Cinematic Sunday AND Musical Monday -- Oh, What a Lovely War!

Mercury apologizes for a lack of posts last week. Her internet connection wasn't working, and she didn't feel these blog posts were quite important enough to merit a trip to a library for public acces internet.

Today's offering functions as both a Cinematic Sunday and a Musical Monday because it is a film filled with music!

Oh, What a Lovely War (1969)

Based on a stage musical of the same name created in 1963,

Richard Attenborough's 1969 movie provides a semi-allegorical journey through the life of a soldier in World War One, beginning

with a trip to Kitchener, French and Haig's seaside pier, (named for three of the major players in the British high command) the jumping off point for their exciting foray into soldiering. What was supposed to be as easy as a day at the seashore, however, turns into something much, much worse, and the songs used in the musical reflect that.

I haven't gotten a chance to see the whole film yet, but the bits I have seen make me extremely excited about the prospect. I like the idea of using 'musical artifact' songs for a production

instead of making up new ones, and I also like that the songs used in this production are a mix of both popular published music and the unofficial, unpublished 'barracks room ballads' that the soldiers made up themselves. Both types of music can inform us about sentiment during the conflict, and how the two types of music play off of each other can also help us understand the views of the people consuming this music. Setting music to an already well known tune helps people learn new lyrics (church hymns are great for this) but also pokes fun at the original lyrics at the same time.

I also include this film because it features a dazzling array of Hollywood's finest on its cast list --Ian Holm, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, and, best of all, one very foxy looking Maggie Smith.

Yup, that's right -- in her youth, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, was a music hall star. It is so excellent I do not have words.

I've made a playlist of all the songs I could find on YouTube in the order they appear in the film. My personal favorites are 'Gassed Last Night' and 'The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling'. Call me macabre.

Musical Monday -- Pack All Your Troubles (In Your Old Kit Bag)

Pack All Your Troubles (In Your Old Kit Bag), written 1915 by George Powell and Felix Powell. Published by Chappell and Company, 1915, recorded by Murray Johnson, 1916, Reinald Werrenrath, 1917.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

This is one of the songs that will define World War One for generations to come. Just like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" it comes from the beginning of the war, and one can see the pop culture aversion to talking about the real problems of war in every note. the song is itself a small narrative poem, following the hijinks of Private Perks, who was " a funny little codger
With a smile a funny smile. Five feet none, he's and artful little dodger, with a smile, a funny smile" who keeps telling the other men in his unit to simply pack up their troubles and smile.

It's interesting that this song comes from the beginning of the war because the essential message of this song, without the bouncy beat, is to keep the terrible experiences of war all to yourself, something that veterans from all wars in all times and all places still struggle with. What's also interesting about this song is that at the end, Private Perks doesn't seem to be changed by his experience at all -- "Round his home he then set about recruiting/With his smile his funny smile." This is the best possible face of war -- we liked it so much we're sending others to do the same.

Like man World War One ballads, this one also saw service in World War Two. And let's face it, if you're letting Judy Garland sing your song in the midst of Hollywood's version of a bombed out village to rally the troops to another blockbuster ending, how much more patriotic can you get?

Cinematic Sunday -- Edwardian Farm

Cinematic Sunday No.2 – Edwardian Farm, BBC, 2010-11

As I mentioned last week, it is my goal in life to one day be in a place where I get to teach people about history using historical costume and historical artifacts. There are many reasons for why I have this aspiration; my new place of employment being one, and this TV show is another. And believe you me, the team of hosts on this show is a hard, hard act to follow.

The BBC has done a series of costumed history shows that are all very good, (last week’s Manor House being one) and Edwardian Farm is the latest of these offerings. A trio of three very talented reenactors – Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, archeologists, and Ruth Goodwin, domestic historian – took a trip back in time for Edwardian Farm by living and working in Morwellham Quay, a historical property in Devon. They fix up the property to historical specifications, make the place generally livable, bring in livestock, put in provisions, and live on the farm for twelve months -- a whole farm year with each season's varied tasks.

Each episode is centered around two or three period appropriate tasks, like getting a field ready for planting, shearing sheep, or learning how to cook dinner in the Edwardian style, and is filled with facts about life on the farm in the Edwardian period. Aided by experts, archival material, and their own not inconsiderable personal experience, the three hosts do an excellent job of explaining how the typical farmer of the period lived, worked, dressed and carried out his daily existence. While farm life might be a little far away from the hallowed halls of Downton, I still think the show is a must-watch for fans of the period. One could also consider that there are several characters in Downton -- Gwen the maid and Mrs. Hughes the housekeeper -- that come from farming backgrounds themselves. Given the lifestyle this show displays, it's not hard to see why the both of them thought going into service a much better option than remaining to work the land.

Edwardian Farm differs greatly from some of the other historical reality shows that the BBC’s done because the people presenting and living this time period are experts – believe it or not, they actually enjoy feeding chickens and forking hay and eating dishes made with cuts of meat most of us wouldn’t touch. (Sheep’s head, anyone?) Additionally, Alex, Peter and Ruth are all really funny and do a wonderful job of connecting the past to elements of today’s world.

All of the show's twelve episodes (and four additional episodes for the Christmas special) are available on YouTube. And, if you enjoy the show, the same team of experts have done a few other shows for BBC as well, including Victorian Farm and Tales from the Green Valley, a show on life in Wales in the 1600s.

Also, in case you haven't heard, PBS has put all first season episodes of Downton up on their website! I went and had a marathon the other day. It was grand.

Fictional Friday -- No Graves as Yet

Last spring while I was just getting over the first series of Downton and looking for something, anything, to read regarding World War One, I discovered Anne Perry’s Joseph Reavley books, beginning with the first in the series, No Graves as Yet. Beginning Perry was a daunting prospect – the woman commands two and a half library shelves and a sizable fan following from her Victorian mysteries.

Please don’t let the extremely mixed reviews on Amazon fool you – I’m not a murder mystery fan at all and I enjoyed these books. Regarding No Graves As Yet, I agree with what some reviewers have called the ‘glacial pace’ of the first half of the novel, but I think that, for someone whose fans are incredibly familiar with another set of characters, a glacial pace is almost acceptable. Both author and reader need a little more time to grow into writing and reading for new voices and faces. Glaciations aside, I grew to like the main characters Joseph and Matthew and their family very much over the course of all five books.

No Graves As Yet begins at Cambridge in 1914, where Joseph Reavley, man of the cloth and tutor at Saint James College, has just received the shocking news that his parents have died in a traffic accident – and from the looks of things, it may not have been much of an accident. Together with his brother Matthew, who happens to work for Secret Intelligence, Joseph begins trying to put together the story around their father’s death, a complicated affair that involves several of Joseph’s students, ties to groups supporting pacifism and German nationalism, jilted lovers, jealous husbands, blackmail, secret documents, and the growing threat of a war with Germany that England is not ready to fight.

I also like Perry’s books because each one takes its title from a poetic epigram – the first book’s comes by way of G.K. Chesterton’s Elegy in a County Churchyard, which I include here.

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet.

Poetry Promenade -- Julian Grenfell

I had a hard time picking a poet to start our Poetry Promenade series. I wanted someone who had written a good ‘beginning of the war’ poem, but not someone so well known that you’d all be rolling your eyes in front of your computer screens going “Merc, really, we already know about him!” Rest assured, we’ll have time for the Brookes and the Sassoons and the Owens later – I think they’re famous for a reason, and I want to share them with you again because they’ve all got poems that I really enjoy.


Poetry Promenade -- Julian Grenfell

Julian Grenfell is fairly well known among academics who study the poetry of the Great War, but I’d never heard of him before picking up several anthologies on the subject. He’s also interesting to me because the two poems that he’s best known for are so very different – one of them, “Into Spring” is a romantic, optimistic portrait of the mortality and oneness with the Earth that death brings, and the other a cynical, sniping remark on the aristocratic, toffee-nosed –and-useless General Staff that he refused to join called “Prayer for those on Staff.”

Grenfell was born in 1888 to a fairly aristocratic family. His father, William Henry Grenfell, later became Baron Desborough for his political contributions after a long career in the house of Commons as a conservative member for Salisbury. Julian was educated at Eton and later at Balliol College, and was apparently writing poetry from a very young age. He joined the army in 1910 as a member of the Royal Dragoons and served in both South Africa and India before being assigned to the French front as the war began in 1914. (Several sources report that by 1914 Grenfell was dissatisfied with life in the Army, and was considering leaving just before war was suddenly declared.) He won several commendations and was mentioned in dispatches, earning him a promotion to Captain.

So well liked and respected was Grenfell that he was also earmarked for promotion to the General Staff as an Aide-de-Camp, a promotion that he refused, writing the satirical “Prayer” after the incident. He died on the 27th of May in 1915 after 13 days in hospital, following a wound to his skull from flying shrapnel. Interestingly, his poem “Into Battle” was published in the Times on the same day as his obituary.

From what I've heard of the first episode of Downton, it sounds as though Matthew is following the same meteoric rise that Grenfell experienced. I wonder also if he would have been inspired to write a poem like "Prayer," and what he would have thought of "Into Battle" given what he experiences at the Somme.

Into Battle

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.


The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.


All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-star and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's Belt and sworded hip.


The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend,
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridges' end.


The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.


The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing."


In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!


And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only Joy of Battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind—


Though joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still,
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.


The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

------

Prayer for Those On Staff

Fighting in mud, we turn to Thee
In these dread times of battle, Lord,
To keep us safe, if so may be,
From shrapnel snipers, shell and sword.

Yet not on us - (for we are men
Of meaner clay, who fight in clay) -
But on the Staff, the Upper Ten,
Depends the issue of the day.

The Staff is working with its brains
While we are sitting in the trench;
The Staff the universe ordains
(Subject to Thee and General French).

God, help the Staff - especially
The young ones, many of them sprung
From our high aristocracy;
Their task is hard, and they are young.

O lord, who mad'st all things to be
And madest some things very good
Please keep the extra ADC
From horrid scenes, and sights of blood.

Musical Monday -- Keep the Home Fires Burning

Aw, heck. My first musical Monday will just have to be put up on a Tuesday. Oh well.

Patriotic music from all periods has a special place in my heart – I spent the second semester of freshman year listening to nothing but World War Two musical propaganda for a twenty page paper and wrote another essay sophomore year on Irish Nationalism in song. The way people talk about the way they love their country or how they think we should deal with war in music has always been fascinating to me, and let me tell you, while World War Two has some real eye-rollers (Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition comes to mind) it has absolutely nothing on World War One. (George Cohan, I am looking at you.) So, without further delay, our first

Musical Monday!

Keep the Home Fires Burning, written by Ivor Novello with lyrics by Lena Guilbert Ford, published 1914, republished 1915.

Today’s Musical Monday selection was chosen for two purposes. The first, because it is a song written early on in the war and contains its own special brand of home front patriotism, and the second, because it was written by a character in another Julian Fellowes production -- wartime song writer, actor and playwright Ivor Novello, played superbly by Jeremy Northam in the Oscar winning Gosford Park.

The song is better known by the title I’ve given it here, but it was originally published as Till The Boys Come Home. Over the course of the war, it was recorded by James F. Harrison, Stanley Kirkby, and one of my personal favorite recording artists from the period, John McCormack. Apparently the popularity of the song was one of the reasons Novello went on to become such a big star after the war.

The lyrics are almost absurdly sentimental by our standards, and yet, one can see why this would have been a popular song at home throughout the war – no mention is made of war’s difficulties except in an offhand way, saying only that to cry for them would only add to their soldierly burdens.

They were summoned from the hillside,

They were called in from the glen,

And the country found them ready

At the stirring call for men.

Let no tears add to their hardships

As the soldiers pass along,

And although your heart is breaking,

Make it sing this cheery song:

Keep the Home Fires Burning,

While your hearts are yearning.

Though your lads are far away

They dream of home.

There's a silver lining

Through the dark clouds shining,

Turn the dark cloud inside out

Till the boys come home.

The song was also included in the 1969 musical ‘Oh, What a Lovely War,’ which I’ll be featuring on another of my Cinematic Sundays. I include both that movie’s treatment of the song and McCormack’s here.

Further reading:

On Wikipedia and First World War.com

Downton Daze Introduction

Today, as many of you may know, is the premiere of the second season of ITV’s smash hit, Downton Abbey. How fortunate for the UK…and unfortunate for the rest of the world, who must now wait until networks in their own countries pick up the broadcasting rights. You can be sure I’ll be hounding the PBS website until January, when they tell me they shall finally be broadcasting.

Until then, for those of us without immediate gratification for our Downton fix, I’m devoting the next several months to trawling through period appropriate costumes, music, poetry, and other relevant media here on my blog. I’m calling this temporary change-over ‘Downton Daze’ and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I’m going to.

Starting off our series will be Cinematic Sundays, a review series of various TV and movies set in the 1900s. Next we’ll have Musical Mondays, where I’ll be featuring various popular tunes of the period, as well as several of the more well known composers. Poetry Promenade will probably float throughout, as I love poetry and I have a lot of poems and poets I’d like to feature, and Fictional Fridays will round out our offerings by discussing written fiction around the Great War Period. I’ve got a stack of books beside my bed just waiting to be read, and I can’t wait to bring them all to your attention. I’ll also be highlighting a lot of great websites throughout the internet world who are also covering Downton and the world it embodies.

Historical fanaticists, take note – I’m more of what you would probably call a popular historical type. I will mainly be reading the kinds of history texts you can buy at your local bookstore, not the more academically minded University press offerings. I apologize in advance for any misdirections on my part and will gladly and joyfully take suggestions and feedback.

So, without more ado --

Cinematic Sunday No. 1 – Manor House, BBC, 2002

Those of you who read this blog already know it is my life’s dream to be able to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff. What would be only slightly better than that is to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff on national TV.

Adding to a series of shows that included Colonial House, Regency House Party, Pioneer House and 1940s House, BBC and PBS put together Manor House, a show where 21 members of the general history loving population (like myself) signed up to dress, work, and behave just like their Edwardian counterparts might have done in the years leading up to the Great War.

One family, the Oliff-Coopers, were the ‘Upstairs’ while 15 other cast members formed the ‘Downstairs’ of this historical reality show. The show was filmed at Manderston House in the North of England, where all 21 members of the cast lived just as their counterparts would have nearly a hundred years before. Guiding them on the show were carefully written rule books, patterned after commonly followed advice books of the period, which outlined standards of dress and behavior for each person and their station.

The Upstairs had a pretty easy run of it, so most of the show’s drama focuses instead on the doings of the Downstairs. It turns out living as a maid in the 1900s was a lot harder than some of the cast members anticipated, and partway through the series several members of the cast actually handed in their notice because they were tired – of the long hours, of the regulations placed on the staff, and of the feeling, very strange to our modern sensibilities, that they had suddenly become so much less than the people they were serving upstairs. I don’t usually go for reality shows, but BBC’s production was well-made and very, very accessible. As someone who’s said a number of times that I was born in the wrong period, shows like this always help me put in perspective that, while time travel would be extremely fun, it does help to have been born and brought up with those expectations and social norms.

View the show’s companion page here at PBS! Be sure to check out the page’s ‘You in 1905’ feature – according to their estimates, I would have been running a lodging house with my family. I wouldn’t have married and would have lived a somewhat miserable existence in a shabby dormitory. How’s that for prospects?

You can watch the entire series on YouTube or check it out from your local library. (There's also a companion book that goes with the series.)

Happy watching!

Watchman Says "All's Well!"

Well, all's well that ends well, I think.

Since my last post, I declined the school job in the city that I really didn't want, accepted and started a job at a local museum that actually pays better than the city job would have in the long run, and began one of my two volunteer opportunities. Last weekend I attended a local Revolutionary War reenactment event and decided those were the people I would really like to be spending my time with, so I've got paperwork out to join the Northwest Territory Alliance so I can join their artillery unit and learn how to properly load and fire a nine-pound cannon, what Jack Aubrey might call a bow-chaser (were it on one of his ships.)

Revolutionary War Days was, in a word, amazing. I was struck at this event, as I have never been before, by the hospitality and openness shown by the reenactors and their families. The willingness to speak about their costumes, historical personalities, campsites, and all things in between was wonderful and welcoming. My dad and I spent ten minutes talking to a guy from Indiana with the Brunswicker regiment about German immigration and settlement patterns. This guy didn’t know us from Adam, but just by dint of us taking two steps into the campsite to admire some folding camp stools, he came over (abandoning his lunch) to talk to us. I’ve been to a lot of these events, but that’s never happened before, and it gave me a really good feeling about joining the reenactment game.

I’ve wanted to join a reenactment society for a long time. A LONG time. But there’s something really, really intimidating about approaching people in costume (people who look like they have made these events their life’s work) with the intent of asking them if you can join their party. I’ve always felt so very, very underqualified. No, I don’t already practice a historic trade. I can’t sew. I can’t even give you more than a grade-school level time-line of this war and some names and apocryphical anecdotes that are probably wrong anyway. I’d still like to join your club.

It’s a hard question for someone like me, who has a genetic need to go into an endeavor knowing everything, to ask, both because I know I know next to nothing and I hate having to admit that. I’ve long felt that in order to join one of these communities, I needed an in – someone already in the group with whom I could latch on, barnacle-like, and sneak into club meetings. Pretty much what I need is a reenactment apprenticeship. Actually, I need a sewing apprenticeship first, but I’ll take what I can get. And reenactment friends are not exactly a dime a dozen. The reason I was attending Revolutionary War days was because I had finally found such a person – a co-worker from my summer job, Jack, a retired teacher and sergeant for Hamilton’s Own Artillery, the local arm of the Northwest Territory Alliance specializing in artillery. Jack was just where I knew I would find him – right next to the guns, explaining his heart out. (Jack and I are very much alike in this way – we put ourselves wherever we will probably have a chance to lecture someone.) We talked for a while about this and that, and he said that when I was ready I should shoot him an email (pun not intended) to get in touch with their group commander instead of going through the NWTA’s website.

But in the midst of this bounty of blessings, something inside me is still reticent about the whole reenactment business. Maybe it’s the feeling of outsider-ness. Maybe it’s the horror stories I’m hearing from the educators at the museum where I work. What if I’m a total Revolutionary war failure? What if I want to join the local World War Two reenactment group (when I find it) or the SCA? Is that considered defecting? Do I get court-martialed for that? Drummed out of the army? Or, god forbid, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail? (If they’re the super-serious types my co-workers warned me about, option three sounds the most likely, in the interest of continuing historical accuracy.)

Quandry: Noun Meaning "I'm in over my head here."

Well, here’s a comfortable dilemma. I go in for a job interview this morning, and this afternoon a possible employer from an interview a month and a half ago calls up offering me a different job. Decisions, decisions.

There is something wonderful and terrifying about being called in for interviews, being called back for interviews, being, after all this running around and printing resumes and posturing, employable. Now I have to make a decision. Do I wait for the interviewer from this morning to call me back next week (to say, possibly, that they’ve found someone else, thank you for your time) or wait for the interview tomorrow to do the same thing, or do I call the HR woman back and say that yes, I’d love to come in for this job I’m really not going to enjoy because you’ll pay me a salary, unlike the other two jobs I’m interviewing for?

I think it is time to make a list of pros and cons for this job in the city.

Positives:

1. There is a salary involved. It is a small salary, but it will sit comfortably between me, my student loans, the gas I will need to put in my car, and the breadline.

2. There will be benefits like medical and dental.

3. It will be something else for me to put on my resume, and I will be there for at least two years barring major embarrassments, catastrophes, or acts of God.

4. I would be working in a building full of younger people like myself, and I would not be full time teaching. I would not be planning my own lessons, writing my own worksheets, or fielding angry phone calls from parents. Big bonuses there.

5. I could still live at home.

6. I could be close enough to the city to start doing something about grad school.

7. I would be working in a building full of British people. (Huge plus.)

And now, the negatives.

1. There is a very small salary involved. It is not large enough for me to move into the city, and gas is ruinously expensive. (See #2)

2. There is an hour long commute involved, and I’m not sure I want to go into the city every day. See #1 about gas money. Also, Chicago winters and snow removal. Eeeyeah.

3. There are no immediately feasible public transport options available.

4. I would be working with 7-8 year olds (of whom I am not fond) in a classroom (of which I am also not fond.)

5. I would be far outside my comfort zone.

6. I would be very limited with grad school. (Like, limited to one school limited. Only one university in the Chicago area has an ALA accredited library science program.)

7. They want me to start training tomorrow.

8. ...Mostly the tomorrow bit is what worries me.

I put the question to Facebook, and almost instantly, one of my teachers from high school (a wise and very no-nonsense person I trust a lot) reminds me that a salary is a salary, and at least 7 year olds can take care of themselves in the bathroom. Very true, and things that bear consideration. The job I originally interviewed for was working with their kindergarten, which I now know I would be rubbish at, so second grade might not be so bad. It's a private school, so the parents are all paying an arm and a leg to send their children there. They're invested. They care. Can that be a problem, parents who care too much? The headmaster mentioned that in the interview. He also mentioned the job is pretty temporary -- after two or three years, they want new people. I guess I could handle that.

But, seven year olds!

So, do I call the HR lady back tomorrow after my other job interview and tell her I’ll take the job, sorry for missing the first day of training? Or do I call her back and tell her that I’m definitely not interested?

Making New Friends (I Hope.)

One of the wonderful things about summer vacation is that one finally has time to do fun things with fun people.

Unless, of course, one has all the time in the world…and no people to spend it with.

Now that I’ve finished college, I feel like the next several months of my life, hot or not, are going to be like one long summer break – friends in distant climes, family busy elsewhere, and little old me, stuck with nothing to do and no one to do it with.

I tried really hard to find something to do with my time. I checked out a boatload of books from the library. I bought 20 feet of rope and tried to learn how to do decorative knotwork. I started watching the birdfeeder in my backyard and identifying birds. But all these activities are things I can do alone, and after a month, I’m bored. I have one friend within driving distance of my house, and to be honest, we’ve been friends for so long I’m not sure how we’re still friends with each other. Our tastes are totally different.

So, in order to solve this problem, I took it first to the person to whom I present all my problems – my mother. She told me to join a book group. Easy enough. Now I have to FIND a book group, so I turn on my computer and google “Book Groups Near REDACTED HOMETOWN.”

What I discover is a lovely little site called Meetup, an online forum/water cooler of sorts for people who want to find (or start) groups of their own to, you know, meet up, and do things. And to be sure, I found a few I thought would be cool. (Renaissance dance? Sure, I want to learn renaissance dance! Sign me up!)

Unfortunately for me, one of the perks of living near a big city is also a problem – you live NEAR a big city, not IN the big city. I can’t drive 45 minutes to a strange part of Chicago to go to Renaissance dance practice, and it’s far enough away from downtown that I can’t take the train, either. I was finding all sorts of meetups left, right and center, and every single one of them was in the CITY, right where I couldn’t get. Get me an apprenticeship with someone who can help me navigate the city bus system, and that might change, but for now, I’m marooned out in the suburbs and I still don’t have anything to do.

I also seem to have proved that nothing ever happens in the suburbs. My life is full of fail and loserness.

So I took my problem to the other person to whom I present all my problems – my dad. My ever-so-helpful father was amazed that I hadn’t heard of Meetup before. ( I lived on a college campus, Dad – if I wanted to meet people I shouted down the hall or baked a loaf of bread and left the door open.) He suggested that if I couldn’t find a group, I should just start one of my own instead.

A brilliant idea, to be sure – but what did I want a group about? Birdwatching? Science fiction? Women’s issues? Writing fanfiction? A steampunk discussion group? I can’t start a group based on something I WANT to learn about. I feel like I have to chose a topic I already know a little about and move from there.

I’ve been trolling around and one of the ideas I keep coming back to is the Book and Movie club, where every month (or whatever) you read a book and then get together to watch the film adaptation and discuss the book and the movie. I can do that. I like books. I like movies. I like comparing the two, and I'm sure some other people do, too. I'd even take suggestions from other people. We could host it on a rota.

Does anyone have any other ideas? My hobbies seem to be brilliantly idiosyncratic.

Found: Old Memories, Slightly Dusty

Last week I got two important documents in the mail. The first, my Minnesota teaching license, assured me that the second, my degree from CSB, was, in fact, in the post. Two pieces of paper that now mean I have officially left childhood behind. Now, it seems, I have to go and be a real person out in the real world with real bills, real worries, and a real job hunt.

And yet, coming home has been strange for me. I don’t feel any older or any wiser. I don’t feel prepared for any of those ‘real world’ challenges yet and, as the job hunt has gone so far, I don’t think I’m going to be moving out of the room of my parent’s house I’ve lived in for the past six years any time soon. However, I was, to use the 19^th century advertising euphemism, “desirous of change” and since I obviously wasn’t changing spaces, I decided a revision of my current room was in order. My mother being the saint that she is helped me move my furniture, vacuum my floor and give the place a general going over. (When one only lives in a room for 4 months out of the year, dust does tend to accumulate.)

While I was giving my room the old rub down, a lot of curious items emerged from cabinets, bookshelves, and file cabinets, relics from past friendships and activities that once defined me. Acres and acres of a slowly developing writing talent, tracing both the developing penmanship as well as a grasp of character development and plot. (Oh, lord, character development and plot. How far you have come.) As I look at these items, I see the people who gave them to me, and I wonder, even after having relinquished their friendship for four years, if they still occasionally look at something and think of me. I am a different person now than I was then, of that I am sure. Would they still be friends with me? And for my newer friends, whose additions to my room have not gathered quite as much dust: Will you still be with me four years from now?

Found:

Numerous notebooks, inscribed to me from Morgan, Katie, and others, in the hope that I would fill them and become a famous writer. To date, they are all empty, a testament to how frightened I was to fill such beautiful pages and live up to such high expectations.

Wooden animals, given to my siblings by my great aunt Alice on her return from an African safari. The cheetah is missing a leg, but they are still beautiful.

One wooden paddle, the duffer paddle my group carried for a week throughout Collegebound, our canoe trip through the Boundary Waters.

One manual typewriter, given posthumously by my grandmother, who never knew I would have liked to hear about the time she used such things.

One long white feather, alternatively called a panache, from Sabrina to complete the four Musketeers Costumes we wore to Bowling one Halloween. Used as a Harry Potter prop for Wingardium Leviosa spells. Also, four wands made out of wooden dowel, created 2010 for Harry Potter premiere party.

One folder of World War Two party notes, reminding me of several happy hours planning with Meredith, Mallory, and Katie.

One rather old picture from 10^th grade Achieve class with the group I built a desk with.

One really old picture from fourth grade Challenge class, occasion unknown.

One Harry Potter cookie jar, missing head, given as a birthday present by Meagan.

Two large scrapbooks, filled with pictures from Ireland and many happy wishes for the people who went there with me.

One small volume, “Crusades and the Holy Land” inscribed from my dear friend Helen.

Two long yellow posters decorated with Michelle and Shannon for the hallway of our freshman dorm.

Many textbooks from English literature classes shared with all my fellow English majors and especially my fellow English education friends, whose books will probably know more use than mine will in the future.

Cupcake paper flowers from Sarah, Emily and Katie, on the occasion of my date with the next door neighbor’s grandson.

One reproduction Beatles Poster from Rachel, given without the knowledge that one day I would find the fact that it was letterpressed more interesting than the band it describes.

Numerous copies of “The Bible Says Be Bold” made in my Book Arts class among many fine souls. Also miniature books from the same.

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father: A Reflection on Endings

This last week has been, for me, a time for extensive reflection on endings.

As my friends were partying away the end of another school year, and celebrating the end of our years as college students, I received the unwelcome and unanticipated news that my cooperating teacher from my high school student teaching experience had died. I began reflecting a great deal not on the end of eras, but on the end of a life.

My teacher (I will call him ‘my teacher’ because that is what he was, in a number of respects) took his own life last Monday. No one will say why, but it has been speculated that he was dealing with a number of personal demons of great magnitude. As a colleague of only two scant months, I could not point to any one thing in his life and say with certainty, “This was what troubled him most.” In fact, from what I could see, there was so much in his life pointing away from suicide – his teaching license had just been renewed, his master’s thesis was well underway, and it was finally warm enough to take his two year old son outside to play, something he had been looking forward to for months.

And yet, here we are, and I am writing a blog post about endings, and not beginnings.

As I moved out of the dorms yesterday, saying goodbye to people I have spent the better part of four wonderful years with, it seemed to me that I was almost sealing them into coffins. “These are the people I will not ever see again. These are the laughs I will not hear, the voices I will not listen for, the door knocks that will not sound.” I think part of the reason I did not grieve as much as some at the passing of my teacher was that I had already done the same for him. He was a part of my life that I was finished with, and I was moving on.

Yet now something strange has happened. Instead of remaining in that closed part of my life, as he would have done had he lived, he is now more a part of my thoughts than ever. Listening to his funeral, and watching the hundreds of students both he and his wife had mentored, I wondered if I was making a bad decision not to stay in teaching, if I was somehow dishonoring him by not remaining in education. He was described by his brother as a humble man, a sentiment I concurred with, and yet my most vivid memory of him remains what he told our students on my last day at the high school – “Miss G is extremely smart, and she could do pretty much anything in the world. We are extremely lucky that she has chosen to go into teaching.”

High praise, especially for a man of few words and no mean intellect himself.

My immediate thought after hearing about his death was that I should write about it. I tried this several times, each poem sounding more terrible than the last. This, I decided, was because I was trying to write a poem about him and instead writing a poem about my personal experience with the news of his death, which didn't make for a very interesting poem topic. None of the poems I started begged to be finished.

While I was walking around campus last week on one of the final sunny days of the semester, I couldn't help realizing how green the grass was. Monday morning had been incredibly and vividly sunny, a welcome break after several dismal days, and as I was walking, I realized that he had missed seeing that sunny day, taking advantage of the first real opportunity to go outside with his son. And the first line came to me.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.

Here, finally, was the poem begging to be born. I decided to write a poem, not addressed to him, but to his son, a boy of only two years who is, by all accounts, the child who will grow up to be his father.

So, here it is—the celebration of the end of a year, an era, a life. If I were teaching this in our creative writing class, I would remind everyone that this is an elegy, a poem of praise for the dead, and ask everyone to look for poetic elements. I might also ask them to compare it to WH Auden's In Memory of W.B. Yeats, and explain that Auden's poem influenced the poet. I can still hear him telling me about the different poetic techniques I should be sure to cover in class.

I ask you all only to read it.

--

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
The birds were singing, and the wind was blowing,
and the breath of the universe blew him away,
overwhelming.

Let me tell you what I knew of him, in the way that heroes are told of their long-dead kin,
so that you will know of his greatness, and remember him well by it.
You do not know it now, but you were a hero to him.

He was tall in the way that trees are tall (and that all fathers are tall to their sons)
in the way that reached up to the sky with confidence and grace
and walked his ways in such a manner that said, to those that knew him, I will take my time with this, and it will be time sweetly taken.

He was a man of few words, carefully said, painstakingly spoken, and yet a man extravagant in praise.
Often he praised you. Praised your smile, your laugh, your walks and child’s ways.

He was a man of great love.

I did not know this as others did, did not see this as others saw, but I saw he loved you.
His desk was filled with pictures of you, and he had,
on a keyring already heavy with responsibility, a huge picture of you, taken at Easter,
one more reminder of you, his greatest joy.

And you brought him great joy.
When you are older, and you wish to have known him, and you hate him for leaving you so soon,
know that it was not your fault that he left, that he took away what was only his to give.
Know that he loved you, as the wind loves the branches of the trees,
inseparable.
Know that he was loved by his students, his far-sons and far-daughters.
Many there were of them, and yet only one of you.
He was father to them as he did not have a chance to be to you,
his only son.

Other things I wish you would know about him were small things, things that will not matter.
Yet I will say them.

Every day he ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch,
Quietly chewing, grading papers.
Silence was his golden time.
He golfed and was good at it.
Laughter was not his enemy, and his smile was wide.
He wore brightly colored shirts, and was uncomfortable in ties.
He read the New Yorker religiously, and John Updike’s writing brought him to rapturous attention.
Determination comforted him,
Irreverence and studied ignorance tried his patience.
His counsel was good, and he was reckoned among the wise.

He wished that you would know the sunshine, and the wild winter he waited out to bring you into the sun.

So, son of your father, go out into the sunshine.
Listen for his voice in the hallways of his school, in the fairways of his game, in the simple pleasure of a sunny day, shared.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
the leaves were budding, and the flowers were blooming,
and at his passing, the universe paused to grieve him.

High School, Abbreviated.

The hour is over, and I long for the days

When men still wrote poems in pursuit of praise.

Where the old would smile and the young would nod

On hearing a verse in search of God,

When turning a poem was as much an art

As drawing a drink from the well of the heart.

These are not them; the rabble I feed

Have neither joy, nor want, nor need

For the stories I tell or the verse I share.

All this, to them, is empty air

And poetry brings no thrill, but curse,

A malady, blight, a rot or worse

And yet it seems so clear to me

They’ve filled their lives with poetry

With their heads fairly teeming with childhood songs

And the rise of the headphone headed throngs.

So why not venture, if only to gain?

Why not spill the wine if it may not stain?

Or…perhaps it is your greatest fear

That you will see something in what’s said here

And your mind’s eye, like mine, will gaze

Back to where they wrote poems in pursuit of praise.

----

That's kind of how I feel about high school now. Also, you all should start following Taylor Mali's blog, Definitely Beautiful. He's one of my new favorite people.

More Gore with the Georgians- Thoughts on "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "Dreadfully Ever After"

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead."

Most die-hard Jane Austen fans read those lines, the opening lines of Quirk Classic's 2006 hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in something close to abject horror, wondering what they had done to bring down this disgrace on their favorite author and her beloved "Pride and Prejudice." I read them and thought several things. One, that was hilariously clever of Seth Grahame-Smith, and two, what a great way to explain why there are no people living at Netherfield. (That part of P&P always irked me.)

Curiously enough, I didn't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for the zombies. Unlike the target audience (that part of the reading or non-reading population generally turned off by 19th century social drama,) I enjoy Jane Austen. P&P isn't my favorite book (that honor goes to Persuasion) but I still get a kick out of Elizabeth and Darcy's angry repartee and can laugh a little at Mr. Bennett's constant trials in a house filled with women and their worries. I read P&P&Z because I like the original enough to also enjoy making fun of it.

And, true to promised form, P&P&Z did not disappoint. Way back in December while I was home on break, I sat down with three different mash-ups of varying persuasions and saturated myself for about a week in Austen homages. All of them were interesting; P&P&Z, however, was without reserve the best of the bunch.

So it was without hesitation that I told the wonderful people at Quirk Books that I'd love to read the latest installment of zombie-infested Austen, Dreadfully Ever After.

I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for the same reason I enjoy reading re-told fairytales and rehashed Shakespeare -- because I can admire the writing and the thought that goes into trying to create something new and innovative out of an already existing work. (For my thoughts on Android Karenina, the Quirk treatment of the Tolstoy Classic, you can read my post here) I liked finding those strange little parallels into the original text, and it's for that reason that I didn't enjoy DEA as much as P&P&Z.

Allow me a moment to explain.

Dreadfully Ever After opens on our fearless friends, the zombie fighting Darcys, four years into their happy marriage. Life for them is pretty much the way we left it at the end of P&P&Z -- Darcy is still Darcy, Lady Catherine is still a pain in everyone's side, and Lizzy is finding it a little hard to adjust to life as a married woman. For one thing, it means she can't wear her trusty katana outside of the house. For another, this lack of swords means that when she and Darcy are set upon by a horde of the undead, she is powerless to stop the zombie who bites her beloved husband and begins the process that will slowly turn him into one of them.

So, off our characters trundle on yet another adventure filled with ninjas, the walking dead, and enough venom from Lady Catherine to burn through a steel door. It's a wild, rollicking ride through post apocalyptic London to try and obtain the antidote to the zombie onslaught.

Now, I can appreciate the delicate art of the Jane Austen spin-off. I have, in a moment of delusion, attempted to write one myself. What unnerves me about DEA is that the great JA characters and nuances I read these things to find are gone, a mere sidenote in this ruckus of katanas and carriage chases. The cleverness that brought me to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is missing here, and if I enjoyed zombies, that wouldn't be a bad thing. As it is, I'm not the first line at the movies when someone mentions the living dead.

The knowledgeable folks at Publishers' Weekly have said of DEA that "This happy sacrilege is sure to please" and I agree with that, as long as one adds "if one enjoys the literary company of flesh-eating unmentionables."

How Reading is Helping Me Hold It Together.

The library is keeping me sane.

No, really, it's true. As I sit here, typing my latest blog post in I don't even want to think how long, I would like to thank the library for this one small moment of sane thought. There are no screaming sixth graders here. No one is off-task (and if they are Facebooking or something, they'll go back to particle physics orTom Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles or the meaning of life in a moment) and everyone is blissfully silent. The only sound is the cheerful  hum of monitors and the well-timed tapping of computer keyboards. No touch-typing in this establishment, no sir!

But more than the calm of the storm, it is the contents of the library that are keeping me tethered in this world rather than letting my mind flee to the next. In the first several weeks of teaching, I had nothing to call my own except facebook, and while mindless banter and endless acres in Farmville can be relaxing to a point, they are by no means helpful towards maintaining an even keel.

It was only after going to the library for a 'big kid book' (Clan of the Cave Bear, an excellent big kid book if I do say so myself) and reading a little bit before going to bed every night, as well as a little bit in the morning that I returned to my usual, cheerful self. I was a much happier person. It was not all school, all the time, and I didn't feel like there was a big, empty hole in my chest. I imagine this is becuase my students are expected to complete reading one book every two weeks. How was I supposed to expect that of them when even I wasn't reading every night?

About a month ago, one of my favorite professors posted on his own blog about the importance of having personal time while student teaching. Our first concern while teaching, he wrote, was to take care of ourselves first. 

But if you don’t make time for yourself and insist on taking that time, then you’ll never have it, because the responsibilities of a teacher are endless.You can always devote more time to students, always make more of an effort to prepare for class, always learn more about your subject, always spend more time on students’ papers, always devote more time to your colleagues and the community around your school. It can feel overwhelming sometimes, and the giving of yourself to others can be exhausting. (Theory Teacher's Blog, 1/30/2011)

 As a teacher, I was giving myself to everyone else, for six hours a day, five days a week. Only after I'd done that 'giving of myself back to myself,' so to speak, could I begin taking care of my students and then taking care of my curriculum. The reason for this was simple -- when we take care of ourselves, we become better mannered, better functioning human beings that students want to interact with. When we are happy, our students have a better chance of being happy. We will want to teach, and they will want to learn. After that, the subject matter follows.

Today I had a pretty rotten day. I wasn't nearly as prepared as I should have been, and while lots of learning went on, my co-operating teacher wasn't very...impressed with me, shall we say. That, however, is the past; nothing I can do will change it. Tomorrow, my students will come in with their rough drafts and that will be the end of it. We will edit them and on Wednesday we will be in the computer lab working. I can't change any of that now any more than I change the way the sunrise will look tomorrow. Tonight, I can only worry about tonight and the first few hours of tomorrow. I will go home, eat a very late dinner and read my next book. (Juliet, by Anne Fortier, which I am super excited for because I am an English major, and I miss Shakespeare.)

After that I'll go to bed and wake up ready for tomorrow.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Wow, what a heck of a way to end the year. No blog post until January Eighth. I'm losing my touch. And I had so much to blog about over the holidays, too.

It really must say something about my priorities when the last three or four blogs have started with some sentiment akin to "Gee, I should really update more often!" but there you have it -- Since starting this blog, my priorities have changed. And after updating my stories, talking with some old friends who haven't gotten a lot of face time lately, and clearing up some other lingering bits of business, I've been doing a lot of thinking about priorities, believe it or not.

This week I started my first round of student teaching -- two months in the middle school with a group of the funniest, sweetest, sixth graders a teacher could hope for. I was scared on Monday and Tuesday; I really didn't think I could make it through the rest of the semester. I didn't know any names, the kids all looked at me funny when I introduced myself, and my desk kept getting shoved aside. It wasn't a great way to start the week, especially when your roommate (who is also student teaching) comes home rhapsodizing about how well she and her teacher get along, how much the kids love her, how much she's loving student teaching and how much she's looking forward to the rest of the semester.

To put it bluntly, I was not getting the same warm fuzzies.

 I'm still not getting the same warm fuzzies today, but they're better, more confident fuzzies. We had a great conversation in the car on Thursday (after staying after for speech practice, because not only is my roomie incredibly confident that this is what she wants to do with her life, but she's also incredibly generous with her time at school and her participation in the school community. She wants to do everything.) about priorities, and Jackie said something really insightful to me, something I've wanted to hear someone say for a long time -- "Merc, I'm not saying this to be mean; you'd make a great teacher, but I think you'd make an even better librarian. That's where your head's at."

And it's true. Jackie was getting all excited this week because she got the kids who don't usually speak in class to speak, and I was getting excited about library day on Thursday and Friday. I got excited when I recommended a book to one of my kids (one of my books, from my personal library, that I loaned him) and he came back the next day after only reading in class and said "Can I take this home and borrow it? It's REALLY GOOD."  Now I get updates every day from him on how much he's enjoying The Hunger Games . (What really makes me happy is I think the fact that I was happy about this made Jackie want to start reading Hunger Games, and SHE ended up not being able to put it down either. SCORE.)

The library is where my head's at. I'm not thinking about how to make my language arts class better -- I'm thinking about how to make library time better. (Is there a list of authors who write about similar subjects? Can I put together a list of great new books? How would I put together a book display? What could I do to make this space more inviting? When can I get around to sending Rick Riordan a fan letter for writing the books that at least fifteen percent of my kids are reading?)

Of course I have to invest time in my teaching, and I will, but I think the course ahead is pretty clear -- One weekend, I'm going to have to sit down with some Grad School applications and find some more scholarship money floating around someplace.

Steampunk Shenanigans, Part One

Eeegads, Sherlock! It's been nearly a month since Miss Gray has posted anything! Whatever happened to her?

The end of the semester, gentlemen. That's what has happened. My life is slowly circling a drain right now. Not a whole lot of time for writing blogs, especially when you're working on really hard-core awesome writing projects.

Early on in the semster, my Contemporary Liturature Professor made us begin thinking about a two-fold final project: read a work of contemporary literature and produce a peice of our own contemporary literature incorporating ideas or contemporary elements from the book we read. Ideas and books read included flash fiction, experimental text,  a lot of David Sedaris (he visited our campus in November) and, of course, that most contemporary of offerings, the mash-up. One of the girls in my class read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies while I tackled Android Karenina, the steampunk mash-up of Leo Tolstoy's well-loved Anna Karenina.

Oh. My. Stars. It was FANTASTIC! As someone who couldn’t stand the original Anna Karenina, I give Ben Winters a lot of credit for not only allowing me read the story again but also for making me thoroughly enjoy it the second time through. What had previously seemed like an unapproachable ‘high art’ novel, one of those books whose meaning will never be fully understood except by the chosen few, was now a book with messages and undertones I could wrap my head around. Robots were the exploited lower classes. One day they might be the authors of their own revolt and no one was expecting that. Technology is a mixed blessing and we have to be careful how we use it. And, of course, even if Tolstoy’s characters now have personal robots to comfort them, even if they travel around the country in gravity trains and take vacations to the moon, misfunctioning families are still all alike.


Android Karenina starts in the same way Anna Karenina does – “Functioning robots are all alike; each robot malfunctions in its own way.” The lovely Anna Karenina has just arrived in Moscow to help with one such misfunction – her brother, Stiva Oblonsky, was recently caught sleeping around with the family’s mechanicienne, the woman employed to keep their household robots running. Upon Anna’s arrival, she meets Count Alexei Vronsky, a handsome and very single captain in the Guards who has recently returned a hero from the Border Wars. Their attempts to find happiness are constantly opposed by Anna’s husband, the cold and unapproachable Alexei Karenin. Meanwhile, Konstantin Levin, a landowner and proprietor of a groznium mine, (the miracle metal that makes the world these characters live in possible,) is trying to win the affections of the young and lovely Kitty Shcherbatskya and come to terms with the conditions of his own existence. It should sound very similar to the original until this point; there is love, class issues between characters, and – here is the twist – all of the main characters have a personal robot, a Class III, who accompanies them throughout their day, gives advice and functions a sort of externalized source for many of Tolstoy’s originally internal monologues. (The only exception to this rule is Karenin, whose Class III is a menacing facial implant who only speaks in capital letters and is trying to take over its owner’s brain. Creepy, and it works.)

Where in Tolstoy there are strong religious sympathies in some of the characters, Winters uses a belief in the pending arrival of an alien race called “The Honored Guests” and where the threat t of the coming Marxist revolution looms large in Tolstoy, Winters uses instead a group of rogue scientists called UnConSciya, a group that Levin and Vronsky later learn are trying to help the world prepare for an impending sea change in Class Three robots and the alien invasion of the flesh-eating Honored Guests. Technology makes appearances inside Android Karenina in surprising ways – instead of attending a ball, Kitty makes her debutante appearance at a Float, a dance at which the dancers are vaulted into the air by means of jet powered air timed to the music and piped through the floor. The mood is no less magical than the original, however:

“Kitty turned her attention to her fellow dancers, as the music slowed from triple time to a common four-four and the air slowed with it, transforming from the swift, giddy puff-puff-puff of waltzfloating to a controlled series of magisterial gusts…Down below, in the seating area, Kitty caught sight of Stiva, and beside him the exquisite figure and head of Anna, with Android Karenina beside her, glowing not lilac, but purest black” (Tolstoy/Winters 93).

It is only in the past five years that authors have even started to think about bastardizing some of the world’s best beloved works of literature. But the reasons for this are equally contemporary as well – these authors want to make what is assumed by many young readers (like myself) to be old, boring and staid into something fun, exciting and adventurous. They want them to read, and in order to do that they appeal to what is hip and current in the world of movies, creating books that are practically cinematic in description (Android Karenina also has a picture every fifty pages or so) and which use common tropes from recent popular movies for the teen demographic. (Examples include vampires (Jane Slayre, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter , Mr. Darcy, Vampyre) zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), creatures from the deeps (Sense and Sensibility and Sea monsters), and the steampunk aesthetic used in Android by Winters, a movement in science fiction that attempts to reimagine a victorian past with some of the technology of the distant future. ) 

On a side-note, I was a steampunk airship officer for Halloween. It was awesome.

By getting people to read Anna Karenina with a few robots and some futuristic technology thrown in, students and casual readers alike are still receiving many of Tolstoy’s original messages and themes about social justice, Marxism, the nature of love and how technology can corrupt our world. It is for this reason that Android Karenina succeeds in my mind where some of the other recent mashups on the market have failed. Winters’ additions help bring readers to the key themes in the story, while the addition of flesh eating zombies to the Netherfield Ball is just a bit of silly fun and doesn’t contribute to a greater understanding of the source text or its original intended meaning.

Whatever the additions, mash-ups are still a kind of hybrid literature, using the text from the past with a trend or taste from the present to create an old story told in a new way. And at the same time that they are considered new, they may also be considered old as well – literary theorists have long pointed out that when we tell stories we are merely following old forms and constructs to tell what amounts to the same story over and over again. “In primitive societies,” writes noted French Theorist Roland Barthes in his essay “The Death of The Author,” “Narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman, or speaker, whose performance may be admired (his mastery of the narrative code) but not his "genius." The author is a modern figure, produced no doubt by our society insofar as…it discovered the prestige of the individual.” (Barthes) The recent mash-up craze is merely being obvious about this recycling of forms and modes, and the authors who write mash-ups are sacrificing and at the same time exploiting this ‘prestige of the individual’ by using the text of an already prestigious canon author and merely adding to it.

So, moral of the story -- the folks at Quirk Books are awesome and they publish some damn entertaining literature. You should support thier noble cause of bringing high art literature to the low-brow masses and buy some books from them! (They're also sending me a copy of P&P&Z for blogging purposes, but it hasn't come yet...so QB PR types, we should email again soon. Just sayin'.)


Thus concludes Part One of my Steampunk Shenanigans. Tune in next time for Part Two -- my own foray into writing mash-up literature!

Literature Does Not Exist in a Vacuum, and Other Things the Seventh Harry Potter Movie Taught Me

I don't think there are any spoilers in this post, but just to be certain, I am talking about the latest Harry Potter movie, so anyone who hasn't seen it might want to beware.

-----


Last night I was one of those crazy college kids out at midnight to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One. This morning I am one of those crazy, sleep-deprived college kids who will go through thier Friday absolutely over the moon at the fact that the movie was so good. I was euphoric leaving that theater last night. I was so happy I had no words. I just sat in the car and beamed. This was the story I loved, the story I read aloud to my little sister and then re-read out loud just for fun a second, and a third, and a fourth time. They kept many of what I thought were some of Rowling's best bits and I was grateful for that.

I had a rough day yesterday -- I gave my book review of Android Karenina (coming soon to a blog near you!) and I taught part of a lesson on Narrative Poetry.  The poem I chose was one of my favorites, The Geebung Polo Club by A.B. Paterson, and the response volume fell flatter than a water balloon eating concrete after being dropped from the 90th floor.

It was bad, in other words. No one said a thing. Getting answers out of those kids was like pulling teeth. And after all that stress, I needed a win, and I found one. Dan, Emma, Rupert. David Yates and all their many friends and accomplices DELIVERED. But stories are curious things -- as we were watching the movie, my friends and I, we couldn't help making connections to other things we had seen, things we had read. Each of us brings a unique selection of prior knowledges and texts with us when we read: it's like packing a suitcase and stowing in on the train for the remainder of the ride. And for us, many of those things we were bringing with us were poems.

Before the movie began (we were at the theatre two hours early, we had to amuse ourselves somehow) we were singing quietly amongst ourselves. Selections included Pippen's Song from Return of the King, The Call from Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and There and Back Again, also from Lord of the Rings. All these songs can link back to Harry Potter -- they talk about the eventual triumph over evil, the renewal of hope, and the belief that we, too, have a place and a purpose in the world.

During the movie I thought several of David Yates' nature shots looked like Lord of the Rings country (including one where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are walking through a field -- I wanted someone to start singing "There and Back Again" right there) that Locket!Harry and Hermione reminded me of some perverse version of Adam and Eve (and also, at the same time, Scary!Galadriel from Fellowship of the Ring) and, perhaps best of all, that Dobby's death reminded me of a poem, one of my favorites and one which, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to share with my friends on the car ride home because we were too busy discussing the rest of the movie.

While Dobby needs no other epitaph than the tremendous life he lived, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" is, I think, also fitting given Dobby's final lines.

"REQUIEM"

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie,

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be,

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

And more than anything else, I wish I could share this expereince of poetry with my students, the idea that it connects us and shares threads of experience just like stories do. It provokes emotion, attempts to answer our questions about life, and binds us to other people. It does not always have an arcane meaning. You do not have to beat it with a hose to get a meaning out of it, to paraphrase Billy Collin's excellent poem Introduction to Poetry. Sometimes you can merely let it be.

My Grandma and Cricket Magazine

My grandmother was one smart woman. She knew where my head was at. She knew where I was going, and I hadn't even gotten there yet when she died.

This morning I had an odd desire to revisit a magazine I read as a child, a magazine that, as I now recall, my grandmother faithfully renewed for me every year until I was well beyond the age to which it was geared. That magazine was Cricket. I loved Cricket with a passion. Before that she'd subscribed to Ladybug and Spider, both publications that, in thier time, I loved too. But Cricket was the one I stayed with the longest -- the stories were better, the pictures brighter. It was practically a party, opening up a new issue every month. I especially loved saving all the issues and going back through to read the stories that came out in episodes. I loved them so much I saved many of my favorite stories in a box, laborously ripped from the magazines that had originally housed them. I think I still have a box of the magazines at home, too. I don't want to get rid of them -- it's a link to my childhood and a link to Grandma.

I picked up an issue several years ago in the children's section and was a little disappointed -- the myths and legends that I had loved so much had been replaced by newer, gritter, young-adult kinds of stories.  I don't care what your teacher education manuals tell you, not every child wants to read about the problems they might be facing in their day-to-day lives. I know I didn't. Ramona, Amber Brown, and pretty much anything Judy Blume every wrote were not welcome additions to my library bag.

I think this magazine might have been part of why I became a writer of stories. Because my grandmother saw they were important to me, and continued buying that magazine subscription so I could continue to see new examples and continue to read. In pedagogy now we're talking about the writing process and how reading (and subsequent discussion of that reading) is important to formulating how a story works.

Thanks, Grandma. I think you taught me that already.

Collecting My Thoughts

Under the subject heading of "Things That Don't Get Done While I Am Computerless," we find one item: Creative Pursuits.

Well, we knew it was going to happen sooner or later --the lack of a functioning personal computer is slowly starting to drive me bonkers. Nothing is getting done when it should. My North and South Mashup, which I have had ideas on for the past week, has gone exactly nowhere, a serious problem considering that is a homework item. My LOTR fanfic is floating out in the ether, my steampunk story is also on a oneway track to nowhere, and all this pent-up creative energy is creating a block on completing schoolwork that I can, in fact, complete on school computers. I have a poster to create, lesson plans to review, journals to write. And nothing's getting done.

Can I also state again for the record that I hate not having a comma key? I am a lover of long sentences, and while it is nice that my roomate is letting me borrow her computer when she's not using it, I ABSOLUTELY HATE that her comma key is not working as it should. I have to press down twice as hard to get a comma to register; ergo, every time there is a comma I have pause so the damn thing will register. Grrrr...

Sorry. This blogger has not been having a very good several weeks. Hopefully sometime in the next few days my mood will improve enough to write some posts on the steampunk novels I've been reading and my opening thoughts on the projected arc of the mash-up.

I have at least made one small bit of progress, however; in lieu of a witty title like Jane Slayre or Android Karenina, I've decided on something a little more subtle -- Elizabeth Gasket's North and South.

Homelessness and Space

The worst of news, readers.

Last Friday, after a visit from the angel of doom and my idiotic tendency to prop my feet up on my desk, I spilled tea on my beloved laptop and turned it into a zombie computer. After taking the battery out, drying it out for the better part of three days to the best of my ability, it will not turn on.

Thus, three years worth of pictures, music, and, worst of all, writing and homeworks, are now in electronic limbo. They might still be on my harddrive. They might not. I have no way of knowing and no way of checking, yet, but I have some of the smartest and most technologically inclined people I know working on it, so we'll see how it goes.

This episode has made me realize two things. One is how incredibly dependent I am on my computer to entertain me, keep me connected with people I don't see on a daily basis, and complete my homework. I wanted to watch a TV show yesterday (and I watch all my TV online) and felt silly going to the computer lab to turn on 'Castle.' I didn't want to check my facebook becuase really, how trival is facebook anyway? And I don't want everyone else in the computer lab to see what incredibly silly game I'm playing!

The second thing I realized is that without my laptop, I feel like a displaced person. I feel homeless without that electronic space to call my own.

I am not by any means trying to trivialize homelessness here. I come from a county with an incredibly high cost of living and an equally high homeless population. I can't say I've ever been physically homeless, but my brother and sister, who have participated multiple times in events like Sleep-Out Saturday, inform me that it's not fun.

When I speak about being homeless, what I really mean is spaceless. I don't have that personal space to store my thoughts or my productions anymore. My stuff doesn't have a home anymore. Using a school computer's not the same -- I have access to the same spaces as I did before, but in a public space. I have a hard time using a public space to do personal things, like write this blog, for instance. I didn't feel anchored enough to devote my time to thinking about blog topics -- I was too worried about when I could get another computer to work on real homework later on that evening.

Hopefully we can recover my data. Hopefully my stories won't have to be recreated from scratch and I won't have to re-acquire all my music. And hopefully I can use this feeling that I have right now, this dreadful, uncertain listlessness, to understand the small percentage of my students that statistics tell me will be homeless. I know my schoolwork's suffering because  of my lack of a computer -- how much must they be suffering when they dont' know where they're sleeping that night?

Airship Ahoy! Student Teaching Dead Ahead!

Good news! The best of news, in fact.

I have received my student teaching placements for next semester! 

There are two of them, one in an area middle school and the other in a high school, and I am assured by people in the know that they are wonderful teachers who really know their business.

I was so overcome with joy at this prospect my productivity for the day imploded, and I ended up leaving my homework until my shift at work last night. Three hours of heavy productivity. It was great.

But after that I went home feeling a great deal like a failure. Here I am, a quarter of the way through senior year, practically swimming in homework and midterms, and all I want to do right now is work on a Halloween costume. Talk about trival.

Not just any Halloween costume, mind you. A steampunk airship officer, to be precise. I spent the better part of Wednesday Googling Do-It-Yourself steampunk accessories, including the obligatory round-rimmed goggles and making a shopping list for the local craft store, thrift shop, and bargain outlet. I realized I want to work on this, instead of writing the 5 mini-essays I have due next week, because I’m bored. A little burnt-out, too. I’m sick and tired of learning about how to teach kids, and it doesn’t help that in two of my classes we’re talking about exactly the same thing. I need a week, I think, to not do any schoolwork at all, and a week is a luxury I don’t have.

Steampunk is an interesting aesthetic. It tries to combine the power, creativity, and mechanical prowess that the Industrial era embodies while at the same time embracing the whimsy, romance and beauty of the Victorian age. Simultaneous creative periods, but very different ideas in terms of what form and function are. It’s like Gaskell’s North and South in a big way, the culture of the city meeting the machinery of the town. (Speaking of which, I got a massively awesome mashup idea involving Mr. Thornton and a bunch of robots that I think I might use for my final project in Contemporary Lit.)

Anyway, as I’m googling around I can’t help but be fascinated by what some of these people have built. These contraptions are beautiful – mahogany keyboards with repurposed typewriter keys, working blunderbuss guns that fire ping-pong balls. (That was another reason I was ashamed of myself – I’m not half that creative or talented to be in this genre) I realized that cosplay of any kind says something very interesting about our society in general. We have such creative, artisanal talent as human beings, and in our industrialized, buy-it-out-of-the-box world, that energy that in earlier periods would have been put to the purpose of making useful objects  is rerouted into making objects that could have been useful, but instead are used for this specialized kind of play. Steampunk’s fascinating to me because it tries to embody this past-present binary, the beauty of past design but also the desire to be futuristic and imaginative as well. (Also awesome - dieselpunk, the 'punk that started after WWI and the Age of Steam left off. Think Art Deco, Soviet Realism, film noir and really futuristic looking cars. Epic.)

I’ve realized, in between trying to finish the midterm exam due tonight and the final project due tomorrow, that this is an excellent conundrum for several reasons. First, I have to practice a good deal of self control in sticking to my time management options. Second, I’m realizing teachers cannot live on homework and grading alone. And third, if I’m getting burnt out thinking about the same thing all day and it’s only October, how must my students feel when they’re learning about five or six different subjects and they have to write a bunch of papers?

All of this is pointing me towards a conclusion we’ve discussed, both in Pedagogy and in Young Adult Lit-- students need to have a way to engage with the literature they’re reading beyond just writing about it. Involve an art project once in a while, something that uses a different part of the brain. This is why art and music and the humanities in schools is so very important! Kids need a creative break!

I know this teacher does, too.

Plagiarism (And Other Things In My Life I'm Not So Sure About)

Every time I wrote a paper for middle or high school, my teacher would remind me not to plagiarize. It's a staple for essay writing instruction -- Tell us where you got everything and don't copy anyone else's work word for word. If you don't, we'll come after you with a red pen and a vengeance.

Simple.

As a future writing teacher, it's important for me to remember this, and remember to teach it to my students. But what I've been having difficulty with lately is the idea that in order to teach someone about plagiarism, I have to plagiarize someone else's idea on how to teach.

Let me explain. In classes like my English Pedagogy we're given books written by prizewinning, veteran teachers that are full of strategies and observations on what works in the classroom and what doesn't. Our professor is filling us with tools from her own experience to help us when we get out into classrooms of our own. And this, to me, sounds an awful lot like plagiarizing, or copying off of someone else's paper on an exam. Aren't I supposed to just know all of this by myself? Aren't I supposed to be coming up with these mind-bogglingly good theories of pedagogy all on my own?

When we speak of sharing lesson plans or ideas on how to teach, isn't it technically intellectual plagiarism when I think Emily's lesson on how to wrap up a unit on critical theory lenses was so awesome I'd like to do exactly the same thing in my classroom because I thought it worked well? Are my roommate and I going to plagiarize each other when we discuss at the end of each school day and try to come up with a plan of attack for tomorrow using these textbooks and their ideas?

My good friend Ben recently linked me to the blog Teaching FTW, the one year labor of love of one Ross Trudeau, a teacher in a Boston charter school.  Trudeau describes a very prescriptive approach to his teacher training at said charter school, something that runs counter to most educator preparation programs in America today. I'll let Mr. Trudeau explain himself on this one:

"Program founder MG once likened traditional teacher prep to putting a pilot in a cockpit after teaching him about aerodynamics and meteorology... but not telling him what any of the buttons do. 'What? You crashed the plane into the mountain? It's cool! You get a whole new plane next September, and you probably learned SO much from that first plane crash! Go get 'em, tiger!'" -- Teaching FTW Feb 4 2010.

"This feels like the best way to learn how to teach. TELL me the moves. WATCH me practice them. CRITIQUE me on how good my presence is, or what my face looks like disciplining students, if my line of questioning is appropriate, yadda. It's like the total opposite of learning adolescent psychology and debating at length the place that ebonics has in a classroom. It's a common-friggin'-sense way to go about learning how to teach. " --Teaching FTW Jan 21, 2010

And while I am reading this blog, I am thinking several things. One: Ben was a genius to link me to this. Two: This is really funny. A little unreadable at times, but funny. Three: I wish my blog had 76 followers. Four: The prescriptive program sounds really awesome, but isn't that intellectual plagiarism too? Shouldn't you have to build your own classroom from scratch first and yes, crash a few planes? (I hate the idea of crashing a plane as much as anyone else, believe me, the idea that the parents of America will trust me with their children's futures is terrifying no matter how many people tell me I'll make a good teacher.)

I suppose at the bottom of this well of self doubt is the way I was taught to look at information and who it belongs to. I'm the girl who wouldn't ask a question in class unless I already knew the answer -- My idea about how knowledge should be handled is strange, to say the least. In my little world, this information on how a classroom works and how students work belongs to someone else. They did the research. They spent the time compiling it. If I were to use it in a paper, I would have to cite where it came from and I would have to paraphrase it. And yet here are all these people telling me that no, I should just use these ideas, lock, stock, and barrel, and maybe mix in a few of my own.

I think something's rotten in the state of educational training here, and I'm not sure if it's my training as a teacher, my own education prior to that, or something else entirely.