Nancy Devine

Winter break is almost here

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Today is the last day of school before a winter break, one that lasts until January 2, 2014. So, I'm going to take a break from posting here. Happy Holidays to those who celebrate! Peace to all!

I'm liking this quite a bit

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:52:00 +0000

'Hygge' sounds terrific

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:16:00 +0000

I did not win the lottery and I did not win a writing contest I entered a couple of months ago. No surprise. No disappointment. But I've got a new goal, sparked by the following.

Hygge, originally a Norwegian word for "well-being," first appeared in Danish near the end of the 18th century, according to Denmark's tourism bureau. It has evolved into a big part of Danish life since then, absorbing connotations over time like a semantic snowball. The dark winters of Denmark helped turn hygge from a mere word into a kind of cultural panacea, manifested in various ways to buffer Danes against cold, solitude and stress.

"In other languages the word for hygge or coziness is more a physical thing, and hygge is more a mental thing," explains Lotte Hansen, a library science student from Aalborg, Denmark, who's interning at the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa. "It's like a feeling, and it's big at Christmastime. The candles, the food, being with your family." (Russell McLendon at Mother Nature Network)

Spend an evening with Michelle Williams' Marilyn Monroe

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:50:00 +0000

I'm not sure there's a better actress than Michelle Williams. And her work in"My Week With Marilyn" is terrific. No surprise, really. So, if you get a chance, do watch "My Week With Marilyn," even though it's sad and dear in an aching sort of way.

Two great things: winter and parkour

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 12:02:00 +0000

I am waiting

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:22:00 +0000

Short, sort of sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:26:00 +0000

The search for a school-appropriate, interesting film for one of my composition classes to review has been interesting. It reminded me of the inexplicable plentitude of films online, some of which would work in a public school, some of which would not.

My search reminded me that Open Culture is a terrific site for finding films online. I nearly got delightfully lost as I read and clicked the listings there. And with easy access to so much, I wondered how my teen years would have been different if I had the Internet.

Lessons to be learned

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 12:23:00 +0000

"Breathing Lessons" is one of those hard-to-watch pieces, a glimpse into a life we don't want to consider, in this case the life of Mark O'Brien who lived out much of his life in an iron lung. (O'Brien is the subject of the film "The Sessions," a good movie with a great performance by John Hawkes who should have gotten an Oscar nomination for his work.) I re-watched "Breathing Lessons" yesterday, trying to determine if I could show it to dual credit senior composition students as part of work we're doing on persuasion. Toward the end of the film, O'Brien mentions that he hired a sex surrogate (the main focus of "The Sessions") and knew that I'd have to find something else, a task made difficult because much of what's interesting wouldn't be deemed "school appropriate." Everyone should watch "Breathing Lessons." That's my ultimate conclusion about this short film.

Word

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 12:14:00 +0000

This short video is about swearing, cussing, profanity, off-color language, etc. In it, those so-called "bad words" that hang out in our language are alluded to, bleeped and referenced, those not said. So, if even the thought of a bad word is bad for you, don't watch. Still, this video is interesting...very interesting.

What if our stories hinder us?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 12:13:00 +0000

Thanks to the development of fMRI technology, researchers have been able to focus on our brain's posterior cingulate cortex, the region activated when we think about ourselves, including our daydreams and cravings. This is the area that we sometimes feel oppressed by; if, say, we let a daydream run amuck and conjure intense emotional trauma. Without mental training, we empower fears to create stories that subsequently define our actions, creating the realty we experience. ( Derek Beres at Big Think)

The above links to a fascinating piece, definitely worth a read.

Success on a wintery Thursday morning

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 11:52:00 +0000

Here's a paraphrase of something a student told me yesterday: Can you help me with my poem? There's still one part I don't get.

So the student and I sat down to look again at the poem he'd been working with. He directed me to the line he struggled with. He told me that he had read this line over and over... Here's the best part----He told me that he'd read this line nearly 50 times. I was elated.

The best thing students can develop is perseverance. Much of education is about getting something very quickly. And when a student doesn't get something quickly, he or she tends to believe said thing cannot be gotten by him or her.

My elation...a student persevered and, when he couldn't figure something out on his own after 50 tries, he asked for my help.

What does a poem do?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 12:56:00 +0000

So for poetry. The concern is not to arrive at a definition and to close the book, but to arrive at an experience. There will never be a complete system for “understanding” or for “judging” poetry. Understanding and critical judgment are admirable goals, but neither can take place until the poem has been experienced, and even then there is always some part of every good work of art that can never be fully explained or categorized. It still remains true that the reader who has experienced most fully will finally be the best judge.

The above comes from an essay by John Ciardi, an essay I've not yet read. I know that I want to read it very much, but I fear that it will stoke the ongoing frustration I have with how people tend to view poetry. People tend to thing a poem means something other than what it says. It's as though a poem is a kind of puzzle to be solved.

One of my classes of seniors just finished a poem analysis paper in which I encouraged them not to tell me what a particular poem means, but rather to discover and explain how a particular poem works. Suffice to say, it was difficult for them....very difficult. And, I'm happy to report, that after much struggle, they wrote terrific stuff.

If you love movies.

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 12:24:00 +0000

As awards season is well underway, it's a good time to look back at some of the unsung films of 2013. While these films might be long shots in terms of critics' prizes and Academy Awards, they deserve your attention and will probably outlive many of the year's prestige movies. And you can stream them at home. (from Indiewire)

Indiewire is a great site to help you keep up with movies. I don't read it all the time; I subscribe to updates from Indiewire and skim, skim, skim those updates.

Start picking

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 12:09:00 +0000

Brain Pickings is just about the best thing online. It's a site that never ceases to challenge my thinking and push my emotions. Here's a bit on it from the site itself.

Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are. Founded in 2006 as a humble email digest and eventually brought online, the site was included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive in 2012.

If you got a few minutes, click the above links and explore.

Almost there...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 12:21:00 +0000

Winter. It's a season that arrives without, in some ways, a warning. One day it's in the forties and the sun is warm, though it's fall. The next day there's a dusting of snow and a winter storm watch crawl across the bottom of the television screen.

A particular kind of peace comes to me in the winter. I don't need to be out there in the world; I can be inside where I can re-group, re-think...re-imagine.

Here's a sense of it, though this video has nothing to do with winter.

A bit of a break

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:21:00 +0000

I'll be taking a break from this space over the long Thanksgiving break. Posts will resume Monday.

Ready for a trek through the world of ghosts?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:51:00 +0000

My friend/colleague Shilo Morlang has his new, self-published novel, A Paranormal Odyssey Through America's Most Ghostly Haunts, for sale at Amazon. Shilo's wife Wendy is also listed as an author of the book,

Below is a bit about the novel.

Can Runyon Nestor trust his world?

Lies, love, and eternal unrest await our protagonist, Runyon Nestor as he battles divergent perceptual realities throughout this taut supernatural thriller BASED ON TRUE EVENTS. A spiritual medium on the popular TV series Ghostwatch! Runyon enjoys acclaim and celebrity—until the show's producer, Clive McKinley, plants a mole in a jealousy-driven attempt to put Runyon's paranormal abilities to the test.

After Runyon is unjustly dismissed from the show as a charlatan and fraud, Ghostwatch! enjoys a brief stint at number one due to the controversy. But without its most bankable star, the show ultimately ends up canceled. Enjoyment of early retirement is short lived, however, for Runyon knows all too well it's only a matter of time before the dead come calling.

Shilo was my student teacher a few years back, a brilliant student teacher, I might add. Now I'm fortunate enough to have him teaching where I teach. And his office desk is right next to mine.

What if?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:23:00 +0000

It seems as though I've been doing everything these days except writing. (Everything most certainly is hyperbole here.) Basically, I've been cooking/baking, reading/researching cooking/baking things and watching Scandal. Yes, I've gone to work, etc. But I've not been writing much.

Periods during which I don't write are almost always periods during which I wonder about the necessity of writing. What does writing really do? What does my writing do? Occasionally, these periods feel existential; that is to say I wonder about what I do as a person and how I contribute to the world. Mostly, though, my thinking is a matter of practicality, as if I were thinking about the usefulness of milk or cars.

I know this for sure: I need "what-ifs" in my life. These days the "what-ifs" go like this. What if I milled wheat berries into flour? What if I milled farro into flour? What if i got some einkorn berries and milled those into flour? And what if I baked with the flour I milled?

It is a luxurious life if you can ask such questions out of curiosity and not desperation. And it is fulfilling to have the means to act, so that you can really see what happens when you try to answer those questions.

So it's okay not to be writing these days. I have bread.

A good poem is...?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0000

"Love and care for elemental details, for chosen words and their simple arrangement on the page… and a way of ending that leaves a new resonance or a lit spark in the reader or listener’s mind—that’s part of it." Naomi Shihab Nye. Come with Me: Poems for a Journey. Greenwillow, 2000. 19 Varieties of Gazelle. Greenwillow, 2002. (from Marilyn Singer's blog)

I'm not sure which question my students ask more frequently: What is a poem? OR What is a good poem? Typically, they've not read much poetry, and whatever poetry they have read is pretty traditional. (i.e. the stuff in their literature books) And, what's more, students want to know what any particular poem means as if poems were puzzles to be decoded.

My suggestion. I just found an essay to read, one I uncovered when I Googled "what does a poem mean?" The essay is "How Does A Poem Mean?" by John Ciardi. To read it, click here.

'Heavy bored' identified?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:06:00 +0000

If you want to be instantly anesthetized, just check out #boredom on Instagram. While the topic of boredom might seem dull, an international team of scientists from the University of Konstanz in Germany and McGill University in Canada has found it to be deeply engaging. In a recent study published in the journal "Motivation and Emotion," a new type of boredom called "apathetic boredom" is described. Characterized by feelings of helplessness and lethargy that are similar to depression, it's the bottom of the boredom barrel. That brings the total number of ways you can be lulled into listlessness to five, according to science. (Sarah B. Weir at Yahoo! Shine)

Is the boredom described above what John Berryman describes in the video below?

Considering this

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 21:36:00 +0000

Our Other Sister

for Ellen

Jeffrey Harrison

The cruelest thing I did to my younger sister
wasn't shooting a homemade blowdart into her knee,
where it dangled for a breathless second

before dropping off, but telling her we had
another, older sister who'd gone away.
What my motives were I can't recall: a whim,

or was it some need of mine to toy with loss,
to probe the ache of imaginary wounds?
But that first sentence was like a strand of DNA

that replicated itself in coiling lies
when my sister began asking her desperate questions.
I called our older sister Isabel

and gave her hazel eyes and long blonde hair.
I had her run away to California
where she took drugs and made hippie jewelry.

Before I knew it, she'd moved to Santa Fe
and opened a shop. She sent a postcard
every year or so, but she'd stopped calling.

I can still see my younger sister staring at me,
her eyes widening with desolation
then filling with tears. I can still remember

how thrilled and horrified I was
that something I'd just made up
had that kind of power, and I can still feel

the blowdart of remorse stabbing me in the heart
as I rushed to tell her none of it was true.
But it was too late. Our other sister

had already taken shape, and we could not
call her back from her life far away
or tell her how badly we missed her.

I got introduced to the above poem because one of my students used it in an analysis assignment we've been working on. It comes from the Poetry 180 website.

Writing again

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 12:27:00 +0000

I'm not sure I consciously missed blogging here. Other activities filled in the time during which I posted, and I developed new routines for my morning. Yet, I've found myself a bit restless and slightly on edge; I realized I've not been writing much. From this stint of not writing much, I've begun to wonder about the utility of writing. The world is full of noise; I shouldn't make more of it. Is my writing more noise? Just as our dog is a place for me to put many of my emotions (love, predominantly), writing is a place for me to put my thoughts, especially those thoughts that are hard to explain. Writing's main purpose for me is the exploration and articulation of my thinking. So here I go. I'm writing here again.

I'm going to restart this crazy thing

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:07:00 +0000

I'm back to this spot, this hang-out where I can post updates on my writing as well as other things that strike my fancy. It's been a long time. Look for posts here soon.

Pretty good stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:48:00 +0000

Because of streaming apps, my husband and I can watch movies at home. This time of year is exceptional for such viewing, because many Oscar nominees for the year start becoming available to us.

Last night, we watched the Oscar winner, Argo. Ever since, I've been trying to figure out why it didn't blow me away. The acting was good, and so was the story. The film is shot in such a way that it looks like a film from the 1970s, a plus, because some of my best movie memories come from that time. Affleck is a handsome man, so watching him is pleasant. But...

There's nothing new in the movie, nothing that pushes, or even nudges, the envelope. I'd probably prefer the book version of Argo instead of the movie.

5 Broken Cameras is quite something

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy Devine) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:53:00 +0000

Last night I watched 5 Broken Cameras, one of the this year's Oscar nominees for best documentary. It is a must-watch.

Here's a bit from Internet Movie Database about the film.

When his fourth son, Gibreel, is born, Emad, a Palestinian villager, gets his first camera. In his village, Bil'in, a separation barrier is being built and the villagers start to resist this decision. For more than five years, Emad films the struggle, which is lead by two of his best friends, alongside filming how Gibreel grows. Very soon it affects his family and his own life. Daily arrests and night raids scare his family; his friends, brothers and him as well are either shot or arrested. One Camera after another is shot at or smashed, each camera tells a part of his story. Written by Guy Davidi