two hundred public words 26/30
I know I keep saying that I am going to hew more strictly to 200 words, but honestly, tonight I think I will. Writing this on a Saturday night is... bah, not what I would rather be doing. Yes, I could have written it at any point today, and did not.
Off topic: what I *did* do this evening, before writing this was to watch a Bollywood romcom on Netflix Instant Watch... one I hadn't seen. That isn't as easy a procedure as one might think. I mean, watching one is easy enough. Choosing one, on the other hand... oy. Last night I tried one called Life Partner and I could only take about three minutes of it. I generally love B'wood, but that thing was horrific. And I couldn't even really tell you why. Entitled obnoxious Indian males being 'humorous' about how oppressive marriage is? Rich NRIs swanning around in sports cars outracing (slow, ground-bound) single seater airplanes? I don't know, but it was incredibly wretched, and I turned it off even before all the opening credits were done.
Tonight, I gritted my teeth and tried again. I liked the movie much better -- it was Dil Kabaddi which I think would translate to Wrestling Hearts, or Heart Wrestling, something like that. It's odd I even know that, and it's only because I watched Raajneeti at the Fremont Big Cinemas 7 with M., several weeks ago. And that sport is in the movie. And M. already knew what it was, though he could not succeed at explaining the rules to me. At all. Anyway, this was an okay movie about modern marriage and infidelity. Annoying and also fun to listen to and see how much I could pick up... quite a lot. It's slowly seeping in, this language, even if I have done almost none of my planned Hindi studying, this summer. I liked the cast, though I am starting to believe that Irrfan Khan is incapable of being in a Bollywood movie that is at all masala. If he's in it, it is going to be more or less arty or mainstream Western style. With bad to no item numbers. But man, I like Soha Ali Khan and Konkona Sen Sharma, especially the latter. I have never seen her do a bad job, ever, Konkona Sen Sharma.
Oh. Yeah. This entry is supposed to be about YAF. Oops. I don't have many historical YAF authors left. Christopher Paul Curtis is the guy for this entry. He's an excellent, excellent, politically and socially conscious writer of historical YAF. Christopher Paul Curtis wrote The Watsons go to Birmingham and Bud, Not Buddy, both of which have won awards and are used constantly in schools. Curtis is black, and he uses his family's experiences in his books. Man, the Wiki article on Curtis is WELL worth reading: dude is from Flint, Michigan, and worked for thirteen years on the Buick assembly line! Dayum. Now that's a motivation for me. Not that I needed one; I have read two of his books and am eagerly looking forward to reading a third.
The Watsons go to Birmingham is straight fictionalized history around the time of the Civil Rights (or Black Freedom) Movement. A black family from the North travel South to stay with relatives and are caught up in the struggles in Birmingham, Alabama. I don't need to say that the book is a tearjerker, do I? It's very well done, though. Much, much better than Robinet's attempt to depict the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
His next major book, Bud, Not Buddy moves from the 60s to the Depression, in the 1930s. An orphan runs away, intending to find his father, who he believes is a band leader of a group called So-and-So and "The Dusky Devastators of the Depression" which is the best name I've ever heard of for a band, and is also apparently straight from Curtis's family history. Bud is engaging and believable, with his unending list of randomly numbered lessons/rules for life. I have never met a student who was not sucked into that story.
Finally, his most recent novel goes further back still, to the life of a freedman -- or a freedboy, anyway -- living in Ontario, Canada. I really want to get Elijah of Buxton. It too is based in a historically real setting, and I have always been curious both about the Underground Railroad and about the end stations in Canada. Is there (I'm asking the lazyweb here) any major national museum in the US of the Underground RR? Shouldn't there be one near Cincinnati or something? Oh, and Elijah of Buxton features Frederick Douglass as a character, hurrah! My favorite rhetorician, ever.
Off topic: what I *did* do this evening, before writing this was to watch a Bollywood romcom on Netflix Instant Watch... one I hadn't seen. That isn't as easy a procedure as one might think. I mean, watching one is easy enough. Choosing one, on the other hand... oy. Last night I tried one called Life Partner and I could only take about three minutes of it. I generally love B'wood, but that thing was horrific. And I couldn't even really tell you why. Entitled obnoxious Indian males being 'humorous' about how oppressive marriage is? Rich NRIs swanning around in sports cars outracing (slow, ground-bound) single seater airplanes? I don't know, but it was incredibly wretched, and I turned it off even before all the opening credits were done.
Tonight, I gritted my teeth and tried again. I liked the movie much better -- it was Dil Kabaddi which I think would translate to Wrestling Hearts, or Heart Wrestling, something like that. It's odd I even know that, and it's only because I watched Raajneeti at the Fremont Big Cinemas 7 with M., several weeks ago. And that sport is in the movie. And M. already knew what it was, though he could not succeed at explaining the rules to me. At all. Anyway, this was an okay movie about modern marriage and infidelity. Annoying and also fun to listen to and see how much I could pick up... quite a lot. It's slowly seeping in, this language, even if I have done almost none of my planned Hindi studying, this summer. I liked the cast, though I am starting to believe that Irrfan Khan is incapable of being in a Bollywood movie that is at all masala. If he's in it, it is going to be more or less arty or mainstream Western style. With bad to no item numbers. But man, I like Soha Ali Khan and Konkona Sen Sharma, especially the latter. I have never seen her do a bad job, ever, Konkona Sen Sharma.
Oh. Yeah. This entry is supposed to be about YAF. Oops. I don't have many historical YAF authors left. Christopher Paul Curtis is the guy for this entry. He's an excellent, excellent, politically and socially conscious writer of historical YAF. Christopher Paul Curtis wrote The Watsons go to Birmingham and Bud, Not Buddy, both of which have won awards and are used constantly in schools. Curtis is black, and he uses his family's experiences in his books. Man, the Wiki article on Curtis is WELL worth reading: dude is from Flint, Michigan, and worked for thirteen years on the Buick assembly line! Dayum. Now that's a motivation for me. Not that I needed one; I have read two of his books and am eagerly looking forward to reading a third.
The Watsons go to Birmingham is straight fictionalized history around the time of the Civil Rights (or Black Freedom) Movement. A black family from the North travel South to stay with relatives and are caught up in the struggles in Birmingham, Alabama. I don't need to say that the book is a tearjerker, do I? It's very well done, though. Much, much better than Robinet's attempt to depict the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
His next major book, Bud, Not Buddy moves from the 60s to the Depression, in the 1930s. An orphan runs away, intending to find his father, who he believes is a band leader of a group called So-and-So and "The Dusky Devastators of the Depression" which is the best name I've ever heard of for a band, and is also apparently straight from Curtis's family history. Bud is engaging and believable, with his unending list of randomly numbered lessons/rules for life. I have never met a student who was not sucked into that story.
Finally, his most recent novel goes further back still, to the life of a freedman -- or a freedboy, anyway -- living in Ontario, Canada. I really want to get Elijah of Buxton. It too is based in a historically real setting, and I have always been curious both about the Underground Railroad and about the end stations in Canada. Is there (I'm asking the lazyweb here) any major national museum in the US of the Underground RR? Shouldn't there be one near Cincinnati or something? Oh, and Elijah of Buxton features Frederick Douglass as a character, hurrah! My favorite rhetorician, ever.