Another death

Goodbye, J.D. Salinger.

Thank you for The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Nine Stories.

We'll celebrate Salinger's literary masterpieces in my English classes tomorrow. Most of his writings are available to read on this site.

Elation!

A little snow goes a long way! School closed for an early dismissal due to a little snow shower we had this morning.

Good news like this makes me feel like my complaints pale in significance. I like being proven wrong.

If I don't find time for intellectual stimulation today, it's my own fault.

Time to snuggle up with Nukah, a mug of hot cocoa, Arthur Russell's Love is Overtaking Me, and my favorite whale of a tale, Moby-Dick.

(Rest in peace, Howard Zinn.)

Another note in the (shallow?) complaint box

I miss the city.

My days are filled, attempting to intellectually stimulate high school students and by the time I leave work, I don't want to think for myself.

I'm in desperate need of company, people with similar senses of humor, good taste in literature, and an ability to memorize important works of art like The Big Lebowski.

I miss Joseph.

I hate the recession and I want to go home.

Obama, please say the right thing. Don't mess this up. Give the people some hope. Tell me it's going to get better soon. Tell me I can go home again.

Ennui

This week began with a downpour, which created flooding and led to mud.

Everywhere I go, obvious statements abound: "It's raining," and "It's cold outside," and "The sidewalks are slippery."

We've run out of things to say. I've retreated into silence and the supine position.

Wake me up when it's spring.

Educational cinema for this week's classes:
The Big Lebowski
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
THX 1138

Gili Frankenstein and her little monsters

I took the day off to restore my health. While at home, I wrote course descriptions for next year. I'm adding a cultural literacy class to my schedule. Here's an excerpt of a note to my father, justifying my reasoning for teaching this class:

This class developed because I'm teaching the seniors about emerging arts and I realized how sad it is that they don't know much about very, very recent history. None of them had heard of ACT-UP, the Guerrilla Girls, the Riot Grrrl Movement, etc. What I realized is that as a teenager, I was voracious about learning about urban culture and found ways to educate myself. Many of my students want to become artists, but have very little connection to other artists who came RIGHT before them. I know that it's not unusual for students to be out of touch with political issues and movements. I was alarmed by the lack of knowledge possessed by my students who often pretend to be city-savvy. I have a student who is extremely well-read and smart, but he'd never heard of Alfred Hitchcock. They have virtually no exposure to non-mainstream movies. I never felt outdated or old until I realized that these students are often living as though they are inventing the wheel. While the students are online day in and out, I asked two of them to facilitate an introduction to Frankenstein and they came back, saying that there just wasn't that much information about it online. HELLO! ALARMED OVER HERE! They need queer theory, they need film criticism, they need inter-textual studies. The class could also be called, "Gili's Concern for the Ignorant Youth She Teaches." Basically, I'm going to make them all into little Gili-clones. It's time to shake things up.

That's Ms. Frankenstein to you!

Kaaterskill Falls, winter edition

We spent our three-day weekend in nature.




Who am I?


Ever-shifting, ever-changing.


Don't question it. Just go with it.


Someday this will all make sense.

A walk in the woods

We climbed Overlook Mountain today.


Nukah made it almost all the way up to the top. Check out those swinging ears!


Then we descended.


As always, Joe took the beautiful nature photography.


One of Nukah's grandmothers, Joe's mom gave Nukah a doggy-treat kit for Hanukah.




He's a very happy (and spoiled) pup.

Adrift

Cornelius' Memorial at Saugerties Lighthouse

I can't resist.

This is Nukah after a very long day. I took him to school in the afternoon to run around with the students and tire himself out. It's a trick, so he'll sleep through the night.

Because of complications with book ordering, my seventh grade English class is now reading Life of Pi, which I've never read, meaning that along with keeping a few chapters ahead in Moby-Dick, I'm also going to have to race forward with Life of Pi. I like to make work for myself.

I've asked my boss if next year I can teach a cultural literacy class and she said yes. I'm thinking of drafting a list of (reasonable) demands for my second year.

Gotta hit the books before the three-day weekend.

Rage against the whatever

I'm bored with my blog. I've been lazy about posting anything substantial, probably because I'm tired by the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is articulate myself.

Tomorrow I'm teaching about wrath in art to my Seven Deadly Sins class. I love thinking about anger, an active, fueling feeling. This class will be the opposite of an anger management support group.

I'll introduce them to The Guerrilla Girls, Lydia Lunch, the rise of Riot Grrrl culture, and Bikini Kill. I'm mostly familiar with anger/wrath in feminist and queer art, so it will be interesting to see what the seniors come up with when asked to list things that they're angry about and how they would express their anger through art. It shouldn't be very hard to get a group of high school students to locate their inner rage.

While researching tomorrow's class, I found a new fabulous blog worth following.

Maybe I should add a daily filling-me-with-rage-at-the-moment item to my blog.
Something I'm angry about right now:
I asked another group of my students, who are reading Moby-Dick to find excerpts in a series of chapters that are important to the book as a whole and explain why they chose these excerpts. One of my students wrote:
"Sadly, once again this chapter fails to deliver even the slightest morsel of plot development or character development but indulges instead in a gluttonous feast of philosophical treatise of the most tangential kind rather like The Da Vinci Code."

Nukah takes the catwalk

Nukah's photographer is back in town.


Joseph arrived this afternoon to hugs and kisses from his woman and puppy-friend. I took a series of not-so-great photographs like this one. Joseph took the other four on this post.


We played in the snowy field behind the library.


Joseph is building a portfolio of photographs for Nukah's modeling career.


Plus, we had our second two-hour delay at school, so today was absolutely wondrous.

Have I mentioned that I have a new puppy?

I've promised myself that I won't become that blogger, who writes endlessly about her puppy and posts pictures of her dog in each and every adorable pose. I've promised Riva that I won't dress up Nukah in stupid outfits. I think I still am allowed a few more days of obnoxious canine posts before I need to reign it in.

(While typing this, Nukah woke up and rolled off my bed and onto the floor. He quickly recovered. He's so deliciously clumsy!)

Winter break ended today, and after I had finished teaching for the day, I picked up Nukah from home and brought him to school to meet the students. He was so excited to meet (and smell) everyone and everything. By the time I drove him home, he was ready for bed.


Before


After

Cornelius' last morning

Firsts and lasts

Today is Cornelius' last day with us. She snuggled with me and even allowed Nukah to get close. I can't write more about her right now.


Joseph gave Nukah his very first bath.


He was a shiny puppy until we took him for a walk. Because his body is so low to the ground, he managed to acquire a thick layer of dirty snow across his belly and on his paws.