February 12, 2013
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It’s Fat Tuesday!!!
Pitchers and Catchers Report
For Duty!!!
1 Happy Fat Tuesday, AND pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training!!!
2 If you’re a baseball fan, that’s good news. Heck, if you enjoy the Spring that is good news!!!
3 It IS Fat Tuesday, correct?
4 If you enjoy the Spring, then here is the first real sign..
5 It sorta works for me. Can’t wait!!!
6 Moving on, Part the First: My classroom has Renaissance masks hanging on the walls. Interestingly, they aren’t creepy. They are the work of many students over the past few years. To me, they add to the happy atmosphere to my classroom.
7 I do enjoy teaching.
8 My students make masks in the coming weeks. They study the Renaissance as preparation for Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing, my play of choice for this Shakespearean season’s English 2A classes.
9 Teaching becomes instantly fun when February hits.
10 We study love, beginning on Valentine’s Day. I teach seasonally. As I teach these wonderful plays, roses get delivered all over campus.
11 It is fun.
12 It is a celebration, and it is a lot of fun.
13 As always, I ask my freshmen how many have read Romeo and Juliet.
14 Two hands per class.
15 They have no idea.
16 It is odd as an adult thinking that there are people out there who haven’t a clues as to the plot of Romeo and Juliet.
17 I think back to when I was young, and somehow I had gotten through my junior year without having read Romeo and Juliet, let alone any other Shakespearean play.
18 I assumed, as do many students, that he was far too difficult for me to handle.
19 I was too busy with trying to live as a teenager than to give too much thought to something as heady as Romeo and Juliet.
20 When I finally saw the film, I stood astounded. I couldn’t believe that I could understand it, as well as the power and lushness of its language.
21 I now see it as a doorway play. Young people don’t buy the story as readily as my generation did. We were schooled on films and songs that repeatedly had people falling “in love.”
22 This generation still gets it, but they have seen enough to realize that the plot of Romeo and Juliet makes no sense.
23 How could two people from warring factions fall “in love” and eventually marry, and then die for their love all in a couple of days?
24 I try to counter that with, “You might not, but there are dreamers who might.”
25 The stuff gets heady, and only THEN do we climb into the world of Shakespeare, and of thought, and of poetry.
26 Moving on, Part the Second: I have spent the entire first part of the year attempting to teach writing. I don’t just throw out a bunch of strange words like “gerunds” or “infinitives.” I have gone further than ever before this year, and have them teaching themselves how to use striking words, how to use parallelism, and how to use sentence concisement.
27 I teach the rules of the language. It becomes painful.
28 But I teach the rules. I use a grammar book. I don’t allow them to say, “I seen this guy…”
29 From around early November to February I pummel them with grammar and composition.
30 They are getting good. I often feel like an art teacher, or a music teacher, only with an insistence on not only the rules of the language, but of the nuances of good writing.
31 I just wish I could practice what I preach when I am into the three a.m. writing this folderol!
32 <sigh>
33 Moving on, Part the Thoid: The 1939 Hunchback of Notre Dame is on right now. I think it’s because it is Mardi Gras on TCM. It is the one with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo and Maureen O’ Hara as Esmeralda.
34 It’s a bit perfect working as a backlight to this.
35 Well, maybe a frontlight that seems in the background.
36 It’s fun. Poets, vagabonds and theives.
37 I watch something like that and I can’t understand how the human race ever survived.
38 Somehow it does.
39 I got home late last night. Meetings. Yeesh. What else is new?
40 That usually means that I conk out earlier, and that this becomes quite a chore. I awakened at around three a.m. as I said, and spent a little time on Wastebook, just goofing on all of the inane stuff that seems to drift through.
41 I mustn’t do that.
42 It cuts into my time, and lately, I haven’t had the time to do anything.
43 I have to tread a bit today, and then the remainder of the week should be a tad easier.
44 For now, I think I must needs grab a little rest.
45 Today will be stressful.
46 I guess stress isn’t altogether a bad thing, but it does wear on one.
47 So I’m going to take my carcass back to bed, and I will awaken, edit this stuff, and send it out to the masses.
48 Have a GREAT Mardi Gras day. And have a great Spring training to both the Giants and the A’s. I’m excited about the upcoming season. I’m also excited about the Spring.
49 See you again.
50 Peace.
~H~
