LYCHEE: Avoiding coming back to reality

How is it that vacations require vacations to recover? One of the luxuries of teaching is that I have time for this. Yet, four days after returning from Belize, I still wish I was back in the balmy paradise, brewing revolution and all (see: Army on Belize's streets after riots, one dead). It was surprisingly not very disconcerting to be cut off from communication with the rest of the world in this small Central American country. Look for upcoming essays and poems about another angel (see: Lessons from the Desert) who saved us from destititution and about the mysticism of caves, waterfalls, and snorkeling in beautiful Belize. Maybe I'll even post a few pictures that do not give away my secret identity. If you are traveling to Belize, feel free to email me for tidbits about places to see, to stay, or about getting around. I should be figuring out what I will do with my classes next week when I go back to work (whatever that is!). In the meantime, I have to take care of important business like writing this entry and emailing my pictures to family and friends.

LYCHEE: Affirmative Action for Conservatives

Welcome to our blog where conservatives and liberals live happily ever after.   Not sure who is which on this site, well, that's good.  One hint:  who posts the most links to Alternet.org?

 

Like this one:  The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives.   Apparently, some conservatives are afraid that liberals have taken over the universities and are brainwashing college students.  I am sure that is how Bush won the last election. 

 

I say save all the labels for the bean counters.  I have lessons to plan, opinions to write, and people to see.

 

 

LYCHEE: Our Brave New World?

Ever read news and feel like you fell down the rabbit hole into some dystopian universe?  Maybe I just spend too much time reading this genre of novels for my courses, novels that are sure to provoke an opinion in even the most reluctant reader. For instance, today I read an article on Alternet.org in which Danny Schechter exposes the fallacy of the op-ed page as a place of free expression for personal opinions of non-journalist writers. 

 

The experts chosen to contribute still tend to come from elite think tanks, universities and big publishers. Increasingly, PR firms, speechwriters and political consultants ghostwrite op-eds for big-name clients and then "place" them with the editors who they are always cultivating. The editors are invariably drawn to top pols and celebrity writers. Who really writes their words doesn't seem to matter--and is rarely disclosed.

 

Moreover, the day of the glamour of the field journalism – bravely uncovering truths to enlighten the populous -- seems to be over.  Instead, through the success of marketing, it is much more admirable and prestigious to scurry to your office on your Madison Avenue in your Banana Republic business casual suit and Kenneth Cole shoes (ok, I am not hip enough about fashion to make an accurate analogy that is Alizarin’s domain).  Who cares if you know what you talking about as long as you look good?

 

There are three times as many pundits as reporters on the air, with more communication students opting for the higher-paid provinces of public relations than the more insecure trenches of corporate journalism. With marketing and packaging driving media businesses, it's no wonder that our newspapers themselves are doing more selling than telling.  (Schechter)

 

Much as I wrote in my entry about VNRs (LYCHEE: Corporate- and self-delusion), we again find the lines information and advertising blurring.  Moreover, it confirms that, in the mainstream media, those with the most money get to be heard.  Schechter extols the virtues of free speech on the blogosphere.  I agree.  But what about the millions who still do not know of the blogosphere and rely on newspapers to get their news.  What about the growing numbers of illiterate citizens our schools are pumping out?  Are the government, media, and marketing industry breeding a generation of unquestioning alphas, betas, and epsilons?  Now, I am not proposing a grand conspiracy, but are they all unwittingly working in the same direction? 

 

Consider this:

 

Earlier this week there was a report on NPR about using comics in the classroom.  Now, I am big fan of comic books as a great way to get students into reading.  In fact, many popular comic books are rich in literary techniques, extended allegorical storylines, and expansive vocabulary.  One of my most challenging scrabble opponents was a boyfriend who grew up reading comic books (and still does as an adult).  However, this story is about using comic style textbooks, specifically comics about science.  I feel this trend perpetuates the commercialization of information and the tendency to pander to the lower literacy rates in schools.  Perhaps I am becoming paranoid, but is this so far from the dystopias classic literature like Brave New World and Fahrenheit 415 warned us about?  How long before we, like Montag, will get our news comic-paneled papers?  Probably not in our lifetime, but it is still disturbing to feel that we are not as different from these fictional realities as we would like to think. 

 

Only by fostering a culture that values literacy, education, and truly critical thinking (a debate that is rarely, if ever, engaged in when talking about the media or education) will we be able to keep our newspapers from becoming propaganda pamphlets.    

 

LYCHEE: Responses to The Kite Runner

I just finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It has been a long time since a book a made me cry. Not just a silent crying that a good book will invoke as it connects to your heart, but physical tears that make you have to put down the book whose pages blur as the book touches your soul.

Over the past several months, my life’s journey has come to focus on forgiveness. My inability to forgive someone I love has led me to attempt to understand better understand forgiveness, leading me in turn to deepen my spiritual practice through yoga and religion. In a discipleship class, when asked what would we ask God if we had a half hour to spend with God, my big question was how do we truly forgive? Hosseini takes us on a journey to find an answer to this question in this beautifully written novel about the darkest and most noble parts of the human soul, parts that exist in each of us.

While The Kite Runner is often known as a story about life in Afghanistan, this is not where the power of the story lies. True, it is fascinatingly heartwarming and heartbreaking to learn about Afghani culture, a culture often misunderstood, misrepresented, or ignored in the U.S. For Afghans, it must be wonderful to see the wisdom and humanity of their lives woven into this tale that explores themes that reach everyone. It is at this level of basis human pain and truth that we connect to the Amir’s story. Like Amir, Hassan, Baba, and Soraya, we, too, have had to make life-altering decisions. When do we take a stand and when to we sit by and watch, thinking we are protecting our own well-being? What are the consequences of the choices we make? How do we live with ourselves, with our own truth that we have constructed? In the end how do we forgive others and ourselves? How do we move on to do good?

And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.

I know that in the end God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But, most important, forgive yourself. (Hosseini 302)

Though this answer is not revolutionary, it is something we all hear or say from time to time, Hosseini moves us beyond this known truth, follow the truth through the sacrifices and work that such forgiveness requires of us. The sacrifice, in this case, being an unburdening, a liberation from our own guilt, not a giving up or denial of something we need. Additionally, forgiveness is something found not through one act, one deed, but something that comes to us slowly as we do the work of moving forward, of believing in goodness and love despite our pain or the pain others have caused us.

Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it. . . . I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with the pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. (Hosseini 359)

In the end, regardless of religion or ethnicity, we must remember that we are all obligated to show compassion for each other and for ourselves. And this requires patience: “Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time . . .” and we should celebrate and be thankful for the melting of each flake (Hosseini 371).

LYCHEE: The Sinful Sin City

Sin City masterfully captures the look of a graphic novel.   If you want a glimpse, watch the trailer.

 

Watching this movie equals watching some guy, who may be attractive, but to whom you are not attracted, pleasuring himself.  It is disgusting, boring, and completely ungratifying, leaving you to feel manipulated and empty.   

 

Fun for them; dull for you.

 

Or, maybe I just don’t appreciate violence for violence’s sake. 

 

For me, the beauty of film noir is in the innuendo, the witty dialogue, the intrigue.  One of the unfortunate results of expanded freedom for artistic expression is that explicitness often overrules artfulness.   In this case, the incessant violence is the movie.  There is no suspense, no mystery, no character development, no exploration of the why or how or what now.  

 

Maybe under my hippie-leftist exterior I am just an old-fashioned girl who wants her film noir murders done off-screen to be revealed and to be solved in well-acted repartee. 

 

 

  

LYCHEE: The Fountain of Youth

Apparently the mineral baths in Desert Hot Springs, CA are the long sought after fountain of youth. Today, buying a bottle of wine at Trader Joe's, I was carded.

Me, grinning with surprise: "I can't remember the last time I was carded."
Cashier, laughing good-naturedly: "I see it made you happy."

LYCHEE: FUN in school and the USA

My friend, a college professor, emailed me:

. . . it makes me insane that my students often radiate intense hostility for me when they fail a test because they didn't do the work b/c they don't think it's important even though they're paying to take these courses. There's nothing right about this logic. I was reading in our union magazine this morning about Schwarzenegger's evil cuts of the Calif. ed budget, and it's just heart-breaking. Pataki's doing similar things here, of course, and the south is shafted, as usual (to use an unpleasant but appropriate term), and it's very disappointing, but we're still beholden to produce all this joy and excitement in our jobs b/c they wouldn't be doable otherwise...

I responded:

It is sad to hear what you say about education at even the college level. Especially the part about how we are supposed to bring pleasantness and cheeriness and, according to my students, FUN, to the classroom. I wish Bush and Arnold would making living in the U.S. more FUN.

She replied :

I love the above line from your e-mail, by the way... AND, if I had a dime for every time I have to tell my students, "This is college, not television, so you get an education for your pain, not entertainment," I could afford more holidays.

I'll have to use that line in my classroom.

LYCHEE: Post Lenten Confessions

Alizarin confessed that her and her husband are trying to give up drinking and smoking respectively (not that Alizarin has a drinking problem, she is just an extravagant woman).  I reminded her that they missed Lent and would have to wait until next year.  Alizarin said they weren’t Catholic, which surprised me since my non-Catholic church faithfully practices Lent.  Well, not so faithfully since I misplaced my lent ‘resolutions’ and kept forgetting to find them throughout Lent.  Maybe I should have vowed to give up forgetfulness and procrastination.  Anyway, not wanting to admit that, I proudly reminded her of my only successful and meaningful Lent experience:  giving up cynicism.  How could Alizarin forget the month of dry, straightforward, cynicism-free emails?!   She must have snoozed through them.  I can’t blame her.   I must say, it was much tougher than giving up chocolate, wine, or any other external vice.  When Lent ended, I was overjoyed to be able to return to my cynical ways.  Government conspiracy theories could now stream from my lips without guilt.  Then, I realized I didn’t need cynicism; rather than a crutch, cynicism became tool to enhance humor and keep perspective on reality, not bury it.   I see you doubt me.  There is always Lent next year.  Until then, smirk away as you drink a glass of wine with us.  (You'll have to step outside for a smoke.)