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November 27, 2006

Literary Naturalism

The Open Boat

Moby Dick Ch. 36 and Ch. 41
Write down examples of language that illustrate literary naturalism
Literary Movements including Realism and Naturalism.

Bartleby, the Scrivener
Writing Suggestions
"Bartleby" print by Katherine Jackson

Emily Dickinson's poetry
Emily Dickinson Links
Emily Dickinson: Pagan Sphinx

"I'm Unique Because" Optimist Essay Contest
Final draft due to Mr. Lackey Monday, February 6th.

Dickinson, Whitman and Spiders

The Open Boat

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

- Stephen Crane

The Open Boat by Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane and the Commodore provides information on the experiences that inspired "The Open Boat," including current efforts to study the sunken vessel.

"To Build a Fire" by Jack London
Writing Suggestions

Iditarod, The Last Great Race
March 4, 2006

Balto, the Sled Dog - Cleveland's connection to the Iditarod

Whitman and Dead Poets

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer:
That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
- Walt Whitman

Poems from Dead Poet's Society

Memorable Quotes from Dead Poets Society

See also Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

November 26, 2006

Monthly Review January 2005 Pete Seeger interviewed by Linda C. Forbes

Robert Kennedy

The Education of Robert Kennedy

Aldo Leopold's Legacy: Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.
- Mission Statement of The Land Institute

On Aldo Leopold:
Aldo Leopold by Wes Jackson and The Land Man by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson From 35 Who Made a Differrence, Smithsonian, November 2005

And Pete Seeger - Pete Seeger interview
By Linda C. Forbes
Monthly Review January 2005

November 25, 2006

Museum of Musical Instuments

woodysguitar.jpgWoody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit. - John Steinbeck
From Bound For Glory: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie at the Museum of Musical Instruments

November 24, 2006

Bob Dylan - Rock of Ages?

Rocks of Ages
November 23, 2006
By NATHANIEL PHILBRICK

Concert Review

November 22, 2006

Blues Legend Robert Lockwood Jr. Dies at 91

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The last connection to bluesman Robert Johnson, when he was 11, Lockwood learned guitar from blues pioneer Robert Johnson, a drifter who briefly moved in with Lockwood's mother.

Billboard and Cleveland Plain Dealer articles and Robert Lockwood biography at PBS's River of Song

NYTimes and Washington Post obituaries.

November 20, 2006

Big Fish

bigfish.jpgThe movie Big Fish is from a novel by author, artist, alligator wrangler Daniel Wallace
"In this first novel, Daniel Wallace...adds legends and folk tales from the Southern backwoods, throws in a smattering of Greek myth and attaches a few of his own inventions. Applying all of these...resulted in a story that is both comic and poignant." -- NYTimes Review
Interview with Daniel Wallace (PDF) and Tim Burton Biography

November 19, 2006

The Black Keys

keys200x150.jpgFriends since they were kids, Auerbach and Carney both dropped out of college and mowed lawns for a living when they first started their band in 2002. They got the name from a schizophrenic artist in Akron who called the two "the black keys," a phrase he used to describe people who "weren't quite right."

Black Keys in concert recorded live from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club, originally webcast on NPR.org Nov. 5. From NPR : The Black Keys

The Black Keys' Dan Auerbachon - the Majesty of Muck Guitar Player November 2003.

Paul Muldoon - Word Freak

For some reason, Northern Ireland produces poets the way the Dominican Republic does baseball players. The M.V.P., the Pedro Marttnez, is of course Seamus Heaney - or Famous Seamus, as he became known after winning the Nobel Prize in 1995. In the next generation there are a number of up-and-coming stars, including Frank Ormsby, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian and the poet most likely to inherit Heaney's mantle, if he hasn't already, Paul Muldoon. The first meeting of Heaney and Muldoon, at a county museum in Armagh in the late 60s, has been embroidered in some accounts into a mystical laying on of hands and a landmark of Irish literary legend - an occasion as momentous in its way as the first meeting of James Joyce and the 21-year-old Samuel Beckett.

Word Freak - New York Times

Cool language - sclerotic

A Captain's Journey From Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home - New York Times

The government's sclerotic supply chain - clogged by bureaucracy, corruption and lack of money - has failed to provide the stations with the necessary tools of policing, from office supplies to weapons, uniforms and police cruisers.

November 17, 2006

Cool Old Rides

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My first motorcycle was like this 250 BSA Starfire.

r100rs.jpg
Here I am on my 1983 BMW R100RS.

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My 1982 BMW R100.

November 16, 2006

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe-Museum-1small.jpg PoePhil.jpg

Edgar Allan Poe Museum - Richmond Virginia and Edgar Allan Poe House - Philadelphia

Outline of Poe's Life & Works

November 12, 2006

Woody Guthrie's Legacy

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Johnny Irion & Sarah Lee Guthrie - This is too weird - Sarah Lee Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie's daughter, granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, is married to the nephew of Thomas Steinbeck, John Steinbeck's son.

Woody Guthrie-Sonny Terry-Brownie McGhee clip

Woody Guthrie - Hard Travelin' (1942)

PBS American Masters - Woody Guthrie

November 08, 2006

The Voice of America

VOA News - Voice of America Special English - News Radio for English Learners featuring Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker

November 07, 2006

Small House Dream

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Tumbleweed Tiny House Company and Very Small House video

Pacifc Crest Trail

Pacific Crest Trail through-hiker Scott Williamson

Tell It On The Mountain video clips.

See also Pacific Crest Trail and TrailCast - Podcasting on foot.

November 06, 2006

Dorthea Lange: Impounded

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Dorthea Lange was hired by the War Relocation Authority to photograph the internment of 116,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. These prisoners were never even charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Two-thirds of them were US citizens, born in the US–the remainder were not allowed to become citizens because at that time people of Asian origin were prohibited from naturalization.

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment features 119 out of the approximately 800 photographs she made. Edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro (Norton, 2006).

In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. Here are Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

Words - some are more equal than others

Porn Beyond Sex and The Devil’s Dictionary
William Safire
NYTimes November 5, 2006

Cyber-Neologoliferation
By JAMES GLEICK
NYTimes November 5, 2006

The Day the Earth Looked Stupid

Political Satire: When It Comes to Political Parody, Upstarts Outrun the Classics
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
NYTimes Nov. 5, 2006

November 03, 2006

Ben Franklin's Thirteen Virtues

  • TEMPERENCE - Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
  • SILENCE - Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
  • ORDER - Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
  • RESOLUTION - Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
  • FRUGALITY - Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
  • INDUSTRY - Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
  • SINCERITY - Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
  • JUSTICE - Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
  • MODERATION - Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
  • CLEANLINESS - Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
  • TRANQUILITY - Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
  • CHASTITY - Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
  • HUMILITY - Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
  • The Mad Farmer Liberation Front


    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.

    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.

    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.
    So, friends, every day do something
    that won't compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.

    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.

    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.

    Listen to carrion -- put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.

    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?

    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.

    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn't go.

    Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.

    By Wendell Berry, 1973

    November 02, 2006

    Experiment #214 - "The Domino Effect"

    The Devil and Homer Simpson

    Mother Jones

    From MotherJones Magazine:

  • Migrants No More
  • Power to the Pickers
  • See also Mother Jones: The "Miners' Angel" and Migrant, Not Homeless

    November 01, 2006

    Field-Tested Books

    Summer-reading reviews: Field-Tested Books and video of silk-screened poster at Coudal Partners

    Howl at 50

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    Allen Ginsberg's Howl

    NPR : After 50 Years, Ginsberg's 'Howl' Still Resonates

    Wired for Books Interview with Allen Ginsberg

    Howl: The Poem That Changed America

    NPR : Revisiting Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' at 50

    Allen Ginsberg - NYTimes Featured Author

    States of Altering Consciousness
    Ginsberg's COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1980 reviewed


    Ginsberg's Tennis Shoes

    Photographs from the Allen Ginsberg Trust