Memories Sweet Memories

Memories are funny things--like wine, they only get better with age. Or they are better the less we remember of them. In any case, I'm going to talk about my girlfriend. Don't begrudge me this--I'm not one to usually fawn over a girl.

I'm also not one to be caught up on a gift. And I'm not, really. It's a harmonica. I like it--it's a very nice harmonica that I haven't quite learned to play. And that's really where the story starts, as well as ends. I am a pretty decent guitar player, and I can bang out a song or two on the piano. When I asked for a harmonica I was just learning to play the piano, and thought that the three would make a pretty awesome ensemble, so I said I would like a harmonica for Christmas to a few friends. And I got one. No shocker. I think that it is the effort, not the gift that, is such a sharp memory to me. See, Steph (my gf) knew very little about me and music at that time. So she did some foot work, asking my best friend what she needed to know about harmonicas (such as that most are made in a single key) and then what information she needed to know about me (such as what key I play in most usually, which is C for the record). Then she went to Alamo music downtown where she was told she could find one. But as is the case with Christmas, they were sold out (because everyone cool wants a harmonica). Now, here I have to say that Steph does not drive--she takes the bus everywhere. So after Alamo music didn't have one, she had to track down another music store that did. I don't know all of the details of it (and she doesn't remember them) but she ended up somewhere on the north side to buy the harmonica, and it was an all day trip. Over a harmonica. That I still haven't learned to play, because it's not so cut and dry as guitar or piano.

Anyway, I think it's pretty awesome when someone will go on the chase for stuff like that. I love music and I love my harmonica, even if I'm not so good at it. Here's a few videos for harmonicas and legos, the runner up.

Randy




warning: if you're not a fan of 'f' bombs, well...

An Author, to His Blog

First, a RAFT by someone more clever than I:


Ever since we've gotten this assignment, I've been thinking about Anne Bradstreet, the proverbial tenth muse, and her poem "An Author, to her Book." And then my friend just went and wrote an address to his pencil. So, as a little bit of background, this is inspired by those two and my recent decision to read back through John Igo's On Poetry and Poetics. (inspired by last week's post).

My RAFT:

Role: The Kleenex Box
Audience: People
Format: Commentary/Critique/Monologue
Topic: Manners

The Snuffbox Decides to Sneeze

Bless you is a great example: it is a knee jerk reaction, one that no one seems to be sure of it's initial meaning anymore. Everyone says it. No one means it. It's one of those fickle redundancies without reason or reference with your sort, you humans. I feel like I could be an apt metaphor for human relations, what with the way you use me up, empty me out, and replace me with the next--No single after-thought as I'm tossed into the dustbin. No one ever says thank you. Never have I heard a 'Bless you.' Just an unceremonious push off the desk, to be replaced by a scarcely distinguishable relative, full and bursting with life, and here I am, the object of a conscientious human's conservative fetish. Your type is funny about what gets a ceremony. Deaths, sneezes, mornings--It's all closer to drudgery than celebration; I've never seen a species more devoted to the careful observation of your own misery. And never anyone else's either--always your own: A bless you, a how are you, a million facebook friends--all of them to be used up, emptied out, and replaced with the next. And all of this, without a Bless You.

P.S. Sorry if this is a bit more morose than usual. We can't all be hilarious all the time.

The Blog Where I'm a Hypocrite

Yes, I am: I am about to talk about writing as a process on what is the compositional equivalent of throwing up in public: a blog. And I'll start with a few admissions. No, I don't actually do it; not on anything other than creative writing, anyway. I do still recognize the relative merits. But, in my years as an English major, I learned a certain formula for paper writing: to write a good, A grade 500 word essay, with no sources other than the text, I needed half an hour. Each 100 words or sources adds an incremental hour. That means that a 700 word essay would take me 3 and a half hours. Then there is creative writing, and my thesis for the writing process:

There is no such thing as good writing; only good rewriting.

Now don't get mad at me, or shoot the messenger, or whatever the appropriate euphemism is. I got it from John Igo and Professor Rossignol.

So what is the writing process? It's code for common sense. Before you write, you should do some prewriting exercises. That is, get an idea of what your writing on, and do some cursory research (no matter what you are writing--bad fiction is fiction with no research). Do some brainstorming, write an outline, et cetera.

Then, when you have your bases covered (read: you read the Wikipedia article and a few of the articles sources) you write a draft. Emphasis on the draft. This is not publication gold. I have taken to calling it the sloppy copy--because that is what it is.

When you are done drafting, don't go correcting grammar and stuff. Here is where common sense comes in. If you're going to redesign a house, you make sure you have the frame right, then you put in the wires. Grammar is the wires; sentence structure is the frame. So, before you start throwing commas where they belong, make sure your sentences are worded the way you want them worded. This is revision.

When you have your sentences saying what you want them saying, then you make sure you've written in syntactically, grammatically correct English. Put the commas where the commas go, the semicolons where the semicolons go, make sure all your sentences are capitalized and punctuated, and that you didn't write 'there' for 'their' (p.s. Microsoft won't catch those errors. A good secret is to read your composition backwards to catch this and misspelled words, because it takes them out of the context that allows your brain to ignore errors).

So, now you've performed literary alchemy: lead to gold, as it were. This is where you publish: put it on a blog, send it to the newspaper, turn it in, hang it on the fridge, or something. Publishing something is making it public. So, go tell the world.

And that's the writing process. I do think that, if ever a student (or anyone, for that matter) is going to write something worth reading, it should be walked through this process, maybe the middle parts several times: Draft, revise, edit, draft, revise.

Publish.

Favorite Vacation: Final Draft (I don't have a title)

It all started because of football: my two brothers (John and Nathan) and myself were watching the Terrapins game, who just happen to have an awful front line--though you couldn't tell my brother John that, and he wouldn't believe you if you did, anyway. But, for the record, the Terrapins have an awful front line. I commented on how the linemen reminded me of the phalanx in ancient military tactics, to which Nathan responded (because he's not the best in history): "So what is this--Roman Elephants versus the Maryland Terrapins?" That comment brought on a lengthy debate on who had elephants--Rome or Carthage, the Terrapins lost their game, and before you knew it we were in Rome, on vacation (but more just to sort out Nathan's history).

Rome is, by the way, much more hot than San Antonio. So we went straight from the plane to the Pantheon, thinking maybe a tribute to the gods, or at least Apollo, would fix things up a bit--make things cooler. We spent a while roaming about the Pantheon and couldn't figure out what to do before deciding that the Pantheon didn't work and headed to St. Peter's Basilica, thinking maybe we had picked the wrong deity or something.

In the end, neither location made Rome cooler (literally). We went on to the Circus Maximus, which isn't really a Circus after all, but more just a big race track (who knew?). Nathan had thought that there would be elephants at the circus, and it made sense to me, so we spend some time waiting for the circus, or a parade, or something--anything really that might have elephants--until John told us "I told you so" and convinced us to go see the Colosseum. Nathan asked if that was where the elephants were, and John followed the map.

The Colosseum didn't have any elephants, but it was awesome: A big football stadium, basically. We all realized that and started talking about how great it would be if Rome had a football team and what they would be called when Nathan said, "The Roman Elephants of course." Then, remembering the point of the trip: "Oh yeah. Where are the elephants?"

John sighed. "They're not here. That's just it Nathan, Rome didn't have the elephants; Carthage did."

Nathan was of course yammering along with him, mocking him the way we did when we were kids. "Well, you know what? Elephants or no elephants, the Terrapins lost that game."

"And so did Carthage," said John.

Then we went home and made like the whole thing never happened, except every once in a while Nathan mentioned his new favorite football team, the Roman Elephants.

A Basic Strategy for Really Boring Papers and Really Interesting Books

And that about sums up this blog post.

Not really.

But since everyone else was putting cool pictures on their blogs, I figured I would follow the crowd. Next time, I'll be relevant.

Speaking of which(!), I have a blog topic: Pre, during, and post strategies, and how they help students.

First, and explanation of pre, during, and post strategies for language arts instruction. These strategies are reminiscent of that effective, but supremely boring, essay strategy from Composition I. First, you tell them what you are going to tell them. In this case, them is the students, and this step is the 'pre stage.' You inform the students , or get the students thinking about what they will be learning, and get them to engage the material they will be learning. Then, you 'tell them.' This is parallel to strategies during the reading phase which reinforce student interactions with a text and with language in general. When the lesson is over, you tell them what you told them: Post lesson strategies. These strategies are ways to elaborate the learning that has taken place, and to make the learning their own.

Pre, during, and post lesson strategies are actually a whole lot more interesting than the essays I wrote in Composition I though; primarily because of the way they offer engagement. For example, one can use prediction or exploration to engage students with subject matter before presenting them with the book to inspire curiosity; teachers can teach vocabulary concurrently within a text, and then check predictions, recap vocabulary, and elaborate on story topics, words or settings in post story writings, or send students to the library to find other information on topics that interested them within a text.

So, what's the point of all this? A lot of things, actually. Hopefully, the students have acquired multiple references to the text in their file storage system (read: brain) which makes the story easier to access, and by extension, the lessons that were imbed into the story, such as vocabulary and sequencing. Also, it allows a variety of language arts to be taught in an organized manner through a single story. This is especially effective if the story content is appealling to the students. The cummulative result is that students remember more information in a more organized manner that is accessible through a wider variety of connections; and they enjoy a great book and learn a lot from it.

P.S. Narwhals rock.