This is amazing!
Youtube tags it "500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art"
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Speaking Up
I get a lot of email forwards from people of many different opinions and beliefs with whom I don't necessarily agree. Usually, I don't respond. Today, though, I got this one, and I felt compelled to respond to the way the message was twisted to represent a xenophobia that is downright unbecoming. Those who make ignorant assumptions or harbor misconceptions about immigrants in this country need to hear from those of us who don't share their views. I couldn't let this one go without sending a reply to EVERYONE on the list of recipients.
Here's the forward:
The year is 1907.....but the speaker knew what he was talking about. READ PRINT UNDER PICTURE
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907. "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt 1907 EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO READ THIS!
Here is my reply:
This is true, and while we are agreeing with this, we need to remember our parents and grandparents who spoke their "first" language at home for years while they became fully versed in English, kept and honored the customs of their countries of origin, and loved and longed for "the homeland" while they were proud Americans. We see evidence of this all around us, and it remains part of the beautiful, complex heritage of our country today.
Immigrants have always been demonized, but don't be fooled by those who say Mexicans and other immigrants don't want to assimilate- I am a teacher in a public school and I see evidence, every day, of this desire to become one of us. Don't be fooled by the tongues that wag and mouths that spout hatred for those who look and speak differently than we who are blessed to have been born here by an accident of birth. The people who have come to this country recently are willing to work the most menial and difficult jobs, and have, against all odds, made their way to America. They are so grateful for the opportunities this country affords them. They are willing to work hard, they want their children to do well in school, and they desperately want to take part in our democracy and become full-fledged American citizens.
Sometimes, a girl's just gotta speak her mind.
Here's the forward:
The year is 1907.....but the speaker knew what he was talking about. READ PRINT UNDER PICTURE
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907. "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt 1907 EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO READ THIS!
Here is my reply:
This is true, and while we are agreeing with this, we need to remember our parents and grandparents who spoke their "first" language at home for years while they became fully versed in English, kept and honored the customs of their countries of origin, and loved and longed for "the homeland" while they were proud Americans. We see evidence of this all around us, and it remains part of the beautiful, complex heritage of our country today.
Immigrants have always been demonized, but don't be fooled by those who say Mexicans and other immigrants don't want to assimilate- I am a teacher in a public school and I see evidence, every day, of this desire to become one of us. Don't be fooled by the tongues that wag and mouths that spout hatred for those who look and speak differently than we who are blessed to have been born here by an accident of birth. The people who have come to this country recently are willing to work the most menial and difficult jobs, and have, against all odds, made their way to America. They are so grateful for the opportunities this country affords them. They are willing to work hard, they want their children to do well in school, and they desperately want to take part in our democracy and become full-fledged American citizens.
Sometimes, a girl's just gotta speak her mind.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Give Me a Day
This morning, I learned from The Writer's Almanac web page that the piano tune ushering in Garrison Keillor's voice every day on that site is a Scandinavian folk song called "Gi Mig En Dag" ("Give Me a Day").
Next, I did a Google search and found a paper on the "internets" written by a musicologist named Frans Mossberg. He uses the tune to offer some "principal and methodogical issues on studies of timbre in words, music, and vocal performance." Yup, that's what Frans' paper does. I think I'll leave that work to him, but he provides this English free translation for part of the song:
Give me a day of winds and of sun by beaches so light and so clear,
Where silences roam in meadows and grass by the sea down by the valleys of Osterlen.
Lovely words, aren't they?
Then, I wondered exactly what timbre means. This comes from my dictionary on cdrom:
timbre (tàm´ber, tîm´-) noun
1. The quality of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume.
2. Music. The distinctive tone of an instrument or a singing voice.
[French, from Old French, drum, clapperless bell, probably from Medieval Greek *timbanon, drum, from Greek tumpanon, kettledrum.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.
Life would be so much less interesting without our computers.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Unholy & Cannoli
I haven't had any tears over the war for a long time, now. The daily grind of hearing the awful news seems to have numbed me in the way that war does when you're far from it, not making any personal sacrifices. But I did last night, and it surprised me. As I drove home from school, NPR was reporting the killing of the two Iraqi newsmen who worked for ABC. I listened and drove on. Then, at home, I had the tv on in the background and something in the voice of the reporter stopped me; there was such a remarkable sadness, I had to take myself over to the box and look. There it was again, the story of the deaths of these two men. There were pictures of them doing their jobs, clips from stories they had covered, and a brief description of their personalities. One had been a joker, a boisterous fellow with a wife and two small children, the other described as a shy man. He looked like a shy man. In the moment I felt a stab of utter futility, did a sort of coughing thing and banged out a sob. It caught me completely off guard.
I signed up for a daily podcast called "The Writer's Almanac." There's a daily vignette from Garrison Keillor that includes a brief "today in history" report and a poem. I've been listening first thing every morning and have fallen in love with its musical introduction, a sweet, simple chorded piano piece that reminds me of the kind of music my second grade teacher used to play for us in the classroom. Remember when second grade teachers all played the classroom piano?
Today's poem addresses a much less traumatizing version of that same surprise of emotion that caught me off guard last night:
Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi
We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."
Here's the link if you want to listen or sign up:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
I signed up for a daily podcast called "The Writer's Almanac." There's a daily vignette from Garrison Keillor that includes a brief "today in history" report and a poem. I've been listening first thing every morning and have fallen in love with its musical introduction, a sweet, simple chorded piano piece that reminds me of the kind of music my second grade teacher used to play for us in the classroom. Remember when second grade teachers all played the classroom piano?
Today's poem addresses a much less traumatizing version of that same surprise of emotion that caught me off guard last night:
Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi
We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."
Here's the link if you want to listen or sign up:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Needing some summer
School is getting to me! I've seen this look on the faces of kids lately.
Could this be what they're thinking? Could it be we all need to get us some summer?
I know, I know, teachers have it made, having summers off.
Seriously, I don't know if I could do this job if it didn't involve getting away from it for a couple of months at a time. I guess we adjust to the circumstances of our work, so I'll just say that if this job didn't involve summers off, I'm not sure if I'd be any good at it at all, and leave it at that. Cuz I have 15 days left at the moment, and at this stage I'm ready to crack.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Code Monkey Dance
Today I read about Jonathan Coulton, a musician who quit his job in the tech industry to devote himself to music full time. He markets his music on the internet and committed to writing a song a week for a year. His song "Code Monkey" is a tribute to his former life, and his fans love it. I haven't heard a lot of this other stuff, but this one is very pop-y. Confession... I love pop-y sounding music! And I like this song. I think it's funny; extra funny considering Mr. Coutlon's former life as a code monkey.
Here's a YouTube version I particularly like:
A girl in what appears to be a dorm room sets up her web cam and does the Code Monkey dance. In an interview about the infectious nature of the web, he said he was playing a gig and some people in the venue were doing the dance.
I was singing this song in my head all day at school. Have I mentioned I really like monkeys?
Here's a YouTube version I particularly like:
A girl in what appears to be a dorm room sets up her web cam and does the Code Monkey dance. In an interview about the infectious nature of the web, he said he was playing a gig and some people in the venue were doing the dance.
I was singing this song in my head all day at school. Have I mentioned I really like monkeys?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Pi
I decided I'm going to read Life of Pi again this summer. I really liked that book, and after watching something about people lost at sea on the Discovery Channel (it was really gruesome), I simply have to read it again. My friend told me her son read it for a college class, so now I can't wait to attack the kid when he gets home this summer, to find out what was said about the story in his class. I have theories and I WANT VALIDATION!!!!
Speaking of reading, I'm presently reading and grading short stories from my creative writers. Does this sound like fun? It's actually one of the most difficult things about my teaching job. Sometimes I find myself thoroughly impressed by the talent of a student, sometimes I read and spend a reeeeeeeeeally long time figuring out what to say about a story that leaves me wondering how this writer could take my class and write THIS story. Someone's not listening...... Nuff said.
It's Mother's Day. I got a card from my daughter that says this:
Today, we celebrate our most valuable resource-- mothers....
Tomorrow, we go back to oil.
I just luuuuuuuv my quirky, funny, smart, Texas daughter! You can read her blog at:
http://butterflypalacedispatch.blogspot.com/
It's a goodie!
Speaking of reading, I'm presently reading and grading short stories from my creative writers. Does this sound like fun? It's actually one of the most difficult things about my teaching job. Sometimes I find myself thoroughly impressed by the talent of a student, sometimes I read and spend a reeeeeeeeeally long time figuring out what to say about a story that leaves me wondering how this writer could take my class and write THIS story. Someone's not listening...... Nuff said.
It's Mother's Day. I got a card from my daughter that says this:
Today, we celebrate our most valuable resource-- mothers....
Tomorrow, we go back to oil.
I just luuuuuuuv my quirky, funny, smart, Texas daughter! You can read her blog at:
http://butterflypalacedispatch.blogspot.com/
It's a goodie!
Saturday, May 12, 2007
A Poem
This poem came out of nowhere, but I'm putting it somewhere, so I don't forget it.
I went to Screw U
But didn’t learn a thing
About any of it
Until I met the one I’d
Leave by waiting
For the locksmith
Early in the morning.
Then I figured out you
Change it all and don’t
Look back until you’ve
Gone so far
The phone book won’t help.
The pots and pans don’t even
Remember a time the meals
Were made by chopping up stuff
Throwing it all together
They took on new
Flavors and less fat.
Where there was fearless
Faltering at every turn
I turned in to a little place
Where I unlocked the secrets of
My adult education.
Kind of crotchety, isn't it? Not the kind of poem that becomes a beautiful morning like this! I'm going peace walkin', and then I'll see if I can stand to cough up the 60 bucks for a Wisconsin fishing license with a trout stamp.
I recently drove over to have a look at my perfect little stream near Red Wing. I'm almost afraid to get my fly rod out of its case, after not using it at all last summer. If it's bent or something, I don't think I'll be able to stand the sadness. Or I'll figure out a way to fish with a bent rod.
One of the best things about the stream is that there is almost never anyone on it, except for some cows and a bull I fear greatly. But not as much as I fear being seen by "the fellas," or the yuppie experts with their $300 polarized lenses and other fancy gear, who would detect, in a heartbeat, that I have almost no idea what I'm doing.
But HA!- Even they don't know about this glittering little gem, perfectly landscaped for a shy novice without waders. Well, there's one old guy who's nice; I trust him not to watch me spend 15 minutes tying on a fly and then flinging it into the weeds behind me. If he does, he keeps his distance and minds his own beeswax.
I went to Screw U
But didn’t learn a thing
About any of it
Until I met the one I’d
Leave by waiting
For the locksmith
Early in the morning.
Then I figured out you
Change it all and don’t
Look back until you’ve
Gone so far
The phone book won’t help.
The pots and pans don’t even
Remember a time the meals
Were made by chopping up stuff
Throwing it all together
They took on new
Flavors and less fat.
Where there was fearless
Faltering at every turn
I turned in to a little place
Where I unlocked the secrets of
My adult education.
Kind of crotchety, isn't it? Not the kind of poem that becomes a beautiful morning like this! I'm going peace walkin', and then I'll see if I can stand to cough up the 60 bucks for a Wisconsin fishing license with a trout stamp.
I recently drove over to have a look at my perfect little stream near Red Wing. I'm almost afraid to get my fly rod out of its case, after not using it at all last summer. If it's bent or something, I don't think I'll be able to stand the sadness. Or I'll figure out a way to fish with a bent rod.
One of the best things about the stream is that there is almost never anyone on it, except for some cows and a bull I fear greatly. But not as much as I fear being seen by "the fellas," or the yuppie experts with their $300 polarized lenses and other fancy gear, who would detect, in a heartbeat, that I have almost no idea what I'm doing.
But HA!- Even they don't know about this glittering little gem, perfectly landscaped for a shy novice without waders. Well, there's one old guy who's nice; I trust him not to watch me spend 15 minutes tying on a fly and then flinging it into the weeds behind me. If he does, he keeps his distance and minds his own beeswax.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Holy Cow!
I haven't been able to sign in to my blog for...a really long time. I switched to the google version, and it screwed up everything. The "it" being me, probably, as I'm sometimes so absent-minded and disorganized I charge into a new tech situation without understanding just what it is I'm doing. My take on this is that you gotta hand it to me for the charging in in the first place, but, as I have learned (well, evidently not), that can sometimes create problems.
So, just this minute, I was fooling around with ALL the issues forums, trouble-shooting, and suggestions and it worked!
Now, I fear I'll never get on again, as I have no idea what I did that made the signing on happen. Story of my life, in one way or another, and as fears go, a rather minor one.
But I'm back. For this moment in time. We shall see about the rest of them.
And why am I Holy-Cowing over my return? I missed me! Ha!
So, just this minute, I was fooling around with ALL the issues forums, trouble-shooting, and suggestions and it worked!
Now, I fear I'll never get on again, as I have no idea what I did that made the signing on happen. Story of my life, in one way or another, and as fears go, a rather minor one.
But I'm back. For this moment in time. We shall see about the rest of them.
And why am I Holy-Cowing over my return? I missed me! Ha!
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