Amy Loves Books

I cringe when music from The Cure is used to sell photo printers. I want to hide when they are playing The Sundays at The Gap. I don't like The Postal Service encouraging me that Kaiser Permanente is the best insurance company, and M&M's do not go with Iron and Wine.

That's why I am happy that, when they were invited to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Sex Pistols sent this response.

Labels: save as draft

painting by Cooper Sanchez

The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.
-Ian McEwan, Atonement

Labels: save as draft

In case you can't quite read the scripture:
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine Luke 4:7

They are quoting Satan.

(Yes, it's a real church and a real banner. To their credit, they have admitted the "oops". Someone my husband works with at Emory saved the previous banner and sent it to him. )

Labels: save as draft

Liz has tagged me with a meme. I did something like this about a year ago, and I've tried to think of different answers for the favorite books and meaningful books categories:

Five Books I Would Love To Teach (if only I had the books to teach with) -
I've found that the most enjoyable books to teach are ones that my students connect with and enjoy reading. This is my top five list of hard-to-resist classics.

The Unvanquished - because this is my favorite Faulkner novel and I have never taught Faulkner. I'm going to teach As I Lay Dying at the end of the semester, which I am awfully excited about.

The Count of Monte Cristo - I taught this years ago and LOVED it. At the time I was dreading having to read it, because it looked so incredibly boring. My best friend got to pick her own books and she teaches this one. I am jealous.

Brave New World- My kids really like Dystopian fiction, and I think this one is a necessary counterpart to Orwell's totalitarian visions.

The Great Gatsby- I could not teach this one unless I moved to eleventh grade, because it is the only novel on the list that the school actually owns copies of. Sadly, it's been taken by American Literature.

Sophie's World- High Schoolers are at the perfect developmental point for an introduction to philosophy. I've read bits of this out loud, and my kids loved it.

Last Book I Bought -
Totally geeky. I am a literature nerd. I normally do not read biography, but this one intrigued me and I just had to have it.
The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticisim by Megan Marshall


Last Book I Read -
Geeky again. Really, really geeky.
Indian Summer by William Dean Howells.

Five Books that Have Been Meaningful To Me -
Bastard Out Of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.
Closer to my family history than I am comfortable accepting.

The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle
Go ahead and laugh. I bought this to be snarky, thinking I'd hate it and laugh at it. It ended up probably saving my marriage. Go figure.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The best introduction to poverty I've read. No Christian should vote in any election without reading this book.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
How we make colossal mistakes trying to undo the collossal mistakes we think our parents made. Haunting. This book haunts me.

I Don't Know How She Does It. This was much more therapeutic than any how-to-be-a-perfect-parent-with-perfect-children books.

Three Books I Have Been Dying To Read -
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
The March by Doctorow
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke

Labels: save as draft

And behold, it shall be called The Science Fair Project.

Labels: save as draft

Sophia Peabody to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"Words cannot tell how immensely my spirit demands thee. Sometimes I almost lose my breath in a vast heaving towards thy heart....for me there is no life without a response of life from thee."

Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Peabody:
"I would write beautifully and make myself famous for your sake."
"How sweet would be my sleep, and how sweet my waking, when I should find your breathing self in my arms."
"What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow."

Elizabeth Peabody to her sister Sophia, after growing tired of Sophia's euphoric letters describing her newlywed bliss:
"You know, dear, there are different kinds of beautiful lives."

Labels: save as draft

As we are, reflected in a piece of contemporary art.

Taken in the new skybridge wing of the High, which truly deserves to be called one of the best new buildings in the world.

Labels: save as draft

I've had a rough two weeks at school. I've been sick. The whole giving-up-my-planning-period-and-teaching-an-extra-class thing has not been going very well, despite the chicken sandwiches. The boys/men in the class are just so incredibly needy. I've been tired by the time fourth block rolls around, my voice has been gone. I've found myself just wishing the bell would ring, and that is not the kind of teacher I want to be.

Now that I've started feeling better, I've been dealing with the (in my opinion) unjust expulsion of a student I love, and that I've felt (at times) like locking my door and screaming at the system. I try not to let it get to me. I often thank God that I am in my thirties, not my twenties, and have parented two children out of toddlerhood. Years of changing diapers and picking up Cheerios and washing puked on clothes and sheets and standing in front of a tantrum-throwing two-year-old who is ticked off that they can not wear their three-day-dirty Barney t-shirt to church have given me an hard-earned ability to just deal with the frustrations and not be driven crazy by them. But some weeks are worse than others. I have bad days. I have bad weeks. I have mornings when I feel very hopeless.

In the midst of all this, God provides encouragement.

I have always said that my personal goal as a teacher is to have every child that enters my classroom think about reading a book someday. My hope is that, one day, they will be bored and looking for something to do and this thought will cross their mind: You know, I could read a book.... At first, I claimed this as my goal as a sort of a joke - but the more I thought about it, and the more I taught, the more I decided that it actually was my goal.

Last night we had Open House at school. One of my students stopped by with her parents. Her mother stepped forward.
I just wanted to come by to shake your hand and thank you in person. Since she started your class, my daughter has been reading. I've seen her turn off the iPod and read a book. You've made a big difference.

This mother did not know that she was speaking the language of my personal goal. God knew.

Today, it all feels worth it.

Labels: save as draft

On the day that they buried Coretta Scott King, I discovered that there is a policy that requires kids who can not provide a valid address to be withdrawn from school. Even if they are in their junior or senior year. Even if they are a member of the National Honor Society and are student athletes and have spotless discipline records. Even if they beg and plead to be allowed to stay in school. Even if the reason they don't have a valid address is that their mom lost her job and lost the apartment and now the family is split up and living among sisters and aunts and grandmas.

The children of the homeless can be taken out of school. The children of the homeless are being taken out of school.

They can be thrown away. As if living, breathing, hoping, children are a piece of trash or red tape. As if they are just names on a piece of paper. As if they don't have minds or possibilities. As if they don't matter. Their futures can be erased before they even begin.

Without a valid address and a power bill in the guardian's name, it is impossible to enroll in a new school and so what do you do? Where do the children of the homeless go?

The system is so unbelievably broken, I can't fathom how to begin to even try to fix it.

Labels: save as draft

I've ben sick, sick, sick, sick. I'll be posting again soon.

I did manage to read a book and review it.

Labels: save as draft