January 2012
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“There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the...”
– Annie Dillard, from Holy the Firm
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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's... →
Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.
“When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960’s, many said it couldn’t be...
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Henry James' Guide to Sports: Wild Card: Detroit... →
henryjamesguidetosports:
In the multitudinous glow of the many-lighted stadium, where stands the individual in relation to his fans, to his city, to his sport and indeed to the firmament? To whom, in the very minute and turn of it, does victory belong? Shall we hand it, as indeed we have before, to Mr. Brees of Austin, Texas, now of the swallowed yet ever-swallowing city of New Orleans?...
December 2011
7 posts
Bests
Best Book I Read: Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout by Phillip Connors. This was a Hard Year in Some Ways, y’all. Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “There are years that ask questions and years that give answers.” This year was a hovering, maddening question, and reading this book during it sort of undid me in the best way possible. It reminded me that being still...
Pick Up Lines That Have Worked on Me
“Are you talking about Anne of Green Gables? [followed by any quote from the 1985 miniseries]”
“I f*cking hate Terry Gross”
“Who dat?!” [this only works outside New Orleans]
“Excuse me, but does your t-shirt say ‘Herzog’ in the Danzig logo?”
“I bet we can’t do cartwheels and make out at the same time”
“Have...
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Some Dates I Have Been On
Year: 2001
Setting: Humboldt County, CA
I meet a Nice Guy who wears his hair in two braids and lives in an abandoned dentist’s office and stays up all night writing raps about the desecration of Mother Earth on his typewriter. He takes me on a moonlight hike. Half a mile into the hike, he goes oddly quiet. We are holding hands. His hand starts to twitch. I get that weird feeling you get...
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“Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die:...”
– Vladimir Nabokov, from “Lectures on Literature”
November 2011
6 posts
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“It is those deep, far-away things in him, those occasional flashings-forth of...”
– Herman Melville on Shakespeare, from Hawthorne and His Mosses
October 2011
10 posts
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That's Just Like, Your Opinion, Man
One of the most popular units I teach is a pairing of A Confederacy of Dunces and the film The Big Lebowski, for my Literature and Film course (the unit is on cult classics). It follows on the heels of reading and watching The Big Sleep (which Lebowski is loosely based on) alongside other noir classics.
Most teachers do a double-take when they hear that I show The Big Lebowski in class. I am...
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Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can’t grab onto.
—David Foster Wallace
I dreamed she married the only man I’ve ever truly loved. I’m sorry, she apologized with flashing green eyes, behind which something sinister swivels on a certain pivot we only sometimes glimpse and whisper...
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On Touch
It’s a basic inside/outside problem. I don’t know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It’s the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body. Crush, at its core, is about rupture. The desire to touch, the gesture of touching, becomes dangerous, damaging, after the hand, withheld for so long, finally makes an attempt at contact....
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The Millions: Bartleby's Occupation of Wall Street →
Melville published Bartleby in 1853, at what was likely a personal low point. Not only had his masterpiece, Moby Dick, received mixed reviews, but his follow-up book, Pierre, was so universally disliked that one paper ran a review titled: HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY. His career as a writer was beginning a steep decline, and he must have known it. It’s easy to see Bartleby as Melville’s alter ego,...
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Afternoon Scenes
At approximately 4:52pm, the following took place in the front office of a private high school:
Me: How was your meeting with the head of the Education PhD program at [redacted prestigious university down the road]?
A: [motions me over, in hushed tones] Well….it was unnerving?
Me: Because it was [redacted prestigious university down the road]?
A: Well….actually…I walked into...
September 2011
7 posts
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How Finland Became an Educational Leader →
How did Finland manage to elevate the role of teacher in the eyes of the population to something that is not just an honorable profession, but a revered profession, whereas in the United States, teachers are so regularly denigrated?
They really think about teachers as scientists and the classrooms are their laboratories. So, as I mentioned — every teacher has to have a masters degree, and...
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Doubling in the Middle →
Roger Angell, a writer for the New Yorker since the 1940s, once described palindromes as “a literary form in which the story line is controlled by the words rather than by the author.” My sense is that Duncan would probably say that’s a description of other people’s palindromes. Because part of what makes him a master is his refusal to cede control. When things are going really well with a Barry...
“I think people who enjoy short stories have a special gland, one that responds...”
– Adam Marek, from “Short Circuit”
August 2011
4 posts
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“I marvel at the calm of the Japanese haiku poets who just enjoy the passage of...”
– Jack Kerouac, in a letter to John Clellon Holmes
July 2011
8 posts
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WatchEven the eminent cursivebuildings must enter the grounds via zipline.
Previously on the zipline
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Anonymous asked: Hi! I'm going to start teaching high school English in the fall. Can you walk me through a typical teaching day for you? Things you cover, how you manage your class. Thanks!