Culture Shock

When I first dove up to Bramasole with the real estate agent, I jokingly said, "This is it."

This is it. I was oblivious to the phenomenal changes I was entering as that rusted gate opened, and I saw the sunrise tints of the house's facade, colors that have diverse a shiver of wonder every time I have looked up since then. I went to Italy for the cypress-lined lanes, the vibrancy of the piazzas, the pure Romanesque churches in the country, the cuisine, the history. I stayed for the never-ending festa of everyday life among the most hospitable people on earth. I made a home here, without really meaning to--the place took hold of me and shaped me in its image.

How did I let this happen? There are many crux marks in one's life, small ones and large. To take a decision, my friend Fulvio says, his usage much more precise than the grammatical make. To take a decision also takes you. Even though when I stepped out of that car I did not know how my life would change, I did sense something at that moment. I wanted an aperture, an opportunity to merge with something limitless. I, in the dullness of my ignorance, was willing.

And Italy has proven to be inexhaustible. To take the gift of a new and very old country--a whole other sphere of language, literature, history, architecture, art: it falls over me like a shower of gold. It is paradoxical but true that something that takes you out of yourself also restores you to yourself with greater freedom. A passionate interest also has a true-north needle that keeps you focused. The excitement of exploration sprang me from a life I knew how to live into a challenging space where I was forced--and overjoyed--to invent each day.

Imagine this quote discussing parenthood instead of life in Italy.


Mayes, Frances. Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. pp.7-8.

The Last 7 Days

Any of you who know me in real life will know that I'm not exactly excited to turn 30. I'm turning 30 in just 7 days.

All my previous birthdays have been exciting and kind of...glowy...in the same way the Christmas Season glows. "May all your days be merry and bright." But this year I'm fighting reality. I don't want to go over this hill. Yes, many have told me their thirties were better than their twenties. Yes, I know people who are well past thirty snicker at me for resisting this birthday. But that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to turn thirty.

Why? I know why. But I don't want to publish them so all the internets everywhere can read them. (And all the over-30 internets can snicker at me.) I just want to relate them to myself. You know what else? I know why I resist this birthday, but I also don't know why. I do and I don't.

Sheesh. Well, the closer I get the less it seems to loom. Maybe at that exact tick when I change from being 29 to being 30, I won't feel any different. Do people change from one second to another? (Yes. They do. But this won't be a tragedy that changes my life...it'll just be time marching on.)

I've been documenting a lot of personal, internal changes that have snuck up on me in the last 18 months or so. I have changed in the last couple years. I foresee those changes shaping my life more in this next decade than just the ticking of a clock.

Writing Writing Unit Plan

I haven't written a Unit Plan in over three years, and I'm pretty rusty! As much as my heart and my mind miss teaching, and as much as I've wanted to get back into it, I'm finding myself surprised that it's this hard to write a simple writing Unit Plan.

I'm trying to keep in mind that Writing was never something I enjoyed teaching (it's time-consuming! hard! confusing! hard to systematize!), so that's part of the challenge at this time. BUT on top of that layer of challenge is a layer of dust...or rust...or just plain stiffness...in my Unit-Writing muscles.

The only way out is through. So off I go.

Candlelight

I'm listening to The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket while I do my cooking today. The villain, Count Olaf, is brilliantly described! Even his accessories are wicked. Here's the description of his candle:

His candle gave off shadows.

You'd think that a candle would give off light, but this candle is described by its shadows. I love it! Good writing, Lemony!

It's getting to be a habit. This is my 3rd post with nothing but linkage.

This Modesty Heart Check will be useful to me when 1) I start teaching middle schoolers again or 2) I ever have daughters.

So will this three-part series on modesty. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

I can't get out of bed in the mornings, and this list might help!

I'm going to browse through this list of organizers.

Motivation to do those chores I hate (I hate all chores, so this ought to be good).

I like this take on the marking of time.

Here's an organizer's take on setting goals.

The same organizer writes about evening routines.

Aaaand for fun: here's a dude who travels around correcting typos in public places. Hooray!

How Do You Roll?

I'm having dinner tonight with my friend G who's growing into a deeper friendship with me. (That's a story for another time.) Anyway, we were talking on Sunday and revealed our secret inner insecurities.

I wish I were more task-oriented like G is. A doer. You know The Doers: the ones who maintain deliciously beautiful homes at all times. Mundane Housekeeping Tasks seems to come naturally to them, and they never sit still and just think, or sit still and just read, because the To Do list looms over their heads.

She wishes she were more analytic-oriented like I am. I'm a thinker, and I know us. We read the dictionary to find new words we don't know. (Saturday evening I spent an hour with a fellow thinker. We each read our own dictionary*, sharing new and exciting words aloud to each other...) We sit and think and analyze for hours. We sometimes do kooky things just to see what would happen. (In the college dining hall, I once ate my entire meal of chili-mac off my tray, not off a plate. Just to see what would happen.)

Here are some implications:

• Why do the both of us assume there's something wrong with the way we were created?
• Why does each of us assume we are lazy because we don't operate the way the other does? I feel the pain of my innate laziness because I don't Do as much as she does; I daresay she feels the same sort of insecurity when compared to my Constant Thinking and Analyzing.
• Why can't I accept her help in making me a better Doer, a better Housekeeper? More accurately, why am I hesitant to accept her help?
• Which type of acumen is assumed to be more usable? (You can get tutoring anywhere...I'm tutoring a girl in my Linguistics class on the finer points of grammar, and I could tutor my friend G in doctrine and theology if she wanted...but honoring your innate talent for Do-ing and Housekeeping by tutoring people like me who just aren't Doers? That's a bold idea.) To rephrase and clarify my question: who is considered to be more important: white-collar workers or blue-collar workers? And why is that?

Sigh. Here I am ruminating over the Thinker/Doer dichotomy (and using words like dichotomy, too) when I should be (1) planning my weekend meals and (2) compiling my grocery list so I can (3) get home and (4) cook food and (5) clean my house.

---

*Yes, we own two dictionaries. When we married, we purged multiple copies of the same books, especially duplicate college textbooks, but we decided not to fight over whose dictionary to keep. Other issues are more important...like which of the double sinks do you want? and how will we squeeze our toothpaste tube now that we share one? and the ever-popular how much does it annoy you when I correct your grammar? Oh, the delights of being married to a Thinker.

Never Read that Sentence Before, or, The Principle of Discreteness

I just had a test in my class, and I hope it went well. I studied, which is more than I can say for my college days...so that at least is a step up.

Here's a thought. One of the concepts I reviewed for the test was the principle of discreteness. Here it is in a nutshell:

• In any language, there are a finite number of words and prefixes/suffixes/infixes.
• In any language, there are a finite number of grammatical rules shaping the way those words are put together.
• However, there is theoretically an infinite number of sentences that can be composed. (Try this sometime: read a book and highlight every sentence you think you might have read somewhere else.)

And I think the title of my most recent post counts as "a sentence I've never read before."

Seventeen More Puns

1. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
2. Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
3. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
4. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
5. The butcher backed up into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
6. To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
7. When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
8. A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
9. A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
10. Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.
11. We'll never run out of math teachers because they always multiply.
12. When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
13. The math professor went crazy with the blackboard. He did a number on it.
14. The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
15. The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
16. If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.
17. A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.

Article (With Citation!) of Funny Metaphors

You may have read some of these analogies around the internet. No, I'm sorry, high school students did not write them. They're from a metaphor/simile contest. Here's the actual news article (and citation!) they came from. They are funny! Read and chuckle.

These are the results from Week 310 of The Style Invitational, published March 14, 1999:

Report From Week 310

in which you were asked to come up with lame analogies. The line separating painfully bad analogies from weirdly good ones is as thin as a soup made from the shadow of a chicken that was starved to death by Abraham Lincoln. And so we had to create a separate category to honor those entries that came too close to actual literature to qualify as "bad." Here they are:

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Even in his last years, grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut. (Sandra Hull, Arlington)

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!" (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)

He regarded death with hesitant dread, as if he were a commedia dell'arte troupe and death was an audience of pipe-fitters. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. (Malcolm Fleschner, Arlington)

Now, back to the gloriously bad analogies.

Sixth Runner-Up: The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. (Malcolm Fleschner, Arlington)

Fifth Runner-Up: "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her [body] heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night. (Bonnie Speary Devore, Gaithersburg)

Fourth Runner-Up: He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something. (John Kammer, Herndon)

Third-Runner-Up: Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. (Barbara Collier, Garrett Park)

Second Runner-Up: She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. (Susan Reese, Arlington)

First Runner-Up: It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. (Marian Carlsson, Lexington, Va.)

And the winner of the Smorked Beef Rectum: The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. (J.F. Knowles, Springfield)

Honorable Mentions

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM. (Paul J. Kocak, Syracuse)

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. (Ralph Scott, Washington)

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist. (Greg Dobbins, Arlington)

He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose. (Russ Beland, Springfield)

The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object. (Nanci Phillips Sharp, Gaithersburg)

You know how in "Rocky" he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in. (Alan S. Jarvis, Fredericksburg)

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. (Susan Reese, Arlington)

She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any PH cleanser. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)

Outside the little snow-covered cabin, a large pile of firewood was stacked like Pamela Anderson. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac)

A branch fell from the tree like a trunk falling off an elephant. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)

The painting was very Escher-like, as if Escher had painted an exact copy of an Escher painting. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often. (Jim Seibert, Falls Church)

They were as good friends as the people on "Friends." (Katie Buckner, McLean)

[one metapor deleted here]

He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo. (Bob Sorensen, Herndon)

The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)

Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light. (Barbara Collier, Garrett Park)

The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

And Last: Joe was frustrated, like a man who thought his claim to fame was occasional appearances in a weekly humor contest, but in fact is known to millions as a stupid high school student who writes unintentionally humorous bad analogies. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

Taken from washingtonpost.com (14 March 1999) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031600738_pf.html

Word of the Day 12/10

This is one of my most favorite words ever!! Yay.

per·spi·cac·i·ty /ˌpɜrspɪˈkæsɪti/ [pur-spi-kas-i-tee] –noun
1. keenness of mental perception and understanding; discernment; penetration.
2. Archaic. keen vision.

[Origin: 1540–50; earlier perspicacite perspicācitās sharpness of sight, equiv. to perspicāci- (s. of perspicāx sharp-sighted; see perspicuous) + -tās -ty]

—Synonyms 1. shrewdness, acuity, astuteness, insight, acumen. See perspicuity.
—Antonyms 1. obtuseness.

"perspicacity." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 10 Dec. 2007. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perspicacity

Word of the Day 11/15 -- Goin' out to Bob

Here's a word with French etymology. I could tell right away by the crazy Frenchy spelling.

flaneur \flah-NUR\, noun:
One who strolls about aimlessly; a lounger; a loafer.
Flaneur comes from French, from flâner, "to saunter; to stroll; to lounge
about."

Am I the only one obsessed with words, etymologies, and spelling? Anybody else love spelling bees?

Word of the Day, 11.9.07

Did you see it? Did you see it?

polyglot \POL-ee-glot\, adjective:
1. Containing or made up of several languages.
2. Writing, speaking, or versed in many languages.

noun:1. One who speaks several languages.

Polyglot derives from Greek polyglottos, from poly-, "many" + glotta, "tongue, language."

Aaah. I feel another wrinkle developing on my corpus collosum. I love words. I love words!

Spelling

I am a Spelling Master. (Like a Zen Master.)

But I have trouble spelling 'biscuit.'
And 'community.'
And, of all words, 'school.' Spelling this one correctly is especially difficult when I type.

I used to have trouble spelling 'parallel' until a friend turned me on to this mnemonic: there are two parallel L's in the middle of the word. Sweet!

Self-styled

Did you notice today's Word of the Day?

soi-disant \swah-dee-ZAHN\, adjective: Self-styled; so-called.

"The soi-disant experts are planning another self-congratulatory awards ceremony." Ooooh, I love vocabulary.

Thirty Terrible Puns

1. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
2. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
4. A backwards poet writes inverse.
5. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
8. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
9. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
10. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat miner.
11. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
16. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
17. Every calendar's days are numbered.
18. A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours, and it taint mine.
19. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
20. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
21. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
22. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
23. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
24. Once you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
25. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
26. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.
27. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
28. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
29. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
30. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

I read voraciously when I was younger. I read a lot of silly fiction series, which were entertaining, but the print version of bubble gum and cotton candy.

I also read good books, the print version of a healthy salad, or a balanced meal of grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, and a yummy dessert.

I remember reading and rereading everything of hers I could get my hands on. I even wrote my high school English research paper on her books.

I was captured, fascinated, by her science fiction and her family fiction.

So many of her stories are unfinished. I wish I could read even more. I will miss you.