A Comedically-Malfunctioning Vacuum Cleaner

What constitutes "age appropriate?" It's different for each kid, isn't it?

Take Elianna, for example. She's almost 2 1/2. She loves dinosaurs. She watched the last season of Camp Cretaceous with us and was never bothered by snarling dinosaurs ("Whatchu DOIN', dinosaur?!") or by antagonistic robots ("robot dinosaur!"). She occasionally sees snatches of Jason's video games; once, recently, having the bad timing to walk into the room as one character hit another and knocked him out. ("Guy fall down?" "Yes, a mean man hit him and he fell down. That's why we don't hit." "We don't hit. Guy fall down, take a nap.") But we were watching a different show with a comedically-malfunctioning vacuum cleaner and she started screaming.

Or, take, for example, the fact that when I was eight or so, the Giant Mouse of Minsk from An American Tale gave me nightmares. When I was ten, I had three months of rabies-based nightmares and paranoia (I would NOT sit with my back to an open door for fear a rabid rodent would creep in and bite me) after reading Old Yeller... but only one year later I was watching Jaws (and Shark Week) and reading Jurassic park without issue.

Every kid is different and, moreover, what bothers every kid is going to be different. A young child may be scared by something innocuous, but not bothered by what you would expect. A middle schooler may completely miss a reference to sex or violence, but be traumatized when the dog dies.

When I worked in the children's department at a local library, one of my favorite patrons was an 11-year-old who reminded me a lot of myself, both in the volume of books read and in genre choices. She'd come in every other week and make a beeline for me, asking, "What's new? What's good?" She had burned through most of the juvenile-level books and was mostly out in the Young Adult section. She could have asked our adult reference librarians, who were technically over YA.

I don't know if it was just because we had developed a rapport, or because I was the youngest full-timer there (I was 30, and looked younger, and I'm also quite short), or if it was simply because we had the same interests - fantasy and adventure, with an occasional dash of history or sci-fi. She was very mature as far as reading level and vocabulary, and she, like I, loved doorstopper tomes. She hauled a huge black vinyl bag with her to stuff all her books into (she often checked out close to a dozen and, yes, did read most of them in two weeks). It became harder and harder to find things that would interest and/or challenge her that would also be "age appropriate." After we had been doing this for a while, I started to ask her, "are you OK with this, are you OK with that?" As young as she was, I still tried to avoid things I knew to have more sexual content. I recall one time I weighed the pros and cons of giving her a book I'd just finished that I had really enjoyed.

"It's kind of dark," I cautioned. "The main character gets put on trial for witchcraft." I paused, sizing up this even-shorter-than-me bookworm. "Would torture bother you?"

"I think I would be OK," she answered confidently.

"Would it bother your parents?"

She shrugged. "I don't think so. If I got upset, they'd be upset, but I think I'll be OK." Still not entirely sure, I gave it to her anyway. Two weeks later she came back for the sequel.

I bring up these stories because recently there have been more and more school boards and school districts being pressured, or even making rules, to allow parents - one single parent, in some cases - to remove books they don't like from the library. While I do agree that certain books don't belong in school libraries - 50 Shades of Grey springs to mind - I also think that a parent's dislike, mistrust, or even misguided rumor-fueled opinion of a book should not outweigh the expertise of teachers and librarians whose area of study is choosing developmentally appropriate books for a certain age group.

Should I go to Elianna's preschool and demand that they remove any books with vacuum cleaners in them? Of course not. Should my mom have gone to our local library or Blockbuster and demand that no one be allowed to watch An American Tale or Old Yeller? Of course not. One parent, one individual, even a vocal minority of annoyed or misinformed people should not be able to make snap decisions on what books hundreds or thousands of students have access to.

By all means, be involved in your child's education. But be aware that just because YOU don't like the book doesn't mean that no one should read it. The book you hated may be the book that finally gets a reluctant reader interested in reading, or may be the book that helps a struggling teen realize they aren't alone, or that helps a child understand an important lesson about the world. Let them read. Or, to quote Finding Nemo:

"I promised I'd never let anything happen to him."

"Well, that's a funny thing to promise - then nothing'll ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo."

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High-Stakes Secrets

Psst... Can you keep a secret?

Recently I've been consuming media about secrets - what a character will do to keep a secret, what happens when a secret gets out...

Jason and I recently watched There's Someone Inside Your House. It's a horror movie about a killer making his way through high school students with secrets. At one point, one of the characters throws what he calls a "secret" party. The attendees are encouraged to share their secrets, the idea being that if your secret is out, the killer no longer has a hold over you. These being high schoolers, the secrets range from crushes to miscarriages. Though as you might expect, not everyone confesses the Real Secret, the Big Secret, the High-Stakes Secret, and people keep dying.

I also recently finished reading Speak, a book about a high schooler keeping a secret that takes such a toll on her that she pretty much stops speaking all-together. Read more about that here.

It made me start thinking about my stories. What secrets do my characters have? What secrets do they consider to be high-stakes? When I was in high school my Big Secret was who I had a crush on, which seems so stupid now. But it's a matter of perspective. Sometimes it's a matter of culture or your place in society, too. A secret that is a big deal for a character in one story, in one world, may be laughable to worry about in another story and world.

I have neglected my characters' secrets. I don't even know what secrets some of my characters have. I need to go through my stories (and especially Brinyor, now that I've decided to workshop it some) and figure out what people's secrets are.

Special Throwback Thursday: Where Were You?

It was early on a Tuesday morning. The phone rang before my alarm went off, which was aggravating. I was a sophomore in college and overloading on classes - I had been up very late. I ignored the phone.

After the alarm went off, my roommates and I dressed and staggered to the dining hall. I had lemon mint scones, and either a coke or diet coke for my caffeine - I was never a coffee person. My roommates and I sat in an alcove with a window seat.

A friend of ours, also a sophomore, came running up to us, skidding to a stop on the terrazzo floor. He was yelling something about planes and a tower, the pentagon, more planes, a field... I was half asleep and didn't understand - had a new Die Hard movie come out?

"Travis, what movie is this?" I mumbled.

"It's not a movie! It's happening right now!" he yelled and took off to tell others. My roommates and I were still confused. No one else in the dining hall seemed to be worked up. Yet. We went to class.

By the time I made it two buildings over and three floors up, news had spread. I should point out that most of us did not have cell phones; the few that did rarely got reception on our rural, mountain-top campus. But I was on my way to a theatre class, and many of my classmates were a year or two older and had friends who were already in New York. They had heard what was going on. There was a phone in the hallway outside the classroom and many of us lined up to call and check on friends and family.

I remembered that my dad had been planning to leave that morning for a business trip. I couldn't remember where he was going. Panicked, I called my mom, knowing I wouldn't be able to reach him if he were in the air. My mom reassured me - he was headed to Austin, but the plane had already been grounded. He and his coworkers were trying to rent a car to make the long drive back to Atlanta. She had been the one calling early that morning.

In a daze, we finally all congregated in the classroom. No official word had come down yet as to whether to cancel class. Our professor used the morning's event to segue into a discussion of tragedy. After that class we found that there would be no classes for the rest of the day; the school that didn't close for ice storms was cancelling classes.

I walked to the bank, about a mile down the road in our small university town and withdrew $100 (most of what was in my meager college student's account), just in case. I had dressed for the chilliness of the Tennessee mountain morning but was now too hot in my 3/4 length blouse and long skirt. I didn't go to the common room with the TV when I got back to the dorm. I didn't watch the 24-7 new coverage. (No live streaming on our young internet.) I didn't see the towers fall 'til almost a week later. I knew that if I stopped, if I watched it, I would crash, just like they did. I had too much work to do. I had a big paper due at the end of the week. I watched it later, after the Time Magazine special edition had already come in my student mail box.

Tuesday morning. September 11, 2001. I was 19. I was in college in Tennessee. Where were you?

Giftshop Apocalypse

Hey, wouldn't that be a great band name?

All kidding aside, Jason and I were watching Sweet Tooth the other night. For those not familiar with the show, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic America - so far mostly in the wilderness. In the episode we were watching, two characters come upon a family living in a gift shop/visitor's center at Yellowstone.

That took me back to when I worked in the college book and convenience store at Sewanee (middle of nowhere Tennessee, for those who don't know). I first worked there during the summer when the tiny college town was pretty quiet. Even with my cleaning and stocking duties I had lots of time to just let my mind wander. I kept a notebook under the counter where I would jot down story ideas. One of the ones I had was about a handful of people in a, ahem, small college town in the middle of nowhere, stranded when The End As We Know It comes, and how they survive and make do. One of the first places the characters went was, of course, the book/convenience store for supplies and clothes.

I've actually always been a big fan of the post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian genre. I've had ideas for stories in these kinds of settings since high school, maybe middle school. Of course, the problem I always have is that wherever my characters are holed up is a little too convenient, a little too easy for this kind of setting. They live in the Tennessee Valley and all the hydroelectric plants are still working and cranking out electricity. Or the book store had so much stock that years later they still have what they need. Or the kids who ran away from home just happened to find a pristine (as in, safe to drink) creek that also had fish they could catch. When I was younger I didn't realize these were narrative problems (or at least could be if the story wasn't crafted right).

Seeing the gift shop used in this way in another work made me feel better about it, though. While this does make it seem "easy," looking around at the gift shop, there is still a lot of stock and it doesn't seem very "lived in." The family has an 11-year-old son, but it doesn't seem like they've been there his whole life. While they didn't go into how long they'd been there in the show, it did give me the impression that they hadn't been there long, maybe stumbled across an isolated building no one else had taken advantage of yet.

Of course, it also makes sense that the characters - the parents, at least - would seek out this type of setting. They would look for somewhere with shelter and supplies, somewhere out of the way to make their permanent home. But if they were looking for somewhere like this, how were they the ones that go so lucky? Were they the only survivors in the area? Were they "on the inside" (say, maybe one of them had worked there)?

Because that's the thing - there's got to be more than just, "we conveniently just happen to have food, water, electricity, or a lifetime supply of sweatshirts." I want to know how the circumstances came together for you to ride out the apocalypse in your cozy gift shop.

Confessions, Judgement, and Accountability

A couple days ago (in fact, the day that I posted my last blog), I decided that this week I wanted to talk about why I'm still struggling with my writing schedule. But in order to fully explain that situation, I have to talk about something I'd been keeping relatively quiet. It's not a secret, per se, but it is something I haven't brought up because it's become a divisive topic in the past year.

Elianna is in pre-school.

Since the shut downs started last March and April (oh my god, has it been ten months? Oh my god has it ONLY been ten months...), Jason and I struggled with whether or not to start Elianna in a mother's morning out program. Since I don't work, we didn't want a full daycare program (even though the daycares in our area are incredibly stellar). We wanted something that would give me a couple hours off a couple days a week, and something to get her socializing.

At her nine month appointment last April (oh my god, she was only nine months last April?) we expressed our joint concerns to her pediatrician - what about COVID exposure? But what about stunting her social growth? What about her lagging gross motor skills, and what about vocabulary skills, which are generally things that being exposed to other children helps them pick up?

We started looking into schools "late." I was really depressed last winter; I didn't start to come out of that 'til February, and that's when we started looking - and that's also generally after most schools start enrollment. We found a school we seemed to like - a local preschool that came VERY highly recommended. I scheduled a tour, knowing that if we liked it we'd be on the waiting list. But I was kind of OK with that - it gave us time to think, consider infection rates, talk to Elianna's doctor, etc., before school started in August.

I went on the tour on March 12. I was impressed with their precautions - sanitizing, distancing, keeping any kids in the hallways walking neatly against one wall - and asking us to keep our distance from the students and not approaching the open classroom doors. Jason was impressed with their security measures, and I had gotten a really good feeling from the ladies leading the tour - including the director, who lives two houses down from me.

That evening, I added Elianna to the waiting list. The next morning - Friday the 13th - I received an email from the school, saying that due to COVID they would be shutting down indefinitely, but they would be in contact with us over the summer regarding waiting lists, reopening, and any new procedures they might implement to help mitigate the spread of the virus. (Spoiler alert - it was seven pages of new health safety procedures.) It honestly just made me feel better about our choice to send Elianna to school there. This was two weeks before Georgia's governor issued stay-at-home orders, and three days before the White House had their big press release on "Flattening the Curve."

We felt good, personally, about our decision - especially after receiving updates on new procedures throughout the summer, and sharing them with our doctor. But I hadn't talked about it except to just family and a few close friends, because how to handle kids in school during the pandemic has been SO divisive. I don't like pissing people off, I don't like getting pissed off, and I didn't have the time for people's judgment.

My sister, who gave birth to her first child in July, and who is a 5th grade teacher, has had the same struggle, times ten. Both of us constantly wonder - am I doing the right thing for my child? for my mental stability? what about the teachers and caregivers? We both have heard the "you're a terrible parent because you're sending your child to school in person/keeping your child home for online learning" and "you're a terrible person - you're putting your child's needs ahead of the health of teachers and caregivers." I'll be the first to admit that I've been judgy of friends' and neighbors' choices with their children this past school year - but I try to keep it quiet. I try not to bash people's personal decisions on social media. I try to be supportive when I can - and silent when I can't.

Which brings me around to why I'm breaking my silence about Elianna's school.

I've been trying to get back into writing. I arranged my schedule so that I work on my writing on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, while Elianna is at school. (Recently I've also been able to add about 45 minutes while she's in physical therapy, but since she's improving and we're dropping down on the frequency of her sessions, that schedule is changing now, too.)

However, late last Friday, Cherokee Schools announced that, due to the number of teachers either currently sick with COVID, or quarantining due to exposure, they no longer had the staffing for in person classes (yes, not even a full week after coming back from Christmas), they would be going virtual at least this week. Elianna is not in public school - but the children of many of the staff at her preschool are. Over the weekend, we got an email from her school letting us know that her class would not meet this week due to staffing issues. Further, if Cherokee remains closed, it's likely her school will also have to close. And while they do have a plan in place for digital learning that means that, 1. I'm still having to supervise Elianna during the time I would normally have while she's at school and, 2. I don't know how much digital learning you can really do with 18-month-olds.

So... there it is.

And, yes, I know most people don't give a hoot whether I'm meeting my writing schedule. But I give a hoot. I feel the need for accountability. But that accountability required an explanation.

Elianna and her class, the last day before Christmas.

(All photos are by her teachers.)

Elianna and her best bud on the playground.

Elianna loves school! (This was taken the same day as the “Grump on a Tractor” incident…)

It's OK Not to Be OK

It goes without saying that this is a tough time for people.  Parents are being asked to teach, discipline, and work at the same time.  Teachers who rely on teaching by discussion or experimentation are being asked to teach via the internet.  Students who thrive on in-person discourse, or who need to be able to speak to anther human and clarify points, are being asked to learn via email and video.

There are going to be an awful lot of students who "lose" this year.

As many of you know, I spent the two and half years before Elianna was born working in the registrar's office of small liberal arts university.  Academia has always been important to me.  I've also worked at a university library.  I went to a very well-to-do-university.  There was never even a question of whether or not I would go to college.  But I also had it lucky.

I was the sort that really didn't need to study.  I was very good at just remembering things.  Except math and science.  I was OK in math and science until I got out of the biology and geometry type disciplines and entered into chemistry, physics, and calculus.  Once, during a high school physics test, I determined that the canon ball was traveling at -43 miles per hour.  I knew this could not possibly be right.  But I also looked back over my work and could not find where I had gone wrong.  I left the calculation and answer, but added "I know this is wrong - sorry."  Because my teacher was the type that gave partial credit if you showed your work on tests and homework and weighted homework heavily, I squeaked through this class with a good grade despite actually being pretty inept at the work.

My college calculus class was dreadful.  I mean the work.  I could not comprehend the problems.  The homework - which was less than half a dozen problems per class - took me hours to complete.  I was crying in class regularly.  Fortunately, because I went to a school where a large class consisted of 25 people, and the professors were approachable and understanding, I was able to get help.  Every night that the tutoring center was open, I was there.  Every time my professor had office hours, I was there - usually crying about how I couldn't fail this class.

At one point, having already failed several tests, and with the final looming, I sobbed to him about how I knew I was going to fail. 

"You're not going to fail this class," he said, gently exasperated.  

"But I've failed all the tests!" I wailed.

"But you've also put forth far more effort than anyone else in the class," he countered.  "You do all the homework.  You show all your work on your tests.  The tutors tell me you're there at every session.  There are students who are failing this class - because they are not trying and they are not seeking help.  You are not one of them."  

Still, when grades came over Christmas, I opened the envelope with dread.  I knew I had failed the final, and I had gone into it with a grade hovering right at the border between passing and failing.  And I unfolded my grade report and found that my calculus grade was the lowest final grade I'd ever gotten in my life: C-.  I screamed and laughed and jumped around the room.  I had been praying to simply scrape by with a D-.  To this day, I'm not entirely sure my professor didn't give me extra points simply so he wouldn't have to see my weepy face ever again.

I do believe at one point my adviser or roommates or friends suggested withdrawing from the class.  The Hermione-like first year that I was, I was scandalized.  Drop a class?  Me?  I might as well commit murder.  There was also the (much more realistic) problem that as bad as I was at math and science that I had chosen to take math my second semester of senior year of high school, and my first semester of college so it would be "fresh" in my mind.  I also had planned to take my lab science requirement second semester freshman year and get it out of the way.  I was concerned that if I had to retake math it would derail that plan - I knew I couldn't manage both a math and a science at the same time, and I was concerned pushing biology too late would also be detrimental as I had last taken bio as a freshman in high school.

Once I got past calculus, however, I took a new outlook on dropping or withdrawing from a problematic class.  My senior year, in a moment of panic just before registration for my final semester, my adviser and I realized we had misunderstood the science requirement.  We had read the requirement as needing two sciences courses.  I had taken a biology lab and a psychology class.  But we realized the requirement was actually for two LAB sciences.  Because my psych class had not had a lab component, it didn't count.  So now here I was, a senior theatre major who, as previously established, was very much NOT a science person, now needed to find a lab science I was sure I could pass.

I went to college in the mountains of rural Tennessee.  My university had an observatory and offered astronomy.  "What a fantastic opportunity!" I thought.  "I can do astronomy - that's looking up at the night sky and identifying planets and constellations, right?  That sounds like fun!"  

The first day of class, our professor put up an overhead projection that was just a sheet of numbers.  

"This is a comet," he said, circling a cluster of numbers that, to my eye, looked no different than any other group of numbers.  My eyes glazed over as he described to us how this group of numbers represented a comet, and then explained that a substantial part of our final grade would be using sheets like this to find and describe a hitherto undiscovered heavenly body moving through our solar system.  I left the classroom and went straight to the registrar's office for a drop form.  (For those of you wondering, I ended up taking forestry instead, as I remembered that my university was, as previously mentioned, in a rural area and we owned 13,000 acres of mostly woodland.)

I guess what I'm trying to say with this rambling tale from school is this: don't force yourself to continue something that is making you miserable.  Drop what you have to drop to get by.  (While I mean this academically, it applies to anything that you might need to stop doing to just keep yourself sane during this time.)  While I can't say 100% that every school is doing this, the university that I used to work at announced that they were extending their deadline to withdraw without academic penalty so that students that are not adjusting well to online learning, or are stuck away from their families and worrying, or, heaven forbid, are dealing with the illness or death of friends or families, can release themselves from just one more thing that is weighing on their mind.

There are a lot of people that are not OK right now.  And that's OK.  If you are one of them, know that it is OK for you to let go of whatever you need to so that you can be OK.

What's in a Name, Act IV - Title Changes

A few days ago, I saw a little thing circulating around Facebook about how, 22 years after its release, people are still arguing about the title change of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the American version of the book.

As a writer, having been to various classes and workshops about publishing, I understand that to a certain extent you have to be concerned about whether a title is marketable.  For example, the film version of a certain Stephen King story was changed from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, to The Shawshank Redemption (which, admittedly, is still a mouthful).  Likewise, the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe became simply Fried Green Tomatoes for the the film version.  However, these changes were made so that the title was shorter, more easily accessible - someone walks up to the ticket counter and asks for two tickets for Shawshank.

In the case of the Harry Potter example above, it wasn't just the title that was changed. On several occasions, British words were switched for American words; the quaffle is described as being the size of a soccer ball rather than a football, and at one of Harry's quidditch matches he's cheered on by a banner that says "Potter for President."  The mentality, in the late 90's when the book came out, was that kids weren't going to read a book with unfamiliar British terms, that the word "philosopher" was boring, and kids would be more likely to read a book with "sorcerer" in the title*.  

*This leads me to ponder if the book would have received less challenges had the title been "philosopher."

I find it particularly intriguing that the title was changed from "philosopher" to "sorcerer" because the Philosopher's Stone was a "real" thing.  In the middle ages, during alchemy's heyday, it was thought that it was possible to create a substance, an item, that would transform any metal into gold, and that a side effect of this process created an elixir to prolong your life or make you immortal.  (Not sure who came up with this idea - "hey, if I tinker around with a bunch of metals and salts and things I'll just randomly come up with this magic stone that does all this cool stuff.")  This led to a large chunk of students in my college humanities class suddenly gasping amongst themselves during a lecture, "What?  It's real?  She didn't make it up?"

I can see why some titles are changed for sake of brevity, or to inject a recognizable character - Indiana Jones's name was added to Raiders of the Lost Ark when the second film was released.  Harley Quinn's name was added to some listings of the recent film Birds of Prey out of a concern that the poor opening weekend meant that people weren't aware who the movie was about.  

But in Harry Potter's case, I honestly feel that this is a case where changing the title was not needed at best, and possibly detrimental.  J. K. Rowling built this world balanced firmly on western mythology and canon.  The books are peppered with well-known (and lesser known) characters, creatures, and plants from mythology and literature.  Why dumb down the title for kids?  Kids are smart.  They'll pick it up.  They'll eat it up.  As Robin Williams said in Mrs. Doubtfire, "You don't have to play dumb to them."

Ladies of Language

So - the registrar, the head of the language department, and the registrar's admin assistant walk into a restaurant...

No, it's not the start of a joke. But it was the start of a very interesting dinner.

Last week, my boss and I went out to dinner with the head of the language department (who is also the head of the honors program). It wasn't really a work dinner, though we did occasionally kick around ideas about how various programs might be improved, or our experiences with similar programs in other places.

We ended up just sitting around and talking for a long time - in fact, my boss had to leave earlier so the other professor and I stayed and chatted for a while longer. It was really nice to be able to hang out with someone else who is "overly educated." I don't mean that as a slight against anyone I regularly spend time with, just that I don't often get the chance to discuss 19th century Russian poetry translation or Central American magic realism in depth.

We also got onto the subject of the novels that I'm writing and, and she sat and listened raptly while I described characters and plot. I think I've told her more about my writing than I've told any other one person in one sitting. At one point she asked what the title of my book was. I told her The Wolf and the Sheath, but also clarified that that was just the working title. I said that I probably wouldn't decide on a final title until after I finish the book, but at the moment I like The Lady, the Wolf, and the Watcher. She said she liked the rhythm of it. (I think that was what actually lead to the discussion of literature in translation.)

Tangentially related to the above, before my boss left, we sort of reprized the discussion my boss and I had a while back about why she doesn't like the term "ladies" to refer to a group of women. (More on that here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/1/7/ladies-gentlemen ) I clarified for the new member of our group, who hadn't been at our previous discussion, that "I read a lot of fantasy. I write a lot of fantasy. To me, a lady is someone who might strap on a sword and lead a battle." And, a twinkle in her eye, she responded, "That's not a lady - that's an empress."

The Teenager's Bucket List

Last weekend I cleaned out a box that had various papers from college and late high school.  In addition to some VERY angsty poetry, I found a list entitled "Things to do before I get to old and/or too busy."  (The "too busy" part makes me think that I knew more then about my penchant for trying to do too much than I realized...)

Looking over this list, I was pleased to find that there were a decent amount of things on the list that I have done.  I don't recall exactly when this list was made, but the inclusion of "go swing dancing" at the end, in different pen, would likely put the majority of the list as having been written around the time I graduated from high school, or no later than early in my freshman year of college.  Prior to college I was unaware of swing dancing and got into it within a month of two of starting freshman year.

For kicks and giggles, here is the list in it's entirety (exactly as I originally worded it), with notes of what I've accomplished from it:

• Read a romance novel.  /I have read a few.  I was not impressed.
• Enter one of my really good love poems in a contest or publication. /Done better than that - I have published four stories, which are of way better quality than the above-mentioned angsty love poems.
• Make a Romeo and Juliet collage like Caitlin did. /I don't remember this collage or person at all : (  But I have done a whole bunch of other cool art projects, so we'll say this evens out.
• Walk around downtown or Little 5 and take pictures. /I've taken pictures of cooler, safer places ; )
• Attend or host a murder mystery dinner, preferably set in the 20's. /Not set in the 20's, sadly, but I performed in a murder mystery dinner show.
• Go all out for a costume party - complete with historically-accurate hair and costume (corset if the character calls for it).  ie, Marguerite, Ankhesunamun, etc*. /Maybe not truly historically accurate but I have now done this a boatload of times - often with corsets.  I'm also not sure why this was on the list, as I did a pretty accurate Egyptian costume in 9th grade and, as mentioned above, I'm fairly sure this list post-dates that party.
• Watch a classic horror movie. /I'm not sure what I meant by "classic" but I've now seen several that could qualify.
• Watch a movie you wanted to see as a kid but didn't - ie, Princess Bride.  /Done.
• Watch something Mommy wouldn't approve of - like South Park.  /Ha!  Done.
• Watch (live) all of the Broadway musicals I can - ie, Scarlet Pimpernel, Phantom of the Opera.  /Phantom twice, Rent, Lion King.  I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of right now.
• Go to a nightclub, a karaoke bar, a drive in theatre, and a cafe where they do poetry readings.  /Nightclub: I'm not sure what I meant by a "nightclub."  I think I was picturing something out of I Love Lucy, though I did go to a discoteque at least once in Russia, so I'm counting that.  Karaoke bar: not specifically a karaoke bar, but I've done karaoke several times, so I'm counting it.  Drive in theatre: Not yet, sadly.  Cafe where they do poetry readings: Stirlings.  Amazing how much of this list was checked off at Sewanee : )
• Sit under a tree on a cool fall or spring day and read or just wonder.  /Probably.  I lived in Sewanee for 6 1/2 years.
• Go on a picnic and take your sketchbook and/or camera.  /Not precisely, I don't think.
• Eat a banana split.  /No.
• Eat an ice cream sundae with everything - nuts, chocolate, whipped cream, and cherry.  /Again, I don't think so.  
• Share a milkshake with your boyfriend** with 2 straws.  /Again, no.  Why I thought there was an age limit on these ice cream-related things is beyond me.  I mentioned this one specifically to Jason and he jokingly said, "Too late!  You're too old and you don't have a boyfriend."  Thanks, dear.
• Try out an outrageous hairdo or outfit you wouldn't normally wear out.  /I was a theatre major, so, yeah.
• Write someone a love letter or poem - anonymously, if you're afraid to do it otherwise - and send it to them.  /Yeah.  Those didn't work out so well...
• Go swing dancing.  /Been there, done that, got the shoes.

*Marguerite from The Scarlet Pimpernel.  Ankhesunamun was Tutankhamun's wife and I was kind of obsessed with her in high school.  
**I did not have a boyfriend at the time of writing this, and would not for several years.

(Also, it is an absolute travesty how good my handwriting was then and how bad it is now.)

The timing of finding this list is kind of odd.  If my assessment of when I wrote it is correct, it was the summer I was 18, and I found it in the summer, precisely 18 years later.  It's interesting to see what experiences I thought would be important or formative then, which of them I accomplished, and what I still feel is important of formative now.  (The fact that I had three "bad for you" food accomplishments listed says a lot about how I will never be thin! ; D )

In all seriousness, though, I think it's very telling to look back at these, see what I wanted to do at 18, and see how much of it was part of my college experience, without actually being something you learn in school.

The Importance of Humanities

On Wednesday, my boss and I had a meeting with the head of the Spanish, French, and World Language and Culture department.  She was late.  When she arrived, she apologized, as her Spanish students had been doing their "cooking show" presentations, and in cleaning up after college students making rice pudding and churros, she had completely forgotten our meeting.  I immediately forgave her, as I had fond memories of a very similar cooking unit in my sophomore Spanish class in high school, and we launched into a joyous discussion of why the history of food is important and why Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous for years. 

(The acid in the tomatoes ate away at the pewter utensils.  Pewter, being an alloy of silver and lead, leached lead into the food and made people sick.  The new world natives - and Europeans who were too poor to afford pewter - were not affected because they were eating with different utensils or with their hands.)

Obviously, a discussion of the history of food was not why the Registrar and the head of the Honors and Language departments were meeting that day.  But it did get me thinking about both my aforementioned Spanish class, and the humanities in general.  

The teacher I had for sophomore Spanish was awesome.  (All my high school Spanish teachers were, honestly.)  In this class, we did a lot of culture units.  We had the previously-mentioned cooking unit.  We did a dance unit.  We watched actual Latin American movies (as opposed to watching American movies in Spanish, which was the default for substitute teachers) and discussed the historical events important to the films.  And we had our art unit, which was spectacular.

We studied various artists: El Greco, Velasquez, Goya, Miro, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Salvador Dali.  We had to make and present a piece of artwork in the style of one of the artists we had studied.  Most people did Miro or Picasso, because Miro and late-Picasso are super easy.  I chose Goya (in his rose period) because the rosy-cheeked, picnicking couples appealed to my 15-year-old romanticism.

One of these styles is more difficult than the others...

Fast forward about 5 years.  I was in St. Petersburg, Russia on a summer abroad trip for my Russian minor.  I was in the Hermitage, one of their palace-turned-museums. I came around a corner and almost literally ran into a huge, doorway-sized painting.  I backed up a bit so I could better see what I almost hit.  Gaunt, long-limbed, grey-faced priests stared down at me.  "Oh, my god, it's El Greco!" I said, not even having to read the placard next to the painting (which I could have done in English, Spanish, or Russian) to know that this was "The Interment of the Count of Orgaz."

I'm not kidding, y'all, this is a HUGE painting.

A large portion of my college experience revolved around the humanities, actually.  I went to a school that was heavily liberal-arts leaning.  On top of that, mine was the first class that had the option of a 4-semester Humanities course for which we could receive credit for 7 or 8 core requirements (literature, history, religion, philosophy, art history, 2 writing-intensive classes, and possibly one I'm forgetting).  A lot of people took it as a way to get 8 requirements done in half the time.  I took it to "free up space" in case I decided to double major.

The course was set up by time period - 1st semester was the ancient world, 2nd semester was medieval, 3rd was early modern, and 4th was modern/contemporary.  In this class I learned about things in conjunction, rather than learning about art or literature or religion separately of the historical context in which they occurred.   We studied the wars, religious and social upheavals, ideas, and inventions that inspired these works, or that these works were reactions to.  It wasn't the first time that I had learned that these things were tied together - in that sophomore Spanish class, we had learned how the Napoleonic wars had influenced Goya's work, just as Franco's regime in the 30's is why we have Picasso's Guernica.  But it was the first time we started at the beginning of civilization and said, "these ancient beliefs influenced this art style and these literary works, then this war changed the way people thought about X and that influenced the music and the architecture and so on and so on, and it's still growing and changing and evolving today."

There's no way to explain all this in a blog post, really.  It takes more time.  It takes more study and investigation.  And its why you can't remove art, literature, or music from their historical contexts.  To really know, to really understand, you have to have the whole picture.