Day 6: The 30 Day Book Meme
Not a newsflash to some people, but I am insane.
I am going to sub 7 straight periods. Normal teaching load is 5. Note to self: when the lovely secretary that hooks you up with jobs needs you, don't automatically nod yes. Think about what you're agreeing to. Or you might have to teach physics again and rely on making bizarre references to jokes from The Big Bang Theory.
Also, Hemingway is no fun to teach on the fly. Even when it is fun to teach. Which is not often. Especially to 9th graders.
Also, all you Japanese learning people out there, can anyone recommend me a good book to learn basic Kanji? (Like, I can write about 20 characters at the moment and some of them not very good at writing at all...Oh, and I've only been learning Japanese for about 4 weeks, so I have no concept of sentence structure or basic concepts...).
And now! Back to the books...and here is an author that, as far as I can tell, isn't much read (or seen) isn't read much out of Ireland. And this is tragic. And SAD.
"But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often; and we fascinates me about memory is that it owes nothing to fact. In that memory atmosphere is more real than incident and everything is simultaneously actual and illusory. In that memory, too, the air is nostalgic with the music of the thirties. It drifts in from somewhere far away--a mirage of sound--a dream music that is both heard and imagined; that seems to be both itself and its own echo; a sound so alluring and so mesmeric that the afternoon is bewitched, maybe haunted, by it." --Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa
First, some background. Lughnasa, for those of you who are not ersatz Celtic Civ scholars, is a Celtic quarter day celebrating the god Lugh (who was later euhemerized and such as most of the Tuatha de Danaan were) was the god of light (and handicrafts and a lot of things...he's compared to Mercury/Hermes in the Greco-Roman pantheon). In here, however, it is the name of a wireless radio.
Friel deals with a small village in Ireland and a family within that village in a state of flux. Economically, cottage industries are drying up in favor of factories, family structures are changing, and "modern" values clash with more conservative traditional ones. Appropriately, this play is a memory play that has Michael narrating the story of his mother and aunts and the world he grew up with as a child. The play has moments where his adult voice--feeling, processing, analyzing, remembering--this life adds several layers of poignancy to the text.
And the characters are just lovely: the aunts are lovingly drawn (I love Kate, the stern matriarch), Michael's father and mother are heartbreaking, and Father Jack, a priest who went on a mission to Africa and "went native" is funny, endearing, and (a theme emerges!), heartbreaking. Also, the play is vaguely autobiographical, so *ouch*.
I'm totally cheating now and going to put in more quotes from a critic that states far more eloquently than I can how Friel's play is both incredibly sad and...almost transcendent. I got this from the Stanford University "Book Salon" podcast (there's an introduction section and an entire discussion of the text...it's kind of awesome) and it is from Irish literary critic Fintan O'Toole. But this, this, this is why this play is awesome: "The brilliance of the play lies in its ability to structure the falling apart of things within a form which is the opposite of these things,Full of ease and gentleness, a form in which time seems suspended."
Beautiful and sad. Go read it!
Woot. 7 HOURS of teaching tomorrow.
What was I thinking again...?
I am going to sub 7 straight periods. Normal teaching load is 5. Note to self: when the lovely secretary that hooks you up with jobs needs you, don't automatically nod yes. Think about what you're agreeing to. Or you might have to teach physics again and rely on making bizarre references to jokes from The Big Bang Theory.
Also, Hemingway is no fun to teach on the fly. Even when it is fun to teach. Which is not often. Especially to 9th graders.
Also, all you Japanese learning people out there, can anyone recommend me a good book to learn basic Kanji? (Like, I can write about 20 characters at the moment and some of them not very good at writing at all...Oh, and I've only been learning Japanese for about 4 weeks, so I have no concept of sentence structure or basic concepts...).
And now! Back to the books...and here is an author that, as far as I can tell, isn't much read (or seen) isn't read much out of Ireland. And this is tragic. And SAD.
"But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often; and we fascinates me about memory is that it owes nothing to fact. In that memory atmosphere is more real than incident and everything is simultaneously actual and illusory. In that memory, too, the air is nostalgic with the music of the thirties. It drifts in from somewhere far away--a mirage of sound--a dream music that is both heard and imagined; that seems to be both itself and its own echo; a sound so alluring and so mesmeric that the afternoon is bewitched, maybe haunted, by it." --Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa
First, some background. Lughnasa, for those of you who are not ersatz Celtic Civ scholars, is a Celtic quarter day celebrating the god Lugh (who was later euhemerized and such as most of the Tuatha de Danaan were) was the god of light (and handicrafts and a lot of things...he's compared to Mercury/Hermes in the Greco-Roman pantheon). In here, however, it is the name of a wireless radio.
Friel deals with a small village in Ireland and a family within that village in a state of flux. Economically, cottage industries are drying up in favor of factories, family structures are changing, and "modern" values clash with more conservative traditional ones. Appropriately, this play is a memory play that has Michael narrating the story of his mother and aunts and the world he grew up with as a child. The play has moments where his adult voice--feeling, processing, analyzing, remembering--this life adds several layers of poignancy to the text.
And the characters are just lovely: the aunts are lovingly drawn (I love Kate, the stern matriarch), Michael's father and mother are heartbreaking, and Father Jack, a priest who went on a mission to Africa and "went native" is funny, endearing, and (a theme emerges!), heartbreaking. Also, the play is vaguely autobiographical, so *ouch*.
I'm totally cheating now and going to put in more quotes from a critic that states far more eloquently than I can how Friel's play is both incredibly sad and...almost transcendent. I got this from the Stanford University "Book Salon" podcast (there's an introduction section and an entire discussion of the text...it's kind of awesome) and it is from Irish literary critic Fintan O'Toole. But this, this, this is why this play is awesome: "The brilliance of the play lies in its ability to structure the falling apart of things within a form which is the opposite of these things,Full of ease and gentleness, a form in which time seems suspended."
Beautiful and sad. Go read it!
Woot. 7 HOURS of teaching tomorrow.
What was I thinking again...?