(What does it feel like to be the guy proposing on the big screen, when the girl says no? Ouch.)
This poem is mostly written in trochaic dimeter- STRESS-unstress X 2. The exceptions are the second couplet, which is trochaic trimeter, and the penultimate line which adds an unstressed beat at the beginning).
This certainly doesn’t indicate any blue blood (though my children can trace their patrilineal descent to Charlemagne four ways).
What it does indicate is a lack of care during the rinse cycle, I suppose.
As you know, from the photo at right, I wear coloured streaks in my hair. At present, all the lower couple of inches of my scalp all the way around is a fuchsia pink, and there are long midnight blue strips on either side. On the right it’s just above the ear, on the left it goes right up to the top of my head. (This sounds strange, but looks quite nice, and garners compliments all the time, so don’t worry about my sanity).
The top of my head is very white. (To effectively camouflage the instant roots I get because my hair grows so fast).
Usually, my brows are almost black (like my hair used to be. >>sigh<<) but lately half of one has lost its pigment. Today when I finished rinsing out the dye and blow-drying my hair, I looked into the mirror and discovered that my formerly white brow, is now blue.
I’m not sure what I think about this.
It’s not that I’m adverse to colour, obviously I’m not. Perhaps it’s just that this seems like an awful lot of blue. I usually wear blue mascara and eye liner, and the gem in my left nostril is blue, as well.
I like serendipity, though. It is what it is.
Blue.
I suppose next time I could accidentally dye it pink…
March is Literacy Month in the world of Rotary, and there is an interesting article in this month’s The Rotarian magazine. It quotes cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley saying,
…reading more fiction enables you to understand other people better. Fiction is about exploring a range of circumstances and interactions and characters you’re likely to meet. Fiction is not a description of ordinary life; it’s a simulation.
Well, duh. Any writer could tell you that. My husband, who has a psychology degree, vets my characters and makes sure I am keeping consistent psychological profiles and responses. I write teen fantasy, mind you. Even those of us crafting fictional worlds do so with care.
Our worlds are crafted to give our readers an opportunity to explore another life, other responses, other realities.
I find it vaguely amusing that the professional business world may not have realised that there is a reason literature is in the curriculum. It would behove more of our leaders to pay close attention to the lessons of Orwell’s 1984, for example. A more well-read population should also be quicker to recognise the danger signs they’ve seen in literature. That’s why I’m a high school English teacher. Along side the history teachers, I aim to provide warnings and inspiration. To raise the next generation to see with clear eyes and communicate their vision with well-chosen words.
Later in the article they quote Oatley quoting Aristotle, “History…tells us only what has happened, whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselves and other people.” He adds that fiction “measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.”
In the wake of pink shirt day, I have been noticing every day behaviours that people seem to find perfectly all right, without giving any thought to the ramifications of their actions.
They’ll wear their ‘Stand up to bullying’ pink shirts on the day, and then they’ll go home and send a “People of Walmart” slide show to three hundred of their closest friends on Facebook.
Or they’ll cheer for humiliating treatment of prisoners by an Arizona warden and share that post around the internet.
Someone told me the other day that fat brides don’t deserve nice weddings. Excuse me?
These people don’t seem to see their own hypocrisy.
How about promoting good nutrition in our schools with healthy free school lunches and home ec programs? How about social justice rather than incarceration?
How about helping people instead of mocking them? How about respecting people instead of insulting them? Who made you better than the everyone else?
Keep your pink shirt on. We’ve got a long way to go.
I thought I’d have a ring or bracelet made with a Latin inscription that reminds me of my goal to “write a thousand words a day.” I have played around with the Google translator and it offers me:
Scribere milia verborum quotidie
It looks rather impressive, doesn’t it? Unfortuately, the ring I have in mind has room for 30 characters, and this is 32. I could go with “write a thousand”
Scribere milia
or even “a thousand words”
Milia verborum
I could skip the amount, and just say “write daily” which is probably the most essential point
Scribere quotidie
Finally, I decided that I could boil it down to a single injunction:
Scribere nunc
Yep. That’s the crucial component of the exercise. Quit goofing around. No more procrastinating. Turn off Facebook. Quick checking out eBay.
This is Pink Shirt Day, and it’s a day to talk openly about bullying. In schools all over Canada, teachers and students put on pink shirts and take a stand against bullying.
It’s a day to confront victimization, and a day to talk about personal ethics amid hypocrisy.
When I ask a class full of teens whether they’ve ever been bullied, every hand goes up. Every kid knows what it feels like to be looked down on, pushed around, and belittled.
Then I ask them, how many of them have ever bullied someone else, and the hands rise again. Not usually all the hands this time, but awfully close. 95 per cent, say. Let’s be honest, who hasn’t snapped at his sibling, made a rude remark about the kid who wasn’t cool, just so you’d feel a little better about your own status?
“Look! I belong because you don’t.”
So wearing a pink shirt is fine, and I’ll be wearing mine. But I’ll be asking the hard questions. Not just “Did you feel bad when you were bullied?” but “Why did you do it to someone else?” “Why do you gain your personal power on the back of someone’s self-esteem? ”
Kids don’t get shaken down for lunch money any more. I’ve never seen a kid shoved into a locker who didn’t request his friends help him get in.
Kids learn to bully.
We have role models after all, of what civilized behavior looks like. We watch our political leaders shout obnoxious comments back and forth in the House of Commons and in our provincial Legislatures.
We watch talk show hosts encourage guests to jump on one another, as we gleefully anticipate the moment when all hell breaks loose.
We scream obscenities at rival sports teams.
We insult other cultures and religions. Red, brown, black, yellow, white. Everybody seems to have a colour that isn’t quite right.
We send soldiers to settle issues by fighting.
Why wouldn’t kids bully each other, when that’s what they see modeled every day?
So wear your pink shirt, but don’t think it’s going to stop anything, until the leaders quit using violence, obscenity and insult to get their way.
Don’t allow yourself to be bullied.
Take a stand and celebrate your unique place in the world.
Demand the respect you deserve.
Be proud you’re you.
.
.
Rather than feeling sorry for yourself, stand up proudly.
Don’t allow yourself to be bullied.
Take a stand and celebrate your unique place in the world.
I was a new teacher, substituting in an English class when I came across Tom Wayman’s poem “Did I Miss Anything?”. Every teacher hears the question several times each week as students who’ve missed a class come to see whether their grades will be impacted by their absences. It gets frustrating. Wayman’s poem reflects the frustration of teachers called to respond to that question.
Of course, the student missed something! If I am doing my job properly, just knowing the task assigned is not sufficient. It is in the preparation for the assignment and the discussion around it that the greatest learning can take place. The opportunity to consult with peers, to explore their understanding as well as your own helps you to grow as a learner. Of course, students miss something when they are not in class; moreover, the class misses something as well.
Your presence improves our learning, too. We miss you. You miss us.
In most cases, the world will not change dramatically because a student isn’t in class, but Tom Wayman imagines a time when that could be the case. His ironic tone matches those felt by those harried teachers who must attempt to synthesize instruction and discussion into a few seconds when they tell the student about the missing assignment while readying the class for the new lesson.
Shawn L. Bird 
Fictional truths March 3, 2013
Tags: business, fiction, Frank Bures, Keith Oatley, literacy, literature, reading, The Rotarian
March is Literacy Month in the world of Rotary, and there is an interesting article in this month’s The Rotarian magazine. It quotes cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley saying,
Well, duh. Any writer could tell you that. My husband, who has a psychology degree, vets my characters and makes sure I am keeping consistent psychological profiles and responses. I write teen fantasy, mind you. Even those of us crafting fictional worlds do so with care.
Our worlds are crafted to give our readers an opportunity to explore another life, other responses, other realities.
I find it vaguely amusing that the professional business world may not have realised that there is a reason literature is in the curriculum. It would behove more of our leaders to pay close attention to the lessons of Orwell’s 1984, for example. A more well-read population should also be quicker to recognise the danger signs they’ve seen in literature. That’s why I’m a high school English teacher. Along side the history teachers, I aim to provide warnings and inspiration. To raise the next generation to see with clear eyes and communicate their vision with well-chosen words.
Later in the article they quote Oatley quoting Aristotle, “History…tells us only what has happened, whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselves and other people.” He adds that fiction “measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.”
Hear. Hear.
.
Work cited:
Bures, Frank. “The Truth about Fiction.” The Rotarian. Vol 191 No. 9 March 2013. pp.29-30.
PS. It behoves me to mention that ‘behove’ is the British spelling of ‘behoove.’
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