Rest Well, Jimmy

 

My sister and I braved the cold to pay our respects to President Carter.  May we all have second acts in life that involved serving others.

A Complete Unknown -- What I Thunk

The film makes some bold choices -- Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger as villains, or at least antagonists.  Joan Baez doesn't come off that well either.  But focusing on the early career of Dylan, these choices make sense by the end.

I also like how smart the film is musically.  There's a minor but great scene that explains to non-guitar players what playing in an open tuning means.

Like all biopics, the film lives or dies on whether you believe in Chalamet's depiction -- I did!

Basically, I thought it was great but I can see where others might differ.

Nosferatu -- What I Thunk

It's great.  It also has the Eggers' slow build that makes The Witch and The Lighthouse so good.

The only issue is that he's quite faithful to the book, so we already know where things are going.  The first half of the film just isn't as compelling as the second half.

Willem Dafoe is amazing, as usual.

Deck the Halls!

Happy Ceramic Tree Christmas to you!

By my count this will be my third Christmas with Mandu, cream and brown spots, and Chingu, the tuxedo terror.  I'll be spending Christmas Eve with my sister and her family.  No airports, just a short drive!

I hope you have a great Christmas as well, wherever you may find yourself!

Delight and Instruct

Substitute teaching is going pretty well.  Half of the game is signing up for gigs at schools that are run well or, of course, avoiding the bad ones.  It gets easier over time, and I've dipped my toes into things like P.E. and Special Education and enjoyed them greatly.

This last week before Christmas break a young elementary student threatened to kill me though.  Per training, I called the Behavior department four times and they didn't even answer.

Again, avoiding the poorly run schools is part of the game.

RIP Rickey Henderson

He was always fun to watch.

"that can never be arranged"

"Of course, he's right, your dear old dad:

The world is poor and men are bad.

An earthly paradise might be arranged

If this old world of ours could but be changed

But that can never be arranged.

Your brother might be fond of you

But if the meat supply won't do

He'd cut you down right where you stood.

(We'd all by loyal if we could.)

Your good wife might be fond of you

But if your love for her won't do

She'd cut you down right where you stood.

(We'd all be grateful if we could.)

Your children might be fond of you

But if your pension would not do

They'd cut you down right where you stood.

(We'd all be human if we could.)"

-- Bertold Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

"the wine-dark ivy, / dense and dark"

 "Here, stranger,

here in the land where horses are a glory

you have reached the noblest home on earth

Colonus glistening, brilliant in the sun --

where the nightingale sings on,

her dying music rising clear,

hovering always, never leaving,

down the shadows deepening green

she haunts the glades, the wine-dark ivy,

dense and dark, the untrodden, sacred wood of god

rich with laurel and olives never touched by the sun

untouched by storms that blast from every quarter --

where the Reveler Dionysus strides the earth forever

where the wild nymphs are dancing round him

nymphs who nursed his life."

-- Oedipus at Colonus, trans. Robert Fagles

"likely never read well without explicit instruction in sounding out words⁠"

I've been teaching for nearly 20 years now, albeit in some unconventional places and spaces, primarily 12 years teaching ESL in South Korea.  These days I'm a substitute teacher at all grade levels and many subjects (including P.E.!).  Anyhow, the debate over phonics or not-to-phonics kind of escaped me while I was living in South Korea, and this article (while seeming a bit biased) was fascinating to me:

"In first grade, these 'independent reading' hours were torture for my kids, who, I would eventually learn, were among the roughly half of all children who, research shows, will likely never read well without explicit instruction in sounding out words⁠. My kids’ reactions to being expected to sit quietly each day pretending to read ran along stereotypical gender lines. My daughter silently berated herself for not being able to read; my son acted out, once attempting to push over a bookshelf."

The whole thing is downright amazing.  All I have to add is that graduate school education programs struggle to justify their own existence every ten years or so by developing entirely new paradigms and approaches, even when existing ones seem to work pretty well.  That's true for other departments as well, but only Ed Schools use children as guinea pigs.

Anyhow, I teach a fair amount of reading intervention classes and phonics and blending are definitely back.  I guess I didn't realize they'd ever gone away.

Really?

So the right-wing president of South Korea thought he could declare martial law and rally some support to a sinking presidency?

I emailed my former boss, a political moderate, and he told me Yoon "lost his mind."

South Korea?

What the hell is going on in South Korea?