I spent some time this three-day weekend thinking about what changes I’m going to make in my teaching of the Puritans in general and The Crucible in particular. Since this is my third straight year teaching this unit, I should have some fairly concrete ideas. And I do. I’m essentially going to weave in more of the historical information (additional readings should help), use as much audio and video support as I can muster (this page will prove helpful as always), and change my approach to the McCarthyism business of the 1950s. Instead of reading the usual boring stuff about Senator Joseph McCarthy, I think we’ll view one of the many wonderful films dealing with themes of McCarthyism. We should be able to get a good essay out of all this material when we’re done.
This American Life can be a little corny at times, but Ira Glass has a real talent for getting moving stories out of everyday people.
I discovered this absolutely compelling piece about Phil Collins (Against All Odds) and one of his biggest fans. Even if you are NOT a Phil Collins fan, check out this piece with him on the show.
It’s extraordinary radio. The episode starts with a simple premise — girl with a broken heart wants to talk to Phil about heartbreak, and then it evolves into something quite different. By the end, barriers come down, and its turns into one of the most personal and affecting interviews about loss I think I’ve ever heard.
Like everyone who watched the 1972 Munich Olympics, I was quite taken with Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut — the 4-foot-11, 85-pound sprite who performed a back flip off the uneven bars, danced on the four-inch-wide balance beam, and seduced a worldwide audience with her floor exercise routine “like a little kid playing in the sun,” in the words of ABC commentator Jim McKay. During the intervening years she has taken a tumble from the world’s stage, but her fans still love her.
NOTE: The above documentary film first aired on the BBC in August of 2001.
I’ve been very busy finishing up a book about MLA documentation. Coyote Canyon Press hopes to publish it as a paperback original this September. Yes, I know, It’s a pretty quick deadline, which means the book pretty much has taken over my life — the implications of which are long hours at the computer. It can be a lonely life and not an exciting way to spend your summer vacation, but inspiration helps. Lately I’ve been watching the great Arthur Rubenstein play the piano. Wish I might grow old as gracefully as he.
Please help support the work I do as a teacher and purchase a copy of this book of wonderful poems by Robert Frost. I selected and edited the poems and wrote the explanatory notes, and Coyote Canyon Press did a great job with their high production standards.
Throughout the summer I’ll post news and events related to the book, which should be a steady seller since interest in Robert Frost has been a constant for the past half century.
On this day in 1972, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) office. They were later charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them and two other men (E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy) for conspiracy, burglary and violation of federal wiretapping laws.
The purpose of the break-in is slightly complex, but here goes. Former Howard Hughes business associate John H. Meier, working with Hubert Humphrey, wanted to feed misinformation to Richard Nixon. Meier told Richard Nixon’s brother, Donald, that he was sure the Democrats would win the election since they had a lot of information on Nixon’s illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released. Meier told Donald Nixon that Larry O’Brien, the Chairman of the DNC, had the information. This provided the President with the motivation to order the break-in of O’Brien’s office as he wanted to see if anything was going to break before the election.
All seven men arrested were either directly or indirectly employees of President Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, CREEP, and many people, including the trial judge, John J. Sirica, suspected a conspiracy involving higher-ups in the government. The scandal revealed the existence of a White House dirty tricks squad, which was behind an orchestrated campaign of political sabotage, an enemies list, a “plumbers” unit to plug political leaks and a secret campaign slush fund associated with CREEP, all with high-level administration involvement. It brought into the open the involvement of Attorney General John N. Mitchell in the dirty tricks, funds and cover-up, as well as key White House advisers, all of whom went to prison for these crimes, for sentences of one to four years. The jail terms had been shortened on the basis of the high level of the convicted, and their cooperation in the hearings.
Coyote Canyon Press is publishing a book of Robert Frost’s early poetry, for which I did the editing, selected the poems, and wrote explanatory notes. The idea was a simple one: gather up the poems from Frost’s first three volumes and write notes for the poems that needed some sort of explanation. The title of the book is SELECTED EARLY POEMS. This is a first publication credit for me, with my name on the front cover, and I’m still not even sure how to contain my disbelief and excitement over this.
Here’s a brief overview of the book: In 1913, Robert Frost published A BOY’S WILL, his first collection of poems, a series of sharply rendered scenes of New England rural life. A second volume, NORTH OF BOSTON, followed in 1914 and contained some of Frost’s most brilliant and best-loved works: “Mending Wall,” “After Apple-Picking,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “Birches.” In 1916 Frost followed up these two volumes with MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, which included many of his most moving poems: “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Hill Wife,” and “The Road Not Taken.” The book I edited for Coyote Canyon Press republishes all three of Frost’s first collections originally published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, New York. My explanatory notes reveal Frost’s complex relation to modern and classical poetic traditions, his knowledge of science and philosophy, and his tremendous ear for the rhythms of English, which enabled him to write the finest blank verse since Milton.
The book should be available through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble in about two weeks. I’ll provide links when the book hits the stores.
I remember clearly the day Nixon resigned.