On the nightstand

This is the forty-first "On the nightstand" entry -- a snapshot (picture and words) of the books on (or, in this case, near) my nightstand right this very second.

Okay.

So what absolutely tickles me about this entry is the sock monkey sheets pictured above. They were advertised in one of the four catalogues that missed the recycling bin yesterday (explanation here). I coveted them from the moment my son pointed them out to me. (My affection for Nick & Nora is described here; for sock monkeys, here and here.) Oh, I thought about those damned flannel sheets all day. I thought about them while teaching, while working, while preparing dinner and then eating it. Finally, just before popping another forkful of stuffing into my piehole (fresh stuffing, folks; I made another turkey dinner yesterday -- hmmm, mmm), I declared, "I must have them. Kids, we're going to Target!"

The new sheets have been washed, tumbled, and made into my bed. I wonder if tonight I in my Nick & Nora sock monkey pajamas will blend into the new sheets like an element in an Escher print. Where's Mom? the kids will wonder tomorrow morning, and a disembodied voice will rise from the sheets. Riiiiiight heeeeere, children.

Heh, heh, heh.

Oh, yeah. The books. What have we got this time?

:: When Things Fall Apart (Pema Chodron)
A blogger who links to M-mv (no, I can't rememer who; please, feel free to send me a note) is reading this. He or she included a quote, and I, steeped in Holiday Savings Rewards from wanton spending at the bookstore that must not be named, thought, Hmmm. That looks interesting. I'll let you know.

:: Turning Angel (Greg Iles)
With so many Holiday Savings Rewards burning a hole in my knapsack, I grabbed this while picking up the above title. Does it matter that I also purchased Gulliver's Travels? No, of course not. I will be condemned for the lapse of judgment Turning Angel represents. I can live with that. My vices are mild. Is it any good? Meh. Mildly entertaining -- a respite from a hard month of deadlines and client demands. There are better entertainments, though. Skip this one if you read slowly or are at all worried what others think about your reading habits. Heh, heh, heh.

:: The Chosen (Chaim Potok)
Having wrapped up our recent drama unit (which grew to include Long Day's Journey into Night) Master and I chose this as one of our holiday lit selections. Discussion tomorrow. Maybe I'll include some here. For now, I will simply say that this book became a favorite when I first read it twenty years ago, and now I remember precisely why: It is a beautiful and complicated story simply told.

:: Social Studies (Fran Lebowitz)
I love Lebowitz. I imagine this will turn up as an RDA presented chapbook-style at some point.

:: Loving Will Shakespeare (Carolyn Meyer)
This is a review copy, and I am looking forward to reading and responding to it.

:: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (M.T. Anderson)
If it's even half as thought- and discussion-provoking as Feed....

:: Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1 (Willard A. Palmer)
Words about my musical pursuits, such as they are, are simmering in my writing pot. Someday. Until then, our piano.

See you next time. Hey, and many thanks for using our Amazon links. I've received several notes about our store: I can only display nine items at a time, which is why some obvious titles are missing this time around. I'll post a "2006 favorites" entry soon; it will be a more complete list and may offer you some holiday gift ideas. If you're still stuck, though, you know what I recommend: an Amazon gift certificate! The recipient can choose whatever he or she wants. Every associate and his mother is peddling these, I know, so, as always, I thank you for your business. It's an encouragement I appreciate deeply.

Look at the fock!

From deep in the archives.

Youngest daughter stands in front of the big hall mirror, tugging at one of her ears and peering.

"Something wrong with your ear?"

"Well, no, I don't think so."

"So, what are you looking for?"

"I thought I felt an ear whack in there, but I seem all nice and clean."

"A what?"

"An ear whack. But it's okay now."

"An ear whack?"

"Yeah. You know, ear whacks. But I only felt one, and now it's gone, so, I'm okay."

"Oh!" It dawns on me. "Ear wax! Ear wax, honey. X like the end of fox."

"What?"

"It's called ear wax."

"Um, yeah, but I only had one, I think." She inspects her ear with a finger. "Yeah, just one.

"I know, I know. But it's still called wax."

"But, Mom...."

"Look. If there's only one fox, we don't say, ‘Look at the fock,' right?"

"Mom! You said a bad word, I think!"

"No, no, honey. Listen. Ear wax ends in X, just like fox and box and ox. It's like wax on cars or candles."

"So, I have ear wocks?"

"WAX. Wax, but," I peek into both ears — and behind since I'm there. "You don't have any. Your ears are clean. Totally clean. Okay?"

"Um. Okay."

A few minutes later.

"Hey, Dad? Look in my ear and see if you see a wock, okay?"

Potty talk

If you take a dim view of potty talk, skip this entry, all right? Good. You've been warned.

So.

At this time of year, the mail carrier delivers an inordinate number of catalogues. 'Tis the season and all that. Regular M-mv readers know that I don't countenance catalogues; they generally pass from mailbox to recycling bin sans perusal.

But the image of a silly t-shirt attracted my eye as I made to pitch this catalogue into the green can.

And I laughed.

Until I nearly, well, you know.

And now the catalogues, all four from today's delivery, have assumed various angles of repose in Family M-mv's bathroom.

I am, on occasion, much too easily amused.

Celebrities writing badly

Antigone is about a girl who looses [sic] her brother during a war.

Indeed.

For more about what an education steeped in the classics can yield, read this listing at Christie's. Yes, the above sliver of juvenilia represents one of one hundred seventy personal items Britney Spears donated to an on-line auction in aid of her eponymous Foundation. Folks, her English teacher wept. (Thanks, CED.)

And in "No Starlet Left Behind, Not Even Lindsay Lohan," we find this sample:

If not only my heart but the heart of Mr. Altman's wife and family and many fellow actors/artists that admire him for his work and love him for making people laugh whenever and however he could.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Did you know Lohan was (*shhh*) homeschooled? For a while, anyway. (Thanks, M.)

Added a little later: Speaking of homeschooling and celebrities (we were, weren't we?)... did you know Will Smith home educates his children? From the November 21 "Get Buzzed" column in Louisville Kentucky's The Courier-Journal:

Will Smith says he and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, homeschool their kids because “traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests — not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.”

In the December issue of Reader’s Digest, Smith, 38, says, “Jada and I homeschool our children because the date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter.”

The “Hitch” star also says he can learn anything he wants to, so long as the instructions are in a book. “Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class,” says Smith.

Aside from the whole "date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter" business, I find myself -- gosh, dare I admit this? -- rather agreeing with Smith.

Heh, heh, heh.

Why I read book blogs

Shields to write Vonnegut’s biography, with blessing at Maud Newton.

(Charles J. Shields penned Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, which I mentioned in this entry.)

From the archives

Stand and stare.
Stuart recites from a William Henry Davis poem in Benjamin Cheever's The Good Nanny: "A poor life is this, if full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare."

Standing (or sitting) and staring shape the common repose of a reader, thinker, and autodidact. Imagine a life so heavy with care and worry that it precluded daydreaming, "zoning," or conversing (silently, of course, lest one alarm strangers and neighbors) with one's self (or selves — past, present, and future).

Horrible.

Now. Make a mental note to be courteous in all of your interactions during this holiday season; in other words, don't add to someone's psychic noise by behaving unkindly during these stressful weeks. Make your mother proud: Use your manners. You're not required to engage in small talk with hapless clerks or the seemingly scattered senior in line behind you, but a smile for the first and an offer to go ahead of you for the latter might afford someone else a little time to just stand and stare.

And that, my fellow readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, would be a good thing, indeed.

The Angel in the House begat the Bitch in the House.
But we figured that out already, didn't we?

How I managed to read the November [2004] issue of the Atlantic before the October is a mystery that, in an uncharacteristically weak moment, I spent at least ten minutes pondering.

"Now how...?"

Anyway, "A Gloom of One's Own" is not to be missed, especially if you read The Bitch in the House. (We discussed it, briefly, here and here.)

One of the pieces I sold soon after becoming a mother was titled "My Angel in the House," so, naturally, Sandra Tsing Loh scored points with this Atlantic reader by tracing the geneaology of the Bitch in the House.

Lost? I'll help. The poem "The Angel in the House" (1854) was Coventry Patmore's paean to Emily, his perfect Victorian wife. A sample of her, erm, perfection: "Man must be pleased; but him to please / Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf / Of his condoled necessities / She casts her best, she flings herself."

Yeah. What he said.

Not.

Seventy-five years later, Virginia Woolf, more Bitch than Angel, to be sure, killed the Angel in her house:

I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must concilliate, they must--to put it bluntly--tell lies if they are to succeed.

Read Loh's piece. Good stuff. Hey, and if you somehow missed Woolf's A Room of One's Own in your literary travels, we'll wait while you add it to your Amazon cart.

Back? Okay.

My angel? Oh. Well. She haunts me still. Sure. She beckons me to the the bathroom where, if I don't drop everything and scrub now, mold may form on the grout. She gestures me to the clothes hamper and shakes her finger, chiding. She calls me to the front windows, which are a mural of my daughters' sticky finger- and lip-prints. She seduces me with the idea of pride in a home well cared for.

Ah, my Angel is clever. Each time I make to pen a few thoughts, she reminds me that dust clings to the ceiling fans, mattresses need turning, and mirrors beg polishing.

For nearly twenty-one years now, my Angel has had allies: My husband and children are in unwitting cahoots with her. She knew what she was doing when she made me a wife and mother.

Yes, my Angel is clever, but I am more clever still. I can't bring myself to the violence Woolf suggests, but I can heartlessly, remorselessly ignore my Angel for short intervals. And I do. And some of it sells.

And that's good enough for me.

Oh. Another book you may have missed: (Woman) Writer by Joyce Carol Oates.

More on writing
Loved this bit from Neil Steinberg (the Sun-Times):

Occasionally, at the office, colleagues will complain about the difficulty of plying their craft amidst the bustle of a newsroom. They pine for the solitude of an office. I always want to say, "Have you tried concentrating?" But that seems so unsympathetic.

Which I am. I look askance at those who can't write unless they are curled up in a windowless room, with big, sound-deadening earphones on their ears and a white-noise machine whirring in the background.

A person has to pull himself together.
...

To some, life is a distraction. To me, it's material. There is a lesson there whether you are a writer or not.

And the lesson is...
Stand and stare, okay? Stand. And stare.

Do you ever find yourself eavesdropping on your own life?

Last night, I was working (or procrastinating in a working posture, anyway) at my desk. My husband and two daughters were playing Great States in the bird room.

All I could hear was the girls' excited and encouraging words to each other and their father ("That's it!" "You're right!" "There it is!" "May I help you?"), their enthusiastic replies ("I know this one!"), and their delighted laughter.

It was not an unusual evening here in the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. I love that familiar song, but maybe I hear it so often that it fades? I shouldn't let these murmurs and laughing moments and gentle evenings fade into a sort of "life's muzak," though.

So I consider myself warned.

Because last night I eavesdropped on my own life.

And it was good.

Populist warblings

From "Deliver us from these latter-day Pooters" (The Observer, November 26, 2006):

For the time being there is room enough for both sets of critics: the bloggers and the professionals. But what if the media one day does as Hill suggests, and gives up on serious criticism, exchanging it for the populist warblings of the blogosphere? This would be easy to do, and cheap. But my God, I hope it will not happen. This is not only because there are so many critics, past and present, that I admire. It is because so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written. After I heard about the spat between Hill and Sutherland I devoted an entire day to book blogs, trying to give them a fair chance. This was not an edifying - or even a very interesting - experience, and I really, really love books.

It's likely that Rachel Cooke's assault will set some book- and lit-bloggers a-quiver with righteous indignation.

Meh. I think I've encountered this sort of disdain before. Cooke's dismissal of bloggers ("populist warblings," indeed) reminds me of some academics' dismissal of their community college brethren: If you teach there, they sniff, you most certainly cannot be one of us.

Well, that rather misses the mark, doesn't it? A faculty member of the English department at Podoink U. and a faculty member of the English department of Podoink Community College face different populations and, by extension, different demands on their time and talent. To behave as if one position were intrinsically better than the other seems rather beside the point, doesn't it? Or are the egalitarian impulses lurking beneath my petulant elitism getting the better of me?

Cooke seems to make a similiarly unnecessary exclusion: that bloggers cannot possibly compete with "the professionals" (i.e., traditional print critics). Aren't they each writing with different audiences and goals in mind? I wonder, is it really a competition? I also wonder about the definition of "professional," but that's the stuff of another post, isn't it?

(And, yes, I realize that some lit- and book-bloggers will be aggrieved to see their efforts likened to those of community college professors. It's an analogy, folks. It's my analogy, and I think it works. Hey! Is that petulant elitism I espy lurking beneath your impulsive egalitarianism? Heh, heh, heh.)

Personally, access to both -- traditional reviews appearing in periodicals and book- and lit-bloggers' recommendations and rejections -- has enriched my reading life immeasurably. I don't prefer one to the other; I greatly enjoy the mental conversation each inspires.

And ya' know what? I could live happily without all of the storms in chipped teacups. Really, I could. Less meta-book talk and more just plain ol' book talk, okay? That's what this reader craves.

Related aside: We recommended Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree back in April 2005. If you missed it then, put it on your wishlist.

Added later: Good evaluation of Cooke's piece here.

Growing up

Sociologists and purveyors of media-driven angst would have us believe that "Kids these days, man, they grow up so fast!"

Do they? I wonder. If so, faster than... than we did? Someone must be kidding, right? No one grew up faster than [insert the names of the reckless? heroic? wise-beyond-their-years (or not)? classmates who smoke, drank, used, slept around, and/or experimented in junior and senior high] and, hell, that was twenty-five years ago! How much faster can a kid grow up?!

In my (albeit, limited) experience, kids grow up just as quickly (or slowly) as their natures and their environments permit.

It is both that simple and that complex.

Which is why some sixth-graders play with dolls and some play doctor.

Whatever their natures and their environments permit.

The recommended daily allowance

Presented chapbook-style: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard).

p. 51
ROS: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?

GUIL: I can't imagine! (Pause.) But all that is well known, common property. Yet he sent for us. And we did come.

p. 57
ROS: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all.

GUIL: Thwarted ambition—a sense of grievance, that's my diagnosis.

ROS: Six rhetorical and two repetition, leaving nineteen, of which we answered fifteen. And what did we get in return? He's depressed! Denmark's a prison and he'd rather live in a nutshell' some shadow-play about the nature of ambition, which never got down to cases, and finally one direct question which might have led somewhere, and led in fact to his illuminating claim to tell a hawk from a handsaw.

p. 60
GUIL: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one—that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know we were lost. (He sits.) A Chinamen of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.

p. 61
GUIL: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

p. 63
PLAYER: [...] Don't you see?! We're actors—we're the opposite of people!

p. 66
PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special.

p. 68
GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

ROS: Or just as mad.

GUIL: Or just as mad.

ROS: And he does both.

GUIL: So there you are.

ROS: Stark raving sane.

p. 71
ROS: I wouldn't think about it if I were you. You'd only get depressed. (Pause.) Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?

p. 72
ROS: [...] They're taking us for granted. Well, I won't stand for it! In future, notice will be taken.

p. 79
PLAYER: [...] There's a design at work in all art—surely, you know that? Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.

p. 80
PLAYER: [...] Now if you're going to be subtle, we'll miss each other in the dark. I'm referring to oral tradition. So to speak.

[...]

ROS: I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and end.

Also highly recommended: the film.

Speaking of "highly recommended," have you visited our newly remerchandised store? I've selected nine of my favorite books from this past year of reading.

The most perfect holiday gift ever!

Fine Art Friday

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988)
"Miss Expanding Universe" (1932)

From "ART IN REVIEW; 'Correspondences' -- 'Isamu Noguchi and Ellsworth Kelly'" (New York Times, March 10, 2000):

Among the many treasures of this show, elegantly installed to emphasize how the works play off each other, is Noguchi's hanging sculpture in aluminum, ''Miss Expanding Universe'' (1932), named by Fuller. The streamlined shape of a woman whose arms have the aspect of wings, it forecast his turn toward biomorphic form a decade later.

A prayer of thanksgiving

On the day before Thanksgiving a couple of years back, I posted the material below in another forum, and I've reposted it here each year since. It's a little more, erm, sentimental than is my wont, but even an overalls-wearing, great-books-thumping, "mommy-blog"-disdaining curmudgeon can have a soft side.

Here's a glimpse of mine.
___________________________

During these last few days before Thanksgiving, I find that in addition to the obvious — my family, my health, my husband’s job and my own — I am thankful for a collection of ordinary and obvious things, as well as a few things less likely to make their way into the typical Thanksgiving prayer.

Thank you for my books — the bookcases, shelves, leaning piles, and overstuffed baskets of them; for the stacks and lists and reading plans; for the bookmarks poking from dozens of them at a time; for the worlds that exist in my home because of them; for the smell of them, even for the dust they attract.

Thank you for Chlorox wipes. In one pass, they clean and disinfect. They make the place smell good. They save me a boatload of time.

Thank you for my vacuum cleaner. It’s not fancy or expensive. It has only a few attachments. Its cord is a little too short, and it’s rather loud. But nothing says, “This home is in order!” like the smell of the apples and cinnamon potpourri wafting from my vacuum’s fresh bag as I make neat, straight tracks on each room’s rug.

Thank you for freshly sharpened pencils and the nifty “industrial strength” sharpener that has not let us down once in four years.

Thank you for dollar stores and the dollar aisles of Jewel and Target.

Thank you for all of the science experiments that failed; they taught us so much.

Thank you for the few that succeeded; they enchanted and encouraged us.

Thank you for IKEA. Why must every other furniture store charge so much for bookshelves?

Thank you for DSL.

Thank you for a job with a company that pays for DSL.

Thank you for museums, parks, and libraries.

Thank you for overalls... and Birkenstocks... thick cotton socks and deliciously warm wool sweaters. And a husband who thinks this is a good look.

Thank you for Super Pretzels. Who would have known they would become a family ritual? Cheddar cheese, pretzels, and juice? It must be 11 a.m. at our house.

Thank you for virtual living rooms and kitchens and porches where I can talk and listen and learn.

Thank you for Shakespeare.

And the UPS truck.

And our mailman.

And Amazon.com.

Thank you for bringing me “pen-pals” at my advanced age. Who could have guessed how much I would enjoy knowing that I have mail?

Thank you for Mountain Dew and Trader Joe’s French roast. And Ritter Sport. And M&Ms. And Dove chocolate. Hmmm.

Thank you for Chicago, a magnificent city.

Thank you for the way my children smell at night, after their baths; for their sleep-softened cheeks and the way they stir just a little when I lean in to kiss them on my 3 a.m. rounds.

Thank you for Latin. And logic. And philosophy. And everything that makes me think. Hard and long and in ways unfamiliar.

Thank you for children who have grown wise but not old before their years, who share many of my interests and who introduce me to new pursuits and new ways of seeing.

Thank you for central air-conditioning. How did I pass nine summers without it?

Thank you for an enduring marriage. They say it’s part luck, part work. Thank you for my good luck and his hard work.

Thank you for the color the sky gets on sunny October days. Some of it drizzled into my oldest and youngest children’s eyes. What a color!

Thank you for the half dozen times I reached into one or another jacket pocket and drew out a $5, $10, or $20 bill. Yes, I should be more careful of my money, but, oh, what a delightful “discovery”!

Thank you for all of the moments and acts and words and pauses that are this life and not some other.

Thank you... for everything.

Robert Altman has died.

Caffeine abuse

From the Chicago Tribune today:

"Everything is a poison, including water, if you have too much," he said. "Caffeine is a stimulant that releases your internal catecholamines [compounds that can serve as hormones] that make you anxious, jittery and create the fight-or-flight response. When the heart beats too fast, bad things happen. It's an emerging trend to keep an eye on and see if it's getting worse."

The researchers found the situation is exacerbated because caffeine is heavily promoted as an effectively legal stimulant in energy drinks or dietary supplements on certain drug Web sites that recount users' experiences.

What do nine- and ten-year-old girls listen to these days?

I'm rather out of touch with "grrrl power" and the culture of female tweens. What do nine- and ten-year-old girls bop to in the year 2006?

Mine are absolutely enchanted with this.

What can I say?

The Saturday Review of Books

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. You should hear my "Silent Night." And the Misses M-mv? Prodigies, I'm sure. [Insert a wry grin.] Oh, and Master's third meet of the season. I'm not sure which makes us prouder -- his sure strokes during each of his events or his gentle-giant coaching technique. (He swims four of the eighty events; he coaches the rest of the meet.) Go, Master M-mv!

Reading: The Man Who Was Thursday (G.K. Chesterton). Yes, still, but apparently "Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy." Consider me savoring.

Watching: One or the other of the movies that arrived in this box later this evening.

Working: Two thousand words before tomorrow evening.

Another tempest in a teapot, I think

I made my policy regarding review or promotional copies abundantly clear in this entry. Readers, thinkers, and autodidacts had been accepting (or rejecting) my book recommendations for nearly three years before I accepted a free book from a publisher (and for nearly three years before M-mv was mentioned in the Los Angeles Times for accepting free books from a publisher). I don't think the fact that I accepted some books this fall and then presented a clearly articulated policy regarding said books injured my reputation with regular M-mv readers.

And for the record, The Thirteenth Tale deserved the hype, which is why I contributed to it. It is not a Great Book, to be sure; it is, however, a "thumpin' good read" -- it entertained and transported this reader, and I thought it might do the same for those who visit M-mv.

By all accounts, I was right.

Afterthought
The reason I began blogging about books had nothing to do with "the mainstream media's treatment of books." I began writing about books and the reading life because, quite simply, I love both, and writing about books and the synthesis of my reading, thinking, and learning is a source of great pleasure for me. My response to text and film and art and life, as chronicled here, is as genuine and non-obligatory as writing gets.

In the end, though, it's just a weblog.

So I don't feel a readerly, writerly, and/or "lit-blogger"ly responsibility to weed out all of those book bloggers who have the audacity to write about books without providing a receipt or library checkout record with their posts.

I'd rather read, thanks.

But that's just me.

Fine Art Friday

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944)
"Girl Looking out the Window" (c. 1892)

From Symbolism (Michael Gibson):

[An] anxiety haunts the work of Edvard Munch, [that] is expressed with a formal inventiveness that impinges upon the emotions before we are even aware of the subject; the deeper regions of the psyche are accessible only through the potent agency of rhythm and color.

Mmmm. Yes. Before we ever intuit what Munch's paintings are about, we become keenly aware of how he intended us to feel, no?

I saw "Girl Looking out the Window" again for the first time -- you do know what I mean, right? -- during our October trip to the Art Institute. What is the girl by the window doing? I wondered. Did the woman in the foreground make her weep? Is she drying her eyes on the curtain? Why does looking at this painting arouse in me an ineffable sadness?

Did you read the wonderful article about Munch in the March 2006 Smithsonian? From "Edvard Munch: Beyond The Scream":

Edvard Munch, who never married, called his paintings his children and hated to be separated from them. Living alone on his estate outside Oslo for the last 27 years of his life, increasingly revered and increasingly isolated, he surrounded himself with work that dated to the start of his long career. Upon his death in 1944, at the age of 80, the authorities discovered—behind locked doors on the second floor of his house—a collection of 1,008 paintings, 4,443 drawings and 15,391 prints, as well as woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, lithographic stones, woodcut blocks, copperplates and photographs. Yet in a final irony of his difficult life, Munch is famous today as the creator of a single image, which has obscured his overall achievement as a pioneering and influential painter and printmaker.

Munch's The Scream is an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time. As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Munch defined how we see our own age—wracked with anxiety and uncertainty. His painting of a sexless, twisted, fetal-faced creature, with mouth and eyes open wide in a shriek of horror, re-created a vision that had seized him as he walked one evening in his youth with two friends at sunset.

An aside: This is a short work month, so I've been a writing fiend. Gotta make the deadline; gotta make the deadline.... Remember that Dunkin' Donuts commercial? Heh, heh, heh.

Hey, can you guess this evening's topic from the following passage? (And, no, Googling the text is not a demonstration of one's intellectual prowess, folks.)

Nothing, at first view, may seem more unbounded than the thought of man, which not only escapes all human power and authority, but is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects. And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived; nor is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction.

Cracked. Me. Up.

Heard this on the talk station this morning: "Phony Letters Say Trees Have Wrong Leaf Colors."

Blogging from the minivan again. Whee! Holy technology, Batman. (And, no, I'm not driving.)

Dental chair reading: Look Back in Anger (John Osborne).

"Twenty Minutes a Day"

by Richard Peck

Read to your children
Twenty minutes a day;
You have the time,
And so do they.
Read while the laundry is in the machine;
Read while the dinner cooks;
Tuck a child in the crook of your arm
And reach for the library books.
Hide the remote,
Let the computer games cool,
For one day your children will be off to school;
Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice;
Let them hear their first tales
In the sound of your voice.
Read in the morning;
Read over noon;
Read by the light of
Goodnight Moon.
Turn the pages together,
Sitting close as you'll fit,
Till a small voice beside you says,
"Hey, don't quit."

Yeah, file this under "My job is way cooler than yours! " too: This weekend's work included writing about Peck and Rainer Maria Rilke.

The recommended daily allowance
Two I've pressed on you (here and elsewhere) many times before: A Long Way from Chicago and Letters to a Young Poet.

Hey, six million thanks to those of you who wrote in to let me know the site layout is a-okay. I appreciated your help.

Several months ago, Mr. M-mv (a Most High Nerd of Geekiness) installed the beta version of IE7 on his various and sundry computers and added his professional $7 worth to the Great Nerd Conversation.

When I viewed "Mental multivitamin" from any of his computers, the banner seemed to shift right. Since it looked perfectly fine with my browser (on my computer), I chalked it off to an IE7 "bug." But now I've upgraded to IE7, and apparently, it's not a bug -- not one caught in the beta net, anyway.

So tell me: What does the banner look like to you? Is it centered? Does the layout look right?

Hey, and does this dress make my ass look fat? Heh, heh, heh.

The Saturday Review of Books

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Fine Art Friday

"The Lesson"
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

This image is a common one; that is, I've seen it on several home education sites and blogs. I love that the mother-teacher has plump arms; I have plump arms, too, now. And I love how the daughter-students lean in close to look at the book. I'd like to imagine it's an art book or a bird book. The Misses M-mv and I sometimes sit in the library, leaning against each other to look. Together.

Related and long aside

Recently, in another forum, I read an article that appeared in the monthly newsletter published by a popular Christian homeschool curriculum provider. The article details the many changes one woman made after listening to teacher-training tapes available through said curriculum provider. These changes included rethinking her wardrobe ("I'm a professional teacher. I simply don t get paid monetarily. However, now I dress like one.) and adopting a longer school-day schedule ("We commence around 7:30 a.m. and end by 4:30 p.m. whether we re finished or not.").

I share neither the writer's religion nor her commitment to to the curriculum provider. I do, however, share her conviction that there's nothing wrong with inserting some, for lack of a better word, professionalism into the pursuit of home education. I wouldn't go about in the ways in which she has. Still, she makes some excellent points.

To me, coming to the home education table (or couch or front porch or whatever) in the same way in which you would arrive at a more conventional job (i.e., washed, dressed, and prepared) is a terrific idea. I haven't much (any?) use for charts and elaborate planning, but I have great regard for arriving at the daily with my game face on and the playbook memorized.

In the article -- "Musings from a Mom" (link currently unavailable) -- Deidre Salmon writes, "It was surprising to hear that [insert private school name here] often tests homeschoolers for admittance and finds them lacking. We all think our children are brilliant and several grade levels ahead of where they should be. Apparently this is not so. More homeschoolers must hear that."

I agree. We are ill-served by the false impression that simply because we home educate, we are providing a superior education. We need a periodic reality check, and the fact is that some homeschoolers are un(der)prepared for more conventional academic success.

And you know what? I'd prefer that my students not find themselves ill-equipped because of my poor planning or inadequate preparation. Treating this endeavor with the same commitment and, yes, professionalism I bring to my more conventional work may help me avoid failure -- mine and theirs.

I've long maintained that a successful homeschooling experience begins with the parent-teacher. See "It all begins with me," for example, where I wrote, in part:

When the work is taking forever to complete, when the quality is less than expected, when enthusiasm has waned, etc., I don't need to look much further than the example I've been setting. Have I been on-task? Have I been doing my job(s) with attention to detail? Have I conveyed my love of the subject and of the family-centered learning project?

For more than six years, here and elsewhere, I've written about the joy of discovery, the mornings in Nick and Nora sock monkey pajamas, the field trips, and all of the M&M moments that make me so glad for this adventure. But I've been just as quick to assert that this, to me, is a job -- one to which I bring commitment, skill, and, again, a sense of professionalism. When I taught in more traditional environments, my students had me -- 120 percent of me, as the cliche goes; some days, more. I see no reason to offer my own children anything less.

Now, that said, I have never had any desire to replicate a school environment in our home. Not. Ever. It is important to me, however, that my children give their studies as much consideration as their art, their imaginative play, etc., and the way I've communicated this is by modeling the behavior I want to see. In other words, I read, study, think, write, learn, and discuss. I work. Right there beside them. How else can I hope to communicate the importance of this pursuit?

May I add that I'm not altogether sure how one engages in Socratic dialogue if one is not present. I mean, I'm all for encouraging academic independence, but I am the teacher, tutor, coach, and (often) discussion leader. Um, 'hard to teach, tutor, coach, or discuss if I'm regularly in another room (mentally or physically), no?

Yes, I manage our home. And, yes, I work (hard, in the interstices parenting and teaching and homemaking permit). And, yes, my family has, over the last decade of homeschooling, dealt with its share of medical crises, relocations, absent spouse syndrome (a.k.a. a lot of business travel), death (of friends and relatives), even a major automobile accident -- so I know (as well as anyone else, anyway) that "life happens." It's just that, like Ms. Salmon, perhaps, I'm pretty convinced that school must keep happening, too.

She has decided that the way to ensure this is by adopting a certain schedule and a new wardrobe and whatnot. Someone else may accomplish the same with schedules or plans. Someone else may do so with a certain academic program. And so on. I do it by approaching the family-centered learning project as work. Good work. Work I love. But, still, work. And if, as I said, I'm on the job? I'm generally dressed for it, and I'm always prepared for it.

And it works for me.

(Sorry, CED. I know how you loathe that phrase. Heh, heh, heh.)

Added later: If you've arrived here via the Carnival of Homeschooling and you liked this entry, you may enjoy some of the posts collected in "Thoughts on education and parenting."

Project Feederwatch

Just two more days until the twentieth season of FeederWatch begins (November 11)!

According to a recent email message, the number of FeederWatch participants is currently lower than last year, and they are asking for our help to recruit new friends to the FeederWatch family. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has issued four press releases highlighting recent findings and calling for new and continuing participants to join in as they embark on our twentieth season.

We're doing our part right here:

Project FeederWatch needs your help to keep track of the birds at your feeders this winter. Count birds as often as two days each week from November 11 to April 6. Your counts will help scientists monitor changes in feeder bird populations. New participants receive a research kit with easy to follow instructions, the FeederWacther's handbook, a bird-identification poster, a calendar, and a subscription to the newsletter of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (U.S.) or Bird Studies Canada (Canada). For more information or to sign up in the U.S., please
visit this site or call (800) 843-2473; if in Canada, please visit this site or call (888) 448-2473. A $15 fee ($35 in Canada) makes the program possible.

Two links

From "‘The left has been infected by the disease of intolerance’" (Spiked, "Battle of Ideas," October 27, 2006):

Kaminer’s description of a free university, where challenging and even confrontational ideas are batted between and among teachers and students, sounds very appealing – but all too often today, the reality is quite different. She says: ‘There are still a lot of very good schools and very good teachers, who try to stimulate their students and expose them to different ideas.’ No doubt that is true. But in some universities there is also a creeping culture of conformism, a sense that certain ideas are beyond the pale and thus must be crushed by the long arm of the censor (often, these days, a university-appointed ethics committee or a self-righteous students’ union).

Creeping culture of conformism. Ew.

And from 'Helicopter' parents try too hard (Boston Globe, November 7, 2006):

It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their kids' job search -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers.

In a brown box from Amazon

A note of thanks

Affiliate programs have become ubiquitous; everyone and his mother now feature links and subtle (or not so) requests that visitors buy using said links. That is the nature of business, of course. My only recourse is to thank you, again and again, for your business and your loyalty.

In the box

:: The Snowman
:: The Masque of the Red Death / The Premature Burial
:: The Fall of the House of Usher /The Pit and the Pendulum
:: After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (Joyce Carol Oates)
:: Moral Disorder: and Other Stories (Margaret Atwood)
:: Black Girl/White Girl (Joyce Carol Oates)
:: One Good Turn (Kate Atkinson)
:: Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion: A Comprehensive Resource for Identifying North American Birds
:: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior

Insulting

Thou art not noble;
For all th'accommodations that thou bear'st are nurs'd by baseness.

So there, eh? That was my lot when I visited here this morning. I consider it a literary privilege to be insulted in this way each morning over my second cuppa.

Speaking of literary, playwright, moralist, and political theorist Albert Camus was born on this date in 1913. Did you know he was the second youngest writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature? (He won in 1957.) Do you know who the youngest lit laureate was?

Rudyard Kipling.

From "Pilgrims' Progress" (Smithsonian Magazine, November 2006):

The English do not make much of their Pilgrim heritage. "It's not our story," a former museum curator, Malcolm Dolby, told me. "These aren't our heroes." Nonetheless, Scrooby has made at least one concession to its departed predecessors: the Pilgrim Fathers pub, a low, whitewashed building, right by the main road. The bar used to be called the Saracen's Head but got a face-lift and a change of name in 1969 to accommodate American tourists searching their roots. A few yards from the pub, I found St. Wilfrid's church, where William Brewster, who would become the spiritual leader of Plymouth Colony, once worshiped. The church's current vicar, the Rev. Richard Spray, showed me around. Like many medieval country churches, St. Wilfrid's had a makeover in the Victorian era, but the structure of the building Brewster knew remained largely intact. "The church is famous for what's not in it," Spray said. "Namely, the Brewsters and the other Pilgrims. But it's interesting to think that the Thanksgiving meal they had when they got to America apparently resembled a Nottinghamshire Harvest Supper—minus the turkey!"

File under "My job is way cooler than yours!"

This weekend, I wrote about Marc Chagall, Louis Sachar, and Harold Pinter.

For money.

I know.

Waaaaay.

The recommended daily allowance

I thought I had already recommended this gem, but then I couldn't find an entry, so here you go: The Art of Looking Sideways (Alan Fletcher).

From page 178: We also only notice things which are directly relevant to our daily business. In consequence, we tend to reduce our environment to visual muzak -- a perpetual symphony or colours, shapes and patterns.

Blinkered by habit we glance around rather than look with acuity. In effect the eye sleeps until the mind wakes it with a question.

Culled from the archives

A happy and successful home education adventure is predicated on a happy and successful parent-child relationship.

In short, it all begins with you.

Ayup. You.

So if you haven't figured out how to be an effective parent yet, then it's unlikely that you will be an effective parent-teacher. It's really that simple, so get on it, folks, because we owe them an education. And contrary to all the warm-fuzziness floating around the 'net, we have a finite period in which to provide said education -- the window closes a little every day. And while it may all begin with you, it should be all about them, no?

Let's go.

Some practical advice:

Classroom management and parenting have a lot in common. A good classroom manager knows that he must give the students a frame in which to hang their day, a song on which to hang their dance.

Give your children some simple daily rhythms. Wake. Make the bed. Groom. Hear Mom read over breakfast. Work on math. Play. Snack. Work on reading. Play. Lunch. Rest. Read. Study. Play. Adventure. Snack. Bathe. Read. Sleep. (Wash. Rinse. Repeat.) Kids like and need reliable rhythms. And it is so much easier to inject fun and adventure into a reliable routine (think improvisation on several measures) than it is to just play it all by ear.

Ensure that the children understand exactly what is expected of them. Tell them what they must do each day before they [insert favorite activity here]. Remind them what obligations must be fulfilled before [insert another here]. Have them repeat it back to you. Often.

Think like a teacher. Don't lose touch with the needs and abilities of young elementary school students. Do you remember kindergarten? Letters and songs and dances and blocks and dress-up and nap time and art and math chants and snacks and words and Mrs. Moen reading stories and Timmy learning to tie shoes and the firemen visiting and soft voices in the classroom and loud ones on the kickball field.

And third grade? More work, to be sure, but Mrs. Slocum understood the need for wonder and fresh air and math fact Bingo and reading Charlotte's Web; she knew to mix a worksheet with a song and seat work with recess. Regardless of how well it all began, your children need the right mix of required subjects, rest, and play. Seat work for ten to fifteen minutes, maybe twenty for the typical five-year-old. Thirty to forty minutes for the typical eight-year-old. A game. An adventure. A walk. A song. Then some more seat work.

And high school? Well, it's not supposed to be easy, but it need not be without its adventures and laughter. Remember, too, that while independence is one objective of an education (as in, you'd like your students to work well without you hovering at their sides), you are the teacher. You must teach. Lead. Coach. Model. Discuss. Monitor. Challenge. Grade. Criticize. Praise. Teach, damn it. Not just when it's fun. Or convenient. Or interesting to you. Or easy. If the window is closing a little every day, then it's nearly closed on our teens. Push as much through the opening as you can. They will be left to their own devices soon enough. Teach them now.

Think like a parent. When the little one asks to be held, hold her. She will only fit in your lap for a little while. Inhale the scent of her warm head. Tackle the next thing.

Think like a teacher's aide. Keep a carton or large basket of oversized paper and crayons, building toys, paper towel rolls, washable markers, large letters and numbers, etc. near your school area so the littlest one has something to do while you work with the older children.

Focus on the moment you're in. Sometimes we become so intent on ticking off the events and errands of our lives in some planner or to-do list, that we forget to live. To breathe. To laugh. To learn alongside our children. To enjoy ourselves. We didn't, after all, choose this path to be miserable, right?

Find the joy.

Parent. And teach.

Fine Art Friday

"Don Quixote"
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Picasso was recognized as an artistic prodigy at an early age. [...] However, he was not satisfied with the limited possibilities in such a traditional mode of representation. His constant, incessant striving for new means of expression is the primary lesson of Picasso's art.

Read more here.

Forty-five hundred polished words due before the weekend is over... my own version of tilting at windmills, I suppose, this squeezing work into the interstices teaching and parenting permit.

Ah, well. See you on the other side.

"...falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling..."

It is snowing here again. It won't last, but, for a moment, my "soul swooned slowly as [I] heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

"The Dead" (James Joyce; related entry).

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

According to A Book of Days for the Literary Year, George Bernard Shaw died on this date. His last words: "You're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die." Around the world, theaters were darkened in his honor.

The Irish playwright and Nobel Laureate (1925) is perhaps best known for Pygmalion. My introduction to Shaw, however, was Arms and the Man:

Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

The piano tuner visited yesterday, which was a month, to the day, since the instrument arrived in our home. He'll be back next week to make another modest adjustment, and then it will be good to go for at least six months.

"You made a good decision," he said, so quietly I found myself leaning forward to hear him.

"Thank you. We wanted an instrument, not a piece of furniture, so we went listening, not looking. Does that make sense?"

"Yes." He seemed pleased by this. "So many people want it to look a certain way."

"I'm not so sure this one looks...."

"No, no, you're right," he agreed. "It's fine. And it sounds...."

"Yes. Authoritative. Full. Big. Like it'll always be there."

"Yes," he said softly.

Links and excerpts

From "The rise & fall of the intellectual" (The New Criterion, September 2006):

The disintegration of the literary culture of the nineteenth century was accompanied by the gradual disappearance after 1900 of the man of letters himself. Within a short time, the man of letters began to appear as a dilettante, a dabbler, a dying species, even as a crank. The term itself came to be used as an instrument of abuse to signify an aged and somewhat eccentric bookman. In short order, modern life began to evolve its own substitutes for the dying breed. “Instead of men of letters,” Gross writes, “there are academic experts, mass media pundits, cultural functionaries.” He is right to wonder if we have gained or lost from the exchange, and the passage of nearly four decades since the publication of his important book has only reinforced our skepticism.

It seems plain, however, in looking back across the century that the man of letters, no matter how he is defined, was pushed aside not so much by academics and experts, but by that distinctive twentieth century phenomenon—the intellectual. The term itself is more or less coeval with the century, having been coined in 1898 to describe the collection of writers and teachers that came to the defense of Captain Dreyfus. The pedigree of the term was thus more political than literary, was associated with protest and opposition, and associated also with the political left. These have been enduring characteristics of the intellectual, and perhaps they serve as well to distinguish the species from the man of letters it supplanted. It might even be said, pace Carlyle, that the intellectual has been our most important modern person, interpreting events for expanding democratic publics and even shaping those events themselves.

From "Real-life frights" (Chicago Sun-Times, October 27, 2006):

What scares us about Chicago? What gives us that creepy feeling as we go about our daily lives around town? With Halloween just around the corner, Weekend asked staffers to write about "scary Chicago" -- those things, those places that are just downright eerie.

The article opens with a bit about Albright's "Picture of Dorian Gray" and includes the following contribution from Thomas Conner:

American Girl Place. You wouldn't think the line would be that fine between girrrl power and, say, the Stepford Wives. But just a cursory stroll through Chicago's biggest tourist attraction since the 1893 World's Fair (a judgment based solely on the number of red AG shopping bags one spies along Michigan Avenue) offers fun-house evidence of how feminine empowerment has mutated into the kind of capitalism even Mussolini could love. Watch the little girls -- all of them wide-eyed, hypnotized, on leave from "Village of the Damned" -- zombie-walk through the doors and utter blood-curdling squeals. They have brunch ... with the dolls. They go to a salon ... with the dolls. They wear matching outfits ... with the dolls. You watch: Soon they'll be obeying orders from the dolls. My niece recently bought finger splints and casts for her dolls. Why would a 10-year-old girl do this? What torture does she have in store for this innocent plastic mold? But maybe they're not so innocent. The Halloween movie I'm waiting for: "Chucky VII: Sugar and Slice -- Fright Night at American Girl Place."

Heh, heh, heh. I'm with Conner. That place is CREEPY. Imagine coming to the greatest city in the world to go there. Boggles the reading-thinking-learning mind.

Finally, I read this yesterday (via Arts & Letters) -- from "The modern world killed off the nap" (Toronto Star, October 29, 2006):

Many studies have shown that napping improves mood and performance.

[...]

"A nap can rejuvenate you to get through the rest of the day," Maas says. "But we'd much rather have people with good nocturnal sleep, so they would not need to take a nap."

Sara C. Mednick, a psychologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., has gone a step further. She says that naps can help even people who get plenty of nighttime sleep. In the lab, she took well-rested subjects and tested them with and without naps. She found that those who napped did better on various tests of cognitive performance than those who did not.

I suspect that this is the secret to my own ability to do it all (all as I define it, anyway) -- a combination of strong coffee and the artfully placed nap.