tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001/315 2007-12-04T19:01:08Z weblog Movable Type Enterprise 1.02 tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5762 2007-12-04T17:34:35Z 2007-12-04T19:01:08Z

Hopefully this reads better than the draft. Thank you all for your helpful feedback....

Andrew Statum Hopefully this reads better than the draft. Thank you all for your helpful feedback. anyone can set up a blog and anyone can have voice. In giving everyone a stage on which to perform, one must be prepared to watch a lot of terrible stuff. There are, however, a few noble souls who contribute a unique voice in a blogging world that can seem, at times, saturated with the ironic, cynical, self-involved chorus that characterizes the blogs of so many gen-x'ers. A site called "Neurons Firing" (http://neurons.wordpress.com), which the site's creator bills as "the graduate course I’d love to take if it existed as a program and was local to where I live," is just such a one. Meet Laurie, a teacher who has been "teaching computer classes and facilitating the use of technology in schools" since 1982 and whose interests "revolve around the brain, graphic design, organizing and creating professional development for faculty, and changing education to make it more relevant, interesting and experiential for all involved." It's also an educational, visually exciting and easily navigable blog for anyone interested in how current neurological research can be applied to the classroom. And, as luck would have it, it's fun to read! Indeed, Laurie's site reflects a dedicated educator's enthusiasm for learning. Her prose is always straight-forward without being clumsy or crudely oversimplified. Take, for instance, her posting of April 17, 2007, a posting devoted to the Cerebellum: "Near the back and bottom of the brain, next to the brain stem, is the CEREBELLUM, a round, lumpy structure resembling cauliflower and about the size of a small fist. It handles motor patterns, coordinates muscle movement, and is responsible for maintaining bodily equilibrium such as posture and balance. It also handles cognitive patterns such as speaking, and automates certain repetitive tasks. Lastly, it is the section of our brains that responds to novelty. Like the rest of the brain, it has two hemispheres connected by a thick wad of nerves." After reading this passage, we get a clear idea of what the Cerebellum is, what it does and a good image of how it looks, all in a clean and polished prose that gently teaches us without being overly didactic, a concern we all share in our careers as educators. Similar postings on nearly every part of the brain, from the amygdala and reticular formation to emotions and attention, pepper the blog and are always written with the same mix of easy-to-follow learnedness and bright-eyed enthusiasm. There is even a helpful section called "The Brain 101" which is a repository of all of Laurie's postings related to the brain for anyone interested in learning about the physical mechanisms Like a good teacher, Laurie is very good at encouraging her audience to explore the current scientific discussion on brain science on their own terms. For example, in an entry on October 31, Laurie discusses neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran's work with mirror neurons, phantom limbs, prosopagnosia and synesthesia. She offers a brief synopsis of his work and provides a number of links to articles. She ends the entry with "Don't take my word for it – go listen to his talk!" and a link to an audio file of one of Ramachandran's lectures on the brain. Though some readers may find this lack of opining a bit coy, the author smartly removes herself from the discussion so that readers may learn for themselves. But don't think that Laurie is not content to let this kind of knowledge rest on its own laurels. Between her more scientifically-minded entries, she has also posted a number of entries detailing her attempt to incorporate knowledge of the brain into her classroom practices. In a follow-up posting to her entry on the cerebellum - in which we learned that the cerebellum is responsible for motor patters and muscle movement - she builds on a quote by Robert K. Greenleaf and offers suggestions as to how we can incorporate movement into the classroom. "Incorporating some form of movement or novelty into any presentation, especially if the audience has been sitting still for quite awhile or listening to a monotone, can be quite beneficial since movement and novelty can wake up the brain and give it a link for remembering." It may be cute, but it works! This is real knowledge with real application for real students and Laurie does a wonderful job of reminding us why we chose to enter this most sacred of professions in the first place. In her entry from December 2, she opens with a short discussion of how "movement, in general, and dance, in particular, is very healthy for our bodies and our minds." She then follows it up with a handful of links to articles discussing the importance of movement and dance to learning. Such entries are not only interesting and insightful, they also contain tips on how to apply the information in a classroom setting. Laurie moves confidently from discussing the latest findings of neuroscientists like Giacomo Rizzolati and V.S. Ramachandran to offering tips on classroom organization and the importance of sleep in the learning process to a quick tutorial on RSS feeds, all of which centers on one question: how can we use this knowledge to better facilitate student learning? Brain research is neat, she seems to say, but it also has applications in the classroom. After all, this is not simply a blog about the brain (there are a number of sites out there devoted to just this topic). It's a well-written, visually stimulating and informative on-going record of one educator's ongoing attempt to incorporate neurological research in her approach to education.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5696 2007-12-01T22:26:25Z 2007-12-03T00:18:21Z

I hope I didn't start too strong without leaving myself anywhere to go. Frances and Joe have both come along beautifully while Marcus languishes at the table with his Dad. I know where I need to go with him but...

Andrew Statum I hope I didn't start too strong without leaving myself anywhere to go. Frances and Joe have both come along beautifully while Marcus languishes at the table with his Dad. I know where I need to go with him but I'm not quite sure how to get there. Oh, and I think he might now be a closet homosexual. Joe, I think, has the most fully developed arc and his is the crisis that seems most prevalent in the three characters' respective consciousnesses. But its Frances who is the "hero" of the piece. She is the only one of these three who confronts her past, accepts it for what it is (don't know exactly what that means yet but hopefully that'll work itself out over my remaining writing sessions) and moves on with her life. Marcus "confronts" his past - in the form of his father - most directly, but he refuses to deal with what he finds and ends up literally running away from it. Joe is at the other end of the spectrum. He is haunted by the specter of his ex-wife and by the residual pain of a life spent feeling sorry for himself and he "deals" with it by overdosing on diet pills. In all I think its working and I think the close third person voice helps me to abstain from judging these people too harshly which, I hope, increases the pathetic response in readers by helping them to see these characters in a more sympathetic light. For example, Joe may be dealing with his problems in a less-than-productive way, but I'm hoping readers will follow the voice as it reveals the anxieties and personal circumstances that have lead him to this point in his consciousness. Same with the other two who are, I think, far-from-exemplary, but also far-from-despicable. As far as the fugal arrangement is concerned, I'm thinking of creating three columns, one for each voice. Only one voice would be speaking at a time with a little overlap when one voice "takes over" the narrative from another, except at the end when all three voices will be going simultaneously which, I hope, gives the piece a kind of symphonic resonance at the climax. We'll see if it works. tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5693 2007-12-01T17:43:49Z 2007-12-01T21:11:06Z

It's not fair. No one should be able to write the way Keats wrote before the age of fifty. The guy died at what, 26?, having secured for himself a place in the upper echelon of the Western literary canon...

Andrew Statum It's not fair. No one should be able to write the way Keats wrote before the age of fifty. The guy died at what, 26?, having secured for himself a place in the upper echelon of the Western literary canon while I, at 28, have nothing to show for my creative life but a handful of ephemera and some half-baked ideas about literature. How is it possible for anyone to write like this while he was still so young? "Bright Star." I think this one says it all.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5669 2007-11-30T00:51:59Z 2007-12-01T17:40:12Z

Some thoughts on Chaya B. Gopin's entry on the (mis-) labeling of patients....

Andrew Statum Chaya B. Gopin's entry on the (mis-) labeling of patients.]]> all of my kids emotionally disturbed? Would one of them slip into my side of the cabin at night and slit my throat in some kind of "Lord of the Flies" inspired coup? Why wasn't I told this was a camp for the insane? No doubt some of these kids did suffer from some kind of attention deficit and/or hyperactivity disorder. No doubt some of these kids did have emotional problems that required the careful administration of drugs. But surely, not every last one of them. Unless this camp was some kind of repository for unstable children, I felt like these kids were way over-medicated. Has Ritalin really become the new "babysitter?" What ever happened to plopping your kid in front of a television for hours at a time? You know, the way Mom did for me? I would love to see the diagnostical statistics for ADD and ADHD in children. What percentage of children have been diagnosed with these disorders? And how does their behavior differ from that of the average, undiagnosed child? Is there no threat of chemical dependency in these kids? And what happens to their neuro-biological chemistry as they grow up? If, say, a child takes a dopamine re-uptake inhibitor throughout his or her childhood, will the child's brain ever be able to manufacture its own supply of dopamine? If not, are these kids, then, physically "addicted" to these medications? Have their been any longitudinal studies done on children who take these medications in childhood but stop taking them later on? The funny thing is, the one kid not taking drugs - one of those odd, emotionally distant, prone to aggression types; what used to be called a "bully" - was the only kid who probably most in need of medication. Oh the irony.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5433 2007-11-20T01:58:47Z 2007-11-20T03:15:21Z

For my final project, I'm going to continue work on my creative writing workshop piece which I'm now thinking of calling "The Fugue of the River Bend Diner." Kitschy? Eh, maybe. I don't know, we'll see. The piece follows the...

Andrew Statum For my final project, I'm going to continue work on my creative writing workshop piece which I'm now thinking of calling "The Fugue of the River Bend Diner." Kitschy? Eh, maybe. I don't know, we'll see. The piece follows the thoughts of three characters (Marcus, Frances, Joseph) as they navigate their way through an afternoon at the River Bend Diner in River Bend, Utah. Their voices weave in and out of each other in much the same way the "voices" of a fugue move in relation to one another, with one voice developing the theme at any given time while the other voices play counterpoints. The overall idea I'm working with here is that everyday represents a kind of reckoning with one's past, and this reckoning takes place in the loneliness of one's consciousness, even while one is immersed in the minutiae of day-to-day interactions. tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5432 2007-11-20T01:45:27Z 2007-11-21T17:46:26Z

All this talk of sleep problems last time got me thinking about my own sleep and dream issues which, I think, are intimately linked. In part, I think dreams are the brain's way of sorting through, and explaining to itself,...

Andrew Statum All this talk of sleep problems last time got me thinking about my own sleep and dream issues which, I think, are intimately linked. In part, I think dreams are the brain's way of sorting through, and explaining to itself, the intra- and extracorporeal phenomena it is picking up while asleep (I don't know if those are real words but I like the way they look). sleep apnea. Don't worry, it's not contagious. For those of you not familiar with this, it basically means I wake up a bunch of times during the night without realizing it. And here, I'm going to regurgitate a bunch of information I kind of remember from various doctors and a biological psychology class from college so, if you're interested, you may want to research this yourself as I could be way off on a lot of this. Anyway, as I think we talked about in class, there are various stages of sleep, right? Stage 1, 2, 3, etc., 1 being when you're just falling asleep, all the way up to Stage 4 or 5 or something, whatever REM sleep is, when you're in deep, dreaming sleep. In moving into deep sleep, the muscles in the body lose tension and relax. This includes tissue in the soft palate which, in many people, sags a bit in the back of the throat, causing them to snore. In some people, though, this tissue relaxes so much it collapses completely and obstructs the airway. This is where sleep apnea comes in. With the soft palate collapsed, the person experiencing an episode of apnea (we'll call him Jim) can't breathe. Jim may go through two, three, maybe even four or five attempts at breathing before coming out of REM sleep and gasping for air. Here in Stage 3 sleep, Jim's muscles regain tension and his breathing resumes its normal rhythms, all without Jim regaining complete consciousness. After a while, Jim falls back into deep sleep and the process starts all over again. These episodes may be especially acute if Jim is lying on his back, or if Jim is overweight, or if Jim has been drinking. Now, the neurological process behind this was explained to me during one of my doctor visits like this: during an apneatic episode, Jim's brain registers a drop in the blood's oxygen level. Jim's brain, however, is not clever enough to realize that Jim isn't breathing. Rather, Jim's brain thinks, at first, the problem is that there's not enough blood pumping through Jim's system. In order to compensate for this, Jim's brain releases hormones into the circulatory system which increases blood pressure. More blood circulating equals more oxygen, right? But after this initial increase in blood pressure, Jim's brain finds that Jim's oxygen levels aren't rising. So Jim's brain further increases blood pressure. Eventually, Jim's brain comes to the conclusion that the reason there isn't enough oxygen in Jim's body isn't because there's a lack of blood pumping through Jim's system, but because Jim's pulmonary faculties, due to the obstruction in the throat, can't get any oxygen into Jim's blood. Finally, as a last ditch effort, Jim's brain basically shakes Jim's body awake (but, usually, not into full consciousness). Jim gasps for air and, after some time, his blood pressure falls back to normal and Jim gradually slips back into deep sleep where the process starts over again. Basically, when Jim has an apneatic episode and his brain shakes him out of deep sleep, Jim finds himself in a high state of arousal. His heart is pumping like mad, he's breathing rapidly, his sinuses are wide open and he's probably sweating so his body can cool itself down from all the effort. So, regardless of Jim's physiological issues, what kind of dreams do you think Jim finds himself having when he wakes up like this? Now, here's where the bio-psych comes into play. There's a theory out there - don't ask me to name who came up with this or anything too particular because I don't know; like I said, all I have is a vague memory from my undergrad years - which holds that our dreams are actually our brains way of sorting through and explaining all the information its being bombarded with while we're sleeping. Think about it. Even though we're out of it, our brains are still bombarded with an insane amount of information - nerve impulses, breathing and heart rates, sounds, touches, etc. (And if you think our brains simply ignore these things, why would we wake up in the night to go pee, or why would alarm clocks work?) What this theory says is that, since it can't simply explain away these impulses with waking phenomena, the brain more-or-less makes up a story that fits the information flooding the brain - a kind of "filling-in-the-gap" of consciousness while we sleep. For example, are you dreaming about running? Maybe you're having muscle twitches in your legs. Skin covered in bees? You may well have slept on your arm and then rolled off of it, causing your arm to tingle and burn. Think about how many times we've dreamt about getting caught in a thunderstorm or hearing an alarm going off, only to wake up and find a thunderstorm going on outside or our alarms buzzing. Perhaps, then, recurring dreams are like the mind's shorthand way of explaining something that happens frequently during sleep. So like, whenever I grind my teeth, my brain gives me a teeth-falling-out sequence. I don't know. It seems reasonable enough to me. So what about Jim (and people who have sleep apnea, like me?) What's his brain supposed to make of his jacked-up state of arousal? What kinds of dreams does Jim experience when he's having one of his "spells?" Well, if Jim is anything like me, and I think he is, I can tell you that Jim has seen some pretty crazy stuff. Not bad dreams necessarily, but intense, vivid dreams, dreams that his brain makes in order to explain why his physical state of arousal is close to being maxed out. Like me, Jim probably has lots of dreams where he can't breathe – things like being trapped underwater; suffocating under a rockslide or an avalanche (if it's cold in Jim's room); bad guys choking him to death. He also probably has lots of dreams where something is happening that would make his heart beat really hard - running away from monsters; getting in fights with big bad dudes; falling out of trees or high buildings. But we all have intense dreams sometimes so how is this any different from anyone else? The difference is, I think, two fold. First, Jim's physiological state of arousal is such that Jim's brain has to resort to these story lines more frequently than most people's brains in order to explain what's going on with Jim's body. Second, due to his apnea, Jim wakes up more frequently than most people while he's having these kinds of dreams so he tends to remember them with greater clarity (Isn't it generally accept that we only remember our dreams if we wake up while we're having them?) So Jim's dreams - and mine, and maybe many other people's with sleep apnea - might tend to be more intense or frightening than most, and occur with a greater regularity and a greater vividness, because, thanks to Jim's little condition, Jim finds himself waking up more frequently during the night (which increases the chances he will remember his dreams) and Jim finds himself in an elevated state of arousal which leads the brain to certain kinds of interpretations. At least, that's how I explain to to myself. Anyone else have any thoughts?]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5103 2007-11-05T19:11:37Z 2007-11-06T02:49:18Z

Here's my review of a blog called Neurons Firing. I guess it's meant to be for something like the on-line version of Learning or Teacher magazine or any publication whose readers are in the educational field. As many of our...

Andrew Statum Neurons Firing. I guess it's meant to be for something like the on-line version of Learning or Teacher magazine or any publication whose readers are in the educational field. As many of our fellow students are themselves educators, I thought this would be a particularly relevant blog to review and get feedback on. Thanks y'all.]]> anyone can set up a blog and anyone can have voice. In giving everyone a stage on which to perform, one must be prepared to watch a lot of terrible stuff. There are, however, a few noble souls who go through the trouble of contributing a unique voice in a blogging world saturated with the ironic, cynical, self-involved chorus that characterizes the quotidian observations of so many gen-x'ers and post-gen x'ers. A site called "Neurons Firing" (http://neurons.wordpress.com), which the site's creator bills as "the graduate course I’d love to take if it existed as a program and was local to where I live," is just such a one. Meet Laurie, a teacher who has been "teaching computer classes and facilitating the use of technology in schools" since 1982 and whose interests "revolve around the brain, graphic design, organizing and creating professional development for faculty, and changing education to make it more relevant, interesting and experiential for all involved." It's also an educational, visually exciting and easily navigable blog for anyone interested in how current neurological research can be applied to the classroom. And it's fun to read! Indeed, Laurie's site certainly reflects the enthusiasm for learning of a dedicated educator. Her prose is simple and straight-forward without being clumsy or crudely oversimplified. Take, for instance, her posting of April 17, 2007, a posting devoted to the Cerebellum: "Near the back and bottom of the brain, next to the brain stem, is the CEREBELLUM, a round, lumpy structure resembling cauliflower and about the size of a small fist. It handles motor patterns, coordinates muscle movement, and is responsible for maintaining bodily equilibrium such as posture and balance. It also handles cognitive patterns such as speaking, and automates certain repetitive tasks. Lastly, it is the section of our brains that responds to novelty. Like the rest of the brain, it has two hemispheres connected by a thick wad of nerves." After reading this passage, we get a clear idea of what the Cerebellum is, what it does and a good image of how it looks, all in a clean and polished prose that gently teaches us without being overly didactic, a concern we all share in our careers as educators. Similar postings on nearly every part of the brain, from the amygdala and reticular formation to emotions and attention, pepper the blog and are always written with the same mix of easy-to-follow learnedness and bright-eyed enthusiasm. There is even a helpful link called "The Brain 101" which gives a link to all of Laurie's postings related to the brain for anyone interested in learning But Ms. Laurie is not content to let this kind of knowledge rest on its own laurels. Between her more scientifically-minded entries, she has also posted a number of entries detailing her attempt to incorporate knowledge of the brain into her classroom practices. In a follow-up posting to her entry on the cerebellum - in which we learned that the cerebellum is responsible for motor patters and muscle movement - she builds on a quote by Robert K. Greenleaf and offers suggestions as to how we can incorporate movement into the classroom. "Incorporating some form of movement or novelty into any presentation, especially if the audience has been sitting still for quite awhile or listening to a monotone, can be quite beneficial since movement and novelty can wake up the brain and give it a link for remembering." It may be cute, but it works! This is real knowledge with real application for real students and Laurie does a wonderful job of reminding us why we chose to enter this most sacred of professions in the first place. Laurie moves confidently from discussing the latest findings of neuroscientists like Giacomo Rizzolati and V.S. Ramachandran to offering tips on classroom organization and the importance of sleep in the learning process to a quick tutorial on RSS feeds, all of which centers on one question: how can we use this knowledge to better facilitate student learning? For this is not simply a blog about the brain (there are a number of sites out there devoted to just this topic). It's a well-written, visually stimulating, informative editorial about one educator's ongoing attempt to incorporate neurological research in her approach to education.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5101 2007-11-05T16:08:52Z 2007-11-06T03:21:23Z

Did you know they've made a movie out of this? Despite the typical promotional histrionics, it looks like it could be decent, though I'm not sure what snowboarding has to do with anything. (And I just looked over Tougaw's blog...

Andrew Statum movie out of this? Despite the typical promotional histrionics, it looks like it could be decent, though I'm not sure what snowboarding has to do with anything. (And I just looked over Tougaw's blog and found out these last two sentences were completely redundant. My apologies. I'm a total rip-off artist.)]]> The Diving Bell and the Butterfly seems to me one of those cultural artifacts that are all but immune from criticism, like a painting by a retarded person or a symphony from someone with autism. Yeah, their works are all pretty incredible, but they're far from masterpieces. What makes them spectacular to contemplate is their sources, the artists themselves who we think are debilitated beyond all hope but then spin off a piece of art a "normal" person could never hope to create. But at the same time, if a "normal" person did create the same piece as a "handicapped" person, the "normal" piece, I imagine, would be held to a much higher standard than the "handicapped" one. So, it seems to me that there are two sets of standards in play when we evaluate something like Bauby's book. It's kind of like the Olympics and the Special Olympics. Yes, the "special" olympians are very gifted athletes. But we would never ask them to compete with the non-disabled athletes. That's not fair to anybody. And even when the "special" olympians are competing only against other "special" olympians, all of us are loathe to call those who don't finish in first place "losers." Every single participant in the Special Olympics is considered a winner because all of the athletes had to overcome severe disabilities simply to be able to compete. So, in a way, every "special" athlete's accomplishment, regardless of placement in the race, is on the same level. The gold medal winner and the kid that finishes in last place have all, kind of won the same amount. But at the same time, doesn't having this separate standard devalue the "worth" of a piece of art created by someone with a physical or mental disability? Are we supposed to judge this work against all other so-called "great" works, or should we only contextualize it within the universe of other works by people with "disabilities?" Or should we abstain from judgment entirely? Rather, should we as consumers of art scrutinize the piece not as a work of art, but as a product of what those in the movie-hype business call, "the human spirit," something that is valuable simply because it exists? I don't know. On one hand, I thought the book itself was kind of a let down. I felt like there wasn't so much a narrative as there was a loosely related series of anecdotes and observations. Bauby's wife and kids come off as very flat characters and even his strongest memories, I felt, weren't translated well to the page. But on the other hand, the story outside of, and partially woven into, the book is incredible. I mean, a man with locked-in syndrome using only his left eyelid to blink out a book? How can you hate on that? I feel as though a book like this is not meant to be considered for its aesthetic qualities but for the mere fact that it exists at all, the fact of which certainly alters Bauby's work in my estimation. If he didn't have locked-in syndrome and he wrote this as a piece of fiction, I'd say this book sucks. (As a side note, I wonder how Claude must have felt when she read the parts of Bauby's work that dealt with her. "I study her dark hair," she read back to him, "her very pale cheeks, which sun and wind have scarcely touched with pink, the long bluish veins on her hands." What if, at some point, she was dictated the words, "I think I'm falling in love with Claude"? How agonizingly self-conscious she must have been during every trip to Bauby's room.)]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5100 2007-11-05T14:27:58Z 2007-11-05T15:13:48Z

So there I am, one of what must have been thousands of race fans posted along the curb a few strides after mile marker 24 in Central Park on Sunday afternoon, scanning the river of runners going by for the...

Andrew Statum So there I am, one of what must have been thousands of race fans posted along the curb a few strides after mile marker 24 in Central Park on Sunday afternoon, scanning the river of runners going by for the familiar faces of our loved ones. Mine, I knew, was wearing orange. This was Natasha's first marathon and, as she's from Florida, she decided to wear a Florida Gators running shirt - orange with blue trim. My camera was on the "burst" setting and I was poised to strike. How could I miss her? Surely, with an orange shirt and red hair, she'd stick out like a sore thumb. we should get medals for our sustained mental exercise! If we could somehow hook our cars up to our minds when we're "looking out" for something, there wouldn't be an energy crisis. Polar bears would be around for our kids to enjoy and Al Gore would be another fat customer greeter at the Wal-Mart in Knoxville, TN. Maybe it could work something like this: we'd plug our awesome future-cars into a discreet socket right behind our ears and then we'd watch a matrix of images scroll by on a screen (provided to us by the car company, of course) and we'd have to watch out for how many times a picture with a red balloon flashes up. The electricity generated by our brains would charge the car and off we'd go (careful to unplug the car from our heads before leaving, of course). Anyway, Natasha did great and we were able to meet up afterwards. I got a few pictures of her looking exhausted under the foil blanket. Mission accomplished.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5010 2007-11-01T16:40:57Z 2007-11-01T16:59:05Z

I was born in Colorado in 1980, a healthy 7 lbs, 10 oz. to a mother with thick brown hair and a father with a sharp nose and a perennially clueless air about his movements....

Andrew Statum I was born in Colorado in 1980, a healthy 7 lbs, 10 oz. to a mother with thick brown hair and a father with a sharp nose and a perennially clueless air about his movements. I was not born in Colorado. At least I don't think I was. I don't remember being born so I have to take someone else's word on this, but I always wanted to be. I was born in Virginia, a fact I find boring for some reason. When I was in fourth grade I played a game called "Two Truths and a Lie" and my birthplace was one of the lies and when it came time to reveal my lie, I maintained it was the truth because I wanted it so badly to be so. When I was eight, my cousin, to whom I always looked up, went to Colorado on a backpacking trip and I idolized her so much I wanted to be just like her, but without the vagina. But I didn't want to be just like her. I wanted to be better than her; more than her. What better way to be more than her than to be from the place she was merely going to on a visit? So yes, I am from Colorado, I remember now. I grew up in a small village outside of Grand Junction called Mesa Verde. My hobbies as a child included tree climbing, mountaineering, and Legos, hobbies for which my status as a single child and the peculiar geography of my home state afforded ample opportunity for exploration and growth. By the age of ten, I was an accomplished hiker, earning the title of "Junior Mountaineer" a full two years ahead of my closest rival (and best friend) Sam. I knew all the trails by heart and I didn't even need a compass because my inner ears, like all children of my state, were so conditioned by the land that I was able (and still am, to a degree) to orient myself into alignment with the Earth's magnetic field, a force whose power is strangely amplified at Mesa Verde, thanks to the high levels of magnetite found in the topsoil there. My mother taught preschool at Davidson elementary and my father was an engineer for Boeing in Denver, a job to which he commuted by Volvo stationwagon 1.5 hours each way, five days a week. He made good money detecting flaws in the wing designs of that company's 700 series airplanes. Perhaps you've heard of them? 737's, 747's, 757's? My dad did that. tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.5009 2007-11-01T15:51:28Z 2007-11-01T16:40:24Z

Lauren, Lauren, you pesky, saucy minx. I think you may have lied to me, but I can't prove it. Tisk, tisk....

Andrew Statum Lauren, Lauren, you pesky, saucy minx. I think you may have lied to me, but I can't prove it. Tisk, tisk. Lying on many levels. First of all, I think it's a good, well-written story. Whether it's "true" or whether it's "made up" doesn't enter into consideration of how artfully and convincingly the Slater portrays her characters or weaves her plot or draws out her themes. And beyond that, it was an entertaining read. For me, all of the elements of a "good story" were present. The "truthfulness" of the story, I think, only enters into my estimation of the book as a secondary, maybe even a tertiary consideration. Though it is the central device, it's only possible if the primary elements of the writing (plot, character, language, etc.) are strong enough to support it, which I think they are. So, that being said, I have the utmost respect for Slater's technique and craft as a writer, but I came away with a bitter taste in my mouth from Lying. I don't want to be flirted with when I read. The entire book, I felt, resonated with a kind of childish coyness that, after a while, just got old. I felt like Slater was prodding me in the ribs over and over again and asking me to consider how clever she was in being able to keep the "historical truth" of her life at bay. Like that guy in that old Monty Python sketch who keeps nudging the guy beside him and saying "See? See? Know what I mean? Huh? Get it? See?" A joke's not funny if you have to ask, "Do you get it?" For me, I think, this book would have worked better if it were billed as a "Memoir of the Growth of an Imagination" because I think Lying perfectly captures the will to gleeful exaggeration that children have. For example, that bit about sticking her head in the toilet bowl to hear what her parents were talking about downstairs. That seems like something a child (Hell, even an adult with magically-inclined mind) would imagine to be a viable solution. Narrating such an incident seems a reasonable way to go about giving us the "narrative truth" of the development of someone's mind while it is in its pre-adolescent phase. But to say one actually stuck one's head in a toilet bowl, and then to string together a bunch of other magical anecdotes that may or may not have happened and slap the label "Memoir" on it seems to me an intentionally provocative ploy to sell a book within a nonfiction-hungry market saturated to the bursting point with autobiography. To say this is how her mind works as an adult; I don't buy it. She's a psychologist for God's sake. And what exactly is the "narrative truth" of Slater's story? She exaggerates? That artistic invention is like epilepsy? Am I missing something?]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.4880 2007-10-29T19:17:21Z 2007-10-29T19:34:44Z

Speaking of nostalgia, I went to a wedding this weekend....

Andrew Statum Speaking of nostalgia, I went to a wedding this weekend. Bleu Rock Inn in Washington, Virginia (not DC). Anyway, the weather was crummy leading up to the thing but once Saturday arrived the weather turned crisp and dry and sunny. Being in the mountains really made me miss Virginia. Back when I was small, my great aunt had a farm near Charlottesville and my mother and I used to go there every year for a week or so. I remember everytime we went turning onto this one road where the Blue Ridge mountains finally came into sight. It was always so magical, leaving the flat world behind for the world of slanted slopes and elevations. Everything smelled so clean and it was quiet and there was a tire swing hanging from this great oak tree (at least I think it was an oak tree but what do I know about botany?) and this stone wall left over from the Civil War which I was told to stay away from because there were snakes living in it. Man, speaking of the Civil War, talk about nostalgia! That is one collective memory the Southern States will never get over, kind of like Brooklyn and The Dodgers (kind of, but not really). Here's a fun fact that I didn't know until my Uncle said so: Southern historians refer to Civil War battles by the nearest town while Northern historians refer to the same battles by the nearest body of water. So, the Battle of Manassas (Southern) is the same thing as the Battle of Bull Run (Northern), it just depends, more or less, on where the particular historian is from. Huh. Who knew? Anyway, I got to see Mom and all my aunts and uncles and cousins and my girlfriend got to meet the bunch of them for the first time and everyone loved everyone and got along perfectly ("She's a keeper," Mrs. Winstead, an old church friend, whispered to me before she left). Family reunions are really a showcase for nostalgic recollections. The old people all talked about growing up in Cleveland and the younger of us (all in their late-twenties and early thirties so not that young anymore) rehashed our own teenage dramas. For the entire weekend, everyone was so happy reliving everything that ever happened between us. And you know what? You can ignore my earlier post. Nostalgia is pretty damn awesome! ]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.4538 2007-10-21T15:02:47Z 2007-10-29T19:13:26Z

I used to think Wordsworth was full of shit. "Though nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; / We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind."...

Andrew Statum I used to think Wordsworth was full of shit. "Though nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; / We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind." Strength? In what remains behind? In nostalgia? You gotta be kidding me! these memories? If I smell cut grass, why don't I remember cutting grass? Why do I remember, say, the grains on the maple tree in my Uncle's back yard and get this vague yet intense and implacable sense of loss? It's just a stupid tree! Perhaps there are those rare people, artists mostly, for whom nostalgia can be harnessed and put to good use. Like Proust. Like Joyce. Like this Franco Magnini guy. Good for them. For these lucky few, their art becomes a means to bridge the gap of nostalgia, a way for them to reassemble the best (and the worst) parts of their past. But for me, nostalgia seems like such a plague. A bittersweet plague, sweet because I get to re-experience something wonderful, bitter because the memory is never as wonderful as the actual experience and leaves me with the feeling that I will never recapture the essence of a joyous lived experience. Ultimately, I'm left with the grief of loss. But nostalgia, I guess, is really a necessary evil. And I think Sacks, in The Landscape of His Dreams really gets at the nostalgia that is impetus behind many people's need for artistic expression - the need to recapture the past, the need to rebuild an experience - or an entire world as in Magnini's case - that is gone. But what makes the past so great? Isn't it just this feeling of nostalgia that makes everything seem more than what it was. Right? But even if I acknowledge that nostalgia is warping my memories, I still feel the need to somehow relive them. Perhaps that's my bulwark against an uncertain future. Even if a memory isn't that great, at least I know, unlike the future, that it's there, that it happened (even though the more we read about memory in this class, the less confident I am in the content of my memories). I don't know. The good old days can't come back. But I guess they're not going anywhere either. So in the end, perhaps nostalgia's a good thing. And maybe Wordsworth's not too far off after all. Maybe there is "strength in what remains behind." At least there's a little something left of the past for me to savor. The good memories and the bad, they're not completely gone. It's how you use it, I guess, that makes you who you are.]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.4485 2007-10-19T18:51:03Z 2007-10-19T19:18:50Z

Here's a link to a comment on an article (is that four levels of intentionality? three?) in a blog called Cognitive Daily discussing change over time in language:...

Andrew Statum change over time in language:]]> quick internet search, this seems to hold up across different language families, especially the Indo-European Language group (that is, the sound of the number "two"). So I guess the general argument would be, the more we use something, the more it stays the same? There seems to be a lot of sense in this, especially as I remember by desk job days. Everyday was a blurred reprint of the day before. It get so you can get through the day without opening your eyes to orient yourself. But back to language, I would imagine this to hold true especially for "swear" words. Shit. Ass. Damn. That other one I'm not brave enough to put in my blog, the king of the swear words, pronounced "fudge" by Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Where did these words come from? What were their historical contexts? And how much have they changed over time? I think I remember being surprised to read the word "fart" in one of the Canterbury Tales and have it mean the same thing in 14-whatever that it does today. Is it because we use these words so frequently that they haven't changed? I need only walk around the city for five minutes where I overhear every naughty word ever devised by man for a nice little sample of the frequency of usage of these words. Or is it because there's something intrinsically, I don't know, meaningful about these sounds that prevents them from changing over time?]]> tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/0907N_1599/001//315.4457 2007-10-18T16:45:21Z 2007-10-19T18:27:54Z

Criticism anymore is hard for me to swallow. Not that it ever was "easy" to read or understand. But there's something much more accessible and honest in the pre-theoretical criticism of Edmund Wilson or Lionel Trilling, or even Samuel Johnson...

Andrew Statum Criticism anymore is hard for me to swallow. Not that it ever was "easy" to read or understand. But there's something much more accessible and honest in the pre-theoretical criticism of Edmund Wilson or Lionel Trilling, or even Samuel Johnson for that matter, than there is in, say, the Freudians or the post-structuralists who all seem to write criticism for the sake of criticism as opposed to writing criticism for the sake of the reader. So much of what passes for "literary criticism" embraces that technical jargonistic gobbledy-gook of the theoretical sciences that it's entirely unreadable by anyone outside of the handful of academicians who have read each other's papers. The entire enterprise smacks of career advancement chicanery. Mrs. Dalloway. No there's not. It's grape juice that gets you drunk and makes you feel sexy. That's why its good.]]>