Evenings in Paradelle

Nearly Everything

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

“Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.”

“Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.”

― by Bill Bryson, from his book A Short History of Nearly Everything

In A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it.

In his book In a Sunburned Country he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves.

Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining. (from the book jacket)

Red, Red Bra

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

I was happy to see NJ's own Hal Sirowitz as the poem of the day last week.

Red, Red Bra

I bought a red bra, she said.
I knew you'd like it.
The only problem was I didn't
have a red blouse to wear with it.
I bought that & red pants
& shoes, so it wouldn't stand out
so much. I also thought of getting
red panties. But I said to hell with that.
I'm not going to worry if one small part
of the outfit doesn't match. And who's
going to see my underwear? Just you.
what do you know about fashion? Nothing.

by Hal Sirowitz

Winter Words

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000

“Winter solitude-
in a world of one colour
the sound of the wind.”
― Bashō

“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
― T.S. Eliot

Oscar Wilde
“Wisdom comes with winters”
― Oscar Wilde

"I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”
― Andrew Wyeth

“The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.”
― Dave Barry

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
― Carl Reiner

"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

420 Characters

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Last month, the illustrator-turned-author Lou Beach released a book of extremely short stories titled 420 Characters - miniature stories that began as Facebook status updates and that are just 420 characters long.

On the program, Studio 360, Kurt Andersen challenged listeners to write their own 420-characters stories. You can read them all here.

Lou Beach judged the contest, and kicked in the prize — a signed print of one of his own illustrations.

I really like this runner-up entry:

I pace my side of the lake we swam all summer. Winter’s first blizzard has blocked all roads; the half-mile swim between us is now a walk across thin ice. I say I’ll cross when the ice is thick. You propose we meet now—halfway. And then? If the ice cracks on your side, you’ll jump to mine, you say. Where have you studied ice? Think how a window swallows a baseball. You really want to take a swing at that?
—Mary Soufi, Vacaville, California

The winning entry:

It was dog number four that put the nail in the coffin, so to speak. It was about a month after the café went out of business, less, maybe. He comes home with it in his arms. Big thing, but still in his arms, carrying it across the threshold. I think he was trying to be funny. But it wasn’t funny. He was never funny.
—Samantha Wilson, Melbourne, Australia

LOU BEACH is an award-winning illustrator and gallery artist, well known for his record covers and magazine work. A book of his artwork, Cut It Out was published in 2006.

To read excerpts from 420 CHARACTERS and to hear them being read by Jeff Bridges, Ian McShane and Dave Alvin, visit www.420characters.com.

Zeitgeist 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Google offers a yearly review called Zeitgeist about how the world searched during the past year.

What mattered in 2011 - according to search?

Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches to capture the year's 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011.

See the results... (it might not give you faith in the future of mankind)

Watch a video version...

The Christmas Planet

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 06:00:00 +0000

This month a planet, properly known as Kepler 22-b, was revealed by NASA.

They have discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system using the Kepler space telescope, but this one is the most Earth-like world discovered so far.

It is located in an area nicknamed by astronomers the Goldilocks Zone. That's because it's not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life.

And the planet has been nicknamed the Christmas Planet because three photos of a planet are needed from Kepler to be sure that 22-b was for real. A 22-b year is 290 days long and photo number three came during the 2010 holiday season, so...

The Christmas Planet is 600 light years away. It is about twice the size of Earth. The average surface temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds pretty nice right now.

American Koans - 1

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:30:00 +0000

...an Eskimo hunter asked the local missionary priest

"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"'No,' said the priest "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

American Koans

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:00:00 +0000

A kōan in Zen Buddhism is a short story, dialogue, question, or statement that is used to teach.

The meaning of kōans often fly in the face of Western "rational thinking" because that meaning is not obvious and there is no "right answer."

I have been posting some kōans here occasionally and most have been classic/traditional ones. Lately, I have come across some writing that seem koan-ish to me in books that I am reading. I thought I might call these "American koans" so I did a search to check the originality of my idea. As is often the case, others have been down that road. I found several sites and books that have American koans.

I'm still going to post some along with the traditional type. They will be American stories, questions and quotes that, hopefully, lead you to some further thinking.

Thirty-Three Fingers: A Collection of Modern American Koans

The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans
Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life
The Zen Koan: Its History and Use in Rinzai Zen
The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans

A Christmas Carol

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Richard Williams' Oscar winning animated version of the Dickens A Christmas Carol.

This is Part 1 of 4 available online. 2 3 4

The Strange World of Shirley Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:00:00 +0000

I noted that today is the birthday of author Shirley Jackson. If you know her writing, it's most likely to be that you read her short story "The Lottery" in a class.

"The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner."

In case you haven't read the story (and you should), I won't add a spoiler, but it's not what you'd expect.

That story was originally published in The New Yorker in 1948 and it still has power. Readers were shocked, wrote angry letters, canceled their subscriptions.

But she has other stories and book that readers should try. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House is a good haunted house book.

Jackson often takes ordinary people in realistic settings and tells a tale of horror and the occult.

In Hill House, there are four characters - an occult scholar, his assistant, a sad young woman with some poltergeist experience and the future heir of Hill House. It turns out that the house has plans to make one of them its own.

I used to offer Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle as outside reading when I taught middle school. I don't who had the book approved and bought a box of copies before I arrived at the school, but I was easily able to seduce students into reading the novel by implying that we shouldn't be reading it for school.

In this novel, the strange but not haunted castle is Blackwood House. The young girl who narrates, Merricat, tells a tale that is described on book jackets as macabre and sinister and humorous. Merricat has created an odd worlds with her own rules. My students assumed that her use of magic and buried talismanic objects or ones she attaches to nearby trees, her rituals and the talk of poisoned relatives is real. That must be what the story is all about.

But the strange family in the strange house is viewed with distrust bordering on hostility by the neighbors and other villagers who don't really see anything paranormal going on - just a weird family. You start to wonder if

Then Merricat's little world is invaded by cousin Charles, who seems to want to gran hold of the Blackwood "fortune." He undoes her spells and digs up her treasures and she gets desperate.

My young teenaged students seemed to connect with being seen as strange or being the outsider. Maybe they didn't cope or fight like Merricat, but they know her fight. So, the novel's conclusion seem tragic.

And Jackson also wrote some light, humorous tales about family life like her Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. She was mom with four children and not some dark, disturbed woman. She wrote at night after her mothering work was done. Maybe it was the night that took her off into that other directions. Maybe it was escape from those daytime "demons" she was raising.

A One Volume Collection of Jackson Novels and Stories

Not Your Usual College Curriculum

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:30:00 +0000

I read an article this past weekend about some "quirky courses" at some N.J. colleges.

They are not the old 1960s joke about taking basket weaving, but there is "Circus Arts" at Bloomfield College, which teaches students the basics of circus life — from tightrope walking to juggling to riding a unicycle = and lessons about teamwork, conquering fear and overcoming obstacles.

Centenary College has apparently been offering some unusual ones for the past few years including courses on The Simpsons, cults, reality television and the computer game Sim City.

You can take "South Park and Philosophy" at Monmouth University (there are books on that), or "Gender, Sexuality, and Pop Music in the 1980s" at the College of New Jersey, or "Harry Potter Phenomenon" at Rowan University and "History of Hip Hop and Rap" at Ramapo College.

At my own alma mater, Rutgers University, there is the more upscale "Wine Insights," intro to wine-tasting class which (even without taking the class) I would pair with Fairleigh Dickinson University's "The Psychology of Fine Dining." That last one may be a bit tougher because it includes a "food sampling" lab session.

Of course, before we judge these courses, we would need to see the actual syllabus and coursework. You could make a challenging course out of the philosophy of Seinfeld (a book I did read) quite easily.

The critics (besides some parents who might feel that the tuition they are paying shouldn't go to such courses) might include the authors of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses whose research shows that most students are not challenged in their classes and few showed significant improvements in critical thinking, complex reasoning or written communication skills after four years in college. Ouch.

It might be interesting to fulfill your soc requirement with the "Sociology of Salsa" at Saint Peter’s College.

William Paterson University's "Fundamentals of Comedy Writing and Performing: Stand up" is either a lot of fun or as painful as an open mic night at the Improv.

I was happy to read that the offering at NJIT (where I teach in a graduate program) doesn't sound silly at all.

The "Habitat for Humanity" class at at New Jersey Institute of Technology is something that fourth year architecture students (the hardest working students there, I would maintain) can take to go beyond building homes on paper or with models and computers and actually produce a real house for a real family.

I know Professor Sollohub and I doubt that the class is easy. I love the fact that partnering with Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit group that builds houses for needy families. It sounds a lot like a typical architecture class - students design houses with construction costs under $100,000, a five-person jury picks the winning project. That two top designers are given internships with an architectural firm and complete their designs during winter break and into the spring semester.

It's interesting that none of the courses in the article are at two-year colleges. That's where my full time work happens and I suspect that we are so focused on getting students through 60 credits of general education (core) courses that will transfer to four-year schools, that there is no time for any true electives.

Koan 19 - The Craftsman

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:30:00 +0000

"The same piece of metal can be used to make ten thousand different utensils. It all depends on the craftsman." - Hai-chueh

No other text is as important to Buddhists, especially Zen Buddhists, as reading the The Diamond Sutra. The translation by Red Pine is a popular one.

At the center of Zen is the Heart Sutra, which monks recite all over the world, and The Diamond Sutra is said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism.

Red Pine explains - or makes it more confusing, by saying:
"The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it's really the body of the Buddha. It's also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it's a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn't exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It's no mind. And yet because it's no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond. "

Yossarian (Still) Lives

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:00:00 +0000

You've heard the phrase "catch 22", right?

The saying entered American English 50 years ago when Joseph Heller published his irreverent World War II novel by that name.

Catch-22 is set in Italy during World War II. The protagonist is the bombardier, Yossarian. Our "hero" is angry because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him as he flies missions.

Actually, his immediate problem is that the officers above him keep increasing the number of missions he has to fly to complete his military service. It's driving him crazy and he thinks he needs to be grounded. But Doc Daneeka tells him that a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions. But if Yossarian makes a formal request to be removed from duty, that proves he is sane, and therefore ineligible to be relieved of duty.That is known as "catch 22."

This wonderful paradox fit right in during the 196os with a anti-authoritarian generation that came of age during the Vietnam War.

Of course, this no-win trap still holds true today, which is just what a story I heard on npr.org said as it celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publication.

Heller flew missions himself in August 1944 over France in his B-25 bomber and those incidents shaped his novel.

Joseph Heller, pictured above in October 1974,
based Catch-22 on his own experiences
as a bombardier in World War II.
Heller died in 1999 at age 76.
Photo: Jerry Mosey/AP

Yossarian is Heller's everyman soldier who is trying as hard as he can to get out of the war.

The novel was seen as an anti-war novel and when it was released, it wasn't all that well-received.

War novels tended to be serious, tragic works, But Catch 22 was black comedy. The New York Times called it an "emotional hodgepodge." But The New Republic said "it was the first genuine post-World War II novel" and Robert Brustein said in his review that he was blown away by the book and the way Heller's depictions of war turned the idea of heroism on its head

The Vietnam War expanded in the 1960s and young people who protested the war embraced novels by Heller and Vonnegut as they seemed to be aligned with their own lost respect for authority and refusal to take things at face value.

In 1970, a film version of the novel was released.
"Doc", played by Jack Gilford, explains the Catch-22 paradox to Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin)

At Home With Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:00:00 +0000

one of Hemingway's work spaces

I have always had a fascination for the spaces that authors use for their writing. The rooms, the desks, the tools and the things that surround them are interesting to see. I think it was the old Saturday Evening Post magazine that ran a regular page on writers' desks at one time. I suppose that when I was younger, I thought that some secrets about their writing must be hiding in those spaces.

Devers

I discovered at least one other person who is interested in this. A.N. Devers is the founder and editor of Writers' Houses, a website dedicated to exploring writers’ spaces and the literary pilgrimage.

She says that she created her site dedicated to documenting writers’ houses because of "a growing obsession, since childhood, with books, travel, and making connections between a writer’s work and place. It also came from a realization that there wasn’t a comprehensive resource online, or in print, that helped literary pilgrims find their way."

You can search on the site by author, city or state. In my own NJ, there were only two listed. One is the Walt Whitman house (which I have visited) and the other is the home of James Fenimore Cooper (which I have not seen).

I wouldn't call my trip to Whitman's home a "pilgrimage" though I suppose that's what these trips might be for some people. I went with my friend Steve and the docent guide mistakenly assumed we were gay because, according to him, the house is a kind of pilgrimage stop for gays.

I found a piece Devers wrote online about two literary home visits. First she describes a visit in Georgia to Flannery O'Connor's home.

This past August, I bought, for two dollars, a small plastic jar of dirt from the gift shop located inside Flannery O’Connor’s house in Milledgeville, Georgia. For the same price I also bought a jar of pond water. At some point, the dirt and pond water had been procured from the grounds of Andalusia, the O’Connor family’s 544-acre farm. On my way to the car after my tour, I picked up a small feather from a peafowl. The Andalusia Foundation recently acquired three peafowl: two peahens and a peacock, no doubt because their visitors were clamoring for them. The peafowl are not descendants of O’Connor’s original forty to fifty birds. Even though I knew this, I placed the feather on my car’s dashboard. Andalusia was the sixth of fourteen writers’ houses I visited on a ten-day road trip across the American South. At some point during the trip, the feather blew out of the car window. I regretted not being more careful with it.

Before I raided the gift shop, I stood behind a rope looking into Flannery’s first-floor bedroom, which was also her writing room. Her crutches were the first things I saw—they are the first things the visitor is meant to see. It is an evocative tableau: her desk and typewriter are situated close to the window, her crutches propped up against a wardrobe behind the desk. But unlike much of the decor in the house, the desk and the typewriter weren’t Flannery’s. I only know this because earlier that day I had seen the real artifacts down the highway a few miles in an exhibit room at her alma mater, Georgia College & State University. It didn’t matter much to me that the desk and typewriter weren’t authentic. Perhaps I didn’t care because I had already seen them. But more likely it’s because I’ve grown used to the reproduction furniture and other anachronisms of the houses of dead writers open to the public. I suppose in that way I am a sympathetic literary pilgrim.

So why visit the homes of the literary departed? She mentions some reasons: hope for proximity, epiphany, trivia and biographical data, an attempt to pull images from our memory of favorite novels, stories, and poems and match them to rooms and objects, to ask questions about the person and place and to separate fact from myth.

One author I would make the pilgrimage for is Ernest Hemingway. He offers several places to visit. His Key West home is the most popular writers’ house in America.

...the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, plays fast and loose with stories and anecdotes from Hemingway’s life. The house is a privately owned and operated business that has brilliantly capitalized on three things in the following order: people love cats, people love Ernest Hemingway, and Ernest Hemingway loved cats. The story goes like this: the scores of cats that have lived over the decades on the property in Key West are direct descendants of Hemingway’s original cats, including Snowball, a six-toed cat who was given to Hemingway as a gift from a sea captain. When I visited in 2008, the Key West guide showed off a picture of Hemingway’s young son Patrick, holding a snow-white kitten in the yard. But in a 1972 Los Angeles Times article by Charles Hillinger, Ernest Hemingway’s last wife and widow, Mary Hemingway, states, “Ernest…never kept animals at the Key West house during the last twenty years of his life. He never stayed at Key West long enough to bother with animals after his divorce from Pauline.” In a 1994 interview with the Miami Herald, Patrick Hemingway stated the cats in the picture were his neighbors’ who wrote in to the paper to confirm. The cat myth began with Bernice Dickson, who bought the Hemingway house in 1964 and opened the estate as a tourist attraction. At some point she started breeding and selling six-toed cats, even sending them through the mail, and claiming, “they are a special Asiatic breed that Mr. Hemingway had when he was here.”

EH reading in Cuba

Supposedly, Hemingway’s family had "sour grapes because they’d failed to keep the lucrative property." Hemingway wrote letter from abroad asking about the animals at Key West - but was referring to his peacocks (which Flannery O’Connor also owned - maybe I should get a few of those...)

I could also make the journey to his birthplace in Oak Park, IL.

When the Hemingway family left that house, they built a new family home at 600 North Kenilworth Avenue, where Ernest spent his high school years. (This second home, while owned by The Ernest Hemingway Foundation, is not yet open to the general public. Possible stop #4)

video of his birthplace in Oak Park, IL

Papa's beloved Pilar

The third stop would be tougher to get to, but might be the most interesting. Hemingway loved his Havana home, La Finca Vigia, and would have stayed there till the end of his life if it wasn't for the political issues (and the big fish becoming harder to find in the Gulf). His beloved boat, Pilar, is kept there.

A Face in the Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:30:00 +0000

With all the election talk on the news, I was reminded of a film I saw in high school that doesn't often get mentioned. It is A Face in the Crowd, a 1957 film starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, that was directed by Elia Kazan. It has a script by Budd Schulberg, based on his short story "Your Arkansas Traveler".

The central character is Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes played by Andy Griffith, who is so far away from the Sheriff Andy Taylor most people know from TV that it's worth watching just to see him in this kind of role *.

Lonesome is discovered by the producer (Neal) of a small-market radio program in rural northeast Arkansas. Rhodes ultimately rises to great fame and influence on national television.

Rhodes character was probably based partly on radio-TV star Arthur Godfrey. Both of them mock their own sponsors (which increased sales). Schulberg claimed to have based a significant part of the character's on Will Rogers, though not Rhodes' amorality and cruelty.

One scene I remember after all these years is when Rhodes's mocks his audience because he mistakenly assumed he was off the air - a situation that has actually occurred more than a few times to celebrities and politicians in the years since the film was released.

The film launched Griffith into stardom, but earned mixed reviews upon its original release. It has been rediscovered in the years since. I was invited to a screening in New York City in 1970 as a high school newspaper "film critic" and the film and experience made a big impression on me.

See if Rhodes shouting his folksy platitudes to an applause machine in his penthouse reminds you of any political candidates in recent times.

In 2008 A Face in the Crowd was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Watch some clips from the film as part of the "Critics’ Picks" series from The New York Times

* Footnote:
I also highly recommend seeing Griffith in Waitress (2007), a film written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. The lead there is Keri Russell as Jenna, a waitress in an abusive marriage who finds some release in making excellent pies named after her life experiences. Andy Griffith plays Joe, the grumpy owner of the diner and other local businesses, who takes a liking to her and encourages her to take her life in another direction. If you watch the DVD, be sure to watch the extra material after you watch the film. It will catch you in your throat as much as the film.

Shine and Chime

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Interesting mistake this month when the National Book Foundation made a mistake and announced that Shine by Lauren Myracle was a nominee in the Young People’s Literature category. They had meant to announce that Chime by Franny Billingsley was the nominee.

Myracle was asked to officially withdraw from the running to preserve the “integrity” of the awards.

The somewhat controversial plot of Shine is about a gay teen who is the victim of a hate crime. (The NBF did say it would donate $5,000 to the Matthew Shepard Foundation in recognition of their mistake.)

The news got me to check out Myracle's other books and I discovered that she was previously known for a series called the Internet Girls. These books are made up of instant messages of three best friends and are full of teen gosspip, emoticons and abbreviations. One of the books is called ttyl and concerns an "inappropriate teacher-student relationship" plus some heartbreak, drunkenness and other teen (by perhaps not YA NBF) topics.

I also took a look at Chime on Amazon to see its plot, which is described there in this way:

"Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony blamed herself for all the family's hardships. Now Briony has worn her guilt for so long it's become a second skin. She often escapes to the swamp, where she tells stories to the Old Ones, the spirits who haunt the marshes. But only witches can see the Old Ones, and in her village, witches are sentenced to death. Briony lives in fear her secret will be found out, even as she believes she deserves the worst kind of punishment. Then Eldric comes along with his golden lion eyes and mane of tawny hair. He's as natural as the sun, and treats her as if she's extraordinary. And everything starts to change. As many secrets as Briony has been holding, there are secrets even she doesn't know"

If I was back in my old role as a middle school English teacher, which of those titles would I rather be teaching based on the plots? Shine sounds more relevant and one that would generate better discussion. Of course, the school district might not approve it.

No publicity is bad publicity?

Two Haiku

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:36:00 +0000

even the pine tree I planted
grows old!
autumn dusk

mountain's red leaves
the setting sun
returns to the sky

- Kobayashi Issa

Koan 18 - Education

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:34:00 +0000

Nasreddin had a leaky ferry-boat, and used it to row people across the river. One day his passenger was a fussy schoolteacher who decided to give the ferryman a test and see how much he knew.

"Tell me, Nasreddin, what are eight sixes?"

"I have no idea."

"How do you spell magnificence?"

"I don't."

"Didn't you study anything at school?"

"No."

"In that case, half your life is lost."

Half way through their journey, a fierce storm blew up, and the boat began to sink.

"Tell me, schoolteacher," said Nasreddin. "Did you ever learn to swim?"

"No."

"In that case, your whole life is lost."

What is the true value of education?

Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 04:12:00 +0000

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.

- Steven Wright

What It Is Not - Koan 17

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:25:00 +0000

A monk asked Nansen: `Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?'
Nansen said: `Yes, there is.'
`What is it?' asked the monk.
Nansen replied: `It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.'

Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:14:00 +0000

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that its very difficult to establish the authenticity of the speaker" -- Albert Einstein

The Human Camera

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:20:00 +0000

Stephen Wiltshire, AKA "The Human Camera" or "The Living Camera", draws Rome from memory - after seeing it once from the air. In this short excerpt from the film Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory.

He has an astounding memory. He is a quick-moving, gifted artist. He is autistic. He has a brain that is very unique.

What does it truly mean to be intelligent?

Nevermind at 20

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:13:00 +0000

Untucked flannel shirts, messy hair and laid-back air.

It was the spring of 1990. Hoping to become at least as well-known as groups they liked, including Sonic Youth and The Melvins, a band passed on such niceties as heated apartments and furniture and focused their money and energy on a demo recorded at Vig's Madison, Wis., studio.

Nirvana

And now their album NEVERMIND is 20 years old.

Grunge is old.

Cobain wasn't thrilled with Nevermind, at least initially, says his biographer Charles R. Cross. "Early on, he complained that the album was too produced," says Cross. "But at the same time, he would acknowledge that it was a brilliant production. Vig was a drummer, and his genius was bringing Grohl to the forefront of the sound on Nevermind. Those opening notes of Teen Spirit can't help but knock you over."

For Nirvana's surviving band members, the album that made their name continues to be a source of pride.
"It was exactly like I hoped it would be," says Grohl. "It's a real simple record. A drum set, a bass, a couple of guitar overdubs and a vocal that's doubled. That's it. By today's standards, it might as well have been done at Sun Studio."

Now, an expansive new multi-disc re-release of Nevermind reveals, the band worked incessantly for more than a year to craft an album that went on to rock the foundation of the music business in the same way that the Sex Pistols' (similarly titled) Never Mind the Bollocks caused a punk explosion in the disco age.

The box set Nevermind [4CD/DVD Super Deluxe] is out today but exclusive to Best Buy until an Oct. 24 general release.

SOURCE: Nirvana poured their hearts into 'Nevermind' – USATODAY.com:

Critics' Picks: 'The Last Picture Show' - Video Library - The New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:34:00 +0000

No one wants to come to pictures shows no more. Set between WWII and the Korean War, Peter Bogdanovich's film The Last Picture Show
is about the end of an era in a small Texas town.

Though it wasn't my era, I could identify with this coming of age story and the film as Film meant a lot to me when it came out in 1971.

It centers on Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and his friend Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges)and the cast includes Cybill Shepherd in her film debut, Ben Johnson, Eileen Brennan, Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Clu Gulager, Randy Quaid in his film debut and John Hillerman.

It was one of the first films to have used a contemporary popular music soundtrack, and for aesthetic and technical reasons it was shot in black and white, which was unusual for its time.

The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and four nominations for acting: Ben Johnson and Jeff Bridges for Best Supporting Actor, and Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman for Best Supporting Actress. It won two: Johnson and Leachman.

Watch a clip with critical commentary at Critics' Picks: 'The Last Picture Show' - The New York Times:

Big buoys

noreply@blogger.com (Poets Online) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:16:00 +0000

Big buoys, originally uploaded by Ningaloo.