Shockingly, this is not a post about Calgon ("...take me away!") -- it's about a very unique cold retardant/remedy discussed in Time's "The China Blog."
Almost sounds good ("almost" being the operative term).
1.19.2007
Reading more and reading "better" books redux
Here are some letters to the editor re: the CSM piece on reading "the classics," about which I posted a couple of days back:
Modern relevance of classic literature
Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece, "Please, I want some more Dickens," really struck a chord with me. Last fall, my husband and I attended our first open house at my daughter's high school. The English teacher reflected on the choice of novel for the semester. "We either do 'Twelve Angry Men' or 'Great Expectations,' " she said. "But we're considering dropping Dickens because he's just too hard for the students."
One mother agreed with the teacher. But I begged her to keep Dickens – and my daughter indeed read "Great Expectations." We had great discussions about this story, even though my husband and I struggled to remember the intricacies of the plot.
But I do remember the first time I read a classic, thinking that I would find it so boring. The book was "Jane Eyre," and to this day I am haunted by Jane, Mr. Rochester, and the mad woman in the attic. That novel encouraged me to read other classics and to understand the allusions that can be found throughout literature.
Hooray for Ms. Wood's suggestion that we encourage reading of the classics. I think the best way to start is in the home, so I'll be pushing one of my best-loved books ("Little Women") my daughter's way again.
Maeve Reilly
Champaign, Ill.Regarding Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece on reading classic literature: Works by Charles Dickens are often found in the children's section. Why? Because adults do not want to read them. Keep in mind that Dickens was a serial writer. His material was meant to be read in sections over extended periods of time. What is more, his works were not written to satisfy any great literary calling; Dickens was a hack paid by the word.
Can children, or even most teens, appreciate the political satire of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"? Will Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have the same influence now as it did in its day, since slavery has long ended? How many could grasp the nautical dialect that peppers Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick"? It is time to accept the fact that so-called classics are irrelevant to most modern readers. Defenders of the classics need to accept this and discover that there are many fine modern books as well.
David Cohen
Alturas, Calif.
My word of the day
Panglossian
Pronunciation: pan-'glä-sE-&n, pa[ng]-, -'glo-From Wikipedia:
Function: adjective
Etymology: Pangloss, optimistic tutor in Voltaire's Candide (1759)
: marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic
The term "panglossianism" describes baseless optimism of the sort exemplified by Pangloss's beliefs, which are the opposite of his fellow traveller Martin's pessimism and emphasis on free will. The phrase "panglossian pessimism" has been used to describe the pessimistic position that, since this is the best of all possible worlds, it is impossible for anything to get any better.As used in a paragraph:The panglossian paradigm is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin to refer to the notion that everything has specifically adapted to suit specific purposes. Instead, they argue, accidents and exaptation (the use of old features for new purposes) play an important role in the process of evolution.
Solar still has one big economic problem: It costs roughly twice as much per kilowatt-hour as power from the grid. But an unusual confluence of events is changing that calculus and making even jaded investors wonder if there isn't something more to solar than hype. First, of course, are rising petroleum prices. True, they're off their highs, but you'd have to be a Panglossian optimist to look at the Middle East and believe oil and natural gas will really become cheap again. ("Let the Sun Shine," Fast Company, February 2007)
1.17.2007
Hockey fights in a different light
Thanks to Off Wing Opinion for passing this recent set-to between Georges Laraque of the 'Yotes and Raitis Ivanins of the Kings along. Trust me -- you've never seen a fight quite like this.
New music
I took a little while today and made some revisions to the playlist at right. Hope you enjoy.
Reading more and reading "better" books
After a week's lapse in blogging, I've returned with an opinion piece appearing in yesterday's (1.16.07) Christian Science Monitor. In it, a homemaker and writer from Deerfield, Illinois, bemoans the fact that school/teen reading lists are lacking in the "classics." I'll be the first to admit that, as a youth (not that long ago, mind you), I read a lot, but in general, didn't read the "great books" -- unless you count the illustration-filled mini-editions (always 238 pages, if I remember correctly) of The Three Musketeers, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Oregon Trail, etc., that I whipped through in a couple hours' time; I wish I could remember the name of that series. Anyhow, I agree with Ms. Wood's point-of-view and, as such, have taken the liberty of adding a few links to her commentary; hope she doesn't mind.
***
Please, I want some more Dickens
A fruitless search for the author at schools and on teen reading lists inspires a parent's literary crusade.
DEERFIELD, ILL.
Do you know any seventh graders reading "Great Expectations"? If not, maybe you should. In his book, "The Educated Child," former Education Secretary William Bennett suggests the Charles Dickens novel be part of a seventh- and eighth-grade reading list. I referred to Mr. Bennett's list recently while helping my 12-year-old son choose a book.
"Great Expectations!?" Now that's expecting a lot, I thought. I remembered picking it up on my own in eighth grade. But would adolescents today read Dickens in their leisure time? Maybe Mr. Bennett's book, written seven years ago, had made an impression. I called a local librarian. No, she said, "Great Expectations" is not a hit.
Next I polled my neighbors' children. Seventh graders on my block weren't reading "Great Expectations." They weren't reading "A Tale of Two Cities," "David Copperfield," or the "Pickwick Papers" [sic] either.
"Classics are stupid," said one 13-year-old girl, whose desperate mother had tried paying her to read Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." "I'd have to buy my son 17 North Face jackets before he'd look at a classic," said another mother.
Why did Bennett's recommendation seem so far-fetched? Yes, television, iPods, and computer games interfere with reading, but was that the only explanation? Maybe the Dickens novel was simply too hard to find. I wanted an answer.
First, I visited the children's section of the library. The books displayed most prominently in the center of the room addressed contemporary social issues such as anorexia, homelessness, divorce, and poverty. I finally found some by Dickens tucked away toward the back of the room.
I left the library and wandered over to the local bookstore. While I relaxed with a book by the 19th-century essayist Thomas De Quincey, a middle-aged woman entered and asked a saleswoman for a book recommendation.
"Do you want chick lit, a page-turner, or a romance?" the saleswoman asked. Oh, how I wish she had asked, "Do you want Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, or the latest translation of 'The Iliad'?" I felt as though I were at Wal-Mart instead of the bookstore, and that prompted me to wonder what other adults were reading. I asked around at the bookstore's cafe. Nobody had read Dickens since college and even then it was a chore. "I hated all that detail," one woman complained.
Then I scoped out the bookstore's teen section. Risqué images graced the covers of books with titles such as "Skinny Dipping" (second in the "Au Pairs" series) and "Gossip Girl." For boys, there were paperbacks that looked more like computer games than books – glossy covers depicting space ships and intergalactic battles.
"It's all teen trash," said the mom who had tried bribing her daughter to read "Little Women." "I might as well buy her a 'Harlequin Romance.' " How could the little black and white sketches of chubby men smoking pipes that appear in the older editions of Dickens compete with sexy girls romping on beaches?
"The answer is obvious," said a local father of two high school girls. "Teachers don't read Dickens, so they don't assign him." And sure enough, I looked at my son's past summer reading list and Dickens wasn't there. Neither were Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Stephen Crane. It seemed clear: For students in junior high, Dickens doesn't exist – not in book groups, not in schools, not at the library, and not at home. "Bah, humbug," I growled, and went off on a search for Mark Twain.
Parents, start a revolution! Unplug all electronic gadgets and get your children reading great books again. Here are a few tips:
• If "Great Expectations" seems too difficult, read the first few chapters aloud. Ask your child to read the rest.
Together, we can save Dickens – and others like him – from extinction!
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