Reading to Your Kids from Far Away

I thought this news item from England was heartwarming, though sad to think of the family separations and the worry.

Across Afghanistan are secret caches of The Gruffalo, tattered and dusty copies of the children’s book hidden safely in British army rucksacks. While soldiers recover from the latest bout of fighting, army padres poke their heads through desert tents, asking if anyone wants to read a bedtime story to their children, 4,000 miles away.

Another favourite spot for recording is a British army ammunitions compound, where a dog-eared copy of The Night Before Christmas is the most popular right now. Soldiers sit alone with their book amid the stacks of bullets and explosives, whispering into a microphone about how “the children were nestled all snug in their beds”. Meanwhile, the warrant officer guards the door.

These recordings, edited free of sandstorm wind and the constant beating of helicopter blades, are now being played to soothe thousands of British babies, children, and teenagers missing their fathers this Christmas.

It’s part of a new service called Storybook Soldiers, offered by volunteers in the Army to try to close the family fracture caused by the conflict in Afghanistan. Although soldiers can send occasional e-mails and make even more occasional satellite phone calls, thousands of families have discovered that there is nothing more evocative than the sound of a parent’s voice, reading.

 

The Curious Incident of the Detective’s Diagnosis

There was an interesting article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine in which a doctor looked at the evidence that Sherlock Holmes might today be diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome. I thought that would please Christopher Boone.

Unaware of how others see them, those with Asperger’s often behave oddly. In addition, they tend to develop extensive knowledge of narrowly focused subjects. In Conan Doyle’s portrayal, Sherlock Holmes at times exhibits all of these qualities. His interactions with others are often direct to the point of rudeness. . . .

As for his interests, Holmes brags frequently of his detailed knowledge of all kinds of strange phenomena. He is said to have written a monograph on the differences among 140 cigar, pipe and cigarette ashes. He demonstrates what Asperger called “autistic intelligence” — an ability to see the world from a very different perspective than most people, often by focusing on details overlooked by others. Indeed Sherlock Holmes boasts that he is able to see the significance of trifles and calls this his “method.”

 

China Discovers Mysteries via Japan

This one is for Yixin and Jasmine . . . China Daily reports that mysteries from Japan are popular in China.

While stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie remain the favorite of fans of the detective fiction genre in China, Chinese youth are eyeing a more diversified collection.

Books from Japan appear to be the newest flavor.

Last Thursday, hundreds of young readers queued up to meet Japanese mystery novelist Soji Shimada during his first trip to China, which also marked the release of the latest Chinese version of his work, Jack the Ripper – One Hundred Years of Solitude.

His debut novel, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, written in the late 1970s, hit the mainland market last year, and has already sold 50,000 copies. This was soon followed by translations of 15 other works by him.

“Interest in mystery and detective stories has seen a sharp spike in recent years. Besides the well-known Western classics, we want to introduce more works from different parts of the world,” says Julia Chen, editor-in-chief of Feel Publishing Co Ltd, one of the leading publishers of detective fiction. . . .

By the way, did you notice that it’s not only snowing in St. Peter today, but it’s snowing on our blog?

 

. . . Due to Technical Difficulty . . .

. . .  we had to postpone the viewing of this YouTube video. I thought it would be a good one to watch in connection with our My Lai discussion because this guy not only refused to participate in the massacre, he stepped up and tried to rescue people. It’s good to know that even in extreme situations some people can see what’s right and do it without blinking.

One thing that always strikes me – how young these people were. Hugh Thompson was 25. His crewmates were 23 and 18.  That seems so young to be facing such hard choices.

 

Comment thread!!!!

Here’s a chance to share something: what are you thankful for?

I know many (most?) of you won’t see this until after the holidays, but I thought it would be nice to sustain the spirit of thanksgiving through the final stressful tobaggan ride of the semester.

photo courtesy of dave77459

 

Why I Love to Read (Thanks, Mom)

I think I mentioned to you all that I missed the Nobel Conference this year because I went to visit my 95-year-old mother who was in the hospital. She was able to leave the hospital but was getting hospice care at home and on Friday she passed away.  I feel a mixture of sadness and gratitude that she doesn’t have to linger, since she wasn’t going to get better and she was ready to go. Apparently the hospice workers sensed there was still something she needed, though she didn’t appear very aware of her surroundings. My sister suggested she might be concerned about her grandchildren living in Kentucky whom she hadn’t seen since the summer. They arranged a one-sided conference call so they could talk to her and about an hour after that she died. I imagine hospice workers grow sensitive to things like that – what a lot of courage and kindness that job must take.

I mention this for a couple of reasons, one purely practical. I’m not sure when we’re going to gather for her memorial service, but December 11th was mentioned. That was going to be a day for workshopping your final papers (that is, having a chance to get peer review and talk through any issues you’re encountering). I think we’ll still be able to find a way to facilitate that, even if I’m on my way to Wisconsin.

The other is just that I was thinking about how much my mother led me to love books – and mysteries in particular. When I think of her, I picture her sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a book, either Jane Austen (whose novels she read over and over) or a mystery from the library.

She grew up in a working class family, the oldest of nine children, and was only sixteen when her father died. She had to quit high school and get a job.She never finished her formal education, but she was the person everyone in the family turned to when we wondered when a historical event happened or what a Latin phrase meant. Even my father considered her the best-educated person in the house, and he was a college professor. She soaked up knowledge from the books she read, and she read voraciously. And though a lot of what she read was fiction, it had a lot of information in it about the world. She was always up for a trip, whether in real life or through books.

And it was clear that books were important. I remember the day when I was four years old and our set of the World Book Encyclopedia was delivered in a big brown carton. It was so exciting to unpack those books! I didn’t know how to read yet, but luckily there were lots of color pictures. Sometimes (though we were sure she knew everything there was to know) when we asked a question, she’d say “look it up!” because being able to find out for ourselves was important, too.

I thought I’d share a YouTube clip that I just bumped into that made me smile. The sound quality isn’t too good but the images are cool and it conveys some of that idea that books are magical.

 

 

 

Interview with Adrian Hyland

The students who took this class last year worked up some questions for Adrian Hyland and he kindly answered them by e-mail. I though you might find this interview interesting. (I reposted it to my personal blog ’cause I wanted a more permanent spot for it.) One thing I found interesting was that, while urban Aboriginal people appreciate the way he depicted their culture, not many people living in the outback – people like the Moonlight mob – have read it. He says “the written word plays a miniscule part in their lives at best. Few of the older people are literate, and even the young ones have more affinity with music, art and film.” Kind of sad to think that he’s writing about a way of life that doesn’t include reading books that depict it.

Thought I’d also link to a review by an Australian woman whose reviews I read regularly. I found this an interesting observation:

I’m not convinced this is crime fiction, at least not in its purest sense. There is a crime, and an investigation of sorts, but, for me anyway, that element of the plot wasn’t particularly important, although in the end it had its share of suspense. At the risk of making this sound like some kind of schmalzy personal-journey tale (schmaltzy this definitely isn’t) solving the mystery played second fiddle to the book’s other themes. Half-Aboriginal, half-white Emily Tempest’s search for somewhere to belong and someone to belong to is engrossing because it isn’t schmaltzy. Indeed all the characters’ search for ‘home’ and ‘family’ ,whatever those terms might mean to them, makes compelling reading. And the exploration of outback Australia after land rights claims started being awarded to Aboriginal groups feels very realistic. I used to be an archivist for a state government here and I did a swag of research for claimant groups and members of the stolen generations so have some small sense of those issues and Hyland’s portrayal of them felt very realistic to me.

To me, the best part of this book is the setting and the way it immerses you in a very different culture, largely through the character (and the very Australian language) of Emily Tempest who straddles the border between white and Aboriginal communities.

 

Looking at Web Sites

Here are some links to resources on recent events in Australia that we can look at in class.

Bringing Them Home

Text of Australian Prime Minister’s 2008 Speech

Responses to the 2008 Apology

Australian Slang

How do you know if a website is a good one for research? Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is responsible for creating this website?
• When was this website created?
• What is its primary focus?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What are the strengths of this website?
• How even-handed is this website? Does it have any potential for bias?
• Does this website provide evidence to back up what it says?

When citing a website, you will need to ask many of the same questions.

• Does this work have an author? If so, list the last name first and end with a period. If no author is given, begin with the title.
• What is the title of this page? Enclose the title in question marks if it is one page within a larger site. Otherwise italicize the title of the site.
• What is the title of the site? Italicize the title. If there is no clear title, simply write Home page without italicizing it.
• What is the name of the publisher or sponsoring organization? This can be tricky to determine. If no publisher or organization is available, write N.p. followed by a comma.
• When was it published? This may be the date created or the date updated. If no date is available, use n.d.
• Medium? Put Web.
• Include the date you looked at the site, followed by a period.
• Include the URL in angle brackets if your professor asks you to.

Example of a citation:  “Aboriginal Mourning Ceremonies.” Indigenous Austraila. FrogandToad Travel, 2009. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

 

Everyone Needs an Editor

I know you may think I go a little overboard commenting on your paper drafts, but everything I’ve ever published that went through the editorial grinder came out better. Here’s an image that caught my eye – and I though you all might identify. Yipes, what a lot of corrections and suggestions!  But a lot of them are good, and the whole thing is a rather clever protest against a corporate decision at the Toronto newspaper, The Star, to outsource editing in order to save money. Editors at newspapers play a much more active role in shaping writing than in most forms of publication – and the people losing their jobs think the newspaper will lose a lot of quality in the process.

In any case, I thought it was a funny way to make a point.

 

Long Ago, In a Play Far, Far Away …

That was certainly an unusual play last night! The first one, in particular, baffled me. During the intermission I Googled it to see what I could find out, and not only is there a handy-dandy Wikipedia article about it, but this review from The New York Times that I found very interesting and helpful in understanding what was going on.

You probably remember the sound from your childhood. It’s the soothing, singsong voice of an adult who is telling you, in the middle of a dark night, that there is nothing to be scared of. And as much you would like to believe that voice, you know, with a certainty that rests in the pit of your stomach, that you are being lied to. And that the person who is reassuring you is just as scared as you are. Such terrors of early youth ripple quietly and relentlessly through the first scene of ”Far Away,” the ravishing, deeply disturbing play from Caryl Churchill that opened last night at the New York Theater Workshop. This latest offering from the author of ”Top Girls” and ”Cloud Nine” disquietingly insists that your childhood instincts were dead right, that nightmares do not stop when sleep ends.

For New Yorkers living in the elongated shadow of Sept. 11, the waking dreamscape of ”Far Away,” where the promise of violence broods in even the coziest corners, is bound to feel familiar. Ms. Churchill envisions a world in which nothing, but nothing, is to be trusted.

“Nothing” including insects, laws of physics, inanimate objects, even a stream – whose side is this water on? During the “talk back” I asked what that play was all about, and the actors said “war” – but I think in a broader sense it’s about fear and paranoia and how those emotions are put into play in a time of conflict to make us try to identify one group as the reason for our fear, so a group we should hate or destroy.

(Final paper topic, free to a good home: in what ways do the books we’re reading manipulate our anxiety, and how is that anxiety defined as a particular group or a type of person we can safely identify and tag as a “bad guy”? How do mysteries use our anxiety to drive a story and then make it all safe in the end because the “bad guy” is stopped? Does it ever run the risk of unfairly tapping into prejudice against a group of people?)

The second pair of plays was also thought-provoking. I expected a much more polarized pair of plays, one that would be pro-Palestine, the other pro-Israeli. And they could have been performed that way, but instead these actors looked for ways in which the short plays could show various approaches to each perspective. In some ways that made it more confusing – they didn’t clash with each other as I was expecting. They were quite similar in the way each group of people was within their own circle in conflict about how to explain war and a long history of anger and pain to a child.

I mentioned to someone after the play that I read a mystery set in the occupied territories, The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees.  I didn’t make it one of our assigned books, but I considered it because it really influenced the way I think about what’s happening in Israel and the occupied territories. It took something complicated and made it much more complicated – but somehow human because I could identify with the characters in the book and understood better what it was like to live in fear and to be unable to move freely around – stuff I know, but hadn’t really known on a personal, daily life level.  The author, as it happens, was a journalist, the Jerusalem bureau chief for Time Magazine. He got sick of trying to report what was happening there in short news bites and decided to write mysteries instead because they could go more deeply into the reasons why the conflict exists.

(Final paper topic, free to good home: How can fiction, make-believe stories meant to entertain, teach us something about the real world? How can literature probe a topic more deeply than a non-fiction treatment of the issue?)