view William Howells would support, which is one where the reality is “out there,” rather than in the mind, and it is something tangible. The women have a view that is more similar to the Jamesian ideology of realism, which is that the reality is different for each person and it is what the mind portrays as reality; reality is what one feels to be real. Minnie’s reality is hidden in the signs of feelings that the women found. Therefore, the women get to the Truth through intuition.
Unlike the women in Susan Glaspell’s play, Jig, the girl in Hemingway’s story, shows her power by having a point of view that leans more towards modernist and Jamesian ideology and using it through language; however, she shares the source of power with Glaspell’s women – intuition. At one point during Jig and the American’s dialogue, Jig, after walking to the other side of the station and taking in nature, starts a quick, terse conversation with the American in which they do not seem to be talking about the same thing, although Jig knows what they are both talking about. By saying, “No, we can’t,” consecutively in response to what the American says, Jig asserts herself with intuition. Proof of her intuition is in the fact that she starts this conversation right after looking into nature, the source of her truth. In nature Jig finds the truth because she sees fertility and new possibilities that there could be should they keep the baby. The phrase, “No, we can’t,” has an aura around it that makes it just the same as saying, “I just know.” These two phases derive from intuition in that the speaker (Jig) is certain, based on gut feeling. Also, as seen through their conversation, Jig’s perspective is both modernist and Jamesian. She shows signs of modernist thinking because she is isolated in that she has a reality that is so subjective that the American cannot penetrate and feel what she is feeling. She shows signs of Jamesian thinking because her reality that she makes in her mind – the white elephant as a symbol of new possibilities instead of the obvious and commonplace sign of burden (which is the point of view of the American) – is projected in the nature she sees in front of her. It is because she uses these ideologies that she works on intuition and is therefore closer to the truth than the American is. Using these ideologies, she shows her power by telling him frankly what she means, but he does not understand her still. This is the power of language – she is using it strategically to assert her power that she knows the truth, the possibilities, and that he does not know and even still, she chooses not to tell him directly, but ambiguously and sincerely.
This concept is made even more explicitly at the end where Jig shows her power through her ambiguous language. The ending, from the time he walks through the barroom to when she answers that she’s “fine,” is particularly ambiguous because we do not know if Jig has decided to have an abortion or not. Only she is the true conductor of the train, meaning that the train symbolizes her as she is in the conversation, the decision-maker. Everyone else, especially the American, is waiting for her to make up her mind; but, the train never comes. Her ambiguity is her power. The train’s not coming, therefore, symbolizes how her and the American’s conversation is not going anywhere, as far as he knows, because she is the one in control and she has not made clear her decision, if she has made it or not. He comes out of the bar that is filled with people waiting for the train, and asks her if she feels better. It is important to note that she does not answer clearly, with a certain yes or no answer; rather, she simply and obscurely rejoins that she “feel[s] fine,” which is not exactly better or worse, according to his question. Her ambiguous answers are the mask in action because she knows what is going on (she knows his limitations in seeing the obvious burden of a baby and she is aware of the endless possibilities that also comes with having a baby, which, to her that is the truth) – after all, she is the one who is going to make the decision – and she is able to understand that and tell it to him in a way in which she maintains her power.
It is interesting that the women do not overtly show their power, but assert it underhandedly or implicitly through lack of words, deceiving words and ambiguous phrases. They are able to use their intuition and it is their intuition that their power comes from. Why do they not show their power in an obvious manner? That is, why do they not tell the men, clearly, what they are thinking of? Perhaps it is because they know that they (the men) will not be able to handle what their (the women’s) intuition has lead them to – the Truth. Their being silent is similar to the true witness who cannot say the truth of what they have seen; they cannot speak except in poems and songs. In regards to the women, if they do speak, their men may not believe them, just as if the true witness spoke, we know it is not the real truth. The only difference is that the women may be speaking the real truth. Songs and poems are different from men or rather, women in the Hemingway’s story and Glaspell’s play did not have another medium of communication, such as songs and poems, just language between them and the men and that is what they use, that is what they manipulate. Language can take many different forms, just as the mask can be applied to different situations. Silence, deception and ambiguity can be different forms of the mask.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Literary paper on Deliver Us from Evie
A Little Self-exploration through a Changing Society
Gender is a fascinating concept because it is an instinctual certainty on a personal level that only the individual knows and may share, hopefully without being met with confrontation: it is one’s own sexual orientation. More and more people, particularly adolescents, are coming out of the closet professing their true gender. Just recently, unfortunately, there have been many suicides by the LGBTQ (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and the queer identified or questioning) youth due to bullying and harassment because of their sexuality. Reading YA novels that describe the experiences of coming out, in English classes, is therefore pertinent to today’s society and can yield many insights that may broaden and enlighten the minds of students. More specifically, approaching those novels with a feminist/gender lens will be beneficial in gaining new perspectives that differ from the traditional way of viewing members of the LGBTQ community, which involves seeing those members as deviants from the so called norm, or “freaks.” M.E. Kerr is one writer of YA literature who provides an exemplar work that illustrates the coming out of a seventeen year old lesbian through the eyes of her younger brother. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie, should be viewed with a feminist/gender lens, as opposed to the traditional New Critical lens (with an emphasis on biblical symbols and references) because doing so helps to show the struggles that adolescents face when dealing with gendered expectations, as well as the way most readers, themselves, are gendered.
Viewing literary works under the feminist/gender lens produces an array of interpretations about the gendering of both women and men in the novel, as well as the readers. In her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Deborah Appleman argues that is important for students to use feminist/gender lens when interpreting literature because they will learn how gendering is done and illumined in a literary work, and the influence of it by the gender of the author. This in turn will help them learn about new concerns of gender that are affecting the people in the society they live in:
There are at least four dimensions in which using feminist theory can transform students’ reading – how students view female characters and appraise the author’s stance toward those characters, how students evaluate the significance of the gender of the author in terms of its influence on a particular literary work, how students interpret whole texts within a feminist framework; and finally, and perhaps most important, how students read the gendered patterns in the world. (69)
Although feminist/gender lens used to be solely based on feminist theory, which focused on gender inequality and the social role of women in society (Cott 8), today that theory is becoming more generalized to accommodate the fact that not only do women face inequalities and criticisms about their gender, but so do men. Likewise, using the feminist/gender lens does not mean advocating for women’s right, but examining both men and women as they have to deal with societal expectations of their gender roles.
Using the feminist/gender lens to approach Deliver Us from Evie, readers can see how Evie and protagonist, Parr, deal with presuppositions about their expected gender behavior. Examples of subtle instances that reveal to readers hidden assumptions about gender roles pepper the text. Different characters’ actions and words touch stereotypes of women and men that can be broached when the text is being discussed with the feminist/gender lens. One example is Evie and Parr’s Mother’s expectations of how Evie should behave in terms of the clothes she (Evie) chooses to wear. Their mother, representative of the traditional way of viewing gender, always complains about how Evie dresses, and insists that she wears more feminine clothes. As an example, getting ready to go to a concert with Patsy, Evie wore kchacki trousers and a blue blazer. Her mother quickly insists that Evie wears a skirt instead: “Even if nobody dresses up, I doubt there’ll be anyone [women] wearing men’s trousers. I have a pair of good gabardine slacks I’ve hardly worn. Try them on, honey,” (37). This is but one of many cases in which Evie and Parr’s mother chastises Evie based on her clothes that men would usually wear. The stereotypes revealed through the mother’s reaction toward how Evie dresses revolves around the idea that even the way people dress is categorized, as in men are expected to wear certain types of clothing while women are expected to wear a different type of clothing and the two are not to be mixed, as we see that Evie’s mother tries to correct her. Parr notes this when he says, “She [his mother] was trying hard to change Evie that fall, trying everything, but it was like trying to change the direction of the wind,” (Kerr). Using the novel as a way to critically view our society, we can see why Evie’s mother is reacting this way: according to Estelle B. Freedman in her book, No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women, “in the West and internationally . . . most people consider lesbians as deviants, a threat to religious values and family stability,” (265). Evie’s behavior is upsetting a narrow status quo that her at first homophobic mother tries to fight. Upon reading the instances throughout the text, students will find that Evie is seen as going against the grain, deviating from what is expected of her.
Not only does Evie find herself subjected to traditional views of gender, so too does Parr. While going on a date with Angel (who comes from a traditional, Christian family who holds views similar to those of Parr’s mother), he is warned by Angel’s father to make sure she comes home at the curfew. When he does not, he is scolded at and blamed for it, even though the fault should have been on Angel, who wanted to stay and wait out the storm for a little while. After reading this section and specifically using the gender lens, students will see that Parr was expected to have a certain role in his heterosexual relationship with Angel by her father, even though Angel violated it. He is still blamed for bringing her late, because that aspect of the date is in his male domain.
It is no doubt that, throughout the novel, Evie and Parr remain close to each other. Why? With a feminist/gender lens, it could seem that they relate to each other in that they are imprisoned by the shackles of societal expectations of gender and may feel oppressed by them. Evie for example, after thinking that her mother believed that she (Evie) and Patsy would make a good couple (and thus suspecting that her mother knew she was a lesbian who was attracted to Patsy), found herself defensive, as if denying her lesbianism, that is, until her mother clarified that she meant to say that Patsy would be a good girlfriend for Parr (Kerr 12). Using the feminist/gender lens would result in our trying to answer the question of why Evie would become so defensive in this particular situation. Perhaps Evie is defensive because she is not ready to come out or that her particular context – a farm setting held down by patriarchal values – is not ready for her “radical,” true gender. If Evie were in a different setting, like a city where lesbians are a bit more acceptable than on a rural farm, she would not feel as defensive; nevertheless, when analyzing this scene, students will find that lesbians and members of the LGBTQ community would feel some degree of fearfulness, anxiety or shame to come out. They may fear violence, threats or unbearable scorn by all-too traditional (believe heterosexism is normal and homosexism is not) members of society who cannot find it in their hearts to the acceptance of members of the LGBTQ community. According to the editors of Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action, “these acts of violence are fueled by heterosexism – the assumption of the inherent superiority of heterosexuality, an obliviousness to the lives and experiences of LGBT people, and the presumption that all people are, or should be, Heterosexual,” (Hoffman 170). Upon close reading of this scene, students would broaden their minds to a different perspective – that of those of the LGBTQ community – and be more sensitive to the feelings of them. Thus, using the feminist/gender lens is important because using it to approach scenes like this would yield connections that students can make with certain people in their society, with whom a rise in suicides is occurring.
One classroom activity that I would engage students in involves seeing the novel through the perspectives of different characters. Rather than having students produce a written assignment, such as a re-writing of a chapter from the perspective of Evie or another member of her society who is against the idea of lesbianism (perhaps her parents or Angel’s parents – so long as their perspective is different from Evie’s), I believe an extremely beneficial activity would be a kinesthetic approach posed by Bruce Pirie in his article, “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” In that article, Pirie believes that students have different ways of learning since people learn from experience and experience comes in different forms, one of which is through the active use of the body. Pirie firmly feels that, “the body has its own kind of knowing that may tap into new levels of understanding,” (46). Thus, it would behoove some students to engage in kinesthetic learning activities to better understand the material being taught.
I feel the perfect activity to use for Deliver Us from Evie from his article would be one called, “Walk This Way,” in which students pick a character and walk the way he or she thinks the character would walk. However, before letting my students loose on this activity, I would have them make an in-depth analysis of the characterizations of the character of their choosing. This will be done by breaking up the class into groups based on the four main characters: Parr, Angel, Evie’s mother and Evie. I would ask them in their groups (one group for Parr, another for Evie, etc) to list characteristic traits that pertain to the character’s physical look and way of behaving, as well as their personality and possible views they (the students) can glean from the character’s dialogue and what other characters may say or imply about him or her that the character holds. As an example, I would recall a scene in the beginning of the novel in which boys at Parr’s school remind him that he has two brothers: Doug and Evie. I would ask the class, what underlying assumption is made here about Evie? She is masculine, as is described by society, in that she is considered as a brother instead of a sister. Another example of Evie could be the scene I had described earlier where Evie was preparing to go the concert wearing men’s clothing.
After the groups have analyzed their specific characters, they would start “Walk This Way,” trying to be in character. Doing this activity involves the students’ walking as if they were the character their group chose. Each character, set with a different personality and way of being, has his or her own way of walking. For example, perhaps Evie may walk more like how men usually walk while the mother would walk more like how women usually walk. Students would break into pairs (of two different characters), taking turns walking as various characters. While one group member is walking, the other is taking notes about how that character is walking, and then they would pair up with another classmate of a different character. After about five to seven minutes, I would have the class switch groups to see how different characters would walk. Everyone would take notes all the while. The next day, the students will have to pick another character and get back in the same groups and walk as that other character, based on their notes, and again they would switch groups. Doing this activity helps students to see and try on different perspectives of characters who have polar views toward gender roles. Learning these perspectives is imperative because they will raise awareness in the students that society is very much gendered by traditional views that have suppressed latent differences in genders.
In keeping with perspectives, what makes this novel different from most books is the point of view M.E. Kerr decided to use, which can reveal how the readers, themselves, are gendered, as they read the book with the feminist/gender lens in mind. The novel is narrated by a central character who is of the opposite sex from the author: Parr is a straight male while M.E. Kerr is an out-lesbian. Why would Kerr write the novel with the protagonist being a straight male instead of a lesbian? In other words, why would she let the lesbian character, Evie, step aside so that we readers view the novel through a straight male’s point of view? Clearly, this is a strategic move by Kerr, a move that may tell us something about how we readers are gendered. Perhaps she is writing through Parr’s eyes instead of through Evie’s because she knew that reading through his point of view is more palatable for us readers, who are used to living in a patriarchal society, our views of genders being influenced by traditional and narrow beliefs (i.e. it is abnormal to be a homosexual). The fact that she wrote the novel this way supposedly for that reason tells us, inherently, that we are indeed gendered, that we need to be eased into the reading of a work of literature that deals with what is traditionally viewed as “out of the norm.” It is as if she were preparing us for what is the real issue, which is the fact that we need to broaden our minds to accept people of unorthodox sexual orientations. When students discuss the point of view of the novel, keeping in mind this possible reason for why it is written this way, they learn or may realize just how influenced by society they are, in terms of inculcated gender expectations.
Students may also realize how they are gendered, if they consider the gender of M.E. Kerr, as an out-lesbian of her time. After learning her gender, would they think that this kind of book – one addressing lesbianism – is expected of her? If so, what would that prove about how they themselves are gendered? Perhaps they find that they believe people of a certain gender only write about their own gender because it is a way of expressing themselves or opening up. In a different perspective, maybe some students might be turned off from the book upon learning Kerr’s gender. That would prove that they are reinforcing the idea that they are living traces of what a patriarchal society wants to make: people who believe in the same traditional views of gender roles. Students may find, therefore that they stand a chance of being homophobic, if they realize they do not want to read literature of a certain “deviant” gender. Likewise, students who find that they bode well with the novel may come to the realization that they are tolerant or accepting of people of the LGBTQ community. Therefore, using the feminist/gender lens is important when exploring Kerr’s book because students understand how they are gendered as they connect the novel to society and ultimately to themselves.
Reading, analyzing, and discussing YA novels about the coming out of members of the LGBTQ community is highly kairotic to today’s issues regarding gender. It would be a disservice to students if they were not approached – at least not briefly – in the English classroom, a setting where students not only learn to appreciate literature, but also to be critical and sensitive citizens of a changing society with respects to gender. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie is only one of many YA novels that, when approached through the gender/feminist lens, can expand the minds of students to new gender-related perspectives and refine their sensitivities in the process. If short stories are more appealing to the students, perhaps the anthology, Am I Blue? Coming Out of the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Baur, is more applicable. Containing short stories by authors such as, Nancy Garden, William Sleator, Jane Yolen, C.S. Adler, Bruce Coville, and M.E. Kerr herself, this anthology brings the same insights that Deliver Us from Evie can.
Works Cited
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modernism Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987.
Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back: the History of Feminism and the Future of Women. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Hoffman, Allan H., John H. Schuh, and Robert H. Fenske. Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action. GAithersberg, Maryland: Aspen, 1998. 170. Print.
Kerr, M.E. Deliver Us from Evie. New York: M.E. Kerr, 1994.
Pirie, Burce. “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” National Council of Teachers of
English. 84.8. 46-51. Web. 14 Nov. 2010..
Gender is a fascinating concept because it is an instinctual certainty on a personal level that only the individual knows and may share, hopefully without being met with confrontation: it is one’s own sexual orientation. More and more people, particularly adolescents, are coming out of the closet professing their true gender. Just recently, unfortunately, there have been many suicides by the LGBTQ (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and the queer identified or questioning) youth due to bullying and harassment because of their sexuality. Reading YA novels that describe the experiences of coming out, in English classes, is therefore pertinent to today’s society and can yield many insights that may broaden and enlighten the minds of students. More specifically, approaching those novels with a feminist/gender lens will be beneficial in gaining new perspectives that differ from the traditional way of viewing members of the LGBTQ community, which involves seeing those members as deviants from the so called norm, or “freaks.” M.E. Kerr is one writer of YA literature who provides an exemplar work that illustrates the coming out of a seventeen year old lesbian through the eyes of her younger brother. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie, should be viewed with a feminist/gender lens, as opposed to the traditional New Critical lens (with an emphasis on biblical symbols and references) because doing so helps to show the struggles that adolescents face when dealing with gendered expectations, as well as the way most readers, themselves, are gendered.
Viewing literary works under the feminist/gender lens produces an array of interpretations about the gendering of both women and men in the novel, as well as the readers. In her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Deborah Appleman argues that is important for students to use feminist/gender lens when interpreting literature because they will learn how gendering is done and illumined in a literary work, and the influence of it by the gender of the author. This in turn will help them learn about new concerns of gender that are affecting the people in the society they live in:
There are at least four dimensions in which using feminist theory can transform students’ reading – how students view female characters and appraise the author’s stance toward those characters, how students evaluate the significance of the gender of the author in terms of its influence on a particular literary work, how students interpret whole texts within a feminist framework; and finally, and perhaps most important, how students read the gendered patterns in the world. (69)
Although feminist/gender lens used to be solely based on feminist theory, which focused on gender inequality and the social role of women in society (Cott 8), today that theory is becoming more generalized to accommodate the fact that not only do women face inequalities and criticisms about their gender, but so do men. Likewise, using the feminist/gender lens does not mean advocating for women’s right, but examining both men and women as they have to deal with societal expectations of their gender roles.
Using the feminist/gender lens to approach Deliver Us from Evie, readers can see how Evie and protagonist, Parr, deal with presuppositions about their expected gender behavior. Examples of subtle instances that reveal to readers hidden assumptions about gender roles pepper the text. Different characters’ actions and words touch stereotypes of women and men that can be broached when the text is being discussed with the feminist/gender lens. One example is Evie and Parr’s Mother’s expectations of how Evie should behave in terms of the clothes she (Evie) chooses to wear. Their mother, representative of the traditional way of viewing gender, always complains about how Evie dresses, and insists that she wears more feminine clothes. As an example, getting ready to go to a concert with Patsy, Evie wore kchacki trousers and a blue blazer. Her mother quickly insists that Evie wears a skirt instead: “Even if nobody dresses up, I doubt there’ll be anyone [women] wearing men’s trousers. I have a pair of good gabardine slacks I’ve hardly worn. Try them on, honey,” (37). This is but one of many cases in which Evie and Parr’s mother chastises Evie based on her clothes that men would usually wear. The stereotypes revealed through the mother’s reaction toward how Evie dresses revolves around the idea that even the way people dress is categorized, as in men are expected to wear certain types of clothing while women are expected to wear a different type of clothing and the two are not to be mixed, as we see that Evie’s mother tries to correct her. Parr notes this when he says, “She [his mother] was trying hard to change Evie that fall, trying everything, but it was like trying to change the direction of the wind,” (Kerr). Using the novel as a way to critically view our society, we can see why Evie’s mother is reacting this way: according to Estelle B. Freedman in her book, No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women, “in the West and internationally . . . most people consider lesbians as deviants, a threat to religious values and family stability,” (265). Evie’s behavior is upsetting a narrow status quo that her at first homophobic mother tries to fight. Upon reading the instances throughout the text, students will find that Evie is seen as going against the grain, deviating from what is expected of her.
Not only does Evie find herself subjected to traditional views of gender, so too does Parr. While going on a date with Angel (who comes from a traditional, Christian family who holds views similar to those of Parr’s mother), he is warned by Angel’s father to make sure she comes home at the curfew. When he does not, he is scolded at and blamed for it, even though the fault should have been on Angel, who wanted to stay and wait out the storm for a little while. After reading this section and specifically using the gender lens, students will see that Parr was expected to have a certain role in his heterosexual relationship with Angel by her father, even though Angel violated it. He is still blamed for bringing her late, because that aspect of the date is in his male domain.
It is no doubt that, throughout the novel, Evie and Parr remain close to each other. Why? With a feminist/gender lens, it could seem that they relate to each other in that they are imprisoned by the shackles of societal expectations of gender and may feel oppressed by them. Evie for example, after thinking that her mother believed that she (Evie) and Patsy would make a good couple (and thus suspecting that her mother knew she was a lesbian who was attracted to Patsy), found herself defensive, as if denying her lesbianism, that is, until her mother clarified that she meant to say that Patsy would be a good girlfriend for Parr (Kerr 12). Using the feminist/gender lens would result in our trying to answer the question of why Evie would become so defensive in this particular situation. Perhaps Evie is defensive because she is not ready to come out or that her particular context – a farm setting held down by patriarchal values – is not ready for her “radical,” true gender. If Evie were in a different setting, like a city where lesbians are a bit more acceptable than on a rural farm, she would not feel as defensive; nevertheless, when analyzing this scene, students will find that lesbians and members of the LGBTQ community would feel some degree of fearfulness, anxiety or shame to come out. They may fear violence, threats or unbearable scorn by all-too traditional (believe heterosexism is normal and homosexism is not) members of society who cannot find it in their hearts to the acceptance of members of the LGBTQ community. According to the editors of Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action, “these acts of violence are fueled by heterosexism – the assumption of the inherent superiority of heterosexuality, an obliviousness to the lives and experiences of LGBT people, and the presumption that all people are, or should be, Heterosexual,” (Hoffman 170). Upon close reading of this scene, students would broaden their minds to a different perspective – that of those of the LGBTQ community – and be more sensitive to the feelings of them. Thus, using the feminist/gender lens is important because using it to approach scenes like this would yield connections that students can make with certain people in their society, with whom a rise in suicides is occurring.
One classroom activity that I would engage students in involves seeing the novel through the perspectives of different characters. Rather than having students produce a written assignment, such as a re-writing of a chapter from the perspective of Evie or another member of her society who is against the idea of lesbianism (perhaps her parents or Angel’s parents – so long as their perspective is different from Evie’s), I believe an extremely beneficial activity would be a kinesthetic approach posed by Bruce Pirie in his article, “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” In that article, Pirie believes that students have different ways of learning since people learn from experience and experience comes in different forms, one of which is through the active use of the body. Pirie firmly feels that, “the body has its own kind of knowing that may tap into new levels of understanding,” (46). Thus, it would behoove some students to engage in kinesthetic learning activities to better understand the material being taught.
I feel the perfect activity to use for Deliver Us from Evie from his article would be one called, “Walk This Way,” in which students pick a character and walk the way he or she thinks the character would walk. However, before letting my students loose on this activity, I would have them make an in-depth analysis of the characterizations of the character of their choosing. This will be done by breaking up the class into groups based on the four main characters: Parr, Angel, Evie’s mother and Evie. I would ask them in their groups (one group for Parr, another for Evie, etc) to list characteristic traits that pertain to the character’s physical look and way of behaving, as well as their personality and possible views they (the students) can glean from the character’s dialogue and what other characters may say or imply about him or her that the character holds. As an example, I would recall a scene in the beginning of the novel in which boys at Parr’s school remind him that he has two brothers: Doug and Evie. I would ask the class, what underlying assumption is made here about Evie? She is masculine, as is described by society, in that she is considered as a brother instead of a sister. Another example of Evie could be the scene I had described earlier where Evie was preparing to go the concert wearing men’s clothing.
After the groups have analyzed their specific characters, they would start “Walk This Way,” trying to be in character. Doing this activity involves the students’ walking as if they were the character their group chose. Each character, set with a different personality and way of being, has his or her own way of walking. For example, perhaps Evie may walk more like how men usually walk while the mother would walk more like how women usually walk. Students would break into pairs (of two different characters), taking turns walking as various characters. While one group member is walking, the other is taking notes about how that character is walking, and then they would pair up with another classmate of a different character. After about five to seven minutes, I would have the class switch groups to see how different characters would walk. Everyone would take notes all the while. The next day, the students will have to pick another character and get back in the same groups and walk as that other character, based on their notes, and again they would switch groups. Doing this activity helps students to see and try on different perspectives of characters who have polar views toward gender roles. Learning these perspectives is imperative because they will raise awareness in the students that society is very much gendered by traditional views that have suppressed latent differences in genders.
In keeping with perspectives, what makes this novel different from most books is the point of view M.E. Kerr decided to use, which can reveal how the readers, themselves, are gendered, as they read the book with the feminist/gender lens in mind. The novel is narrated by a central character who is of the opposite sex from the author: Parr is a straight male while M.E. Kerr is an out-lesbian. Why would Kerr write the novel with the protagonist being a straight male instead of a lesbian? In other words, why would she let the lesbian character, Evie, step aside so that we readers view the novel through a straight male’s point of view? Clearly, this is a strategic move by Kerr, a move that may tell us something about how we readers are gendered. Perhaps she is writing through Parr’s eyes instead of through Evie’s because she knew that reading through his point of view is more palatable for us readers, who are used to living in a patriarchal society, our views of genders being influenced by traditional and narrow beliefs (i.e. it is abnormal to be a homosexual). The fact that she wrote the novel this way supposedly for that reason tells us, inherently, that we are indeed gendered, that we need to be eased into the reading of a work of literature that deals with what is traditionally viewed as “out of the norm.” It is as if she were preparing us for what is the real issue, which is the fact that we need to broaden our minds to accept people of unorthodox sexual orientations. When students discuss the point of view of the novel, keeping in mind this possible reason for why it is written this way, they learn or may realize just how influenced by society they are, in terms of inculcated gender expectations.
Students may also realize how they are gendered, if they consider the gender of M.E. Kerr, as an out-lesbian of her time. After learning her gender, would they think that this kind of book – one addressing lesbianism – is expected of her? If so, what would that prove about how they themselves are gendered? Perhaps they find that they believe people of a certain gender only write about their own gender because it is a way of expressing themselves or opening up. In a different perspective, maybe some students might be turned off from the book upon learning Kerr’s gender. That would prove that they are reinforcing the idea that they are living traces of what a patriarchal society wants to make: people who believe in the same traditional views of gender roles. Students may find, therefore that they stand a chance of being homophobic, if they realize they do not want to read literature of a certain “deviant” gender. Likewise, students who find that they bode well with the novel may come to the realization that they are tolerant or accepting of people of the LGBTQ community. Therefore, using the feminist/gender lens is important when exploring Kerr’s book because students understand how they are gendered as they connect the novel to society and ultimately to themselves.
Reading, analyzing, and discussing YA novels about the coming out of members of the LGBTQ community is highly kairotic to today’s issues regarding gender. It would be a disservice to students if they were not approached – at least not briefly – in the English classroom, a setting where students not only learn to appreciate literature, but also to be critical and sensitive citizens of a changing society with respects to gender. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie is only one of many YA novels that, when approached through the gender/feminist lens, can expand the minds of students to new gender-related perspectives and refine their sensitivities in the process. If short stories are more appealing to the students, perhaps the anthology, Am I Blue? Coming Out of the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Baur, is more applicable. Containing short stories by authors such as, Nancy Garden, William Sleator, Jane Yolen, C.S. Adler, Bruce Coville, and M.E. Kerr herself, this anthology brings the same insights that Deliver Us from Evie can.
Works Cited
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modernism Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987.
Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back: the History of Feminism and the Future of Women. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Hoffman, Allan H., John H. Schuh, and Robert H. Fenske. Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action. GAithersberg, Maryland: Aspen, 1998. 170. Print.
Kerr, M.E. Deliver Us from Evie. New York: M.E. Kerr, 1994.
Pirie, Burce. “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” National Council of Teachers of
English. 84.8. 46-51. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.
Procrastination is a killer identity
I just want to make sure that you know what they call me, the work that’s piled on my desk. They call me Princess Procrastination. Or Princess P for short (or, more embarrassingly, PP). I procrastinate more than I sleep. I know all to well how to slack off. I know all too well how to regret. I know all to well how to learn a lesson the hard way. I know all to well how to stay up at freakin’ 4:40 in the morning working on something that should have been done a few days ago, and that is now due just hours later. I go through the motions of procrastination as if that were the proper way to do work. It’s my nature to procrastinate, and it’s very hard to change. In fact, I think it would be easier to change the Earth’s axis than to change my way of working. Sad isn’t it. Yes, but I get by. Oh yeah, I also know how to pull off a bad attitude, or more authentic yet, I’m capable of having bad attitudes – who isn’t when they’re PP?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Poem - "Do you really know?"
"Do you really know?"
A poem, by Bernadette Tinio
So you think you’ve got me figured out when I haven’t even figured myself out yet. You swallow my words like clues when really they’re just words like nails for cereal – try swallowing that. But maybe my words are clues, but maybe they’re not. Who’s to tell – except me – because you can’t get inside my head. My actions are indirect; yeah, they’re just performance indicators, but not the actual brain itself, the words that line the folds of my mushy intellect or the thoughts that cloud my vision – like seeing across the world through the purple night sky.
A poem, by Bernadette Tinio
So you think you’ve got me figured out when I haven’t even figured myself out yet. You swallow my words like clues when really they’re just words like nails for cereal – try swallowing that. But maybe my words are clues, but maybe they’re not. Who’s to tell – except me – because you can’t get inside my head. My actions are indirect; yeah, they’re just performance indicators, but not the actual brain itself, the words that line the folds of my mushy intellect or the thoughts that cloud my vision – like seeing across the world through the purple night sky.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
A birthday card to me
Already I’m missing being 21 years old. I remember going into this year feeling like I was opening a doorway to a room full of fun and new experiences. Many firsts happened in that year. Let’s see. Where to begin!
1. I got my first pet – my lovely two goldfish, Gibralter and Dorian Gray. Sadly though, they both passed away within seven months; but still, I cannot deny the comfort I found in having their lit aquarium light my room, casting cute fishy shadows on my floor, calming me down for sleep.
2. I drank for the first time and got drunk. Yeah! Such an experience, simply put.
3. On a more unfortunate note, I also had my first hang over and learned that I’m more of a mixed drinker than a beer person.
4. I got my first drum set. Yeah! The hours I spent on them, bangin’ them in the afternoon when no one was home during my winter break. And I’d come back upstairs from the basement, all sweaty with endorphins running high.
5. I learned to drive. Seeing as my mom had knee problems and wasn’t allowed to drive for a few weeks, I had to learn quickly so I can drive her to all her errands; in fact that was how I learned. It was funny though, how I first started to learn. My mom and I had planned to practice driving in the parking lot of Sunken Meadow. We forgot to switch seats though when we were driving home and I ended up driving on the highway the very first day I started to drive. Needless to say, I learned to drive on the busy roads before the residential areas, ha!
6. I got my first real job, tutoring someone. Finally making money!
7. I started writing a blog.
8. I got not one but two djembe drums! Now I can pretend to be like Toca, Jason Mraz’s singing partner!
9. I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out. P-A-I-N-F-U-L. During that period of my life, you’d have found me a pitiful girl with bulging cheeks, despite their not being food in my mouth.
10. I went to my first concert – Jason Mraz at Jones Beach. Yup, that day Steph and I followed him from his guest appearance on the Today show to the Jones Beach amphitheater.
And finally,
11. I learned more about myself as I did a little self-exploring.
Being 21 was awesome and I expect being 22 to be just as awesome, as well as the many years ahead of me. Life, as I’ve figured by now, is nothing but a fun experience (at least overall) that never ceases to involve my learning something with each new episode to be added on this reel. Certainly, I’ve had my ups and downs as much as any person sitting next to me. But, in trying to be an optimist, I find that talking to people – new and former – provides as much comfort as writing or as lying on the couch watching a funny show or lying in bed waiting for sleep to arrive or listening to a song that I used to listen to over and over again and for some reason stopped. Yes, or playing tennis or drumming too.
My name is Bern and I am a lover of life with all my family and friends, happiness and sensualities.
This is my birthday card to me! Happy birthday, you reflective and nostalgic 22 year old!
With eternal glowing love and peace,
Bern
1. I got my first pet – my lovely two goldfish, Gibralter and Dorian Gray. Sadly though, they both passed away within seven months; but still, I cannot deny the comfort I found in having their lit aquarium light my room, casting cute fishy shadows on my floor, calming me down for sleep.
2. I drank for the first time and got drunk. Yeah! Such an experience, simply put.
3. On a more unfortunate note, I also had my first hang over and learned that I’m more of a mixed drinker than a beer person.
4. I got my first drum set. Yeah! The hours I spent on them, bangin’ them in the afternoon when no one was home during my winter break. And I’d come back upstairs from the basement, all sweaty with endorphins running high.
5. I learned to drive. Seeing as my mom had knee problems and wasn’t allowed to drive for a few weeks, I had to learn quickly so I can drive her to all her errands; in fact that was how I learned. It was funny though, how I first started to learn. My mom and I had planned to practice driving in the parking lot of Sunken Meadow. We forgot to switch seats though when we were driving home and I ended up driving on the highway the very first day I started to drive. Needless to say, I learned to drive on the busy roads before the residential areas, ha!
6. I got my first real job, tutoring someone. Finally making money!
7. I started writing a blog.
8. I got not one but two djembe drums! Now I can pretend to be like Toca, Jason Mraz’s singing partner!
9. I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out. P-A-I-N-F-U-L. During that period of my life, you’d have found me a pitiful girl with bulging cheeks, despite their not being food in my mouth.
10. I went to my first concert – Jason Mraz at Jones Beach. Yup, that day Steph and I followed him from his guest appearance on the Today show to the Jones Beach amphitheater.
And finally,
11. I learned more about myself as I did a little self-exploring.
Being 21 was awesome and I expect being 22 to be just as awesome, as well as the many years ahead of me. Life, as I’ve figured by now, is nothing but a fun experience (at least overall) that never ceases to involve my learning something with each new episode to be added on this reel. Certainly, I’ve had my ups and downs as much as any person sitting next to me. But, in trying to be an optimist, I find that talking to people – new and former – provides as much comfort as writing or as lying on the couch watching a funny show or lying in bed waiting for sleep to arrive or listening to a song that I used to listen to over and over again and for some reason stopped. Yes, or playing tennis or drumming too.
My name is Bern and I am a lover of life with all my family and friends, happiness and sensualities.
This is my birthday card to me! Happy birthday, you reflective and nostalgic 22 year old!
With eternal glowing love and peace,
Bern
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Clouds of intellect
Last Thursday, I met an interesting Filipino-American (wait hold on. Can I say American-Filipino if I feel more American, which I don’t; I feel completely balanced, but I’m just saying. Or is that politically incorrect?). He is a Professor here at Stony Brook University and he was offering a class on literature of people of color with a gender/queer critical lens. “¡La mejor combinación!” I thought. I wanted to take this course but it conflicted with one of my teaching classes. My goal in meeting this professor was to get him to change the time slot of the course.
So I went into his office.
Knock, knock. “Excuse me, Professor _______? My name is Bernadette Tinio. I’m an English major in the English teaching program. Actually I’m not one of your students, but I heard you were going to be teaching a literature of people of color class next semester and I was wondering –”
I abruptly stopped babbling and interrupted myself by asking, “Are you, by any chance, Filipino?”
“Yes, I was just about to ask you that.” I already knew he was Filipino; I did my research beforehand.
“Yeah, I am too. I figured maybe if you saw that my last name was Tinio . . .”
And so that’s how our meeting started, which lasted for almost an hour. We discussed the course he was going to teach and if he was going to teach it again (at a more convenient time for me) in the future. Realizing my deep interest in that subject, he recommended books that he was using for his class. They are mostly about finding one’s identity, exploring one’s sexuality and how one is perceived by others based on that aspect of his or her self. Not to mention a cultural/immigration lens added to it. There’s a lot going on, which make those books interesting reads!
We got into personal stuff too – like family.
“Do you say Tito and Tita and Lolo and Lola. Kuya and Ate’s?" I asked with genuine interest. We had already established, by then, that we were both first generation immigrants, our parents having migrated here from the Philippines and our being born here in America.
His nephews call him Tito Jeff.
“Yeah. I actually have a nephew who’s only about five or six years younger than I am. It’s funny because he asks me, ‘so do I have to call you Tita Bern?’ I tell him, ‘No, just Bern, no Tita. Too weird.’”
Not wanting to be rude and selfish, I think some time during our conversation, I crossed upon his name and asked if he would prefer it with a Filipino accent or an American one, for he was indeed half white, half Filipino.
With a Filipino accent it is, then.
In keeping with the subject of names, I put my last name up for dissection and discussion. “T-I-N-I-O. Tinio. I think Filipinos would pronounce it as if it were Tiño – with the tilde over the ‘n’ like it is in my middle name, which is my mom’s maiden name, Castañeda.”
Then, to show I have at least a basic understanding of the Philippines’s origins, I quickly added, “The Spanish have a very big influence on Tagalog. I realize when I ask my parents how to spell car in Tagalog, they say it’s ‘kotse,’ whereas in Spanish, it’s ‘coche.’ When both are said with a casual, native tongue, they sound almost completely the same. Just different ways of spelling it.”
Suddenly, this popped in my head and out of my mouth: “Professor, I have a question: when did the Philippines become an American colony?”
He opened up the wikipedia page. Around the 1940s. Coming back to my last name, we figured it might have been spelled ‘Tiño” before the Americans started to influence them and change it to ‘Tinio.’ And then that name stuck, as if the Americans stitched it on our skins and we started to sport it like a tattoo.
As I left his office by the end of the random meeting, I was dazed and filled with Filipino/queer/linguistic clouds. I didn’t know what time it was and for a few minutes forgot my plans for the day, my classes. To say the least, that was a very enlightening meeting that had a deep impression on me that only further fueled my interest in the subjects discussed.
That was definitely the highlight of my day.
Oh, and no, I didn't get him to change the time slot of the course. But, I did get to know him and he wants to keep in touch. That's a good thing!
So I went into his office.
Knock, knock. “Excuse me, Professor _______? My name is Bernadette Tinio. I’m an English major in the English teaching program. Actually I’m not one of your students, but I heard you were going to be teaching a literature of people of color class next semester and I was wondering –”
I abruptly stopped babbling and interrupted myself by asking, “Are you, by any chance, Filipino?”
“Yes, I was just about to ask you that.” I already knew he was Filipino; I did my research beforehand.
“Yeah, I am too. I figured maybe if you saw that my last name was Tinio . . .”
And so that’s how our meeting started, which lasted for almost an hour. We discussed the course he was going to teach and if he was going to teach it again (at a more convenient time for me) in the future. Realizing my deep interest in that subject, he recommended books that he was using for his class. They are mostly about finding one’s identity, exploring one’s sexuality and how one is perceived by others based on that aspect of his or her self. Not to mention a cultural/immigration lens added to it. There’s a lot going on, which make those books interesting reads!
We got into personal stuff too – like family.
“Do you say Tito and Tita and Lolo and Lola. Kuya and Ate’s?" I asked with genuine interest. We had already established, by then, that we were both first generation immigrants, our parents having migrated here from the Philippines and our being born here in America.
His nephews call him Tito Jeff.
“Yeah. I actually have a nephew who’s only about five or six years younger than I am. It’s funny because he asks me, ‘so do I have to call you Tita Bern?’ I tell him, ‘No, just Bern, no Tita. Too weird.’”
Not wanting to be rude and selfish, I think some time during our conversation, I crossed upon his name and asked if he would prefer it with a Filipino accent or an American one, for he was indeed half white, half Filipino.
With a Filipino accent it is, then.
In keeping with the subject of names, I put my last name up for dissection and discussion. “T-I-N-I-O. Tinio. I think Filipinos would pronounce it as if it were Tiño – with the tilde over the ‘n’ like it is in my middle name, which is my mom’s maiden name, Castañeda.”
Then, to show I have at least a basic understanding of the Philippines’s origins, I quickly added, “The Spanish have a very big influence on Tagalog. I realize when I ask my parents how to spell car in Tagalog, they say it’s ‘kotse,’ whereas in Spanish, it’s ‘coche.’ When both are said with a casual, native tongue, they sound almost completely the same. Just different ways of spelling it.”
Suddenly, this popped in my head and out of my mouth: “Professor, I have a question: when did the Philippines become an American colony?”
He opened up the wikipedia page. Around the 1940s. Coming back to my last name, we figured it might have been spelled ‘Tiño” before the Americans started to influence them and change it to ‘Tinio.’ And then that name stuck, as if the Americans stitched it on our skins and we started to sport it like a tattoo.
As I left his office by the end of the random meeting, I was dazed and filled with Filipino/queer/linguistic clouds. I didn’t know what time it was and for a few minutes forgot my plans for the day, my classes. To say the least, that was a very enlightening meeting that had a deep impression on me that only further fueled my interest in the subjects discussed.
That was definitely the highlight of my day.
Oh, and no, I didn't get him to change the time slot of the course. But, I did get to know him and he wants to keep in touch. That's a good thing!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Literary paper: Ice Haven
I'm not going to lie. The higher up I go in school, the harder it is. The bumps on this academic road are bigger and - indulge me a bit more as I delve further into this metaphor - sometimes I may fall into ditches or pits. Now the problem is getting out of those seemingly merciless traps, which could have been avoided through schoolwork-filled weekends and the eschewing from procrastination. It's too bad I'm not perfect, yet who wants to live a life of perfection? You should give Keane's, "Perfect Symmetry" a listen and you'll see what I mean, this whole business of mankind's imperfection as a definition of living. Yet a perfect GPA is every college student's dream come true. And what happens if that dream really did come true? Where do you go when you've reached the top? Stay there and look at the kingdom you've mastered? Or do you stumble and fall, hoping, desperately to climb back up again? What if you turn into a turtle and cannot get back on the right side, on your legs? You will need either external help or an extra push exerted by your own will and muscle. A slump in GPA is hard to pick up and much of the picking up is contingent on many factors, like the courses you take that are available to you, the professors, the subjectivity of the assignments. School is a jungle. A migraine-causing rumble that enlightens until you tumble.
And let me tell ya. I've been tumbling down those pits like a shameful turtle knocked and turned on its shell.
But I, for a brief moment however it may be, saw my potential. I got an "A-" on a paper. It was the first "A" I've gotten in a long time. Yes, I needed that.
So I proudly present to you that paper. This place will serve as my refrigerator.
"Ice Haven’s Men, Women and Children – Many Dark Lights"
What makes Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel, or comic as he would prefer it be called , Ice Haven, immensely creative and thought-provoking is its many characters and the breaking of the fourth wall by Harry Naybors, a comic critic (one of the main characters who in particular representative of Clowes himself) at the beginning and end of the story. Naybors harbors views similar to those of Clowes. One example is where they share what they think comics really are. Naybors directly says to the reader:
While prose tends toward pure ‘interiority,’ coming to life in the reader’s mind, and cinema gravitates toward the ‘exteriority’ of experiential spectacle, perhaps ‘comics,’ in its embrace of both the interiority of the written word and the physicality of image, more closely replicates the true nature of human consciousness and the struggle between private self-definition and corporeal ‘reality’. (Clowes 4)
This comic reveals, explicitly and intriguingly, Clowes and Naybors’s high value on human consciousness and their belief that the conventions of comics provide the perfect way to delineate the inner workings of the mind – our thoughts, internal imprints left only in ourselves, unless we leave some kind of legacy in the world in any form including our impact on relationships and society. In other words, how can we touch the lives of others in our world, if we keep ourselves to ourselves? Unfortunately, for the citizens of Ice Haven, the world they live in is not happy and perfect. As the narrator, Random Wilder puts it, “Our [the people of Ice Haven] lovely name, intended to conjure a wondrous winterland, [brings] to mind only gloom and frostbite,” (Clowes 6). Through many characters (over twenty – nine of whom are protagonists) and their relationships with others, this comic powerfully shows us why Ice Haven is a place of “gloom and frostbite.”
The comic revolves around the kidnapping of David Goldberg, a highly reserved boy who separates himself from society, rarely saying anything until the end. The nine idiosyncratic, central characters provide various perspectives on the crime, some directly relating to it and some briefly only mentioning it. Random Wilder is a frustrated writer whose rival is Ida Wentz, Poet laureate of Ice Haven and grandmother of Vida, a visitor to Ice Haven, who dreams to be a writer, but without immediate success. Charles is a boy who is outwardly quiet to all but his younger neighbor, George, to whom he confides his deepest, intellectual and secret thoughts. He is also friends with Carmichael, a creepy boy whose actions and thoughts perturb Charles. Charles’s older sister, Violet is the typical seventeen year old girl who hates her step-father and mother and wants to escape her home troubles to run off with her boyfriend. Lastly, we have Mr. and Mrs. Ames, detectives who have problems in their own relationship as they investigate the kidnapping of David Goldberg. All these characters are in one way or another connected to the kidnapping of David, whether they are directly investigating the case, like the Ames or if they have a friend who is friends with the owner of a stationary shop, from which the paper of David’s ransom note was bought. All of these characters, not coincidentally, also have relationship problems.
Although Ice Haven can be approached in a myriad of ways, new critical and gender/feminist provide the best basis for analysis. From a new critical perspective, one of the main themes is nature versus human consciousness. Nature can be stipulated as embodying the concept of sexual desire, instincts and fate (how events ended up), while human consciousness can be connected to the thoughts, feelings and intellectual capacities of humans, as well as how humans can project those to their environment, that is, their society, by means of their legacies. Throughout the comic, human consciousness is favored or seen as superior over nature. However, as the comic unfolds, nature ultimately triumphs. Subconsciously, characters think they could beat nature with their legacies; but, nature punishes them in the form of empty and troubled relationships that they cannot avoid (it is fate). This is seen most prominently with Random Wilder, Charles, and Rocky, who appeared only once (though effectively) in the comic.
Believing that he is better than Ida and should therefore be the Poet laureate of Ice Haven, Random Wilder epitomizes the idea of humans’ being capable of producing refined artistic visions, coming from the mind. Being a writer, Random Wilder has his mind wrapped around his poetry – words brought to life by his thoughts and creative writing. However, his constant need to be superior to Ida causes endless frustration. Nature has produced for him a place in which he self-destructs because he is extremely focused on his legacy – his poetry – and he realizes that he cannot beat her. Because of his obsession of wanting to leave a legacy, nature punishes him by making him go through the motions of hating himself for (upon realization and resignation) being a worse or unpopular poet, compared to Ida.
Unlike Wilder, Charles is punished by nature by his uneven relationship with his older step-sister: he is in love with her, but she does not realize this and does not return the love. He tells George how he absolutely refuses to let sexual desire (nature) control him, and yet he is so deeply in love with Violet, so much so that he desperately hopes their parents would break up so that it would not seem so outrageous if he were to be in a romantic relationship with Violet when he grows older. He is trapped in his self-denial. What is ironic is the fact that he explicitly realizes this. He says, “Nature laughs at our suffering,” (Clowes 38). Charles overtly tries to fight off sexual desire, but ultimately he cannot. He must endure what cruelties nature has in store for him: unrequited love that is also frowned upon in society as it is taboo to romantically love your sibling.
Perhaps the most explicit form of the defeat of human consciousness and legacy at the hands of nature can be seen in the scene with Rocky, a Fred Flintstone look-alike, whose clip is set in prehistoric times. This one panel is obviously a deliberate inclusion made by Clowes, as its setting differs substantially from the rest. Rocky is a caveman who has grown tired of nature, when he says, “I’ve had it,” (Clowes 49) and decides to die in a symbolic fashion: he digs a hole for himself to lie in. This action signifies his perpetuating himself in human society so that his body will remain, as if it were a legacy, on earth. Upon lying down in the ground, he says, “This hole will be my monument. It will erode one day into a bottomless pit or an ocean,” (Clowes 49). Even when he dies, he will remain in society.
Ice Haven’s bleak society, filled with failed relationships, can provide rich insights when approached with feminist/gender critical lens. The comic’s ending makes it seem as though women ultimately were superior to men. After all, the only two characters who were able to escape Ice Haven were women and the only person who was truly happy was also a woman. One of Vida’s magazines was recognized by a producer who then wanted her to help in the making of a film about it. Violet was able to move to Hawaii, after giving up on her dissolving relationship with her boyfriend, Penrod, without missing anybody but her younger brother, Charles. Finally, throughout the comic, Ida was the only character who remained happy: she got to see her grand daughter and remained the most liked Poet laureate of Ice Haven.
One reason why women seem to dominate over men, ultimately in this comic, could be because the original crime, off which the crime involving the kidnapping and possible murdering of David Goldberg was inspired (by Clowes), was done by two intellectual men, Leopold and Loeb. They are mentioned in the comic through the book Carmichael gives to Charles. There is also a panel containing solely their story (of their crime), although they are not present in the comic plotline itself; their crime is set in the 1920’s. They had kidnapped fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks and murdered him with a chisel, after luring him into their car . Not only that, the men of Ice Haven have ignored woman (as when Penrod stopped speaking to Violet), and were seen as turning women into sex objects (when Carmichael arbitrarily makes love to Paula and when Harry and the police officer implicitly has affairs with Mrs. Ames). Perhaps society is now against men because of that crime, which seems like an original sin, and is now favoring woman, as punishment. Men’s punishment can be seen in the men of all the relationships: Charles and Violet, Random Wilder and Ida, Random Wilder and Vida, Mr. and Mrs. Ames. Charles can never be Violet’s boyfriend; Wilder’s works can never match the popularity of Ida’s; Wilder self-destructs when he sees that even Ida’s grand daughter, Vida, writes better than he; Mrs. Ames cheats on her husband, through affairs with Harry Naybors and the police officer.
However, seeing women portrayed as the ones who were successful in one of Clowes’s works seems unfitting because he often wrote about Generation X , the generation born after the baby boomers of the 1950’s, particularly from 1965 to 1976 (Ortner 416). One characteristic of Generation X’s women is that they were the generation who never really fought hard for women’s rights. In other words, they were not the strongest feminists time has seen. “Many Boomers saw the critical issues of their youth (. . . feminist, sexual freedom) as moot,” (Tulgan 45). What does the inclusion of this outlook of women – their ascendency over men – say about the author, Clowes himself? Is he a feminist? Or is he mocking Generation X for not continuing, fervently, the breakthroughs women were making before that generation? Perhaps he is reacting to the harshness and ingenuity of Leopold and Loeb, whom he had heard of since they went to the same University as he did, although at different times . Clowes would then be writing this comic as a stand (defending women and society) against men like Leopold and Loeb.
One class activity that I would engage the students in if I were teaching this graphic novel involves the teaching of the gender/feminist lens. I would first explain to the students the concept of using a gender/feminist critical lens, emphasizing that the point of using that lens is to see different perspectives of the graphic novel from both male and female views (as opposed to just female). I would ask them, in particular, as a model, “How would the story be like if it were told by David Goldberg? Would David see the world full of people who were exactly the same? Or would he lean toward certain people and describe certain others in negative or positive ways, based on their gender?” In other words, I would get the students thinking in terms of gender/feminist lenses. We would brainstorm possible answers as to how the story would have been different and write it on the board. After looking, physically, at all the possible solutions that the students come up with, I would explain to them how looking through different lenses can produce many different perspectives. With this in mind, the students would be ready to work on the following activity. I would break the class into groups. Half of the groups would choose a different female character and re-tell the story solely from that character’s point of view. The other half of the groups would choose a different male counterpart of the female characters and re-tell the story solely through that point of view. We would then go from group to group, discussing what they had come up with, writing short summaries of their responses on the board. This activity highlights the benefits of using different perspectives, in this case, in the gender/feminist lens. When students use a different lens, other than the traditional new critical lens, they begin to approach the graphic novel in a way that makes them think deeply and find connections to society and its expectations. They begin to open their minds wider as they see the story differently.
If this comic were to be taught in a high school class, there is no doubt that the students would find the text both entertaining and enlightening. However, they would have to know additional intellectual skills that are required to read graphic novels. One main intellectual skill that I have learned while reading graphic novels or comics myself, is the ability to make inferences between what is being said and what is going on in the picture. Students should not only look for actions being described but how the actions are displayed. They would have to understand what is going on when the characters discuss something in one box and then just stand, looking at each other in the next, for example.
Given this valuable skill – making inferences – some parents, teachers and principals might still make some objections about using graphic novels in the classroom. As McCloud, author of Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form, puts it, “The revolution in public perception has been a SLOW and difficult one, but at least some recent trends have been encouraging compared to what came before,” (82). He means that comics have been traditionally viewed as non-serious fictitious pictures of violence and sex. However, more graphic novels are deviating from this stereotyped view. Still, some have these aspects – violence and sexual content – but in a more rich and insightful way that renders a worthwhile read in the classroom. For example, Ice Haven in particular has some sexual content that parents might not want their children to read or be exposed to. However, it is up to the teacher to justify still using the graphic novel. Effective arguments she might make to counter those objections, specific to Ice Haven or any other graphic novel, include arguing that the content alone without a particular critical lens (in the case discussed in this paper – new critical and gender/feminist) may be obscene, but with the lens, it will be fulfilling and worth the reading and teaching of it.
Works Cited
Clowes, Daniel. Ice Haven. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001, 2005 by Daniel G. Clowes.
McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form. Canada: REINVENTING COMIC BOOKS, 2000.
Ortner, Sherry B. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (Aug., 1998): 414-440.
Parille, Ken. “A Cartoon Wolrd: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes.” Boston Review. January/February 2006 < http://bostonreview.net/BR31.1/parille.php>.
“Daniel Clowes.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedi. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 October 2010. Web. 20 September 2010.
“The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 15.3 (Nov., 1924): 347-348.
Tulgan, Bruce. Managing Gernertaion X: How to bring out the best in young talent, revised and updated. New York: Norton paperback 2000, 1996 by Bruce Tulgan.
And let me tell ya. I've been tumbling down those pits like a shameful turtle knocked and turned on its shell.
But I, for a brief moment however it may be, saw my potential. I got an "A-" on a paper. It was the first "A" I've gotten in a long time. Yes, I needed that.
So I proudly present to you that paper. This place will serve as my refrigerator.
"Ice Haven’s Men, Women and Children – Many Dark Lights"
What makes Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel, or comic as he would prefer it be called , Ice Haven, immensely creative and thought-provoking is its many characters and the breaking of the fourth wall by Harry Naybors, a comic critic (one of the main characters who in particular representative of Clowes himself) at the beginning and end of the story. Naybors harbors views similar to those of Clowes. One example is where they share what they think comics really are. Naybors directly says to the reader:
While prose tends toward pure ‘interiority,’ coming to life in the reader’s mind, and cinema gravitates toward the ‘exteriority’ of experiential spectacle, perhaps ‘comics,’ in its embrace of both the interiority of the written word and the physicality of image, more closely replicates the true nature of human consciousness and the struggle between private self-definition and corporeal ‘reality’. (Clowes 4)
This comic reveals, explicitly and intriguingly, Clowes and Naybors’s high value on human consciousness and their belief that the conventions of comics provide the perfect way to delineate the inner workings of the mind – our thoughts, internal imprints left only in ourselves, unless we leave some kind of legacy in the world in any form including our impact on relationships and society. In other words, how can we touch the lives of others in our world, if we keep ourselves to ourselves? Unfortunately, for the citizens of Ice Haven, the world they live in is not happy and perfect. As the narrator, Random Wilder puts it, “Our [the people of Ice Haven] lovely name, intended to conjure a wondrous winterland, [brings] to mind only gloom and frostbite,” (Clowes 6). Through many characters (over twenty – nine of whom are protagonists) and their relationships with others, this comic powerfully shows us why Ice Haven is a place of “gloom and frostbite.”
The comic revolves around the kidnapping of David Goldberg, a highly reserved boy who separates himself from society, rarely saying anything until the end. The nine idiosyncratic, central characters provide various perspectives on the crime, some directly relating to it and some briefly only mentioning it. Random Wilder is a frustrated writer whose rival is Ida Wentz, Poet laureate of Ice Haven and grandmother of Vida, a visitor to Ice Haven, who dreams to be a writer, but without immediate success. Charles is a boy who is outwardly quiet to all but his younger neighbor, George, to whom he confides his deepest, intellectual and secret thoughts. He is also friends with Carmichael, a creepy boy whose actions and thoughts perturb Charles. Charles’s older sister, Violet is the typical seventeen year old girl who hates her step-father and mother and wants to escape her home troubles to run off with her boyfriend. Lastly, we have Mr. and Mrs. Ames, detectives who have problems in their own relationship as they investigate the kidnapping of David Goldberg. All these characters are in one way or another connected to the kidnapping of David, whether they are directly investigating the case, like the Ames or if they have a friend who is friends with the owner of a stationary shop, from which the paper of David’s ransom note was bought. All of these characters, not coincidentally, also have relationship problems.
Although Ice Haven can be approached in a myriad of ways, new critical and gender/feminist provide the best basis for analysis. From a new critical perspective, one of the main themes is nature versus human consciousness. Nature can be stipulated as embodying the concept of sexual desire, instincts and fate (how events ended up), while human consciousness can be connected to the thoughts, feelings and intellectual capacities of humans, as well as how humans can project those to their environment, that is, their society, by means of their legacies. Throughout the comic, human consciousness is favored or seen as superior over nature. However, as the comic unfolds, nature ultimately triumphs. Subconsciously, characters think they could beat nature with their legacies; but, nature punishes them in the form of empty and troubled relationships that they cannot avoid (it is fate). This is seen most prominently with Random Wilder, Charles, and Rocky, who appeared only once (though effectively) in the comic.
Believing that he is better than Ida and should therefore be the Poet laureate of Ice Haven, Random Wilder epitomizes the idea of humans’ being capable of producing refined artistic visions, coming from the mind. Being a writer, Random Wilder has his mind wrapped around his poetry – words brought to life by his thoughts and creative writing. However, his constant need to be superior to Ida causes endless frustration. Nature has produced for him a place in which he self-destructs because he is extremely focused on his legacy – his poetry – and he realizes that he cannot beat her. Because of his obsession of wanting to leave a legacy, nature punishes him by making him go through the motions of hating himself for (upon realization and resignation) being a worse or unpopular poet, compared to Ida.
Unlike Wilder, Charles is punished by nature by his uneven relationship with his older step-sister: he is in love with her, but she does not realize this and does not return the love. He tells George how he absolutely refuses to let sexual desire (nature) control him, and yet he is so deeply in love with Violet, so much so that he desperately hopes their parents would break up so that it would not seem so outrageous if he were to be in a romantic relationship with Violet when he grows older. He is trapped in his self-denial. What is ironic is the fact that he explicitly realizes this. He says, “Nature laughs at our suffering,” (Clowes 38). Charles overtly tries to fight off sexual desire, but ultimately he cannot. He must endure what cruelties nature has in store for him: unrequited love that is also frowned upon in society as it is taboo to romantically love your sibling.
Perhaps the most explicit form of the defeat of human consciousness and legacy at the hands of nature can be seen in the scene with Rocky, a Fred Flintstone look-alike, whose clip is set in prehistoric times. This one panel is obviously a deliberate inclusion made by Clowes, as its setting differs substantially from the rest. Rocky is a caveman who has grown tired of nature, when he says, “I’ve had it,” (Clowes 49) and decides to die in a symbolic fashion: he digs a hole for himself to lie in. This action signifies his perpetuating himself in human society so that his body will remain, as if it were a legacy, on earth. Upon lying down in the ground, he says, “This hole will be my monument. It will erode one day into a bottomless pit or an ocean,” (Clowes 49). Even when he dies, he will remain in society.
Ice Haven’s bleak society, filled with failed relationships, can provide rich insights when approached with feminist/gender critical lens. The comic’s ending makes it seem as though women ultimately were superior to men. After all, the only two characters who were able to escape Ice Haven were women and the only person who was truly happy was also a woman. One of Vida’s magazines was recognized by a producer who then wanted her to help in the making of a film about it. Violet was able to move to Hawaii, after giving up on her dissolving relationship with her boyfriend, Penrod, without missing anybody but her younger brother, Charles. Finally, throughout the comic, Ida was the only character who remained happy: she got to see her grand daughter and remained the most liked Poet laureate of Ice Haven.
One reason why women seem to dominate over men, ultimately in this comic, could be because the original crime, off which the crime involving the kidnapping and possible murdering of David Goldberg was inspired (by Clowes), was done by two intellectual men, Leopold and Loeb. They are mentioned in the comic through the book Carmichael gives to Charles. There is also a panel containing solely their story (of their crime), although they are not present in the comic plotline itself; their crime is set in the 1920’s. They had kidnapped fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks and murdered him with a chisel, after luring him into their car . Not only that, the men of Ice Haven have ignored woman (as when Penrod stopped speaking to Violet), and were seen as turning women into sex objects (when Carmichael arbitrarily makes love to Paula and when Harry and the police officer implicitly has affairs with Mrs. Ames). Perhaps society is now against men because of that crime, which seems like an original sin, and is now favoring woman, as punishment. Men’s punishment can be seen in the men of all the relationships: Charles and Violet, Random Wilder and Ida, Random Wilder and Vida, Mr. and Mrs. Ames. Charles can never be Violet’s boyfriend; Wilder’s works can never match the popularity of Ida’s; Wilder self-destructs when he sees that even Ida’s grand daughter, Vida, writes better than he; Mrs. Ames cheats on her husband, through affairs with Harry Naybors and the police officer.
However, seeing women portrayed as the ones who were successful in one of Clowes’s works seems unfitting because he often wrote about Generation X , the generation born after the baby boomers of the 1950’s, particularly from 1965 to 1976 (Ortner 416). One characteristic of Generation X’s women is that they were the generation who never really fought hard for women’s rights. In other words, they were not the strongest feminists time has seen. “Many Boomers saw the critical issues of their youth (. . . feminist, sexual freedom) as moot,” (Tulgan 45). What does the inclusion of this outlook of women – their ascendency over men – say about the author, Clowes himself? Is he a feminist? Or is he mocking Generation X for not continuing, fervently, the breakthroughs women were making before that generation? Perhaps he is reacting to the harshness and ingenuity of Leopold and Loeb, whom he had heard of since they went to the same University as he did, although at different times . Clowes would then be writing this comic as a stand (defending women and society) against men like Leopold and Loeb.
One class activity that I would engage the students in if I were teaching this graphic novel involves the teaching of the gender/feminist lens. I would first explain to the students the concept of using a gender/feminist critical lens, emphasizing that the point of using that lens is to see different perspectives of the graphic novel from both male and female views (as opposed to just female). I would ask them, in particular, as a model, “How would the story be like if it were told by David Goldberg? Would David see the world full of people who were exactly the same? Or would he lean toward certain people and describe certain others in negative or positive ways, based on their gender?” In other words, I would get the students thinking in terms of gender/feminist lenses. We would brainstorm possible answers as to how the story would have been different and write it on the board. After looking, physically, at all the possible solutions that the students come up with, I would explain to them how looking through different lenses can produce many different perspectives. With this in mind, the students would be ready to work on the following activity. I would break the class into groups. Half of the groups would choose a different female character and re-tell the story solely from that character’s point of view. The other half of the groups would choose a different male counterpart of the female characters and re-tell the story solely through that point of view. We would then go from group to group, discussing what they had come up with, writing short summaries of their responses on the board. This activity highlights the benefits of using different perspectives, in this case, in the gender/feminist lens. When students use a different lens, other than the traditional new critical lens, they begin to approach the graphic novel in a way that makes them think deeply and find connections to society and its expectations. They begin to open their minds wider as they see the story differently.
If this comic were to be taught in a high school class, there is no doubt that the students would find the text both entertaining and enlightening. However, they would have to know additional intellectual skills that are required to read graphic novels. One main intellectual skill that I have learned while reading graphic novels or comics myself, is the ability to make inferences between what is being said and what is going on in the picture. Students should not only look for actions being described but how the actions are displayed. They would have to understand what is going on when the characters discuss something in one box and then just stand, looking at each other in the next, for example.
Given this valuable skill – making inferences – some parents, teachers and principals might still make some objections about using graphic novels in the classroom. As McCloud, author of Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form, puts it, “The revolution in public perception has been a SLOW and difficult one, but at least some recent trends have been encouraging compared to what came before,” (82). He means that comics have been traditionally viewed as non-serious fictitious pictures of violence and sex. However, more graphic novels are deviating from this stereotyped view. Still, some have these aspects – violence and sexual content – but in a more rich and insightful way that renders a worthwhile read in the classroom. For example, Ice Haven in particular has some sexual content that parents might not want their children to read or be exposed to. However, it is up to the teacher to justify still using the graphic novel. Effective arguments she might make to counter those objections, specific to Ice Haven or any other graphic novel, include arguing that the content alone without a particular critical lens (in the case discussed in this paper – new critical and gender/feminist) may be obscene, but with the lens, it will be fulfilling and worth the reading and teaching of it.
Works Cited
Clowes, Daniel. Ice Haven. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001, 2005 by Daniel G. Clowes.
McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form. Canada: REINVENTING COMIC BOOKS, 2000.
Ortner, Sherry B. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (Aug., 1998): 414-440.
Parille, Ken. “A Cartoon Wolrd: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes.” Boston Review. January/February 2006 < http://bostonreview.net/BR31.1/parille.php>.
“Daniel Clowes.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedi. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 October 2010. Web. 20 September 2010.
“The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 15.3 (Nov., 1924): 347-348.
Tulgan, Bruce. Managing Gernertaion X: How to bring out the best in young talent, revised and updated. New York: Norton paperback 2000, 1996 by Bruce Tulgan.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Kissing Fish: teaching society about gender
What could the Kissing fish symbolize?
Well, this is what it says here on this website -- http://www.allabout-aquariumfish.com/2009/04/green-pink-kissing-gourami-behavior.html:
Kissing Gourami is an interesting fish that will never fail to thrill even novice fish keepers. In fact, their actions and behavior are so adorable that sometimes people thought they were actually kissing each other as a lover. That’s actually not true because the lip-locking act is a test of strength between two male kissing gouramis especially seen during the breeding season to impress the females. However, there is nothing to worry about because the act would not actually cause harm and injury to the other party.
Now, on a surface level, the two male kissing fish look as if they are gay, kissing each other. This symbolic gesture conjures in our minds the concept of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. There’s nothing wrong to put the lips of two lovers together.
However, these fish aren’t showing affection or sexual love. They are fighting. They are fighting for a female. It’s the tale of two guys beating up each other to win the girl. There’s nothing gay, lesbian or bisexual about that. It’s the typical male chasing after the female story, where he is doing whatever it takes to win her, even fighting in some semi-dangerous lip-locking way. It is the Kissing fish’s only way of showing aggression, when physicality isn’t so big.
So, here we have a duality. What it looks like on the outside (what tricks people – the kissing) and what is actually going on: a fight for a love.
But what’s interesting is that you can’t even tell the difference between the sexes of Kissing fish. There is almost no sexual, outer ways one could make to distinguish between male and female Kissing fish. So, for all we know, the two Kissing fish fighting could be two females over a female fish or two males fighting for a male fish. No outward sexual dimorphism, nada. At least that’s what it looks like to the common eye with a common heart – one that loves what it loves.
Does it really matter if the one you love is a certain sex in relation to yours? What does gender actually mean? Certainly gender is not, in many respects, the exact synonym for sex. Sex, as in male or female, is just that: male or female. It’s what it says on your genes, your chromosomes. Do you have a ‘y’ hanging about your collar or to do you sport an extra ‘x’?
Gender to me is much more fascinating. It is a certainty on various personal levels that only you, the individual, knows. It has a voice, though not necessarily a choice, for gender is a natural and beautiful way of being. It’s got attitude when packaged in uniqueness, but it’s a murderer when limited to societal expectations; the way you perceive yourself may be different from the way society wants to see you and stupidly, those who see you the way they expect to see you, when coming to the realization that you're someone totally different, divergent, are quick to make you loath to be you, to exist as you. But before walking that last road, we find that often times, society, if you're not invulnerable enough, is a huge "lifestyle-influencer." For instance, it brainwashes you through media of all types: the internet, commercials and ads, people interaction. Gender is painfully categorical when paired with such dumb-ass indoctrination. Girls in school put napkins on their pizzas to stay skinny while boys pick on the kid who has man boobs. Lesbians, gays and bisexuals are made fun of and bullied and pushed to suicide. People of all ages, and particularly teens and adolescents, are being led to despair, depression and death because of the harsh treatment from those who won't accept them. It hurts to say that some people don't know that there's nothing wrong with stepping over boundaries that shouldn't even be there. It doesn’t surprise me then, that gays, lesbians and bisexuals are finally taking a stand that I hope will be strong enough to withstand the resistance of the traditional position, with so many years of suppression backing it up. Unleash what’s been hidden and forbidden. Breathe acceptance and tolerance. Take off your eye patch – you’re not a pirate anyway – and see the world with both eyes (why let the other eye live in darkness?).
Well, this is what it says here on this website -- http://www.allabout-aquariumfish.com/2009/04/green-pink-kissing-gourami-behavior.html:
Kissing Gourami is an interesting fish that will never fail to thrill even novice fish keepers. In fact, their actions and behavior are so adorable that sometimes people thought they were actually kissing each other as a lover. That’s actually not true because the lip-locking act is a test of strength between two male kissing gouramis especially seen during the breeding season to impress the females. However, there is nothing to worry about because the act would not actually cause harm and injury to the other party.
Now, on a surface level, the two male kissing fish look as if they are gay, kissing each other. This symbolic gesture conjures in our minds the concept of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. There’s nothing wrong to put the lips of two lovers together.
However, these fish aren’t showing affection or sexual love. They are fighting. They are fighting for a female. It’s the tale of two guys beating up each other to win the girl. There’s nothing gay, lesbian or bisexual about that. It’s the typical male chasing after the female story, where he is doing whatever it takes to win her, even fighting in some semi-dangerous lip-locking way. It is the Kissing fish’s only way of showing aggression, when physicality isn’t so big.
So, here we have a duality. What it looks like on the outside (what tricks people – the kissing) and what is actually going on: a fight for a love.
But what’s interesting is that you can’t even tell the difference between the sexes of Kissing fish. There is almost no sexual, outer ways one could make to distinguish between male and female Kissing fish. So, for all we know, the two Kissing fish fighting could be two females over a female fish or two males fighting for a male fish. No outward sexual dimorphism, nada. At least that’s what it looks like to the common eye with a common heart – one that loves what it loves.
Does it really matter if the one you love is a certain sex in relation to yours? What does gender actually mean? Certainly gender is not, in many respects, the exact synonym for sex. Sex, as in male or female, is just that: male or female. It’s what it says on your genes, your chromosomes. Do you have a ‘y’ hanging about your collar or to do you sport an extra ‘x’?
Gender to me is much more fascinating. It is a certainty on various personal levels that only you, the individual, knows. It has a voice, though not necessarily a choice, for gender is a natural and beautiful way of being. It’s got attitude when packaged in uniqueness, but it’s a murderer when limited to societal expectations; the way you perceive yourself may be different from the way society wants to see you and stupidly, those who see you the way they expect to see you, when coming to the realization that you're someone totally different, divergent, are quick to make you loath to be you, to exist as you. But before walking that last road, we find that often times, society, if you're not invulnerable enough, is a huge "lifestyle-influencer." For instance, it brainwashes you through media of all types: the internet, commercials and ads, people interaction. Gender is painfully categorical when paired with such dumb-ass indoctrination. Girls in school put napkins on their pizzas to stay skinny while boys pick on the kid who has man boobs. Lesbians, gays and bisexuals are made fun of and bullied and pushed to suicide. People of all ages, and particularly teens and adolescents, are being led to despair, depression and death because of the harsh treatment from those who won't accept them. It hurts to say that some people don't know that there's nothing wrong with stepping over boundaries that shouldn't even be there. It doesn’t surprise me then, that gays, lesbians and bisexuals are finally taking a stand that I hope will be strong enough to withstand the resistance of the traditional position, with so many years of suppression backing it up. Unleash what’s been hidden and forbidden. Breathe acceptance and tolerance. Take off your eye patch – you’re not a pirate anyway – and see the world with both eyes (why let the other eye live in darkness?).
Sunday, October 24, 2010
So why did I choose to do this?
Why I wanted to teach English
It all began with my being selfish. To me, English (literature) was something I found first and foremost, entertaining. Amusing. Pleasurable. A constant day dreamer, I always find that I can delve into a work outside of my reality, quite easily and in most times, willingly and with fervor. It is no surprise then that I enjoyed other subjects with this certain commonality (of being able to live in a different world, temporarily).
Astronomy interested me because I was learning about a world, a universe, physically outside my earthly dimensions. Not only that, there are parts of the Universe that would require a whole lot of imagination: what does it look like inside black holes? (This question has tickled many sci-fi writers. In my opinion, worm holes do exist and lead to a parallel universe). How beautiful must the spewing beams of electromagnetic radiation look like from pulsars? The aurora borealis we can witness here on Earth are, to me, one of the most fascinating phenomena I’ve ever heard of. If watching them is pleasurable, imagine how excited I’d be to watch a supernova or other astronomical, magical manifestations.
History – particularly early U.S. history – interested me because in order to understand the goings-on of certain key historical events, I’d have to set myself in that time period. After watching historical movies, such as Pearl Harbor and Gangs of New York, as well as reading about the tensions between the South and the North during the Civil War era and the Age of American Revolution, I’d imagine what I would do if I were there. Would I be as traditional as the women at the time were or would I be my contemporary self, even then? It would be so different living in a 1770’s household or an 1860’s plantation among slaves. Would I have befriended some of them if I were a poor southern girl or one of their owners? Would I want to teach them to read, secretly? If I belonged to a wealthy family, I probably would have been married by then – and it would have been an arranged one! In the world of literature during the time of the Civil War and slavery, I would have liked to talk to Mark Twain and ask him to humor me (literally, for he was a humorist).
In any case, situating me outside my reality bubble is a proclivity of mine that I’ve had ever since my memory started working its engine.
So, to be honest, once I decided my major to be English, I was certain I had made the right decision. But, I thought, what could I do with a major in English? One of my favorite Professors always mentioned how English majors, when they were children, had at least once in their lives, looked at something, just pondering. Well, I can tell you that many times I lie down in bed staring up at the ceiling, just thinking, or I’d be sitting in the passenger seat, just thinking, or eating breakfast, just thinking. And now, in retrospect, I realize just how experienced and truthful my Professor was and is. English majors like to play with their minds and get worked up about it. She also mentioned, or rather, constantly reminded us, that our parents are probably ok with our majoring in English, but are also probably worrying about what career we can get with a degree in English. That question never popped in my head until a man who, by the way he walked you can tell was a former high school teacher, came into one of my lecture classes and talked to us about being a teacher. Granted he was talking about being a history teacher, since it was during one of my history classes, but still, the idea of being a teacher stayed in my head like a book not yet covered in dust, resting on the shelf, until it is ready to be read.
I imagined my self teaching, that day. “Why would I want to teach, though?” I asked myself. And then it hit me; an idea came to me so suddenly, it caught me by relieving surprise. Along with having a tendency to day dream, I also tend to explain things to people. After school, my parents never had to ask, “How was school?” Ok, maybe they did, but I never just said “fine.” I gave them a lengthy, detailed answer, informing them of what I learned and – dare I say it – teaching them what I had learned that day. I wanted to enlighten them – and that’s what I want to do with my students, although in myriad ways that would fit their needs.
As evinced by the first few paragraphs, I like to work with the imagination, to employ human’s capacity of creativity. With my students, I would stress creative writing. Easing into creative writing, at the beginning of each day, I would have my students engage in freewriting in a journal for five minutes, just have them getting whatever’s running through their minds out on paper so they can see their thoughts in words. A reason I believe they should see their thoughts as meaningful symbols on paper is so they can physically see or develop a style of writing that comes natural to them, for they are not exactly being graded or criticized on their freewrites. By not grading their freewrites, I am creating a learning setting, low in pressure that I hope will take away from students – particularly those who are intimidated by the act of writing – any source of apprehension or anxiety when approaching writing. On certain days, depending on the unit I am teaching, I may have a prompt that would launch their freewrite in a way that would encourage creative thinking or deep, critical thinking and opinion formation.
There are many other aspects of English that I would like to stress, but I feel right now it’s too early to fully know for sure the kind of teacher I’ll be. In the words of a Student teaching expert who came to my methods class, I’m still a “baby.” But my foundation is strong: I want to expand my students' minds.
It all began with my being selfish. To me, English (literature) was something I found first and foremost, entertaining. Amusing. Pleasurable. A constant day dreamer, I always find that I can delve into a work outside of my reality, quite easily and in most times, willingly and with fervor. It is no surprise then that I enjoyed other subjects with this certain commonality (of being able to live in a different world, temporarily).
Astronomy interested me because I was learning about a world, a universe, physically outside my earthly dimensions. Not only that, there are parts of the Universe that would require a whole lot of imagination: what does it look like inside black holes? (This question has tickled many sci-fi writers. In my opinion, worm holes do exist and lead to a parallel universe). How beautiful must the spewing beams of electromagnetic radiation look like from pulsars? The aurora borealis we can witness here on Earth are, to me, one of the most fascinating phenomena I’ve ever heard of. If watching them is pleasurable, imagine how excited I’d be to watch a supernova or other astronomical, magical manifestations.
History – particularly early U.S. history – interested me because in order to understand the goings-on of certain key historical events, I’d have to set myself in that time period. After watching historical movies, such as Pearl Harbor and Gangs of New York, as well as reading about the tensions between the South and the North during the Civil War era and the Age of American Revolution, I’d imagine what I would do if I were there. Would I be as traditional as the women at the time were or would I be my contemporary self, even then? It would be so different living in a 1770’s household or an 1860’s plantation among slaves. Would I have befriended some of them if I were a poor southern girl or one of their owners? Would I want to teach them to read, secretly? If I belonged to a wealthy family, I probably would have been married by then – and it would have been an arranged one! In the world of literature during the time of the Civil War and slavery, I would have liked to talk to Mark Twain and ask him to humor me (literally, for he was a humorist).
In any case, situating me outside my reality bubble is a proclivity of mine that I’ve had ever since my memory started working its engine.
So, to be honest, once I decided my major to be English, I was certain I had made the right decision. But, I thought, what could I do with a major in English? One of my favorite Professors always mentioned how English majors, when they were children, had at least once in their lives, looked at something, just pondering. Well, I can tell you that many times I lie down in bed staring up at the ceiling, just thinking, or I’d be sitting in the passenger seat, just thinking, or eating breakfast, just thinking. And now, in retrospect, I realize just how experienced and truthful my Professor was and is. English majors like to play with their minds and get worked up about it. She also mentioned, or rather, constantly reminded us, that our parents are probably ok with our majoring in English, but are also probably worrying about what career we can get with a degree in English. That question never popped in my head until a man who, by the way he walked you can tell was a former high school teacher, came into one of my lecture classes and talked to us about being a teacher. Granted he was talking about being a history teacher, since it was during one of my history classes, but still, the idea of being a teacher stayed in my head like a book not yet covered in dust, resting on the shelf, until it is ready to be read.
I imagined my self teaching, that day. “Why would I want to teach, though?” I asked myself. And then it hit me; an idea came to me so suddenly, it caught me by relieving surprise. Along with having a tendency to day dream, I also tend to explain things to people. After school, my parents never had to ask, “How was school?” Ok, maybe they did, but I never just said “fine.” I gave them a lengthy, detailed answer, informing them of what I learned and – dare I say it – teaching them what I had learned that day. I wanted to enlighten them – and that’s what I want to do with my students, although in myriad ways that would fit their needs.
As evinced by the first few paragraphs, I like to work with the imagination, to employ human’s capacity of creativity. With my students, I would stress creative writing. Easing into creative writing, at the beginning of each day, I would have my students engage in freewriting in a journal for five minutes, just have them getting whatever’s running through their minds out on paper so they can see their thoughts in words. A reason I believe they should see their thoughts as meaningful symbols on paper is so they can physically see or develop a style of writing that comes natural to them, for they are not exactly being graded or criticized on their freewrites. By not grading their freewrites, I am creating a learning setting, low in pressure that I hope will take away from students – particularly those who are intimidated by the act of writing – any source of apprehension or anxiety when approaching writing. On certain days, depending on the unit I am teaching, I may have a prompt that would launch their freewrite in a way that would encourage creative thinking or deep, critical thinking and opinion formation.
There are many other aspects of English that I would like to stress, but I feel right now it’s too early to fully know for sure the kind of teacher I’ll be. In the words of a Student teaching expert who came to my methods class, I’m still a “baby.” But my foundation is strong: I want to expand my students' minds.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
I never knew, until now
Walking around with a stressful mind, today I couldn’t help but think about teaching. And what it means to really love to teach. Is it something in you that makes you want to help students understand concepts that you can only hope they can imbibe meaningfully, given the physical and mental capabilities of their adolescent bodies? Or is it the fact that, as a teacher, you will be touching their lives, possibly in more ways than academic (like perhaps inspire them to reach their own personal goals or to change their way of being for the better. The word ‘role-model’ comes to mind, but it’s the one that they also hate when she gives out tests, homeworks and quizzes)? In other words, what motivates teachers to teach?
Still being in my infancy stage of learning the ways of teaching (more like conception), I have suddenly realized that I don’t even know why I decided to be an English teacher. The surface reasons mainly drove around the idea of having paid summer vacations, but now I find that something else had compelled me to the teaching field. And yet I can’t put a finger on it. It’s that deep inside me; I can’t even find the answer – my answer.
I must keep in mind that just because I love English doesn’t mean I love to teach it – or do I? I guess, for the time being, my answer to the question of why I wanted to be an English teacher, will have to suffice with the fact that teaching was the only thing I could think of, that I could do with an English major degree besides a writer. And not only that, I recalled how, as a high school student, I always wanted to be like certain teachers, whose personality and enthusiasm in their content area (subject) made me want to be like them. I secretly wanted to pass out worksheets and write on the board, but I was always too shy to ask if I could be of some assistance. As I observed more teachers, still as a high school student, I started to grow jealous of how some really awesome teachers were able to enlighten students and make them grow not just in the classroom. I think I just answered my question.
I remember how one sleepless and mind-exhausting night I had gotten out of bed, turned on my light (a clamp lamp usually used in construction sites) and searched through two and a half feet tall piles of papers, looking for a worksheet that listed the requirements for the English major and the English Teacher Education major, as well as a worksheet that listed the requirements for the math major and the Math Teacher Education major.
That’s right, before I had delved in the English field, I was contemplating majoring in math and minoring in astronomy. In fact, throughout my first two years in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do or be for the rest of my life. I knew I loved so many different subjects because I had excelled in most of them in high school and I had grown to be interested in them (like a good read – once you got hooked on it, you’re sold). But then the end of my sophomore year was calling for my declaration of a major and I still wasn’t sure. It took me the whole summer to make up my mind. It was a summer of writing blogs. It was a summer of watching shows, the scripts of which gave me pleasure. It was the summer of day dreams. By my junior year my mind was eighty percent sure: I was going to be an English major. But, I hadn’t made it official, in paper, yet. Despite all the luring creativity that English brought through different media, I was still able to see myself teaching math. I figured that Social Studies included government, and Lord knows I haven’t gotten a clue about politics (and it bores me to death, well most of it, not all) and science was too lab-ish and procedural for my liking. And, although I did well in IB Spanish, I never really took it seriously.
So, sitting at my messed up desk under a yellow light (it seemed so artificial in the dead of night. Man, I really needed a new light bulb), I thought hard of which one I could see myself teaching – math or English. I remember only hearing my breathing, the crickets, a persistent and dull ringy noise from the lamp and my clock ticking, as I was hearing my thoughts run like a mad man through my mind, scratching fibers. I blame all these factors for my headache that middle of the night. Squinting my eyes as they were stinging (always indicative of a lack of sleep), I pictured myself in slacks and a collared shirt, up at the board. First I wrote an quadratic equation, asking students to find the roots. Then I saw myself writing questions like “How can you relate to Holden Caufield? Can you relate? Why or why not? Please give examples.” Did I want to work with symbols and figures and word problems for the rest of my life, or did I want to imagine and come up with thoughts, literary analysis and inevitably, essays? To be honest, I found deeper meaning in the latter and so that’s what I chose.
I also chose English because I had realized that you can never concretely be wrong or right, unlike in math. I’m sayin’ subjectivity could either kill you or raise you, but with sound evidence, you’ll have the benefit of the doubt, rest assured.
And I wanted to be different. Most of my family and relatives are in the science/health science fields or business/math/economics fields and I wanted to break that chain and take what Robert Frost calls, “the road not taken.” Despite my mom’s yearnings for my being a nurse and my dad’s yearnings for my being an accountant, I hooked up with my creative side, married it and became Mrs. English major. And, conventional and conservative though they are, they supported me. Thank you, both.
But you should teach Math, you’ll make more money and they need more math teachers now-a-days, so a job will be easy to find. Yeah, or you should do special education, you’ll make more money, for sure. That’s what I initially and immediately encountered at least once or twice a week, from others, whenever I went around with my dad to his errands or meeting with people he had to see. You know, I never really thought of the money. I thought of the pleasure I would get. So I was selfish, yes, but in a different and determined way. A healthier way? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I hope so. But then how would it be healthier?
Still being in my infancy stage of learning the ways of teaching (more like conception), I have suddenly realized that I don’t even know why I decided to be an English teacher. The surface reasons mainly drove around the idea of having paid summer vacations, but now I find that something else had compelled me to the teaching field. And yet I can’t put a finger on it. It’s that deep inside me; I can’t even find the answer – my answer.
I must keep in mind that just because I love English doesn’t mean I love to teach it – or do I? I guess, for the time being, my answer to the question of why I wanted to be an English teacher, will have to suffice with the fact that teaching was the only thing I could think of, that I could do with an English major degree besides a writer. And not only that, I recalled how, as a high school student, I always wanted to be like certain teachers, whose personality and enthusiasm in their content area (subject) made me want to be like them. I secretly wanted to pass out worksheets and write on the board, but I was always too shy to ask if I could be of some assistance. As I observed more teachers, still as a high school student, I started to grow jealous of how some really awesome teachers were able to enlighten students and make them grow not just in the classroom. I think I just answered my question.
I remember how one sleepless and mind-exhausting night I had gotten out of bed, turned on my light (a clamp lamp usually used in construction sites) and searched through two and a half feet tall piles of papers, looking for a worksheet that listed the requirements for the English major and the English Teacher Education major, as well as a worksheet that listed the requirements for the math major and the Math Teacher Education major.
That’s right, before I had delved in the English field, I was contemplating majoring in math and minoring in astronomy. In fact, throughout my first two years in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do or be for the rest of my life. I knew I loved so many different subjects because I had excelled in most of them in high school and I had grown to be interested in them (like a good read – once you got hooked on it, you’re sold). But then the end of my sophomore year was calling for my declaration of a major and I still wasn’t sure. It took me the whole summer to make up my mind. It was a summer of writing blogs. It was a summer of watching shows, the scripts of which gave me pleasure. It was the summer of day dreams. By my junior year my mind was eighty percent sure: I was going to be an English major. But, I hadn’t made it official, in paper, yet. Despite all the luring creativity that English brought through different media, I was still able to see myself teaching math. I figured that Social Studies included government, and Lord knows I haven’t gotten a clue about politics (and it bores me to death, well most of it, not all) and science was too lab-ish and procedural for my liking. And, although I did well in IB Spanish, I never really took it seriously.
So, sitting at my messed up desk under a yellow light (it seemed so artificial in the dead of night. Man, I really needed a new light bulb), I thought hard of which one I could see myself teaching – math or English. I remember only hearing my breathing, the crickets, a persistent and dull ringy noise from the lamp and my clock ticking, as I was hearing my thoughts run like a mad man through my mind, scratching fibers. I blame all these factors for my headache that middle of the night. Squinting my eyes as they were stinging (always indicative of a lack of sleep), I pictured myself in slacks and a collared shirt, up at the board. First I wrote an quadratic equation, asking students to find the roots. Then I saw myself writing questions like “How can you relate to Holden Caufield? Can you relate? Why or why not? Please give examples.” Did I want to work with symbols and figures and word problems for the rest of my life, or did I want to imagine and come up with thoughts, literary analysis and inevitably, essays? To be honest, I found deeper meaning in the latter and so that’s what I chose.
I also chose English because I had realized that you can never concretely be wrong or right, unlike in math. I’m sayin’ subjectivity could either kill you or raise you, but with sound evidence, you’ll have the benefit of the doubt, rest assured.
And I wanted to be different. Most of my family and relatives are in the science/health science fields or business/math/economics fields and I wanted to break that chain and take what Robert Frost calls, “the road not taken.” Despite my mom’s yearnings for my being a nurse and my dad’s yearnings for my being an accountant, I hooked up with my creative side, married it and became Mrs. English major. And, conventional and conservative though they are, they supported me. Thank you, both.
But you should teach Math, you’ll make more money and they need more math teachers now-a-days, so a job will be easy to find. Yeah, or you should do special education, you’ll make more money, for sure. That’s what I initially and immediately encountered at least once or twice a week, from others, whenever I went around with my dad to his errands or meeting with people he had to see. You know, I never really thought of the money. I thought of the pleasure I would get. So I was selfish, yes, but in a different and determined way. A healthier way? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I hope so. But then how would it be healthier?
Saturday, September 11, 2010
A double life or a life slowly taken over
How did I learn to play the drums?
I willingly made watching drum covers an obsession. A serious one, for it did, in fact, impact my life in a both positive and negative way. Unfortunately, watching drum covers obsessively was one of the main causes of my not doing as well in school as I used to with regards to work ethic and discipline. But the good that came out was that I gained newfound knowledge that consolidated itself whenever I practiced it on the drums. Not only that, it was pleasurable, realizing the fact that I was making something out of what I watched and observed so closely as well as the act itself, the learning.
So, am I moving somewhere? Yes, but I also am regressing a little. Regressing academically, moving forward musically. But I will try to make both sides equal. Is it possible? I will have to make it possible with determination but temptation seems to be in an eternal arm wrestle with me and sometimes, quite frankly, I get tired. I am a human, who can only try her best.
Don’t get me wrong. I am nowhere near being very good at the drums. I humble myself before those drummers I watch on youtube as well as and especially professional drummers who know drum rudiments, in particular. When I get older and start making real money, I’m gonna get me some drum lessons to learn the drum rudiments. I can teach myself some instruments, but I can’t always do everything alone. I need some help and I’m just happy to accept that fact. I am, after all, only human.
I willingly made watching drum covers an obsession. A serious one, for it did, in fact, impact my life in a both positive and negative way. Unfortunately, watching drum covers obsessively was one of the main causes of my not doing as well in school as I used to with regards to work ethic and discipline. But the good that came out was that I gained newfound knowledge that consolidated itself whenever I practiced it on the drums. Not only that, it was pleasurable, realizing the fact that I was making something out of what I watched and observed so closely as well as the act itself, the learning.
So, am I moving somewhere? Yes, but I also am regressing a little. Regressing academically, moving forward musically. But I will try to make both sides equal. Is it possible? I will have to make it possible with determination but temptation seems to be in an eternal arm wrestle with me and sometimes, quite frankly, I get tired. I am a human, who can only try her best.
Don’t get me wrong. I am nowhere near being very good at the drums. I humble myself before those drummers I watch on youtube as well as and especially professional drummers who know drum rudiments, in particular. When I get older and start making real money, I’m gonna get me some drum lessons to learn the drum rudiments. I can teach myself some instruments, but I can’t always do everything alone. I need some help and I’m just happy to accept that fact. I am, after all, only human.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Transitions = a call for hardy breakfasts
After waking up at 5:15am, . . . and then turning off the alarm clock only to fall easily back asleep for what I hoped would only be ten minutes (but actually turned out to be forty-five minutes!) I walked down the still dark hallway from my cornered room in a still semi-drowsily fashion, to the silent and empty kitchen, to whip myself somethin’ to eat.
I had the wheatiest of breakfasts if I may say: sugar-free apple cinnamon oatmeal with left over frosted mini wheats, bite size, (whatever’s left at the bottom of the ceareal bag) – yes, the sugar in this cereal totally cancelled out the sugar-free-ness of the oatmeal packet (guilty as charged for wanting something sweet in the morning – like the sweet, little nap after the alarm clock went off!) – with even more cinnamon in the form of extremely fine grandules, blue berries and lots of fat-free milk. Me loves me some milk, ever since my mom got me addicted to it. Oh yeah, the wheat germ!
I felt this breakfast was the best way to prepare myself for the first day of classes, granted I don’t have any today for this week only. But I still chose to go to school, carpooling with Ate Sherry and Steph, just to re-familiarize myself with everything I had so eagerly forgotten when the motions of summer break were overtaking my zealous self.
With the start of school signifying the end of summer break, I must look back and see if I accomplished any goals I had set for myself at the beginning to middle of summer break. If I’m not mistaken, my goals were:
1. Learn to drive. If I do, my dad promised to get me double bass kick pedals for my drum set. Digididigididigididigididigidi. That’s how they’ll sounds like, except with a deep tone.
2. Make at least one drum cover to post on youtube. Also, continue practicing/learning the drums.
3. Make at least one piano cover to post on youtube. Also, memorize the scales (I haven’t memorized all of them yet, if that even interests you, I don’t know).
4. Improve in tennis.
And the verdict? I learned to drive and my road test is on September 22. I’m thinking I’ll not get double bass kick pedals because I had bought cymbals in advance instead (right now, the cymbals are more essential to my kit than the kick pedals), although I had bought the cymbals with my money from my savings account. Nope, I didn’t do a drum cover, because I can’t record anything, at the moment. But I’ve been practicing all summer. I did in fact make a piano cover, but it’s in Ate Sherry’s laptop and she’s doesn’t know how to put it on youtube and neither do I . . . and nope, I didn’t memorize the scales. Yes, in my opinion, I did improve in tennis.
But my summer was more than just these goals, no matter how much I talk about them. I had so many good times, just chillin’ at home at night with my parents, watching rented movies from our public library, (sci-fi and scary movies). The last movie we watched was The Prestige. It is now my new favorite movie. Watching scary movies with Kuya and Liz is especially fun. Man do they love scary movies; I bet you they’ve watched all the scary movies you can think of. I also loved the loaded weekends spent with Kuya and Steph, playing basketball, tennis and running. Oh, and that one random night dancing with them to club-like music from my keyboard in our den. Steph’s got some moves. Yes, I actually did enjoy driving my mom around to all her errands when she couldn’t because she had hurt her knee; that was how I learned to drive and it was good timing too because it’s about time I learn.
So while it seems that I didn’t fully accomplish some of my goals, I don’t mind it at all because what really matters is that I made the most out of my summer and from the looks of it, I’d say I did!
I had the wheatiest of breakfasts if I may say: sugar-free apple cinnamon oatmeal with left over frosted mini wheats, bite size, (whatever’s left at the bottom of the ceareal bag) – yes, the sugar in this cereal totally cancelled out the sugar-free-ness of the oatmeal packet (guilty as charged for wanting something sweet in the morning – like the sweet, little nap after the alarm clock went off!) – with even more cinnamon in the form of extremely fine grandules, blue berries and lots of fat-free milk. Me loves me some milk, ever since my mom got me addicted to it. Oh yeah, the wheat germ!
I felt this breakfast was the best way to prepare myself for the first day of classes, granted I don’t have any today for this week only. But I still chose to go to school, carpooling with Ate Sherry and Steph, just to re-familiarize myself with everything I had so eagerly forgotten when the motions of summer break were overtaking my zealous self.
With the start of school signifying the end of summer break, I must look back and see if I accomplished any goals I had set for myself at the beginning to middle of summer break. If I’m not mistaken, my goals were:
1. Learn to drive. If I do, my dad promised to get me double bass kick pedals for my drum set. Digididigididigididigididigidi. That’s how they’ll sounds like, except with a deep tone.
2. Make at least one drum cover to post on youtube. Also, continue practicing/learning the drums.
3. Make at least one piano cover to post on youtube. Also, memorize the scales (I haven’t memorized all of them yet, if that even interests you, I don’t know).
4. Improve in tennis.
And the verdict? I learned to drive and my road test is on September 22. I’m thinking I’ll not get double bass kick pedals because I had bought cymbals in advance instead (right now, the cymbals are more essential to my kit than the kick pedals), although I had bought the cymbals with my money from my savings account. Nope, I didn’t do a drum cover, because I can’t record anything, at the moment. But I’ve been practicing all summer. I did in fact make a piano cover, but it’s in Ate Sherry’s laptop and she’s doesn’t know how to put it on youtube and neither do I . . . and nope, I didn’t memorize the scales. Yes, in my opinion, I did improve in tennis.
But my summer was more than just these goals, no matter how much I talk about them. I had so many good times, just chillin’ at home at night with my parents, watching rented movies from our public library, (sci-fi and scary movies). The last movie we watched was The Prestige. It is now my new favorite movie. Watching scary movies with Kuya and Liz is especially fun. Man do they love scary movies; I bet you they’ve watched all the scary movies you can think of. I also loved the loaded weekends spent with Kuya and Steph, playing basketball, tennis and running. Oh, and that one random night dancing with them to club-like music from my keyboard in our den. Steph’s got some moves. Yes, I actually did enjoy driving my mom around to all her errands when she couldn’t because she had hurt her knee; that was how I learned to drive and it was good timing too because it’s about time I learn.
So while it seems that I didn’t fully accomplish some of my goals, I don’t mind it at all because what really matters is that I made the most out of my summer and from the looks of it, I’d say I did!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
School's a-comin' =(
So what’s been happening? Well, I finished my junior year in college and in just a few days, I’m going to embark in my senior year in college, and with a teacher whom I don’t really like, but am forced to learn from nevertheless. I will forever dislike her -- sorry ma’am, it’s a personality thing. I never really thought you liked me anyway, but thanks for accepting me into the program, you don’t know how much that means to me; heck, it’s because I always thought you could care less about me and might have even thought had no potential in your class (I know I didn’t impress you one bit). But you still accepted me into the teaching program. I don’t know if it was my grades for every other class other than the one I had with you that made you turn, ever so delicately and unexpectedly for me, for I certainly didn’t shine very well whenever you tested me in your class. I made a fool out of myself in my shy ignorance and inexperience compared to all the other English teacher wannabe’s who were already ahead of me in the game (they were all already in the program whereas I wasn’t yet at the time because I had applied late. That just means I’m going to graduate an extra semester late). Or maybe it was pity that led your mind toward my acceptance? What did Will say from Fresh Prince? He was always behind, rollerblading with one skate but then the Banks family helped him with another. I guess I should say thanks but I know you still hate me for Lord knows what reason. Darn, I will never know. Perhaps our student-teacher relationship will mend itself in due time; come on, I’ve got three more semesters and then grad school for my masters.
So anyway, besides her, I want to talk about two other professors whom I love for their ways of teaching. They are Professor Haralson and Professor Scheckel. I think they are the best professors I’ve had in Stony Brook because I love their teaching methods (not to hard and yet not too easy) and I love their enthusiasm in literature and their entertaining personalities.
You know what Professor Haralson did on the first day of school last semester? It was raining and he came in with a big, yellow raincoat matched with what looked like a fisherman’s rubber boots and a huge opened umbrella. He walked down the aisles of desks shaking everyone’s hand, engaging in small talk around the whole room with each student he passed by. Then he made a sarcastic joke about the lousy weather while standing on top of his desk, still carrying the opened umbrella, that is of course until he threw it across the floor. Did I mention that he is quite an old man? Probably in his high fifties. I’ve taken his several of his courses before. The semester before last, you know what he did on the day of our final? He wore a Hawaiian shirt (with sunglasses hanging from the collar) with white shorts and sandals, all accompanied with a hat that looked like a sombrero. He wanted us to finish the final already so he can sit in the sand grading whatever bs we had come up with (it must have amused him; he’s a light grader, which is also why I keep taking his classes) during those last two hours of his class sitting for the final essay. What did my teaching all add up to? -- I bet he was asking himself that while enjoying the summer beach.
It was not only his personality that kept me coming for more, it was also the material he taught. He made me absolutely love contemporary short stories. He made me love short stories period. And how? Being an old man with many years of experience in teaching college students, he learned how to keep us entertained. He made us read short stories with sexual content in it. I know it’s kind of implicit that most college students and really, come to think about it, teenagers and adolescents, think about sex a lot more than older adults. I must admit this with my own experience backing me up. And it wasn’t totally rated R because it was literature; there was substance in addition to that sexual content. Like a mother giving her baby medicine in their apple sauce. It’s a disguise that works. Who said sex had no meaning in it anyway? Writers are very creative, I realized, in the different ways they described it, in the different ways they used it to convey other themes that aren’t necessarily about love. Or they described it in ways that made you truly think about what love actually means to the specific character, what’s boggling the narrator’s mind. I can remember him saying in his jocular way, “So your homework is to read this three times before you go to bed, ha!”
So anyway, that’s Professor Haralson. Professor Scheckel’s a whole other story that I’ll save for another blog.
Freakin’ school’s about to start in just a few days (next Monday to be exact) and I’m absolutely dreading it. Excuse the minor curse word, it’s just that when I’m in summer mode, I absolutely HATE the thought of going back to school mode. I mean deep-seated distaste. I can’t lie, the start of school cramps my summer style. I once told Steph that school bothers me. That is until it becomes interesting and (oh, you know I love using this word) entertaining.
I stay for the juicy short stories that I get to read in some classes -- the stories with broken or uneven love relationships that become unraveling maps to nowhere really (in the air, up for interpretation - somewhere there; you catch my drift); but, if they're lacking, I'm likely to fall asleep or slip if it were not for my robotic ability and last minute desperation (oh procrastination, what a shocker) that jumps in on time to save me from an absolute, total wreckage that is a pure failing grade, or even worse -- a sinking reputation.
Wow, that's one long sentence!
And it seems that I’ll be getting less of those short stories and more classes based on teaching. It’s a shift that’s bound to happen. Once we learn the literature/grammar part, we have to learn the ways to teach it.
So yeah, school and I don't mix until about the second or third week in, where I'm forced to share my life with it.
So anyway, besides her, I want to talk about two other professors whom I love for their ways of teaching. They are Professor Haralson and Professor Scheckel. I think they are the best professors I’ve had in Stony Brook because I love their teaching methods (not to hard and yet not too easy) and I love their enthusiasm in literature and their entertaining personalities.
You know what Professor Haralson did on the first day of school last semester? It was raining and he came in with a big, yellow raincoat matched with what looked like a fisherman’s rubber boots and a huge opened umbrella. He walked down the aisles of desks shaking everyone’s hand, engaging in small talk around the whole room with each student he passed by. Then he made a sarcastic joke about the lousy weather while standing on top of his desk, still carrying the opened umbrella, that is of course until he threw it across the floor. Did I mention that he is quite an old man? Probably in his high fifties. I’ve taken his several of his courses before. The semester before last, you know what he did on the day of our final? He wore a Hawaiian shirt (with sunglasses hanging from the collar) with white shorts and sandals, all accompanied with a hat that looked like a sombrero. He wanted us to finish the final already so he can sit in the sand grading whatever bs we had come up with (it must have amused him; he’s a light grader, which is also why I keep taking his classes) during those last two hours of his class sitting for the final essay. What did my teaching all add up to? -- I bet he was asking himself that while enjoying the summer beach.
It was not only his personality that kept me coming for more, it was also the material he taught. He made me absolutely love contemporary short stories. He made me love short stories period. And how? Being an old man with many years of experience in teaching college students, he learned how to keep us entertained. He made us read short stories with sexual content in it. I know it’s kind of implicit that most college students and really, come to think about it, teenagers and adolescents, think about sex a lot more than older adults. I must admit this with my own experience backing me up. And it wasn’t totally rated R because it was literature; there was substance in addition to that sexual content. Like a mother giving her baby medicine in their apple sauce. It’s a disguise that works. Who said sex had no meaning in it anyway? Writers are very creative, I realized, in the different ways they described it, in the different ways they used it to convey other themes that aren’t necessarily about love. Or they described it in ways that made you truly think about what love actually means to the specific character, what’s boggling the narrator’s mind. I can remember him saying in his jocular way, “So your homework is to read this three times before you go to bed, ha!”
So anyway, that’s Professor Haralson. Professor Scheckel’s a whole other story that I’ll save for another blog.
Freakin’ school’s about to start in just a few days (next Monday to be exact) and I’m absolutely dreading it. Excuse the minor curse word, it’s just that when I’m in summer mode, I absolutely HATE the thought of going back to school mode. I mean deep-seated distaste. I can’t lie, the start of school cramps my summer style. I once told Steph that school bothers me. That is until it becomes interesting and (oh, you know I love using this word) entertaining.
I stay for the juicy short stories that I get to read in some classes -- the stories with broken or uneven love relationships that become unraveling maps to nowhere really (in the air, up for interpretation - somewhere there; you catch my drift); but, if they're lacking, I'm likely to fall asleep or slip if it were not for my robotic ability and last minute desperation (oh procrastination, what a shocker) that jumps in on time to save me from an absolute, total wreckage that is a pure failing grade, or even worse -- a sinking reputation.
Wow, that's one long sentence!
And it seems that I’ll be getting less of those short stories and more classes based on teaching. It’s a shift that’s bound to happen. Once we learn the literature/grammar part, we have to learn the ways to teach it.
So yeah, school and I don't mix until about the second or third week in, where I'm forced to share my life with it.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Hopes and Fears
Recording drum covers is a difficult feat, especially for a person like me, who is, I must admit, a bit technologically inept (yes, when talking to me about technology, I'd prefer that you pretend I'm five years old). Part of the difficulty, aside from all the tech stuff, spews from the fact that recording decent drum covers is very expensive. I don't mind the practicing part; although it's time-consuming the fun I get out of it cancels that out. However we all know that money doesn't grow on trees no matter how much we wish it did. After talking with a friend with much experience in this field, I learned a thing or two about the materials I'd need to have in order to record drum covers that are not rough on the ears.
With all this said, I'm sad to say that I won't be able to make drum covers just yet. And I really wanted to so badly. It's just not financially possible to make decent covers at the moment. That and I need time to learn and familiarize myself with an audio mixer, among other recording equipment.
In order to make decent (meaning that it's not unclear and really poor quality on video) drum covers I'd need to have microphones (at least four of them for main drums/cymbals), cables, speakers, an audio mixer, a laptop that isn't broken (mine has a virus still -- shouldn't have seen that unrrated video! Just kidding (about the video) -- or am I??!!), as well as a certain music program and a video camera.
All that comes out to at least one thousand bucks. Lord knows that's not lying around anywhere, at least not under my foot.
But out of all those audio/recording equipment, the one that excites me the most is the audio mixer. Roughly, I think (remember I'm not a tech buff), this is how it outlines. I have to attach the microphones to the snare, floor tom, bass drum and overhead for the cymbals and tom-toms. With the cables, I'd attach those mic's to the audio mixer. What the audio mixer does (again, I think) is that it takes the sound that the mic's pick up from the drums/cymbals and I could create the listening experience for the listener, should the listener be wearing headphones/earphones. For example, I'd want to give the most authentic sound by making my hi-hat sound more to the left on the headphones because that's where my hi-hat is. The snare, a major part of the drum set, would most likely be centered. I'd make it so that low pitched sounds are on the bottom right when (you'd hear those sounds on the bottom right with your headphones)and nice splash cymbals and crashes on top, just like my real drum set. That audio mixer would be attached to speakers in which I would plug in my headphones so I can hear what I'm playing. The mixer would also be attached to my laptop which would have installed in it a music program in which I can edit the sound coming in. As for the video, well that's what the video camera is for. I'd video tape me playing to the drums and when it comes time to putting everything together, I'd mute the sound from the camera and replace it with the results of the editing in the music program. Then all I have to do is sync that up. If my friend could actually teach me all this, to be honest, I'd think a miracle just happened or a musical magic trick.
Does this all make sense? Am I boring you? It's all so interesting me; I've always wanted to organize sound and play around with it. I just never had the guts and determination to do it, nor the equipment, money and person to help me. But suddenly that all seems closer than I could have hoped for mostly because my determination to audio mix songs has peaked to an all time high.
And I wouldn't only have to use the audio mixer for my drums. I could use it with the piano too. Perhaps I cold make songs on the piano, record it and mix it up with the mixer and then add the drums for my own song. Now all I need is a guitar (preferably electric but it could also be acoustic), lyrics and a singer. but now I'm just asking for a. . . band!
Oh my--
Oh my goodness--
That'd be . . .
Sorry, just had a near uncontrolled ecstatic/excited moment; I had to let the feeling run through me.
Imagine - no seriously - imagine if I were the audio mixer in a band I'm in! I'd love to be the drummer/audio mixer/song writer/co-composer of a rock band (alternative or not, whichever, or a hybrid of both). Just short of that I could just make songs myself (if I had the proper recording equipment and mixer). I'd do the drums and piano (yes, it'll be piano rock) and maybe get Kuya to do the electric guitar, unless it's acoustic (but then it wouldn't get the effect of a real rock sound) or I could do the electric guitar sound using my keyboard (it'd be on a different sound other than grand piano). Yeah -- baby this could work! I just need the time and the dough.
Here I go again, talking about my hobby and totally ignoring what I really should focus on, my English teaching career. You know what I noticed? When people ask (particularly the elderly), what I'm taking up, and I'd respond with "English," the first thing that comes to their mind is grammar; but that's not all it is. it's a whole lot of writing and literature and they don't even want to stress grammar (unless it gets to the point where it gets in the way of great essay content). That's why lately I've been answering people with, "English and literature." Sorry for that random bit - it just popped in my head. So I myself absolutely love my hobbies more than my planned career. If only I were as enthusiastic in teaching as I am in recording (which I haven't done yet and still so want to do it) music and creating music, then I'd get better grades I bet. I must admit it's been slowly declining (just a tad) as my love of music has increased tenfold these past few school semesters. Oh man. then there's writing short stories. I find that more fun than learning about teaching even if it's time-consuming. it tests my creative writing skills and makes me appreciate short stories more now than ever. I love writing - creative writing - because it's like creating music.
And tennis. That's a whole other story. I love tennis and it's probably the oldest of all my hobbies. Tennis has been there since my junior year in high school. Yes, the explosion of interest in writing and music came with the college package. So what was I before tennis? An obedient nerd in school, purely academic. Nope, didn't play sports, didn't work out at the gym. I started working out/running in college too. It seemed like I experienced a late growth spurt in college in terms of my hobbies. Late bloomer is what I am -- better late than never. And yet for some this isn't late at all.
Music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, watching Whose Line is it Anyway?, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing.
That's all I think about. My love life is dry, though. Some may say it's nearing a confirmed non-existent status that begs for me to get out more (a breath a fresh air and hope and potential, away from a rusting dungeon, I might add), but to me it's more of a void-turned unconscious/conscious urge. Think of a reserved seat. It'll happen; it's there and yet it's not. I want it to materialize, for sure. Then again, who's totally sure about anything, you know? When will I finally record drum covers? That question gets annoying sometimes when other things are pestering my mind.
I feel like I'm spreading myself over too many slices of bread. I once wrote a birthday poem for Ate Sherry, in which I told her how life is a balancing act. Oh, the metaphors I think up. But seriously, I've never meant it as strongly as I do RIGHT NOW. Oh my God, how am I going to balance everything? School is going to start soon. I'm going to have to work extra hard in school to compensate for my declining interest in it (I'm heavily relying on the "I hope I get back in the zone - the one where I have a deep desire to teach" wagon). I'm going to have to get a part time job and schedule work hours (hopefully I get a job in a music store) so that I can earn money and save it up for audio/recording equipment (from here on out you ain't gonna see me touch my savings account except only to add to it). I'm going to have to find time to work out and stay in shape and I'm going to have to find time to continue writing (I'm thinking I should continue what I've been doing during my school semesters, which is generating ideas to write while I work out or have them magically appear at my doorstep in my mind right before I sleep).
I'm spreading myself, spreading myself thin. Balance . . . Bern you have to balance. But it's so hard, sometimes I can't. Yeah, but you have to if you really want to do everything you love (I wonder how far I can go without sacrificing anything . . . oh I'm pushing boundaries, baby). But it's so hard . . but you have to, you've got to -- and that's the last word, like fists climbing up the handle of a baseball bat.
You know what I really want? I just wanna . . . I just . . . I wish I could improve in all aspects of my life simultaneously. I wonder if that's possible (if it is, I'd be on cloud nine instead of in my troubled mind). I just need time to be kind to me and to cooperate with me. Oh, and good people - supportive and inspirational - to surround me. And I need the skills to perform the best balancing act I can ever pull off; that'll be my physical rendition of life. And the end result? My personal satisfaction and I hope the enjoyment of others from it =).
With all this said, I'm sad to say that I won't be able to make drum covers just yet. And I really wanted to so badly. It's just not financially possible to make decent covers at the moment. That and I need time to learn and familiarize myself with an audio mixer, among other recording equipment.
In order to make decent (meaning that it's not unclear and really poor quality on video) drum covers I'd need to have microphones (at least four of them for main drums/cymbals), cables, speakers, an audio mixer, a laptop that isn't broken (mine has a virus still -- shouldn't have seen that unrrated video! Just kidding (about the video) -- or am I??!!), as well as a certain music program and a video camera.
All that comes out to at least one thousand bucks. Lord knows that's not lying around anywhere, at least not under my foot.
But out of all those audio/recording equipment, the one that excites me the most is the audio mixer. Roughly, I think (remember I'm not a tech buff), this is how it outlines. I have to attach the microphones to the snare, floor tom, bass drum and overhead for the cymbals and tom-toms. With the cables, I'd attach those mic's to the audio mixer. What the audio mixer does (again, I think) is that it takes the sound that the mic's pick up from the drums/cymbals and I could create the listening experience for the listener, should the listener be wearing headphones/earphones. For example, I'd want to give the most authentic sound by making my hi-hat sound more to the left on the headphones because that's where my hi-hat is. The snare, a major part of the drum set, would most likely be centered. I'd make it so that low pitched sounds are on the bottom right when (you'd hear those sounds on the bottom right with your headphones)and nice splash cymbals and crashes on top, just like my real drum set. That audio mixer would be attached to speakers in which I would plug in my headphones so I can hear what I'm playing. The mixer would also be attached to my laptop which would have installed in it a music program in which I can edit the sound coming in. As for the video, well that's what the video camera is for. I'd video tape me playing to the drums and when it comes time to putting everything together, I'd mute the sound from the camera and replace it with the results of the editing in the music program. Then all I have to do is sync that up. If my friend could actually teach me all this, to be honest, I'd think a miracle just happened or a musical magic trick.
Does this all make sense? Am I boring you? It's all so interesting me; I've always wanted to organize sound and play around with it. I just never had the guts and determination to do it, nor the equipment, money and person to help me. But suddenly that all seems closer than I could have hoped for mostly because my determination to audio mix songs has peaked to an all time high.
And I wouldn't only have to use the audio mixer for my drums. I could use it with the piano too. Perhaps I cold make songs on the piano, record it and mix it up with the mixer and then add the drums for my own song. Now all I need is a guitar (preferably electric but it could also be acoustic), lyrics and a singer. but now I'm just asking for a. . . band!
Oh my--
Oh my goodness--
That'd be . . .
Sorry, just had a near uncontrolled ecstatic/excited moment; I had to let the feeling run through me.
Imagine - no seriously - imagine if I were the audio mixer in a band I'm in! I'd love to be the drummer/audio mixer/song writer/co-composer of a rock band (alternative or not, whichever, or a hybrid of both). Just short of that I could just make songs myself (if I had the proper recording equipment and mixer). I'd do the drums and piano (yes, it'll be piano rock) and maybe get Kuya to do the electric guitar, unless it's acoustic (but then it wouldn't get the effect of a real rock sound) or I could do the electric guitar sound using my keyboard (it'd be on a different sound other than grand piano). Yeah -- baby this could work! I just need the time and the dough.
Here I go again, talking about my hobby and totally ignoring what I really should focus on, my English teaching career. You know what I noticed? When people ask (particularly the elderly), what I'm taking up, and I'd respond with "English," the first thing that comes to their mind is grammar; but that's not all it is. it's a whole lot of writing and literature and they don't even want to stress grammar (unless it gets to the point where it gets in the way of great essay content). That's why lately I've been answering people with, "English and literature." Sorry for that random bit - it just popped in my head. So I myself absolutely love my hobbies more than my planned career. If only I were as enthusiastic in teaching as I am in recording (which I haven't done yet and still so want to do it) music and creating music, then I'd get better grades I bet. I must admit it's been slowly declining (just a tad) as my love of music has increased tenfold these past few school semesters. Oh man. then there's writing short stories. I find that more fun than learning about teaching even if it's time-consuming. it tests my creative writing skills and makes me appreciate short stories more now than ever. I love writing - creative writing - because it's like creating music.
And tennis. That's a whole other story. I love tennis and it's probably the oldest of all my hobbies. Tennis has been there since my junior year in high school. Yes, the explosion of interest in writing and music came with the college package. So what was I before tennis? An obedient nerd in school, purely academic. Nope, didn't play sports, didn't work out at the gym. I started working out/running in college too. It seemed like I experienced a late growth spurt in college in terms of my hobbies. Late bloomer is what I am -- better late than never. And yet for some this isn't late at all.
Music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, watching Whose Line is it Anyway?, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing, music, tennis, writing.
That's all I think about. My love life is dry, though. Some may say it's nearing a confirmed non-existent status that begs for me to get out more (a breath a fresh air and hope and potential, away from a rusting dungeon, I might add), but to me it's more of a void-turned unconscious/conscious urge. Think of a reserved seat. It'll happen; it's there and yet it's not. I want it to materialize, for sure. Then again, who's totally sure about anything, you know? When will I finally record drum covers? That question gets annoying sometimes when other things are pestering my mind.
I feel like I'm spreading myself over too many slices of bread. I once wrote a birthday poem for Ate Sherry, in which I told her how life is a balancing act. Oh, the metaphors I think up. But seriously, I've never meant it as strongly as I do RIGHT NOW. Oh my God, how am I going to balance everything? School is going to start soon. I'm going to have to work extra hard in school to compensate for my declining interest in it (I'm heavily relying on the "I hope I get back in the zone - the one where I have a deep desire to teach" wagon). I'm going to have to get a part time job and schedule work hours (hopefully I get a job in a music store) so that I can earn money and save it up for audio/recording equipment (from here on out you ain't gonna see me touch my savings account except only to add to it). I'm going to have to find time to work out and stay in shape and I'm going to have to find time to continue writing (I'm thinking I should continue what I've been doing during my school semesters, which is generating ideas to write while I work out or have them magically appear at my doorstep in my mind right before I sleep).
I'm spreading myself, spreading myself thin. Balance . . . Bern you have to balance. But it's so hard, sometimes I can't. Yeah, but you have to if you really want to do everything you love (I wonder how far I can go without sacrificing anything . . . oh I'm pushing boundaries, baby). But it's so hard . . but you have to, you've got to -- and that's the last word, like fists climbing up the handle of a baseball bat.
You know what I really want? I just wanna . . . I just . . . I wish I could improve in all aspects of my life simultaneously. I wonder if that's possible (if it is, I'd be on cloud nine instead of in my troubled mind). I just need time to be kind to me and to cooperate with me. Oh, and good people - supportive and inspirational - to surround me. And I need the skills to perform the best balancing act I can ever pull off; that'll be my physical rendition of life. And the end result? My personal satisfaction and I hope the enjoyment of others from it =).
Friday, August 13, 2010
Homosexuality
Why can’t you love someone you love because they’re the same sex as you? Wouldn’t forbidding this be an act of sexism, then? “You’re not allowed to love her because she’s a girl,” that’s sexism right? But then you look at the bigger picture and they say, “And you’re also a girl.” Then conservative people squirm in disgust. If homosexuality’s been around for so long, why can’t we just accept it and get along? Basic questions, people, the defending answer to which would humor me. What’s sinful about this kind of love? The fact that it doesn’t lead to producing children which is what God intended sex for? You may say, “Exactly!” but that doesn’t cut it for me. Would it make a difference if it didn’t say in the Bible that homosexuality is sinful? Would people since the beginning of the Bible accept homosexuality as normal, or was the taboo set in society even before the Bible? There are so many questions I . . . I . . . I have a headache.
I recently took a survey that was used for scientific research in the field of psychology and it was about immorality. The survey had grounds on personality and basically what it was all about was to see where my boundaries are as far as what I consider to be immoral – where is my borderline in terms of immorality, I guess I should say. One of the main issues on the survey was homosexuality or just sexuality in general – premarital sex, causal sex, masturbation, hetero/homosexual sex. Are all of these immoral and to what degree (extreme, so-so, not really, etc)? Other issues included smoking, pollution, littering, the use of curse words, all of which are out of this topic though. As a result of the survey, which I must say was rather intriguing to me because I never really analyzed this side of myself, I discovered that I’m pretty liberal. I’m permissive, tolerant of what most others would forbid, particularly in terms of sexuality. But that contradicted with my religion, which is why I decided to label myself a liberal Christian, if such a thing can exist.
Oh hypocrisy. Don’t kill yourself over it. Everyone is a hypocrite and we can attribute that attribute to the fact that we have feelings and opinions and then we have deeper and truer feelings and opinions. We could try to not be hypocrites but we’re all mixtures of a little of many beliefs and values that may get entangled. So what if they do? Don’t get me wrong. It’s worth trying not to be a hypocrite, you gotta try your strength, but in my opinion, it’s not something to die over. Circumstances change and we find that we’re not as constant as the sun. We’re more like moons because we have phases. Let’s face it, we’re lunatics at heart because we’re not perfect but imperfect hypocrites who are just trying to do the right thing, which is following our hearts whichever way it sways. All I’m saying is that you should live by who you are even if that means being a liberal Christian. Take what you like and leave what you disagree with.
I was kind of hesitant to post this because I realize it is a bit personal, but it was kairotic and therefore somewhat appropriate. It was also interesting, at least for me, to explore. I thought what harm would it do me? None, right? – so long as every sets aside differences and practices tolerance contentedly. I mean, I have obviously.
No, I’m not homosexual myself, at least I don’t think I am.
I recently took a survey that was used for scientific research in the field of psychology and it was about immorality. The survey had grounds on personality and basically what it was all about was to see where my boundaries are as far as what I consider to be immoral – where is my borderline in terms of immorality, I guess I should say. One of the main issues on the survey was homosexuality or just sexuality in general – premarital sex, causal sex, masturbation, hetero/homosexual sex. Are all of these immoral and to what degree (extreme, so-so, not really, etc)? Other issues included smoking, pollution, littering, the use of curse words, all of which are out of this topic though. As a result of the survey, which I must say was rather intriguing to me because I never really analyzed this side of myself, I discovered that I’m pretty liberal. I’m permissive, tolerant of what most others would forbid, particularly in terms of sexuality. But that contradicted with my religion, which is why I decided to label myself a liberal Christian, if such a thing can exist.
Oh hypocrisy. Don’t kill yourself over it. Everyone is a hypocrite and we can attribute that attribute to the fact that we have feelings and opinions and then we have deeper and truer feelings and opinions. We could try to not be hypocrites but we’re all mixtures of a little of many beliefs and values that may get entangled. So what if they do? Don’t get me wrong. It’s worth trying not to be a hypocrite, you gotta try your strength, but in my opinion, it’s not something to die over. Circumstances change and we find that we’re not as constant as the sun. We’re more like moons because we have phases. Let’s face it, we’re lunatics at heart because we’re not perfect but imperfect hypocrites who are just trying to do the right thing, which is following our hearts whichever way it sways. All I’m saying is that you should live by who you are even if that means being a liberal Christian. Take what you like and leave what you disagree with.
I was kind of hesitant to post this because I realize it is a bit personal, but it was kairotic and therefore somewhat appropriate. It was also interesting, at least for me, to explore. I thought what harm would it do me? None, right? – so long as every sets aside differences and practices tolerance contentedly. I mean, I have obviously.
No, I’m not homosexual myself, at least I don’t think I am.
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