Pollock. Yes, again.

From "Hidden in Plain Sight?" (ARTNews, October 2009):

Among the reasons that people continue to be fascinated by Jackson Pollock’s paintings is their Rorschach quality. Viewers have perceived many things in them, from scenes out of classical mythology to Jungian symbols. In Tom and Jack, an upcoming book about the relationship between Pollock and his teacher Thomas Hart Benton, art historian Henry Adams finds a very surprising image hidden in Pollock’s 1943–44 Mural: the artist’s own signature.

Remember these?
Images from our "Pollock Sunday" entry:

Pollock Didn't Use Pink (2007)
30 x 20, tempera on foam board

Tortured Artist (2007)
20 x 30, tempera on foam board

Confessions of an Autodidact (2007)
30 x 20, tempera on foam board

Related M-mv entries
■ Fine Art Friday (7.27.2006)

■ Pollock Sunday (8.12.2007)

■ The recommended daily allowance (7.16.2007)

The recommended daily allowance

Lighting Their Fires (Rafe Esquith)

Two years ago, I included Esquith's Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire in my "Teach, damn it" entry. His other title, There Are No Shortcuts, which is not at all as compelling as Hair's on Fire, and the documentary about his class, The Hobart Shakespeareans, which is much more so, were also mentioned.

If you appreciated those recommendations, you will adore Lighting Their Fires. (Added later: As I mentioned in this entry, I received a review copy of this book.)

Framed by an afterschool trip to Dodger Stadium, Esquith's narrative is -- I'll just say it -- far less self-absorbed and therefore much more absorbing than his previous books were. Over the course of nine innings, the veteran teacher shares anecdotes, appreciates students, offers advice (not the least of which includes turn off the television, teach them chess, and give them music and art lessons), and models restraint in the presence of Very Bad ballpark behavior.

It's a gem.

For the chapbook

p. 53
Parents who want more for their kids have to take matters into their own capable hands. Reading for pleasure helps students excel in many pursuits, from art projects to scientific experiments. Reading for extended periods of time and then discussing the content with peers is a priceless exercise in focus.

(Note: You know how much I appreciate the synchronicity and serendipity at work in my reading life. Well, as I mentioned in the 9.21.2009 "On the nightstand" entry, I recently read The Westing Game with the Girls Rule Book Club. (In fact, I listed The Westing Game right beneath my note about received a review copy of Lighting Their Fires.) How neat it was, then, that The Westing Game was listed as one example of a book parents should read with their elementary school-age children. More, for older students, he recommended that no teen miss Holden. Wonderful. Just wonderful.)

p. 66
In studying Shakespeare, I have heard several experts define tragedy as not something that is merely bad, but something that is bad that should have been good.

p. 67
The ultimate goal in raising a child is to get him to turn off his own television set. We can take the cigarette or bottle away from the addict, but that is not the cure. And besides, we cannot simply remove the danger of television. It's there and it's a reality. The real challenge is to teach a child the reason why television can rob him of his potential and get him to make his own decision. [...] A child who chooses to limit his time in front of a screen enormously increases his chances of finding an avenue to greatness.

p. 78
Extraordinary young people are not necessarily brighter than their peers; they have merely developed sharper vision and see the picture more clearly.

p. 107
But for special children, excellence is a way of life, not just something to stive for in school....

p. 112
For children to be inspired to work hard and achieve greatness, they need to understand that their own world is a small one. Other kids are doing the same thing and achieving more. This is not meant to discourage a child, but to show him reality. It is rare that anyone has greatness thrust upon him.

p. 145
All of my energy became focused on the kids rather than on what others might think. My discovery that proving oneself to others is a waste of time paid huge dividends in the children's growth.

p.146
After all, the first rule of parenting and teaching is to be the people we want the kids to be.

(Note: Ayup.)

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Banned Books Week (ALA):
September 26–October 3, 2008

According to the American Library Association, Banned Books Week

celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

Some banned books:
■ Brave New World
■ To Kill a Mockingbird
■ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
■ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
■ Fahrenheit 451

Banned? Challenged? What's the difference?
The ALA describes the difference between a banned book and a challenged book:

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.

Related reading

From 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova):

The phrase "suppressed on political grounds" casts a shadow of a heavy-handed government blocking its citizens from receiving information, ideas and opinions that it perceives to be critical, embarrassing or threatening. This image, unfortunately, is too often reality. It is not, however, limited to dictatorships such as those of Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's communist Soviet Union and Suharto's Indonesia. The governments of democracies also participate in attempts to censor such critical material in order to protect their own perceived state security.

Further, the impression that censorship for political reasons emanates only from national government is mistaken. The second common source of such activity is at the local community level, generated by school board members or citizens, individually or in groups, who attack textbooks and fiction used in schools or available in school libraries.

Among the books discussed:
■ All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
■ Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)
■ Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
■ The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
_____________________________

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Technorati tags: censorship, banned books

The recommended daily allowance

NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children
(Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman)

As I mentioned in the 8.12.2009 "On the nightstand" entry, I received an advance reading copy of NurtureShock, published earlier this month. Already familiar with Bronson and Merryman's provocative take on such parenting challenges as praise, sleep issues, and lying, I was prepared for more insightful analysis and crisp writing.

And I certainly wasn't disappointed.

Interested? Check out the excerpt featured in the September 14 issue of Newsweek: "Even Babies Discriminate." Need more? The Bronson/Merryman articles featured in the M-mv entries linked above may also compel you to get your hands on a copy of this thought-provoking collection of essays.

On our small screen

Wallander (2009)
It was no surprise to us that Kenneth Branagh garnered an Emmy nod for his portrayal of the titular detective in this BBC series based on the work of Henning Mankell. (Brendan Gleason took home the prize for his portrayal of Winston Churchill: Into the Storm.) Mr. M-mv and I thoroughly enjoyed the three episodes and hope more will follow.

Taking Chance (2008)
Speaking of Emmy nods, Kevin Bacon also earned one for his role in this quiet film. I watched it through a veil of tears, but its powerful emotion shouldn't prevent you from following Lt. Col. Mike Strobl on his journey to bring the body of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps home to his family.

King Corn (2008)
College buds Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis learn that they both can trace their ancestry to the same small farm town in Iowa. It is there that they determine to raise an acre of corn. Confiding that my favorite scene is the final shot of these affable man-boys playing a game of catch in their field should not diminish the appeal and interest of this simple but effective documentary.

Sicko (2007)
Michael Moore does not concern himself with the uninsured but rather with those whose health insurance has failed to cover their needs. For perhaps obvious reasons, this film seems particularly poignant and thought-provoking right now, during the current health care debate. I was struck especially by Moore's forays into Britain, Canada, France, and Cuba (!), where health care is available to all citizens for little or no money.

Fame (1980)
The Misses expressed a mild interest in seeing the remake, but I don't like movie theaters, and I couldn't see how one could water down the elements that earned the original its R rating to a rating of PG-13, so I gave them that ol' parenting standby: "We'll see." But we won't. Not in a theater, anyway. They had made me reconsider an important feature of the landscape of my younger self's imagination, though, so one night last week, after everyone else had gone to bed, I watched the original. As it turns out, the movie that had so thoroughly captivated my fellow choir and drama club members and me was not particularly well-acted nor even particularly deep. Either that or I have simply grown too old to appreciate the film's realism, which Ebert, in his 3.5-star review, insists is there, sensitively and genuinely there. (He hasn't a nice word to spare for the remake, by the way.)

The Birds (1963)
A blend of sci-fi and social commentary, this Hitchcock classic is a sort of rite of passage for new members of the FCLP's film club.

The recommended daily allowance

Wounded by School:
Recapturing the Joy in Learning
and Standing Up to Old School Culture
(Kirsten Olson)

p. 31
In my own experience, pleasure in learning is also central to human happiness -- to an engaged and vital life. I began this book with a desire to understand the experiences of highly capable learners, virtuoso explorers who showed unusual vitality in learning. I wanted to explore those moments of human consciousness when learning became transcendently enjoyable and autotelic -- self-sustaining, disconnected from time, and profoundly pleasurable. My investigations of those experiences were quickly diverted by the repeated and powerful descriptions amoung my research subjects of educational wounding and laceration in school. They had to escape school to begin learning, as one of them said, because it had to be "beyond duty." [Emphasis added.]

I first mentioned this review copy in the 8.12.2009 "On the nightstand" entry. If you haven't already done so, check out Olson's academic paper "School Woundedness, Cultural Myths of Schooling, and The Healing Process" and the following articles:

■ New Learners for the New Economy

■ Their Time Is Occupied, But Not Their Brains

■ Be Your Child's Chief Learning Officer!

What it means

It's funny. I cannot recall how the conversation began. We talked about so many things today. But at 5:38 p.m., there we were, arranged on the couch, floor, and chair, dissecting the Pledge of Allegiance. We examined it as grammarians, as fans of parsing and diagramming: S-V-O, parallel construction, prepositional phrases, oh, my!

And then we considered it as amateur rhetoricians. We were reminded that there is no comma -- and therefore no pause -- between "one nation" and "under God." That is not how the Pledge is usually recited, though, is it? Most people say, "And to the republic [pause] for which it stands, [pause] one nation [pause] under God, [pause] indivisible, [pause] with liberty [pause] and justice [small pause] for all." Try saying that passage without the italicized pauses. Isn't that more emphatic?

We thought so, too.

And then we considered it as -- for lack of a better word -- philosophers. What does it mean? And as we talked, I remembered the following bit from Red Skelton, who was, during his long career, alternately praised and derided for his foppish sentimentality.

Call us foppish sentimentalists: We loved it.

So,when was the last time you said the Pledge of Allegiance? What did you mean by it?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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

"Literary types" = "budgetary liabilities"

From "The Decline of the English Department" (The American Scholar, Autumn 2009):

Studying English taught us how to write and think better, and to make articulate many of the inchoate impulses and confusions of our post-adolescent minds. We began to see, as we had not before, how such books could shape and refine our thinking. We began to understand why generations of people coming before us had kept them in libraries and bookstores and in classes such as ours. There was, we got to know, a tradition, a historical culture, that had been assembled around these books. Shakespeare had indeed made a difference—to people before us, now to us, and forever to the language of English-speaking people.

Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future. In comparison with the pre-professional ambitions that dominate the lives of American undergraduates today, the psychological condition of students of the time was defined by self-reflection, innocence, and a casual irresponsibility about what was coming next. [All emphasis added.]

"The tragedy began long before the computer and the cellphone."

Umberto Eco on "The lost art of handwriting" (The Guardian, September 21):

The art of handwriting teaches us to control our hands and encourages hand-eye coordination.

The three-page article pointed out that writing by hand obliges us to compose the phrase mentally before writing it down. Thanks to the resistance of pen and paper, it does make one slow down and think. Many writers, though accustomed to writing on the computer, would sometimes prefer even to impress letters on a clay tablet, just so they could think with greater calm.

The Carnival of Homeschooling

~ Hosted by Apollos Academy ~

The theme of the Carnival is "Learning about the Autumnal Equinox," and an M-mv entry is included in the line-up. Stop by for information and/or inspiration.

On the nightstand

And we'll call this one the at-a-glance edition, all right?

Currently reading
■ Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World (Rafe Esquith)
This slim volume has already provided me with abundant motivation for this fall's studies. (A review copy.)

■ The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin)
With the Girls Rule Book Club.

■ Leisure: The Basis of Culture (Josef Pieper)
At the recommendation of Ordo Amoris.

■ The owner's manual for this (2009)
Since all that's left of Zoe is this (which had never been used, by the way).

Recently completed
■ The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir (Laurie Sandell)
Recommended in Entertainment Weekly, I think... or maybe by Girl Detective?

■ Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Colors of Light (Wanda M. Corn)
Related to our watercolor class.

■ The Art of Andrew Wyeth (Wanda M. Corn)
Also related to our watercolor class.

■ Blue Dog (George Rodrigue)

The "On the nightstand" archive can be found here.

On the nightstand

Let's call this the prairie primer edition.

You see, Master's field biology course features a volunteer component for which students must document at least ten hours spent in environmental projects. While paging through a county publication, I happened upon an article about prairie conservation and restoration. Master needed a project, and the Misses and I were just plain interested, so we decided to attend the information and training program. Last week, we participated in our first field assignment as newly minted volunteers: collecting the seeds of Golden Alexander for future restoration projects.

One of the most exciting aspects of this adventure is that we get to visit places that are off-limits to the public. (I confess, though, that I had a LOT of trouble understanding that I could -- "Yes, you really can, Mrs. M-mv!" -- go off the path.)

So, here are the books that have graced the knapsacks, couch, nightstands, ottomans, kitchen and bathroom counters, and work table since we immersed ourselves in the subject of all things prairie.

In the field
■ Prairie Plants of Northern Illinois: Identification and Ecology (Russell R. Kirt)

■ A Field Guide to Wildflowers: Northeastern and North-Central North America (Peterson Field Guide)

■ A Guide to Field Identification: Wildflowers of North America

■ Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers: A Field Guide to Common Wildflowers and Plants of the Prairie Midwest (Doug Ladd and Frank Oberle)

■ A Field Guide to the Wildflowers of North America

■ Prairie in Your Pocket: A Guide to Plants of the Tallgrass Prairie (Mark Muller)

In preparation
■ Where the Sky Began (John Madson)

■ Prairie: A Natural History (Candace Savage)

■ Peterson Field Guides: The North American Prairie

The "On the nightstand" archive can be found here.

The $150 Space Camera

John Williams just reported this story: "MIT Students Beat NASA on Beer-Money Budget" (Wired, September 15).

Real Simple. Really?

Through one program or another, I received a free one-year subscription to Real Simple. Maybe it's just me, but isn't it incredibly difficult to discern features from advertisements? Where are the articles? I asked Mr. M-mv. Where are they?

And then I found this in the September 2009 issue: "Philosophy 101."

Reminiscent of a Mental Floss bit, the article condenses the work of six thinkers -- including Plato, Kant, and Hegel -- into a few bullet points. It's the sort of introduction those who are new to the subject appreciate. It may also prove interesting bathroom reading. (Yes, I have been known to strew articles of interest near the throne of the captive audience.)

Tyranny of experts

From the opening of "Specialist pleading" (The Australian, September 2, 2009):

Western culture assumes that a responsible individual will defer to the opinion of an expert. Politicians frequently remind us that their policies are "evidence based", which usually means informed by expert advice. Experts have the last word on topics of public interest and increasingly on matters to do with people's private affairs. We are advised to seek and heed to advice of a bewildering chorus of personal experts -- parenting specialists, life coaches, relationship gurus, super-nannies and sex therapists, to name a few -- who apparently possess the authority to tell us how to live our lives.

The exhortation to defer to experts is underpinned by the premise that their specialist knowledge entitles them to a higher moral status to the rest of us.

Later:

The flip side of expertise is an incompetent public. Historically, the ambiguous relationship between democracy and reliance on expertise has led many thinkers to draw pessimistic conclusions about the capacity of the public to play the role of a responsible citizenry. This argument is presented forcefully by American commentator Walter Lippmann in his classic 1992 study, Public Opinion. Lippmann declared that the proportion of the electorate that is "absolutely illiterate" is much larger than one would suspect and that these people, who are "mentally children or barbarians", are natural targets of manipulators. [Boldface added.]

Still later:

While this professionalisation of everyday life has been a distinct trend from the outset of modernity, it has grown at a breathtaking pace since the 1960s, with professionals systematically expanding the range of personal issues that demand expert knowledge. Today, every aspect of life from birth through to school and career to marriage and mourning is subject professional counselling.

Professionalisation of everyday life. Hmmmm. I smell some blog posts brewing. Heh, heh, heh.

You'll need an extra mug of coffee for this one...

But it's worth it.

From this week's New Yorker: "Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?"

"Do you ever read your prose aloud, either quietly to yourself or at a public reading of your work?"

From "Prune that prose" (Chronicle of Higher Education, September 7, 2009):

"[A]cademic" is shorthand for "lifeless prose, cumbersome to read, filled with unnecessary complication, often disdainful and stridently obscure in style and tone." If by chance they do wind up wanting to acquire a manuscript by a faculty member, the first thing they say at the editorial meeting is: "But he doesn't write like an academic!"

I'm fascinated by the fact that we don't take this as an insult. Academics are not embarrassed by writing that's impenetrable. We're taught to feel like doctors castigated for poor penmanship. Producing turgid prose is part of how we define ourselves as professionals.

What's the Word? Shakespeare after 9/11

Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 9, the Modern Language Association's "What's the Word? Shakespeare after 9/11" program will be aired and simulcast at 7:30 p.m.(ET) on WBGO (88.3FM) in Newark, N.J. If you cannot receive the broadcast signal, try simulcast listening: Visit the WBGO website and click on the "Listen Now!" tab in the upper right corner, then follow the prompts. (You might want to give this a dry run to ensure that all is in working order.)

As one of three featured speakers, Scott Newstok, the editor of Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, reflects on Henry V in the light of the events of September 11.

Catch a preview of the program here.

And find (tangentially) related M-mv entries here, here, and here.

Mental clarity

From the October 2009 issue of Prevention: "Play up your brain power."

R.I.P. Reading Rainbow

Related stories here and here.

ZOO: An excellent place to study
the habits of human beings.
~ Evan Esar, American humorist (1899-1995)

Two Sundays ago, we headed to Grosse Point Lighthouse. Last Sunday, we journeyed to the Brookfield Zoo, and this time, Master M-mv joined us.

Our first stop was the butterfly house, which is only open from Memorial Day until mid-September. Here are just a few of my favorite images from this seasonal exhibit.

We spent the rest of our visit seeking out familiar faces, like Cookie, the seventy-five-year-old Mitchell's cockatoo...

Where to this Sunday? you ask. This Sunday we're not going anywhere. We'll probably hit the bike trail, of course, but otherwise? I think it's a stay-home weekend. A "Let's catch up on all of those magazines that have piled up around here" weekend. A "Hotdogs and corn? Sounds good!" weekend. A "There's no way I'm settin' that alarm!" weekend.

Wishing you and yours the same.

Will's face

From "Waiting for William" (Washington Post, August 30):

What Shakespeare looked like in his prime is just one of the many things disputed about him, along with how many plays he wrote and in what order, whether he was a nice guy or a jerk, how he treated his wife, if he was a bisexual, or a secret Catholic, and what killed him at age 53. Just two images of Shakespeare are considered authentic by scholars, and both were done after the playwright died. A clumsy funerary bust over his tomb in the chancel of Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford depicts a portly man in robes with a quill in his hand. It must have looked like him at his death because his family approved it. The other is the cartoonlike engraving on the cover of the First Folio, the authorized collection of his plays published in 1623, seven years after he died. The engraving, by a Flemish artisan named Martin Droeshout, shows a neckless man with an absurdly domed forehead, pouches under his eyes and a hint of flab around his chin.

International Year of Astronomy

Our Galileoscopes have arrived!