Italy and China

I devoured the two books, "Women of the Silk" and "The Birth of Venus" in a few days. I can feel the pace of school slow as Christmas break approaches. I have more time to read.

Or did I read them so fast as a challenge to myself. To see if I can enter the world of a book so utterly that my mundane world disappears. I pester my children to read. They resist. They would rather enter the easy world of internet games, communities and youtube.

So I was wondering if I too had lost that ability to dissolve into a book. No. Or at least not yet.
Both of these books relate to other things I have read in the past.

I picked up "Women of the Silk" because my IV form students had just finished an Amy Tan story about a narrator going home to discover two half-sisters she did not know she had. The time period of the novel is the same as the mother' s past -- set in China during the Japanese occupation.

The second book "The Birth of Venus" is told as a memoir by a woman living in fourteenth-century Florence. This is the same time period as flashback story in "The Rule of Four" and the biography of Machiavelli.

Mind candy both.

I think I will read "Villette" over break. Or maybe "Main Street."

More Books to Read

I have got a few more books to add to my list of possibilities. And a few reactions.

A book about the formation of the government of the United States called American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. It is written by Joseph J. Ellis. From the review I read in the New York Times the books seems to be discussion of how at certain pivotal moments in history, the US constitution frames the boundaries and fences of government that vitriolic debate can take place without the destruction of the country and the peace. In other words, that the balance between the 3 branches means we can discuss explosive issues because no matter how strongly any one side feels, change will happen so slowly that it can be corrected or reversed.

From reading this review, I am intrigued because it seems to capture my sense of why our country has not devolved during the current presidential administration.

The two other books are about Latin: by Harry Mount, Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin into Your Life and by Nicholas Ostler, Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. The first one offers itself as a review of Latin grammar and vocabulary to help you remember enough of both to start reading Latin again. The second is a history of the language and its evolution. The second book sounds more appealing as it traces the language from pre-historical Rome to twenty-first century internet.

Another book is translated from the French and is about how to fake having read a book. The author is Pierre Bayard and the translator is Jeffrey Mehlman. The title is How to talk about Books you Haven't Read. For me as an English teacher the entire idea of this book is sacreligious, but on the other hand I know my students and even my own children don't see reading the way I did and do. For me reading transported me beyond the limitations of my locale and into a greater environment. Now they achieve the same action with no effort through computers which supply both visuals, sound, and plot.

But in the review by Jay McInerney in the New York Times this Sunday, there is one paragraph I want to quote in full: "Lest the reader or the nonreader, think that Bayard underestimates the power of reading, he proposes that we are all essentially literary constructs, defined by our own inner libraries: the books we've read, skimmed and heard about. 'We are the sum of these accumulated books,' he writes."

Now I find this idea rather intriguing...and it goes really back to St. Augustine's concept of the memory as a great repository that forms our identity. (I seem to be referring to Augustine quite a bit these days. I guess it is time to reread The Confessions, which I first read in an undergraduate English class as a prelude to understanding Dante's Divinia Comedia.) So the overall thrust is that we are the composite of all our experience -- whether psychic or physical. And thus the novels, characters, and words that echo in our minds form our identity.

Am I more like Hamlet the more often I teach him? Or would Macbeth be my alter ego? Or would my moral compass eschew the bloody Macbeth for the cerebral prince. And is that why the more often I have to teach Wuthering Heights the more repulsed I am by Heathcliff's misogyny and confounded that I was ever misled into thinking his love of Cathy was the pinnacle of romance?

Swinging in Montana

During our weekend in Montana, we had the option to fly on two different swings. The first was your standard swing of two ropes attached to board. But the one everyone loved was the disk swing. This was just a circle of wood with a hole in the center for the rope. The rope was knotted securely under the swing and then tied even more securely to a branch at least 40 feet in the air.

At first, students took turns on the swing, pushing each other high in the air and squealing. But then they developed a new technique.

Two people got on the swing -- looking like a seated Push-Me-Pull-You. Then three or four folks on the ground pushed the two swingers in a huge circle or grabbed onto the end of the rope and give them a running surge of velocity! Talk about a sudden feeling of death as ground rushes beneath and trees come too close!

Montana

For a single weekend in October, east met west as students and teachers from Philadelphia joined students and teachers from Montana to explore various forms of art. For each form of art -- photography, writing, theater, art -- we had generous mentors who led the workshops and encouraged everyone and shared their enthusiasm and stories.

We were hosted by two wonderful families who opened their homes to us and provided us the time and space to forge new relationships.

The picture at the right is one I took early one morning as the sun was rising. The view is to the south east. You can see one of the cabins where we stayed on the left. But behind the cabin and between the trees is the horizon of mountain and sky. Everywhere I looked, the sky arched above and the foothills and plains and river sculpted the view.

I have not been to Montana since my husband and I went hiking for two weeks in Glacier National Park. That was over 14 years ago. Since those years, I had forgotten the sweeping views of sky joining earth.

When we got off the plane in Billings and boarded the bus, I sat beside the window and felt my chest expand. I took deeper and deeper breaths, trying to inhale sky. How to describe that sensation of simultaneous exaltation and diminishment? I felt small and hushed, and yet paradoxically I felt enlarged and joyous. St. Augustine spoke of this sensation in his Confessions, as he described his envelopment in and by God. If I remember correctly, Augustine felt both insignificant before the Almighty and yet when joined to that presence through love, he felt blessed.

I don't claim to have a relationship with God. I only have this sensation of absolute awe and humility when looking at the unity of mountains and sky. And it has to be mountains unobscured by cities, houses, telephone poles, or even people. I don't want people crawling between me and that horizon. I want to be overtaken by the land and made into nothing by the vastness.

NYT Book Review

Notes to self -- what to read next

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. By Jeffrey Toobin.
Reviewed by NYT Sept. 23, 2007.
Looks like an interesting read discussing and analyzing the dynamics and procedures of the Supreme Court. NYT calls Toobin an intelligent and engaged outsider who is not awed by the Court, but he might have asked more probing questions of various sources.

Loving Frank. By Nancy Horan. Reviewed by NYT Sept. 23, 2007. About the love affair of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney who ran away from a husband and children in order to live with Wright. NYT review made this sound intriguing because of the independence of the woman.

Shadow of the Silk Road. By Colin Thubron. Reviewed by NYT July 15, 2007.
I want to read this book after visiting Antioch which was the terminal destination of the Silk Road. This book sounds like a synthesis of both history and contemporary observation which is exactly what I want.


Soul Eater. By Michelle Paver. Reviewed by NYT July 15, 2007.
The reviewer said that this would be a good book for anyone who loves HP. It is recommended as a real page turner with elegant prose.

Senior Hike

The new academic year has begun but the seniors did have a pause of two days as they hiked 17 miles of the Appalachian Trail near the Lehigh Valley. The 60 students were chaperoned by 12 teachers. We hiked over rocks, climbed over rocks, went down rocks, and slept on rocks. Nonetheless, the hike was beautiful and I loved being outside under the trees during the day and under the stars at night.
This picture was taken as we all gathered early Monday morning to begin the hike to buses. The mist was thick but shot through with sunlight.

Princeton and Florence: Treasure Hunter Novel

n short succession I read two books focusing on the same fascinating time period -- the late fifteenth century Renaissance.

The first was a novel by the collaborating authors Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason was a mystery set in contemporary Princeton but having roots in the Renaissance. The mystery centers on how to interpret and understand a massive and puzzling Renaissance text called "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." The first-person narrator is a senior undergraduate English major at Princeton, who struggles with questions of loyalty, identity, and love. The action of the novel moved swiftly and once in a while I stumbled upon a magnificent analogy which encapsulated the narrator's emotions and reactions.

From this novel, I went to a biography of Machiavelli -- famous for writing "The Prince" -- and who was a contemporary of the purported author of the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." King writes a lively and humorous prose; he rather enjoys focusing on the more scurrilous aspects of Machiavelli's career which seems to be his method for offsetting Machiavelli's rather black reputation for deception, treachery, and aggression.

After reading both books I was struck anew how my selections of books are almost predetermined. I picked up the Machiavelli book because of "The Rule of Four." I picked up "The Rule of Four" because I had read a review of it last summer in the "New York Times" and remembered seeing it on my son's bookshelf.

Sometimes what I read is just by happenstance, but that is what I love about summer reading -- I can go anywhere inclination and Fortuna leads.

Rome and France

After reading "Liszt's Kiss," I went to the public library and found Dunlap's previous and first novel. This one was also set in France during the reign of Louis XIV whose queen was the Austrian Maria Theresa. Again the novel focused on music and singing -- not a surprise given than Dunlap has a Ph.D. in music history from Yale. The female protagonist of this first novel, Emilie, resembles the girl in the second novel -- musically talented, innocent, manipulated and influenced. Dunlap has some exquisite descriptions of Emilie's voice -- she describes it as "opening like a flower" in the middle range and being clear in the top range. That simile "opening like a flower" is particularly resonate and evocative. The two composers that figure in this novel are Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. After reading this novel, I want to listen to works by both men: Lully's "Alceste" and "Psyche" and Charpentier's sacred music.

But before I read Dunlap's novel, I read a novel called "Medicus" by Ruth Downie. This novel set in Britannia during the reign of Hadrian was really entertaining. The main character is a doctor named Ruso who has a penchant for damsels in distress -- dead and alive. Both he and the narrator have a rather droll sense of humor, often rendered by wry understatement and ironic juxtaposition. It is a pity that this is Downie's first novel, because I would otherwise have to run to the library to check out her other novels. The novel was published in 2006, so I can expect to wait at least another year for the second novel to appear to learn what happens to Ruso and Tilla next.

John Donne and Doubt

Browsing the books shelves of our local library, I found a new biography about John Donne, who wrote intellectually muscular poetry. I took down the hefty book and remembered that Donne struggled with his conversion to the Church of England, and tried to defend that conversion as not made for expediency but for true righteousness. I also recalled that when King James I appointed him Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1621, some controversy existed because of Donne's background (his family was Roman Catholic), his early poetry (rebellious, erotic, and unconventional), and his marriage (he married his patron Lord Egerton's niece in secrecy). But I remembered Donne as a great doubter and questioner -- who defended suicide in one tract, who questioned the existence and presence of God. And also he lived at a time when England was dominated by religious antagonism and hatred, because the official religion of the state was Protestantism and Roman Catholics were persecuted and shut out of public offices. Everyone had to attend Protestant services and if someone did not, that person was suspected of being a Catholic and subject to questioning.

As I remembered these broad characteristics of Jacobean England, I was reminded of a NPR program, Krista Tippet's "Speaking of Faith" in which she interviewed Deborah Michael Hecht who wrote a history of doubt. Hecht argues that doubt has a great and long history beginning in Ancient Greece and that doubt about God and questions about God coincide with periods of cosmopolitanism and social upheaval. That description certainly seemed to fit England during Donne's lifetime and so I decided to read this biography by John Stubbs.

Stubb's biography of Donne is not written for the casual reader, but the reader who likes a challenge. In fact, his biography seems modeled on one of Donne's poems -- it demands patience as the narrative unfolds but the reader is rewarded by wonderful pictures of everyday life in London -- in the city, in the country, at the court, and among the poor and persecuted. Stubbs has written one of the most readable accounts of the tense relationship between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Jacobean England. He also shows how fine the line of distinction could be between the two religions.

Stubbs had to weave in Donne's own words -- from poetry, letters, sermons, etc. Given that all of Donne's poetry is undated, he takes a conservative and balanced approach to matching certain poems with certain events in Donne's life. For example, he matches "The Flea" to the time he was seeing Anne More clandestinely before their marriage. He assigns most of the Jack Donne poetry to Donne's twenties before he met More while serving as secretary to Lord Thomas Egerton. I guess the greatest tribute I can give Stubb's analysis and contextualization of Donne's poetry is that I have gone back and reread some of the poems he analyzes and I want to read Donne's essay "Biathanatos."

So if I had not heard Hecht's theory about doubt thriving in a cosmopolitan, questioning setting I might not have decided to read Stubbs' biography -- and I would not have met again one of my favorite poets.

Tolkien and Liszt

Within the last week, I have read two diametrically opposed books.

Marjorie Burns published a book in 2005 titled Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth. This scholarly book published by University of Toronto Press is based on the reasoned premise that Tolkien used both Norse and Celtic mythology, folklore, and epics to give his own texts a resonating depth and energy which makes his ostensibly simplistic characters and plot ambiguous and allusive. Burns argues about how Tolkien combines both Norse and Celtic elements to create a balance between the the pragmatic and realistic Norse and the mystic and spiritual Celtic. In her list of works cited, most of the texts Burns gives are translations from the Old Norse or the Celtic or scholarly commentary.

For Celticists intrigued by echoes of Welsh and Irish folklore in Tolkien, Burns deals head-on with a troublesome issue. Tolkien always denied any affection for Irish literature -- considering the land alien and the folklore off putting. But on the other hand, he always expressed a fascination with the music and orthography of Welsh. Burns neatly sidesteps Tolkien's own denials of the Celtic -- as any decent scholar should do -- and goes right ahead arguing that Tolkien employed the model of the Celtic sovereignty goddess when imagining Galadriel, or the Irish sidh mounds when describing the Elvish hidden kingdoms. As I read Burns' study, I wanted to go back and reread certain section of Lord of the Rings as well as my copies of various Old Irish sagas.

The other book I finished was a ballast to the scholarship. This was a novel set in early nineteenth-century Paris by Susanne Dunlap. The title is scurrilous -- Liszt's Kiss. It is a combination of a historical romance, mystery, and musicology. The setting is a rather interesting time when Paris was the center of culture and famous artists and composers lived in close proximity and knew each other -- Chopin, Paganini, Liszt, Delacroix. Dunlap's description of this intense concentration of talent reminded me of early twentieth-century Paris . And Dunlap includes the historically accurate drama and pathos of a cholera outbreak. One of her characters is a medical student who serves at the city hospital. In the course of the novel, he performs emergency surgery. I asked my husband to read that scene to assess the historical accuracy of the description. He agreed it was horrifically accurate and we then had a conversation about the miracle of anyone surviving a surgery before antibiotics or sterile procedure.

I ate up Dunlap's novel in just a day. It was not a demanding read but Dunlap has a marvelously restrained prose when narrating an assignation or a kiss which is refreshing after the otherwise torrid descriptions in contemporary fiction.

Images and Energy

For a teacher, the summers are a special time of recharging, reflecting, and resting after a hectic year. But last week many of us at my school gave up a week of our summer to learn more about technology and how to use technology more effectively in our classes to energize our students. Under the experienced guidance of Thomas Daccord from Alan November learning, I downloaded, registered, and explored a variety of programs, and websites. I learned about blogging, flickr, wikis, google earth tours, voicethreads, and lots of other programs.

And I also rediscovered the power of image. A single image. So much of what I do in the English classroom is word based -- connotations of a single word, symbolism of a word phrase, structure of repeated metaphors. But all word based. I can get incredibly excited by a single phrase and the way that phrase creates meaning through association and conflict. Yet this last week I watched my colleagues get excited by pictures they sent back and forth to each other. They not only sent images to each other, but they also recorded little messages and stories to accompany those images. The atmosphere of the room shifted from silent passivity to vociferous engagement -- laughter, smiles, quips. And yet we were all still learning and focused.

I decided I wanted to create my own images using a digital camera and then manipulating the images in Adobe photoshop or ArtRage.

The image above is a result of experimenting with a picture taken of a hydrangea blooming in my garden. I uploaded the image as a tracing image in ArtRage and then played with various tools. Not that anyone needs to know that, but in case I forget how I made the image later. It took me at least 4 different tries before I got something that looked okay. At first I just had a blank background but the the blossom looked lost. But the image started to look better when I used layers to establish background, outline of petals, color of petals, and dots for the centers, and then metallic glitter for some variation.

So this image is both a concession and an acknowledgment.

Caesar: Within His Time -- Still Extraordinary

When I was traveling back from Turkey, we stopped in Heathrow, London for a 5 hour layover. There I found Adrian Goldworthy's biograpy of Julius Caesar, titled simply Caesar.
He writes in a lively, engaged tone instead of the dry, objective tone of a historian. He weighs the contemporary evidence -- letters, commentaries, histories -- and always keeps emphasizing that Caesar was not inevitably successful in politics or war.
If you have watched HBO's series Rome, you might find this biography worthwhile.

LOTR Video

from YouTube: "How the Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended"

St. Peter's Church in Antioch

On the trip to Antioch, we saw St. Peter's Church, which is high in the mountains above Antioch. In this cave church (which once had a mosaic tile floor and murals on the wall), St. Peter and others met and worshiped as Christians. Anyone coming to this church is granted a plenary indulgence for all sins. In other words, if you make pilgrimage to this church, you are forgiven all your sins.
In the middle ages, people would make a pilgrimage to this church, buy a St. Peter's medal, and pray for forgiveness. In the middle ages, a pilgrimage to St. Peter's would be incredibly dangerous -- over the stormy seas, through treacherous mountains, through strange cities, and past bandits and robbers. Anyone surviving the pilgrimage and returning home would be famous!

A Trip to Turkey

From June 3-11, I took 4 EA students to visit the Gundogdu School in Adana, Turkey. We had a terrific trip and met wonderful people, who were hospitable, friendly, and welcoming. This picture was taken in Antioch and shows one of the streets in the old city.