Results of Ruminations

The school where I teach has a different way of approaching the Language Arts and history cores. We combine them into a single course. It's twice as long, but it covers both curricula and gives me a chance to dive a little deeper into our coursework as a result. There are immense advantages to this, but there are some downsides. One of them is that my Language Arts instruction is, strangely enough, subsumed most of the time. When I was in college, I studied how to be an English teacher, gaining ideas for writing projects, how to read books, and discussing literature in great depth. Those are skills that I leverage now in my current courses, and I think they're some of the best tools I have. But I also designed content around some of the more nitty-gritty stuff, like grammar, different types of creative writing, and poetry. I don't have the opportunity to teach most of my sophomores about that type of "English" stuff nowadays. Proof positive of this deficiency ...

I've been sitting on completed manuscripts for too long now, and they're starting to burn in me a little. I feel like I need to step up my agent query list, but every time I send out and get rejected, I feel burned and disheartened. It's been a long while since I tried to query (months at the minimum) and I need to put my work out more fully. Every time I'm rejected, though, I figure that it's because I haven't put enough polish/work on my book. That is true, though that may not be the reason I didn't hook an agent before. No, I think that there are a lot of factors that are connected to my failure to get anything accomplished on the publishing front and I can't control most of them. Those that I can, however, mostly involve the amount of work I can do in my revisions. But I keep landing on my perennial problem: I don't like doing revisions. I don't like revisiting stories I've told, I'm tired of the characters, plot, and words. I wish...

Since I've moved to New Place, I've taken it upon me to wash the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher on an almost-nightly basis. There are two reasons for that, so far as I can see, and I think they're both worthwhile. One, it's a small but necessary chore that no one really likes doing. My wife does a lot of (read: a massive amount of) other things already, so this is a way for me to show my appreciation of her, relieving a persistent responsibility. Two, it gives me some positive private time. Okay, so it isn't particularly private. I'm standing in the middle of the kitchen, often with the kids running around the island counter, chasing and laughing at each other. Our house is arranged in such a way that our kitchen is the most open room, the roof vaulting from the outside wall up above the second story (or, if you're British, storey) bedroom. It's about as far from "private" as can be. However, since my older boys might get roped int...

I finished listening to Reza Aslan read his book Zealot . If you aren't aware of who Reza Aslan is, he is the host of Bel iever   in which he explores some of the different religions of the world. (Because I don't have a cable package, I haven't seen any of the show. He is a bit of a polemicist, to put it mildly, so some of what he does stirs people up. So, be warned*.) The book has long been on my radar. Reza Aslan is a Muslim who has dabbled in Christianity and eventually dedicated his life to studying different religions. He is a believer in God--a practicing Muslim as he is, that should come as no surprise--but his own personal experiences with Christianity came about as a youth. After some time, he lost faith in Jesus the Christ, but never stopped wanting to know more about Jesus of Nazareth. Zealot  is a culmination of his study of the life of the latter. Lots of people have spoken about Aslan's work, and since it's widely available, I don't want to tu...

This article shocked me. I know that is click bait on my part, but you should go back and look at it. Can you conceive of an American war* in which over 2 million soldiers' lives were lost? Can you then imagine them not being remembered? A memorial to commemorate the names of the fallen would be, were it to be modeled after the Vietnam War memorial, over eight and a half miles long.  This memorial is about a quarter of a mile long. Picture source . I finished my annual rereading of All Quiet on the Western Front . It's always a difficult read, and the last fifty pages are particularly grim, if only because of the hopelessness that permeates it. The pity of war is rendered so starkly there that I feel my teaching of the topic is in some ways superfluous. Nevertheless, I feel I have an obligation to teach about the First World War with as much sympathy and detail as I can muster, if only because it is so often misremembered by America--and almost forgotten by German...

Over the last six or seven years, I've been trying to refine what my voice sounds like as a writer. Of course, there's the discrepancy between the fact that written language and spoken  language are rather different fundamentally. It's one of the weird things about writing: Whoever it was who did it first chose, for whatever reason, to name this phenomenon as "voice". It's not aural, but visual. It resides in its own part of the brain where characters live. I've often said that writers are strange folk because they scriven what the voices in their heads say, then demand that someone else pay money to go through that same imagination. Basically, we pay to hear the voices in another's head. I think that's where the voice concept comes in. The cadences and tones are imagined, and the best readers are the ones who differentiate between those separate voices naturally. Writers who sell well, broadly speaking, are those who can communicate that unique ...

While talking with a friend on the way home from writers' group, I had a bit of an epiphany. It may be a thought that has been expressed by other, more intelligent and better read thinkers out there, but it was something that struck a nerve in me. It's pretty simple: High- and epic fantasy in the traditional vein is often propaganda for aristocratic suppression of the lower classes. Papa Tolkien  It's not unusual to give the title of "Father of modern fantasy" to J.R.R. Tolkien. Like other giants in their fields (Shakespeare, Freud, Marx, and many more), anyone attempting to work in the same genre or discipline has two options: Confront, or go around. There is no ignoring Tolkien if you're writing fantasy. Part of what makes him so fundamental is his tapping into mythic motifs, re-conceptualizing them and modernizing them in such a way that the topography of fantasy has been permanently shifted because of it. Probably laughing at all the imitators th...

Amid the perpetual noise of the internet and the jockeying for additional outrage over the latest political scandal--an almost daily occurrence these days--there's been a lot of clicks baited through headlines (which I'm quoting, not linking to, because I don't want to give them the satisfaction of having another visitor to their websites) such as "A 130-Year-Old Fact About Dinosaurs Might Be Wrong" and "Astonishing Discovery About Dinosaurs Shocks Scientists"* and my personal favorite, "A new theory could overturn one of the most central 'facts' about dinosaurs". Curious about this, I followed the link provided by one of the many paleontologists I follow on Twitter, which pointed me to a blog post by Dr. Paul Barrett. In his post " Shaking the tree ...", he explains the basic thesis of what he's conceived of, though the full article is behind a paywall from Nature  magazine**. It's not particularly technical, and...

I've lamented before that I feel like I don't know enough. Since I left college, I haven't felt as connected to the intellectual abilities I had started to build during my last year or two. In fact, one of my favorite experiences in all of university was my "Madness in Literature" class. This is one of the reasons that I quickly encourage students to look forward to and anticipate their next step in education. The class involved looking at madness--the way it was portrayed in literature, obviously, but also culturally, historically, and politically. The professor had never taught the course before, as it was a senior seminar, once-in-a-lifetime chance. I would swing by the professor's office to chat with her about ideas I'd had because of the readings, which was unusual for me. I generally let my classwork speak for itself. But there were a couple of professors whose acquaintance I pursued outside of the classroom. I appreciated Dr. Albrecht-Crane's ...

Where I live, there's just enough light pollution to keep most stars at bay. How interesting it is to consider that technology can push away the ancient photograph of celestial bodies that nightly parades, moving so predictably that we long assumed the stars more permanent than kings, more powerful than rulers. Were a civilization 65 million light years away to look through its telescope at our pale blue dot, they would see the light reflected off of dinosaur hides and feathers. Maybe that's why aliens haven't visited our planet: They're afraid of our teeth. The vastness of space is so mind-boggling big that it's sometimes easier to entrench than explore, to recoil instead of redouble our efforts to learn more. That emptiness--the same sky that almost everyone I know sleeps beneath--means something different to each person. How interesting it is to consider that the immensity of the galaxy in which we live, despite its ubiquity, can mean something so separate fr...

First off, the word pedagogy is weird. Generously, it sounds like "ped" meaning foot  (like in the word pedigree ) and "gogy" meaning "baby talk for 'doggy'". It doesn't mean either of those things. My favorite etymology website says that the word comes from the Greek and Latin meaning "education of boys". The way it's used nowadays, however, is the method of instruction--that is, the choices that an educator makes in her classroom, whether it be classroom management, assignments, or interaction with the students, all wrap into the broadest sense of pedagogy . I'm becoming increasingly unsure of how I approach things from a pedagogical standpoint, however. I've been teaching for nine years straight, to say nothing of the student teaching and substitute teaching I have under my size 34 belt. Existential crises are pretty common for me--paralyzing moments of crippling doubt that make me puzzle over almost every decision* ...

When I was a kid, I watched a massive amount of television. I remember watching TV even when I didn't want to watch what was on. Sitcoms were bittersweet: I liked a couple of them, but it also meant that cartoons were over for the day. I watched Mr. Belvedere and Charles in Charge . I spent time with Family Matters and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I liked Full House  (and totally crushed on Stephanie) and even tuned in to Home Improvement. Okay, so by saying "a couple of them", they obviously made a difference in my mind. Thinking back, the melange of TV shows I used to watch is essentially the feverdream fodder for " Too Many Cooks " , isn't it? Growing up with sitcom families, I did what (I think) most people do with shows and movies they love: They assume that there's a parallel between the lives on screen with reality. For example, I was always shocked and a little discomfited when one of the TV adults drank coffee. As a card-carrying Mormon family...

There are differences between guilt  and shame . I like what Dr. Burgo outlines in the linked article. Since I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both of those concepts are something that is not only discussed, but even preached, particularly about guilt. For example, Elder David A. Bednar, in a General Conference address, said a variation of what I've heard in one form or another throughout my life: "Guilt is to our spirit what pain is to our body—a warning of danger and a protection from additional damage." These two definitions aren't seamless. The doctor's point of view is that it is what we fear about others--their feelings, their lives, their thoughts toward us--and the harm we cause them that triggers the feeling of guilt. For the theologian, it is an internal thing, one about personal choices that aren't kosher. If Dr. Burgo's distinction were applied, Elder Bednar here is talking about shame. In line with Dr. Burgo...

A couple of years ago, Salt Lake City developed a hankering for some Comic Con (or ComiCon), ushering in a new wave of geek ephemera and focus on fandom. While my wife and I missed the first one or two, we decided to attend one of the cons when some of the Lord of the Rings  actors (particularly Sean Astin) showed up for the experience. Gayle put together a dress that looked like Arwyn from The Return of the King  and I wore some Hogwarts robes. We got a picture with Sean and generally had a good time. Since then, we've attended each convention, always going in costume. We've worn steampunk, Hogwarts, Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, and Queen Elizabeth with her Shakespeare. The boys sometimes come, wearing superhero costumes, dressing as Leonardo da Vinci, and even dressing up as dinosaurs. In short, we go and we participate and we enjoy the experience. Now feeling fairly familiar with how a convention works--how much there is to see and enjoy, how much time one is standin...

I am part of a writers' group. We've been meeting, fairly regularly, for over nine years. The members have shifted, unsurprisingly, as friends have moved away. Three of the original members are still around, with one who joined really early in the process sticking around, too. We've rotated from an apartment close to the mutual workplace (back when we knew each other just because of the place where we worked) to another house to another then another, and continuing onward for the better part of a decade. We've counted before: I think we've hit almost thirty novels, in one form or another. Some are complete; most are drafts that were abandoned via those aforementioned moves and/or lack of interest on the part of the writer. We meet Thursday nights for a couple of hours, using the group time as group therapy and forging friendships while also improving our writing. It's cathartic and enjoyable and one of the supports in my life that helps beat back my depression...

If you don't count the calendar shifts, today marks the 2,061st anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar. I'm not a classicist, but I hang out with one, and today he dressed in black. He discussed the events of that fateful day in Roman history, explaining what transpired, why they did what they did, and the consequence of Caesar's assassination. Today, I discussed the events of a different assassination, but not one less consequential: The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 103 years ago this June.   In the podcast lecture series I'm listening to, we covered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who was, along with the rest of his family, best known for their Shakespearean performances. We don't know if Mister Lincoln had read Julius Caesar , but it's almost certain that Booth had. Not even a week ago, someone breached the perimeter of the White House, though his motives aren't necessarily fatal. Still, ther...

Many years ago, I wrote a video game essay " On Violence ". Looking over it, I think there's some interesting stuff in there. While I no longer put a lot of thought into a video game theory--in part because what seems pertinent and permanent is quickly outmoded and outdated as the industry grinds along--it was fun to see some of my older thoughts on how violence and video games works on a theoretical level. I can say that I'm older now, but though the wisdom is lacking, I see there are other areas about violence that need discussing. This, of course, pertains to the annual trudging through the trenches that I do with my sophomores, looking at how the World Wars came to pass. We've only started this unit, but there's already a bit of...dread, if not in them, then in me. So the so-called "necessity of the wars" comes into my mind. When my middle child was born, I used to read to him for a few minutes as he fell asleep. I picked Violence  by Slavoj ...

For the first time in...well, months, really...I don't want to write an essay. There have been times when I didn't know what to talk about. I'd cast my eyes around my office, hoping for some inspiration to strike. My eyes would rove over books that I either remembered or had no memory of, depending on how long it had been since I read them. Most of those that I read I could probably regurgitate some event or other that happened in them, and any of those that I don't have any memory at all are probably those that I haven't actually read them yet. Nevertheless, they often spurred some topic or another. Not tonight. I finished some final thoughts and changes to my first World War I presentation that I'll be putting on tomorrow, which used up a lot of my time. Thinking about what I'm going to have to do to teach a handful of 15 and 16 year olds about the Great War always makes me glum. It's hard because I have a lot (for the lay person) of knowledge abou...