Books!

I just finished Mark Edmondson's book Why Read? and am reading David Denby's Great Books, about his returning to Columbia in later adulthood to experience reading and discussing the works he studied as an undergrad. All the while, I ask myself how I can translate what I'm learning from this reading to the high school classes I teach (English 9 and Creative Writing). These are the things I have the luxury to ponder during the summer, when not confronted with the daily realities of teaching. Are you buying this justification for my long summer vacations? I can hear the masses (masses? at this blog? okay then, the few) saying, "Wouldn't if be nice if we all had such time to reflect on the function and practice of our jobs?"
To that I say, " Yes! It would!"

Edmundson's book proposes that reading and a study of the humanities is especially important for those who find themselves living in a culture where they can't find a good fit for their sensibilities and have a vague idea that there's something more out there than the value systems their education, religious training, families, and early experiences have transmitted to them.

In many ways, I'm so Midwestern I reek of hard work, endless stretches of corn rows rustling in the August wind, and Lake Woebegone stoicism. And I'm proud of it. In many ways, I feel fortunate to have been raised in my family, in a little Midwestern town, with my particular set of experiences. But....I'm recalling the reader's history I wrote for my Teaching Lit professor, in which I described reading as a lifeline for a curious girl from a small Iowa town, a dedicated, short-on-cash young mother with a desire to know the world better, and then a forty-something college student with a love of learning and a dream to teach.

Edmunson's book takes a scholarly approach to the topic, but in this unscholarly blog I'd like to say that my experience proves he's right. Reading shaped me every bit as much as corn fields, Sunday school and motherhood, and continues to do so.

As for Denby's book about revisiting the discussions of texts he read as a student, if you've been reading this blog you know that should I ever hit the jackpot and free myself from having to earn a living, I will selfishly set out to do exactly that. Yes, he writes mostly (but not entirely) about reading the dead, white, male writers of the Western world who have shaped thought for centuries, and I mostly agree it's high time all the other thinkers had a crack at our minds. But I'd settle for Denby's experience any day, and for now, I'll do my usual thing: read about it.

A friend of mine knew someone who thought life mostly sucked, and the salvation in this miserable existence was knowing there are so many great books yet to be read. Between the two of us, when life went sour we'd laugh and say, "Thank god there's books!"

I'm pretty sure we were only half joking.

Curriculum Writing

I've been working on writing curriculum the past few days and think I may be onto something. Being a lazy public school teacher who spends summers surfing the internet on your tax dollars, I give you this:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=62629

We Will Not Be Silenced

Check out this video:

Fiction and Nonfiction

I finished teaching the summer class that prepares 8th graders for the high school, so the school year is now over for me. I thought I'd do more blogging when I wasn't spending my evenings reading student writing, but it doesn't look that way, does it? I can't explain why I've been reading more and blogging less, except to say I am getting closer to the bottom of my stack of must-reads. What luxury!

At the risk of sounding like all I do is spend my free time sitting on my butt reading or watching t.v. (this is only partly true), I'm driven to mention a forum I watched yesterday (hey- I was cleaning out the kitchen junk drawer!). Cspan covered the annual conference on the progressive movement and the internet sponsored by the DailyKos blog. Generally, the forum addressed the idea that the blogosphere is now doing the job that the press is supposed to be doing.

One of the participants was Joe Wilson. To summarize, Joe Wilson is the man who outed our president for lying to us when he used the nuclear threat as a rationalization for making war on Iraq. Bush told us Iraq had attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger in order to create nuclear weapons. Joe Wilson published an op-ed essay in the New York Times which said this was not so. And Joe would know, as he was the Foreign Service official who had been sent to investigate those very claims. King George did not take kindly to this and in turn, someone in his court retaliated by outing Joe's wife, who was working as a U.S. CIA operative. Today, the evil Karl Rove received word that he will not be indicted as a blabbermouth, but Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to the Vice President, has been. To understate it grossly, this act compromised national security and decimated the lives of a couple who had spent years in service to the United States. Need anyone ask why stories of political intrigue aren't in my stack of must-reads? Why bother with fiction when the truth is stranger?

For me, the most riveting presenter at YearlyKos was Larry Johnson, a proclaimed conservative and former state department CIA analyst and counter-terrorism expert who said simply this:
When George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld asked the CIA if there was any proof of a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, the CIA told them "No." And when they asked the CIA if Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger, they were told "No." These men lied when they used these scare tactics to convince congress and the American people that their desire to wage war on Iraq was justified. And they knew it. When they were caught and rationalized their lies by saying they had been given faulty intelligence, they were lying. And they knew it.

Our president turned up in Iraq today, looking quite smug about the recent "success" there. Karl Rove spoke at a dinner last night and advised Republicans to make no excuses for the invasion of Iraq. While the war rages on, the US/Coalition forces body count is at 2,722, untold thousands of Iraqis have been killed along with countless numbers of those maimed and wounded on all of the many "sides" of this war.

I'm not feeling the success, and I wouldn't know where to begin to make excuses for the behavior of my government. This is no lie. And I know it.