March 9, 2011
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1 Wednesday of my personal BOYCOTT BIG OIL AND GAS campaign, and I still have a quarter tank. I've gone nowhere.
2 The nice thing is that it's not really a "cause". I didn't start a huge Facebook cause thingy because I'm simply not that important.
3 Sometimes a humble protest works.
4 I spend my entire life trying to convince people to think. It's my career, if you think about it.
5 So sometimes I just do things that are logical and really don't care if anyone joins me. Like today I gave Charlie Sheen up for Lent.
6 When you get down to it, we all are teachers in a way.
7 Too bad we couldn't have some sort of harmonious convergence where all our best ideas and practices are listened to by one another.
8 I'm fairly convinced that we would discover miracles.
9 Moving on, Part the First: It's a little after 3 a.m. as I compose. The cat just woke me with a baritone bevy of "OW! OW! OW!" It isn't a "Meow" though. It's operatic and ridiculously loud. Every night. Every single night.
10 I turned on his faucet and let him enjoy his trickle of water.
11 Within ten minutes he began screaming again.
12 We took him to the vet last year, and thought he was dying.
13 Nope.
14 Just a creature of annoying habit.
15 He is howling now, only it's down to a mile "mew".
16 It's like having a witching-hour opera sung by one fastidious cat every single night. Don't get me wrong. He has a booming voice. But every single night.
17 Good thing I'm awake to enjoy it.
18 Moving on, Part the Second: I created a document called Daily News Ideas yesterday.
19 It began when a student asked me this question: "Was Rosaline a Capulet?"
20 I get this question every year.
21 In Romeo and Juliet, if you recall, in Act 1, Romeo is hopelessly in love with a girl named Rosaline, who has rejected his wooing.
22 Like ridiculously in love, or what he might think is love.
23 He is so distraught that he roams the Sycamore Grove each night, sighing and crying over Rosaline, and in the morning goes home, shuts himself up in his room, masking all daylight out, and sits in darkness sighing and crying.
24 Every year, a student will ask if Rosaline is a Capulet.
25 Every year I mechanically answer that she is the niece of Juliet's father, and that she is also Juliet's cousin.
26 Just fact.
27 Yesterday the same student offered rhetorically, "So...Romeo has a thing for the Capulet chicks?"
28
29 I had never really considered that, in all these years. Consider this: Romeo was well versed in the poetry of Plutarch.
30 It brought in this entire self-destructive aspect to the story.
31 I then thought, "How come we don't learn about Plutarch in high school?"
32 In fact, we don't learn about a lot of things in high school.
33 I got home and became really philosophical.
34 In Mexico, philosophy is a subject in school. Not so in the United States.
35 So I went home and found out about Plutarch.
36 Mountain climber and sonnet writer. Wrote flowery sonnets.
37 There's more, of course.
38 I spent a good part of the afternoon just thinking about all sorts of things, like Plutarch, and philosophy, and how Harper Lee, while good, is no match for Shakespeare or Socrates.
39 Harper Lee would probably have trouble attracting readers to a blog spot nowadays.
40 Anyway, I whiled away the afternoon with a snooty disposition and a great amount of philosophical folderol traveling through the train that is my brain.
41 One student.
42 One comment.
43 Shakespeare. Plutarch.
44 I think I'll go back to bed and ponder.
45 It's all I can do.
46 Have a great Wednesday. I'm actually not sure whether to give up Charlie Sheen for Lent, or Lent for Lent. Still pondering.
47 Peace.
~H~
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