Updating one's blog

OK, anyone else totally forget to update his or her blog?  Is life perhaps too short and busy to maintain these constant online presences? 

Go outside and look, listen, smell...
Put down the mouse...

Visiting ghosts, Being at home

We have been spending weekends out east going through 54 years of memories, well, actually far more years than that since there is so much theater memorabilia dating from the 1940s.  My family bought our old farmhouse in 1958; my brother and I were tiny children and we spent every summer and most weekends during our school years driving out in the dusk to the tiny town where potato farms ruled.  Amagansett at that time was a drive-through town between East Hampton, a gentile old town that moved slowly, even in the summer, and Montauk, a more rough and tumble beach community.  Our house was one of the few on Miankoma Lane.

As I peruse through piles of photos, old Playbills, scripts, letters from long past actors, it is hard not to think about my parents, my actor father and my ballet dancer mother.  Their personalities still move through the air of the house.   My mother was the gifted dancer who moved to New York City in her late teens to become a dancer, traveled Europe during World War II in a dance troupe, and joined a number of musical comedies in the dance corps during the heyday of the musical.  My father had friends from every corner of the theater world and indeed of the globe.  Images of happy young women, handsome men, old character actors mingle with family pictures of us growing up. 

This house has known happiness within its walls, as well as its share of small tragedies.  But the atmosphere is one of subdued light, the tinkling of glasses, laughter and music still seem to echo faintly.  the house, in its silence still suggests lives well lived. 

Technology in the classroom--my response to the New York Times

In response to the New York Times article “Teachers resist high tech push into Idaho schools” (1/4/12) I had worked up the following response.  After double-checking the Times website, I realized that this would need a scalpel to get it down to 150 requirement!  This was not easy for wordy me but I did it and was gratified to have the Times publish my revised letter on January 6th.  But here are my more complete thoughts about the push to move technology into the center of the classroom.  What follows is the original letter which is excerpted in the Times letter column. 

I would like to commend the teachers who are fighting for an engaged learning experience through Socratic questioning as opposed to computer-based module learning.  I teach at the college level.  Over the past ten years we have witnessed a dramatic increase in active use of technology among children and teens.  Despite the ready access to computers, tablets, smart phones and other information-rich tools, our students come to college with weak attention skills and too often an active dislike of reading and sustained engagement with ideas.  Their knowledge base is far less than that of their parents and older siblings who may not have had ready access to technology. While they can text-message the average adult under the table, they do not demonstrate that they have reaped the rewards promised exultantly by the manufacturers of technology.

Do we really think little Jessica is shifting through the overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed material available on the web and avidly absorbing knowledge?  Rather she spends five minutes copying and pasting from Wikipedia or SparkNotes into her assignment and the other hour and a half on FaceBook, Twitter or flitting from hyperlink to hyperlink. While video sites do offer rich material on history and current events, you have to resist the siren call of the hilarious “Hitler Rants” videos and the hundreds of other clever postings, wildly inaccurate but seductively entertaining. While the web may provide information if does not equip the student with the critical thinking skills to discern the good from the bad or ridiculous, despite what Governor Otto hopes.

I teach online graduate classes and really enjoy them but have serious reservations for their value for undergrads, much less pre-college students.  Our young people need to learn how to look someone in the face, engage with persons in active dialogue, read body language and develop their personhood.  None of this is done easily, if at all, on a computer.  Ann Rosenbaum strikes me as a tech savvy young teacher.  She is absolutely right in cautioning against the substitution of technology for quality face to face engaged inquiry.  Her students will succeed in college and in the business world because they will know how to talk with one another, work through differences of opinion, have and use information productively, and solve problems critically and cooperatively.  None of this is achieved by plugging into the web and interacting with a mouse.  

Amagansett: a magical name for me.  From 1958 I have viewed this place as my home, my secret garden, if you will.  As a child I roamed the streets, dunes, woods, fields and sought myself among the elements.  The people were always foreign to me.  As a solitary person, I cherished the night sky, the ever cresting waves, the horse in the field--who did not acknowledge my existence.  Here I could look, see and be invisible.  Here I was at home.

Reactivating my blog!  And dealing with two gmail addresses. What a challenge...

New Blog site

Ok, I have been very very lax about this blog.
A. I have very little to say.  Refreshing or Boring?  You decide!
B. I am devoting my random thoughts to my new site which I urge, beg, entreat-- well, really, whatever--you to visit. No pressure.  My anglo-saxon friend below recommends it.

Check out: http://www.wendycturgeon.org/Blog/Blog.html

Tempus fugit

Well, here it is--July 25th--and you might be wondering (OK, probably not) what I have been doing all summer. Well, the answer is not much and a lot. It all depends on how you measure events.

My travel schedule falls under the "a lot" column:

May Rome and Greece with James Blakeley, a history professor at my college, and 19 freshmen, including 17 girls. (You do the estrogen math.)

June Queretaro, Mexico for the NAACI conference which I organized along with my colleagues Susan Gardner (Canada- the sane country in North America) and Eugenio Echeverria (Mexico.)

July Oxford, England for a Inter-Disciplinary.net conference on Childhood, followed by a visit to Pennine Community up in Wakefield

July-August South Carolina (as if it is not hot enough here in New York) for the AAPT conference on teaching philosophy

OK- so lots of traveling, presenting, listening. learning--all accompanied by packing and unpacking.

In the "not much" category is reading and really digging into new ideas. My colleague, whom I run into occasionally when I appear on campus to deal with various administrative stuff (a technical term, most likely unfamiliar to those of you who do not deal with the esoterics of paper pushing)-- well he is always reporting on having read about five books in the last week and just makes me:

(a) exhausted

(b) guilty as a student who is falling way behind on the homework and has the sinking feeling that there is no way in the known universe that she can ever, ever catch up.

So, in that department I am seriously lagging. But not to worry! Summer stretches luxuriously ahead, right? Oh no! Are fall syllabi due already??? What happened to the summers of my youth that lasted for months? And by "months" I mean psychological periods of long time, not calendar time.

So gather ye rosebuds while ye may. And, perhaps, have another pomegranate martini.

Betrayal and remorse

I had gone out east to visit Pat but I quickly realized that this was just a ruse. The overnight visit proceeded as always with much discussion but now there was another there. And I knew I would be revealed. My secret could simply not remain.

As soon as I arrived home, he knew. He took one look at me and he could tell. He could tell that there had been another. His eyes radiated questions, disappointment, unbelief. What could I say? What could I do? The scent of the other lingered on me and I knew that he knew and that he knew that I knew that he knew. Apologies burst from my lips, crying promises that it would never happen again. Never. That no one could ever replace him in my heart or my bed. No--there was only him. But the scent of the other formed a miasma of distrust, of betrayal between us.

I will win him back, I vowed! I can do this. With what charm or gesture can I recapture his trust and devotion, so callously and thoughtlessly trampled on my by wild, wanton and careless actions? I fell to my knees before me, begging his forgiveness. And he gave it. His generous heart opened and I was redeemed.

"Hektor," I promised, "I will never let Carly, Pat's lab, in my lap again. There is only you. Only you." But can love regrow where trust has been shattered...? Yes, in a dog's heart which is bigger than the universe and forgives us our sins.

Carly Hektor

There is a Unicorn in the Garden

Well, not actually. Instead there is a peacock on the roof. The roof of my neighbor, to be precise. The attached photo is evidence # 465.23 why I need a better telephoto lens, but I digress.

Sharp and particularly well educated readers (by that I mean educated with respect to American humorists of the mid-twentieth century and most likely limited to my brother) will recognize the reference to the short story by James Thurber in which a husband starts to comment upon the presence of a unicorn in his garden, much to the growing enragement of his wife. Let’s just say the whole thing works out well for him as his wife is carted off to the ‘booby hatch” for calling in a unicorn. But I digress yet again.

Last night a peacock did mysterious appear on the roof of my neighbor. No explanation. We all trouped out to marvel at the bird who strolled back and forth against the evening sky, blithely ignoring the growing crowds below. Despite threats to hose him off, everyone pretty much simply gawked, made lame jokes about whether the house owner had a license (that would be me) and eventually we all went inside to our respective homes, leaving him to roost as he chose. Later the bird flew (did you know peacocks could actually fly?) to the roof across the street and then onto another backyard. “Hey, dad, there is a giant bird here!” was heard by my husband as he walked Hektor around the block. No “Missing peacock” signs have yet appeared on the telephone poles.

I hope he found his way home or at the very least found an amiable pea hen. But then, isn’t the peacock sacred to Hera? Hmm... let that be a warning to all errant husbands.

Les Belles Heures- Prayerbooks and Distractions

We visited the Metropolitan exhibit of the complete Belles Heures book for Jean, Duc de Berry, created by two brothers, the Limbourgs. Each page is exquisitely decorated with filigree ornamentation and scenes to illustrate the bible stories, psalms, and stories of the saints. I try to imagine the Duc or his child wife idly (or devoutly?) thumbing the pages, eyes glancing at the text but seduced ultimately by the saturated hues and vivid images of ecstasy and death. I wondered if the faces in the miniature drawings were of people the brother artists knew, and liked --or perhaps did not. Anticipating Michelangelo’s placement of a particularly pesky cardinal in hell on his Sistine Chapel ceiling?

In a world of death, intrigue, richness and plague that was the fifteen century, how did the sumptuous book so carefully crafted for a political figure of power and wealth function? What did it mean? Really?

Now I simply gazed upon each page, using a magnifying glass handily provided by the Met to wonder at the detail, even as the ornate language resembled more organic shapes than words with meaning. In what ways did this artistic creation capture a moment in time that also expanded to absorb and transform the Christian mythological vision of good, evil and the endless battle between them?

Paris and memento mori

Nicki showed me the catacombs of Paris this past week. dark winding tunnels underground that allow single file visitors to course through passages dimly lit and some mysterious but welcome ventilation. First one comes upon the carved temples of sandstone, miniature palaces of some forgotten civilization of elves. But entering the miles of ossuary is what captures one's attention. Piles of head-high bones, neatly stacked like firewood with skulls artistically placed in layers line each side of the tunnel. In front of each section is a sign which informs the passerby of what cemetery and date these bones came from and when they were placed here. The dates range from the late 1700s to late 1800s.

As one moves through this underground kingdom of the dead one encounters carefully placed quotes from authors ranging from Homer to Seneca up to 19th century Frenchmen. Each one reminds the living that they are really looking into a mirror, even if unimagined as such.

When we finally exited a guard checked my purse. Someone right before our group had tried to steal a skull. Somehow I doubt Hades would have let that person go unscathed. The dead have a way of catching up with one.

Off to Paris!

This evening I leave for paris with a group of Honors Program students and an art professor. This is a wonderful group of students so I am optimistic that all will go well. Even if it looks as if it will rain the entire time we are there. We can always hope that the weather report will be wrong. Is that possible?

I am missing a couple of wonderful students who could not join us. We will toast them while we are there.

Metaphor contest

What does Paris have to do with this photograph?

Grading, snow and the tragedies of life

One of my freshmen students fired off two emails today, only to show up at my office door a half hour later with dad to complain that the student had received a B+ in a course I had taught. First semester in college and this student is obsessing over a B+. Of course, the fact that the same student had to miss the last three weeks of classes due to a family trip (totally worthwhile one, I might add but irrelevant here) was dismissed. I was unreasonable, manipulative, and since grading essays on learning is totally subjective, clearly I had FAILED THIS STUDENT. The same student who could have attended a prestigious school instead of mine, etc. This was all from dad, by the way. The student just sat there and let daddy work his lawyer magic. Or not.

Wow- life is tragic isn't it? I am sure any errant reader of this blog feels the pain of the student and can easily see how important a grade in a first semester course is to one's entire life. Far more important than war, disease, devastating accidents, say.

Now look at Long Island Newsday of December 22nd in which riders of the LIRR on early Sunday morning in the midst of the worst blizzard to hit Long Island in decades were hysterical because their train was stopped and they were stuck in the snow for hours. OK, not pleasant to be sure but do you suppose that anyone noticed it was SNOWING A BLIZZARD outside?

We seem to have a modern disease in which the world revolves around us and our desires. Everyone and everything (including the freezing point of water, I suppose) should recognize that we are important, that we deserve to get whatever we want because we, well, want it and want it now.

I sympathize with the people on the train but to break open a window (because it was too cold in the train??) and to abuse the conductors who may not really know much more than the passengers about when help would arrive just smacks of hubris and foolishness. Yes, it is awful but band together and deal with it. And to abuse a faculty member after your first semester at college because you didn't get straight A's echos our notion that the world must bend itself to our desires. Why not discuss your grades calmly and with a willingness to learn? Gosh, maybe the student didn't do quite as well as they thought? Could we talk about it before threatening and insulting me?

Maybe we all just need to recognize that the universe does not revolve around us and our petty wants? Conductors might be a bit surly and faculty who are accused of unfairness do tend to get annoyed but where is our communal sense of reality, of responsibility and recognition of the world as it is? Most of all, with what graces are we blest and indeed lucky?

I do recall being a senior in college and received a paper back all marked up with red. I was devastated. But I also wondered what I had done wrong and how I had gotten this far without a teacher helping me improve. I was the fault as mostly mine. Not that I was happy, mind you. I approached my professor with a certain degree of hysteria, I am sure, but also respectful and willing to do what I could to improve. Hmm...

Saturnalia approaches

Time to bang the drums and call back the sun. As the days get shorter and shorter we long for that illusive entity, the sun. The Christmas lights (excuse me-- holiday lights) try their best to fight against the inky blackness and there is a certain degree of hope in their twinkle. But as the rain pounds down, I can only sit and consider the empty darkness outside.

Or can we hope for the moon?

Autumnal events

The most melancholy and therefore most human season of the year is the fall. As the leaves begin to take on hues of gold, crimson, auburn, we find our souls recalling the brevity of existence. Life is most intense in the autumn.

Lost in Translation

I have often told my students the humorous problems with translation that a former professor of mine for Medieval Philosopher shared with his students. If you take Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and translate it to French and back again you get The Raisins of Discontent. Now a wit has taken this one step further with the song "Take Me Out to the Ball game"! Try pasting the link below and visit this site.

http://linear1.org/gm/archives/00000007.php

August dog days

Ok, so it is officially hot here on LI. Hot and muggy. Have I mentioned that it is hot... and muggy? If I wanted to live in Sumatra, I would move there.

August is a bittersweet time. I finally have some time with no teaching responsibilities and yet, fall semester looms around the corner and so I find myself preparing readings, notes and files for the fall semester. Anyone who thinks that college faculty have an easy schedule never taught with all the background stuff that needs to go on. Of course, every semester brings fresh hope that I might do a better job and get one person excited about philosophy. I certainly try.

Well, having gotten my whining over, I will turn to a more cheerful subject. Julie and Julia is a delightful movie with the amazing Meryl Streep, the actress par excellence of our time. A delightful set of parallel stories that works quite nicely. Highyl recommend it. It almost made me want to learn how to cook, almost.

Included here for your viewing pleasure is a shot at Saratoga. A race day that will go down in infamy as I lost virtually all my money on every race. You would think the law of odds would have come out at least once for me!

Hektor Protector Contemplates the world

Hektor Protector, a rare and precious Cesky Terrier, sits and thinks about the world. And perhaps reflects on the wisdom of eating his Wendy's gear shift ensemble which turned out to be incredibly expensive to replace in a Volkswagen...

Death comes to a Tree

The Story of Erysichthon

Ovid tells the terrible story of King Erysichton who orders his men to chop down a tree sacred to Demeter. Even the workers quake and try to dissuade him. He runs the main dissenter through with his sword and the rest, trembling, cut the tree down, the majestic, beautiful tree. The dryads scream in agony. Demeter sees and sends Hunger to inhabit Erysichthon's innards. As he sleeps she hovers over him; he breathes her in and he awakes with an insatiable hunger. He cannot stop eating and yet wastes away. Later he sells his young daughter into prostitution in order to buy more food. She manages to transform into an animal and escape. But he sees a business opportunity and sells her again and again.

In the end he ate himself. Demeter has spoken. When man destroys the natural world, he destroys himself.

Now today I witnessed a terrible murder. A gigantic fir tree, decades old, was cut down on the order of my new neighbors in Saint James. This tree was the first to catch the snow in winter, feel the wind as it coursed through our small town, shade my house from the summer sun. Now there is only a gapping hole where it had stood. The side of their house stands exposed in all it mundane banality. The power saws have been churning away for 12 hours and they drowned out the screams of the living being that was killed.

May Demeter note this act of hubris. this act of outrage. May she find a way to remind these sad little people that the earth is all we have...

FRN@NYU.NYC

Ok, something happened to this... wonder where the link went? I will investigate.