Archive for November, 2008

Great-great-granddad

My great-great-grandfather, by all accounts, didn’t put much stock in photographs.  Too new, too strange.  It was almost indecent, making pictures of people like that.  He’d heard that kings and princes and such had painters to come and make pictures of them, but that was painting, that was different.  It took a while… several days, by his reckoning… and, well, that was for kings.  Like wearing those bright-colored tights — fine for fine folk, but not for him.  These photographs, somehow, were worse.  Too quick.  They didn’t take so long to make, and so people were going around wasting them on regular folks.  That just couldn’t be right, could it?

He didn’t hold with fairs and festivals and the like, either.  Too much like carnival.  Oh, yes, he’d heard stories about carnival.  A visiting preacher had spoken one Sunday morning about the immoral ways of the old country and how every year they had revelry so scandalous that it took forty days to atone for it afterward. (more…)

Home of Anne Hathaway

I should call it “Shakespeare Saturday.” My readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets continue with Sonnet 3.

But first, a little biographical information that you may or may not have known about Shakespeare:

• He was married to Anne Hathaway, possibly because he’d gotten her pregnant.
• He had three children in all, Susanna (the eldest) and fraternal twins Hamnet and Judith.
• When Shakespeare died at the ripe old age of 52, he bequeathed to Anne his “second-best bed.”  How… sweet.

Sonnet 3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
    But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

What I get out of it

(more…)

I want to preface this post with a couple of disclaimers.  First, understand that it’s a rant.  Matthew Dryden challenged people to write angrily and “with abandon” this week, and although this didn’t come out as angry as it could have, it’s more aggressive than I normally would get.  Blame him; he says it’s ok.

Second, as I was casting about for a topic for my rant, I serendipitously discovered a contest Word Sell, Inc. regarding cell phone use and abuse.  Now, I’m not a huge contest person, but there was a cash prize offered, and I did need a rant topic, so…

“Sir, cell phones are prohibited to students.”

...sigh...

He looks at me, and I can tell that if he were half — rather than twice — my age, his lower lip would be trembling.

“But what if there’s an emergency?” he almost wails.  “How will I get in touch with my son?”

“There is an emergency,” I respond.  “Your son’s grades are on life-support, and by texting in class, he’s pulling the plug.  Oh, and we have…” I pause to count on my fingers… “three land lines here at the school.  Your tax dollars at work, and all that, you know.  If you need to get in touch with your son for any reason, well, use your imagination.” (more…)

Memory seed.

My parents’ woods.  Shade, creek, flowers, vines, fences.  These have always been there in my memories.  In the right season, we would go and look for the pink lady’s slipper orchid; at other times, we would simply walk for the sake of walking.  Fifty acres, mostly wooded, spread out beneath our feet, filled with jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium, honeysuckle, and a wealth of other wildflowers.

On one occasion, I remember a man going with us who did not normally go.  I think he was my uncle.  I know that I was too young to know why he was there, since he did not live with us.

The walk was… how long?  I’m not sure, because I’ve forgotten most of it.  The only fragment of that day that has survived was near the end of the hike.  We were walking uphill, approaching the back of my father’s barn.  My uncle was in front of me.  He and my father paused for a moment to talk, and as I squinted up at them against the patches of sun falling through the leaves, my uncle bent and scooped something from the ground.  He turned and extended his hand to me, smiling.  I took what he held and looked down at it, puzzled. (more…)

My study of Shakespeare’s sonnets continues.  Read the first post if you’re not sure what “study” I’m talking about.  The short version is that I’m going through The Sonnets one by one, reading, reflecting, dissecting, and discussing them here.  The interpretations are my own; I’m not seeking input from other sources before posting my thoughts.  Ideally, as Shreds of Truth gains readers, this will become a good source of discussion and civil debate… at least, that is my hope.

Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held;
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
    This were to be new made when thou art old,
    And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

What I get out of it

(more…)

Harri Stojka

Guitars and needles, strings and yarn… the past
returns with chords of music, wool, and wood.
The strands of music weave their way around
his strands of hair. Its hue is like the back
of his guitar, its acorn-chestnut glow
like Grandma’s polished floor, her polished chair.
She knitted in that chair, and he knits tunes
like woolen sweaters in the air or gloves
for children’s fingers. Wrinkles line his face.
They sing of age and cold, as Grandma’s did.
Her chair had armrests polished smooth and dull,
as his chair’s arms must be. She hunched with age
and pain and concentration, as does he.
She would have liked this man, this song, these strands.

  (more…)

Keep it secret, keep it safe.

So I finally succumbed to the adolescent abomination that is MySpace.

No, no, it’s not what you think.  I don’t have a MySpace now, and I never will again… but for approximately ten minutes, I did.

Why?  Was I drawn into the mystique of being able to make thousands of “friends” in a matter of minutes?  Did I wish to find out how many teenagers in Yoknap County cut themselves?  Was I missing the exciting drama of reading about my student’s friend’s boyfriend sleeping with his other girlfriend’s mother, along with everything that half the teenagers in three local counties, seven cities in California, and a small suburb in Germany have to say about it?  Did I long for the obnoxious tween-targeted ads featuring the stars and starlets of High School Musical 7?

No, no, nonono.  None of the above.  It’s still not what you think. (more…)

Shakespeare, busted.

I recently saw a show where a group of inner-city kids from Harlesden banded together to do a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  The show was both entertaining and inspirational, especially after the play’s successful opening night.

“I’m going to read his sonnets,” exclaimed one enthusiastic young rapper, “and study them until I can understand the genius of the man.”

Well… here I am, on the other side of the Atlantic, teaching Shakespeare’s drama to gifted teenagers, and despite my college education I still have the same attitude toward The Sonnets that I had when I was in high school:  the poems are difficult and intimidating and not what I’m interested in reading.

Meanwhile, an underprivileged inner-city “gangsta” is studying them voluntarily.  I am ashamed.

So without further ado (about nothing, cough-cough), I begin my study of The Sonnets.  I hope to average one or two per week. (more…)

...still warm...

She made cookies.

There are times when cookies are necessary.  They are sugary little emotional painkillers, morphine for the soul.

Most people don’t realize it, but many words in the English language derive from ancient onomatopoeia.  There is a reason why “fuzzy” sounds, well, fuzzy, and why pronouncing “stutter” sounds like you have a bit of a speech impediment.  Likewise, there is a reason why “cookie” has that heartbeat BUHdum rhythm to it.  Cookie.  Cookie.  Cookie, cookie, cookie, pulse getting faster as you smell the chocolate… cookiecookiecookiecookie heralds a touch of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Cookies. (more…)

November 4, 2008. Election Day, USA.

If the candidate of your choice doesn’t win, feel free to blame the voting-machine goblins… they are obviously biased toward the other candidate.

Alternatively, you could read Writer Dad’s brilliant election poem, in which he likens America to the Roman Empire… distracted by bread and circuses while the Empire’s leadership rots from within. (more…)