When I see diversity-casting in commercials—two bland Caucasians waving beer cans at a TV, or at a driving up to a Taco Bell window, accompanied, somehow, by a handsome black guy—the word that pops into my head is “segregation”! I can’t help it. The ruse is so obvious, a counterfactual posing as a home truth. Then I watch the black guy for signs that he shares my disquiet, and sometimes I think I can see it in his eyes, a veiled chagrin at both his company and the bald contrivance that roped him into it. He seems to be asking himself, By what unholy mix of demographic calculation and liberal-wish projection have I ended up wedged in the front seat of a little car between these two pinkish fellows? In their morbidly color-conscious color-blindness, these commercials are like the stereotypical white guy who thinks some slogan has flung him to the magical land beyond race—Peter Riegert in “Animal House,” yelling “Hey Otis, my man!” onto a dance floor packed with the skeptical black people of 1962. By pretending it isn’t so hard, he just reminds you how hard it really is.
We have become accustomed to thinking of educational failure as a function of a teacher’s lack of effort, talent, or training. But sometimes the problem lies specifically in what we train teachers to do. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way we teach reading and writing to some of our most vulnerable students.Every day, for two hours a day, I led my young students through Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop. I was trained not to address my kids as “students” or “class” but as “authors” and “readers.” We gathered “seed ideas” in our Writer’s Notebooks. We crafted “small moment” stories, personal narratives, and memoirs. We peer edited. We “shared out.” Gathered with them on the rug, I explained to my 10-year-olds that “good writers find ideas from things that happened in their lives.” That stories have “big ideas.” That good writers “add detail,” “stretch their words,” and “spell the best they can.”
Teach grammar, sentence structure, and mechanics? I barely even taught. I “modeled” the habits of good readers and “coached” my students. What I called “teaching,” my staff developer from Teacher’s College dismissed as merely “giving directions.” My job was to demonstrate what good readers and writers do and encourage my students to imitate and adopt those behaviors.
In short, I presided over the reading and writing equivalent of a Cargo Cult.
The typical Romanian driver is a man of faith. He sees the road as it is — a densely congested, shattered series of uneven concrete blocks — but does not let the sordid reality obscure the promise of what it could be: a ribbon of silken asphalt winding from horizon to horizon, without another car in sight, if only he could get past the moron in front of him. And, he feels, God will reward those who put their faith in Him, floor it and swing out on a blind curve. Look in any truck or taxi and you will find a little icon of a saint dangling from the rear view mirror. This is basically an admission that the driver does not expect to survive without sustained and direct divine intervention, something that I will find easier to believe after returning home from this road trip.
livelymorgue:Dec. 21, 1933: From the Mid-Week Pictorial. Americans visiting Paris celebrated the end of Prohibition in the United States in a “real two-fisted manner,” its original caption stated. Photo: The New York TimesBottoms up!
If the Berlin Wall could fall, so can the N.F.L.
I keep telling you people, it doesn’t work that way. As the piece itself says, football fans have nowhere else to go. Ratings haven’t been touched, sponsors are happy. Probably even more people will tune in to see what officiating disaster or nearly-fatal helmet-to-helmet hit happens next week. It’s bread and circuses all the way. My guess is that the NFL will replace these officials with ones who are even worse, just to create more buzz. It turns out that incompetence, violence, and the resulting outrage are all bankable. Cool!
(via Otto’s Dance of Death - 50 Watts)Any time the 50 Watts blog mentions “the collection of Richard Sica,” you know you’re in for some excellent and morbid woodcuts.
Christaraksha
May the cross of the Son of God,
which is mightier than all the hosts of Satan
and more glorious than all the hosts of heaven,
abide with you in your going out and your coming in.
By day and night, at morning and at evening,
at all times and in all places,
may it protect and defend you.
From the wrath of evildoers,
from the assaults of evil spirits,
from foes visible and invisible,
from the snares of the devil,
from all passions that beguile the soul and body:
may it guard, protect and deliver you.
Amen.
(A prayer from India of unknown origin, often said before sleep, and incorporated into some of the liturgies of the Church of South India. We use it at my church, All Souls’ Anglican, as a benediction at the conclusion of the Eucharist.)
“Mad Libs” of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 from the Brooklyn Book Festival.