It's the birthday of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born in Portland, Maine, 1807. He went to Bowdoin College and became a scholar of literature and modern languages. In 1826, he traveled to Europe to study German, French, Spanish, and Italian. He got married, and in 1835 he returned to Europe to learn Scandinavian languages, but his wife came with him, and she had a miscarriage and died in the Netherlands. He fell in love again, with a young woman named Fanny Appleton, but she rejected his marriage proposal. So grieving for his first wife, despairing over Fanny's refusal, he threw himself into his work and became a popular American poet.
In 1843, Fanny agreed to marry Henry after all. They were very happy, they had six children, and Fanny helped her husband with his work. Longfellow wrote incredibly successful book-length poems, like Evangeline (1847), about separated lovers in Nova Scotia, and The Song of Hiawatha (1855), about an Ojibwe leader. Whenever he published a book of poetry, it would sell out almost immediately.
But in 1861, Fanny Longfellow was using sealing wax and her dress caught on fire. Longfellow rushed in from the next room and tried to smother the fire by throwing his arms around his wife. But Fanny died the next day, and Longfellow was heartbroken. He wrote "The Cross of Snow" in her memory.
The Cross of Snow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face—the face of one long dead—
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123561668718178625.html
more for my collection of articles about education.
more for my collection of articles about education.
Bridal Shower, by George Bilgere
Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.
And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.
And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.
I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.
You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.
O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,
after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.
And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.
And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.
I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.
You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.
O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,
after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Pinky and the Brain
http://rossrats.blogspot.com/2009/02/who-do-they-remind-you-of.html
A friend wrote this on her blog, and I hope she doesn't mind my sharing it. The video clip cracked me up!
A friend wrote this on her blog, and I hope she doesn't mind my sharing it. The video clip cracked me up!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Fringe Politicians
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/22/jindal-stands-governors-refuses-federal-unemployment-benefits/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535040968044863.html
Hooray for the governors of Louisianna, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alaska!
AND.....IDAHO!!! Good job, Butch!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535040968044863.html
Hooray for the governors of Louisianna, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alaska!
AND.....IDAHO!!! Good job, Butch!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
from "The Best of the Web" WSJ--more about education
Fail Your Customers
The New York Times has an amusing piece about the frustrations of college professors:
Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.
"Many students come in with the conviction that they've worked hard and deserve a higher mark," Professor Grossman said. "Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before."
He attributes those complaints to his students' sense of entitlement.
Another prof, Ellen Greenberger of the University of California at Irvine, has published a study called "Self-Entitled College Students":
Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
"I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade," Mr. Greenwood said. "What else is there really than the effort that you put in?"
"If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?" he added. "If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher's mind, then something is wrong."
Anyone who works for a living is immediately struck by the contrast between this attitude and the real world. When you hire someone to do a job, you look for results, not "effort." Someone who works effectively and effortlessly is much more valued than someone who tries really hard and produces mediocre results. Why should schoolwork be any different?
The answer is that, except at the highest levels of higher education, school "work" is the opposite of real work. Students do not work for professors; professors work for students--or, to be precise, students (in combination with their parents and the government) contract with institutions of higher education, which in turn employ professors to deliver services to students.
If students have a sense of entitlement, it is a sense best captured in that old saying: The customer is always right. They're spending tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree so they can go out and find a job, and they're working hard on their assignments to boot--you're darn right they feel entitled to good grades!
Professors, quite understandably, see it differently. To the best of them, their calling is to impart knowledge and intellectual refinement. The degree is merely a symbol. The real "product" that colleges produce is educated young people.
What we have, then, is a mismatch between what customers are buying and what institutions are selling. Colleges and universities have had great economic success marketing themselves as sellers of job-hunting licenses. If they embraced instead an old-fashioned vision of learning as an end in itself, the quality of their product doubtless would improve immensely--but their market would shrink correspondingly.
Professors may be unhappy to be working for institutions that, to a large extent, have degenerated into mere diploma mills. Many of them, however, owe their jobs to that degeneration.
The New York Times has an amusing piece about the frustrations of college professors:
Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.
"Many students come in with the conviction that they've worked hard and deserve a higher mark," Professor Grossman said. "Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before."
He attributes those complaints to his students' sense of entitlement.
Another prof, Ellen Greenberger of the University of California at Irvine, has published a study called "Self-Entitled College Students":
Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
"I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade," Mr. Greenwood said. "What else is there really than the effort that you put in?"
"If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?" he added. "If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher's mind, then something is wrong."
Anyone who works for a living is immediately struck by the contrast between this attitude and the real world. When you hire someone to do a job, you look for results, not "effort." Someone who works effectively and effortlessly is much more valued than someone who tries really hard and produces mediocre results. Why should schoolwork be any different?
The answer is that, except at the highest levels of higher education, school "work" is the opposite of real work. Students do not work for professors; professors work for students--or, to be precise, students (in combination with their parents and the government) contract with institutions of higher education, which in turn employ professors to deliver services to students.
If students have a sense of entitlement, it is a sense best captured in that old saying: The customer is always right. They're spending tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree so they can go out and find a job, and they're working hard on their assignments to boot--you're darn right they feel entitled to good grades!
Professors, quite understandably, see it differently. To the best of them, their calling is to impart knowledge and intellectual refinement. The degree is merely a symbol. The real "product" that colleges produce is educated young people.
What we have, then, is a mismatch between what customers are buying and what institutions are selling. Colleges and universities have had great economic success marketing themselves as sellers of job-hunting licenses. If they embraced instead an old-fashioned vision of learning as an end in itself, the quality of their product doubtless would improve immensely--but their market would shrink correspondingly.
Professors may be unhappy to be working for institutions that, to a large extent, have degenerated into mere diploma mills. Many of them, however, owe their jobs to that degeneration.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
History of Desire, by Tony Hoagland
When you're seventeen, and drunk
on the husky, late-night flavor
of your first girlfriend's voice
along the wires of the telephone
what else to do but steal
your father's El Dorado from the drive,
and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
Then climb the county water tower
and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
a hundred feet above the town?
Because only the letters of that word,
DORIS, next door to yours,
in yard-high, iridescent script,
are amplified enough to tell the world
who's playing lead guitar
in the rock band of your blood.
You don't consider for a moment
the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
a decade after Doris, when,
out for a drive on your visit home,
you take the Smallville Road, look up
and see RON LOVES DORIS
still scorched upon the reservoir.
This is how history catches up—
by holding still until you
bump into yourself.
What makes you blush, and shove
the pedal of the Mustang
almost through the floor
as if you wanted to spray gravel
across the features of the past,
or accelerate into oblivion?
Are you so out of love that you
can't move fast enough away?
But if desire is acceleration,
experience is circular as any
Indianapolis. We keep coming back
to what we are—each time older,
more freaked out, or less afraid.
And you are older now.
You should stop today.
In the name of Doris, stop.
on the husky, late-night flavor
of your first girlfriend's voice
along the wires of the telephone
what else to do but steal
your father's El Dorado from the drive,
and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
Then climb the county water tower
and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
a hundred feet above the town?
Because only the letters of that word,
DORIS, next door to yours,
in yard-high, iridescent script,
are amplified enough to tell the world
who's playing lead guitar
in the rock band of your blood.
You don't consider for a moment
the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
a decade after Doris, when,
out for a drive on your visit home,
you take the Smallville Road, look up
and see RON LOVES DORIS
still scorched upon the reservoir.
This is how history catches up—
by holding still until you
bump into yourself.
What makes you blush, and shove
the pedal of the Mustang
almost through the floor
as if you wanted to spray gravel
across the features of the past,
or accelerate into oblivion?
Are you so out of love that you
can't move fast enough away?
But if desire is acceleration,
experience is circular as any
Indianapolis. We keep coming back
to what we are—each time older,
more freaked out, or less afraid.
And you are older now.
You should stop today.
In the name of Doris, stop.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
not so sweet
Scary, in fact. We should be taking note at how easily Chavez has taken control of Venezuela--is it such a far stretch to imagine America going this route? No doubt Chavez promised his people "change."
oh, how sweet...
Looks like they're succeeding in brainwashing our children. Or, at least they're only picking the letters of children who have conformed to liberal ideas that it's better for soldiers to come home than to defend America, that unlike terrorists, Global Warming is the real threat, and that the President is the only one who can help us, whether we live in the country or not, give us employment, and make it rain candy (that part is actually kind of cute).
Thursday, February 12, 2009
more than just talk?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/12/dems-consider-reviving-fairness-doctrine/
People have mocked conservative radio hosts for raising alarms about things Obama might do to push us towards socialism--and it kills me that they are still being mocked even when their predictions are coming to pass. I think they have been conservative by choosing the term "socialist" as opposed to "communist."
Already, Obama has plunged this country into more spending/debt than we've ever seen, and that's saying a LOT. Under the guise of "stimulus" he is sneaking in nationalized health-care, and proposing to hire more government workers (you know...people paid for by tax dollars to waste time and space, and who are virtually un-firable).
The "fairness doctrine" is a step towards silencing anyone who recognizes the direction we are headed and is bold enough to say something about it. It sounds warm and fuzzy--we all think life should be fair, right? But it is bringing the freedom of speech to an end, and bringing us even closer to socio/communism.
In a Capitalist country, those given airtime on radio waves are picked by those who listen to the radio. I am curious as to why radio listeners overwhelmingly support conservative hosts over liberal ones. I am also curious to know why television is overwhelmingly liberal. I don't get it. But apparently that's the way it is.
The "fairness doctrine" will attempt to give equal radio time to liberals and conservatives. Like I said, it sounds good, it sounds "fair." But is it fair to radio stations who will lose advertising dollars when people stop tuning in because they are broadcasting hosts they don't want to listen to?
Is it fair to impose these restrictions on one medium, the radio, and not television? To say to one, "You MUST comply and give equal time to both conservatives and liberals," and let the other persist in its liberal bias unnoticed?
People have mocked conservative radio hosts for raising alarms about things Obama might do to push us towards socialism--and it kills me that they are still being mocked even when their predictions are coming to pass. I think they have been conservative by choosing the term "socialist" as opposed to "communist."
Already, Obama has plunged this country into more spending/debt than we've ever seen, and that's saying a LOT. Under the guise of "stimulus" he is sneaking in nationalized health-care, and proposing to hire more government workers (you know...people paid for by tax dollars to waste time and space, and who are virtually un-firable).
The "fairness doctrine" is a step towards silencing anyone who recognizes the direction we are headed and is bold enough to say something about it. It sounds warm and fuzzy--we all think life should be fair, right? But it is bringing the freedom of speech to an end, and bringing us even closer to socio/communism.
In a Capitalist country, those given airtime on radio waves are picked by those who listen to the radio. I am curious as to why radio listeners overwhelmingly support conservative hosts over liberal ones. I am also curious to know why television is overwhelmingly liberal. I don't get it. But apparently that's the way it is.
The "fairness doctrine" will attempt to give equal radio time to liberals and conservatives. Like I said, it sounds good, it sounds "fair." But is it fair to radio stations who will lose advertising dollars when people stop tuning in because they are broadcasting hosts they don't want to listen to?
Is it fair to impose these restrictions on one medium, the radio, and not television? To say to one, "You MUST comply and give equal time to both conservatives and liberals," and let the other persist in its liberal bias unnoticed?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
maybe I have a sick mind...
Or maybe journalists and politicians are playing to our Freudian "id"s on purpose--thinking that maybe we'll buy into the gargantuan stimulus package the same way people are sucked into male-enhancement products. Unless you have GREAT online security, then like me, you would have gotten hundreds of spams with titles like "want to impress her?" or "so massive it scared her"--and those are relatively inoffensive examples of some I have sent straight to the trash, and attempted to filter with slight success.
As I read articles describing the dire circumstances of our country, and how important it is that we pass this atrocity, here are words that I am seeing repeatedly:
stimulus (maybe a stretch, since it's what everyone is calling this thing)
package It just occurred to me that maybe the innuendo began AFTER the "stimulus package" was named
the sweet spot
limp
size
growth
elevated
rigorous
stripped, stripping
burning the midnight oil
massive measure
Am I imagining things? At any rate, I find it extremely offensive--not just the similarities to online sex scams--the bill itself is the real perversion.
As I read articles describing the dire circumstances of our country, and how important it is that we pass this atrocity, here are words that I am seeing repeatedly:
stimulus (maybe a stretch, since it's what everyone is calling this thing)
package It just occurred to me that maybe the innuendo began AFTER the "stimulus package" was named
the sweet spot
limp
size
growth
elevated
rigorous
stripped, stripping
burning the midnight oil
massive measure
Am I imagining things? At any rate, I find it extremely offensive--not just the similarities to online sex scams--the bill itself is the real perversion.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil, by Judea Pearl
Poignant article by the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl.
Father Jonathan writes for Fox news quite a lot, and I appreciate his perspective. He often reminds me of how many doctrines Catholics and Mormons actually do agree on. As Christianity has come under increasing fire, it's important for people of faith to build upon those things we have in common. Anyway, here's his latest article:
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/02/02/father_jonathan_porritt/
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/02/02/father_jonathan_porritt/
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