Lies

James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me is undeniably a thought provoking book. But I find that it can be long-winded, meandering, and worse: while it proclaims to despair the lack of critical thinking of America's students and teachers, it engages in an alarmingly small amount of critical exposition itself. It is vague about details and almost never cites its sources. If I wanted to learn anything more about a particular study that he cites, I'll have to look it up on my own, as he provides no bibliography. He does provide bibliographical information in his extensive notes section, but I think his erratic use of endnotes is not appropriate, especially in his case. For someone who wants to change the way history books are written, you'd think he could demonstrate some of the techniques he himself laments that history books don't use! Try footnotes as well as endnotes, and a bibliography that links to every statistic that he used. Also, just elaborating on who his experts are, the context of their words, would help.
But not only do I wish he had spent more time bracing his text, I also wish that he would have spent a little less time inserting himself into the book. His side notes, which I can only assume he means to be amusing, seem interfering and unscholarly. While disparaging a quote from Alabama law, instead of discussing the choice of diction, he inserts his own interpretation without so much as a footnote for explanation: "Alabama law used to require that schools avoid 'textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interest of the [white] people of the State'," (page 280, Touchstone 1996 version, brackets Loewen's). You see what I did there? I gave you the context and where to find it if you want to know more, and I left my personal take on it out of the original quote so as not to contaminate a historian's most important evidence: the primary source.

Murder

Crime captivates the world. Crime fiction and dramatizations of real crime take up rows upon rows in the bookstore, hours on the television every week. Some people disdain pat whodunnits, while others (like myself) find their predictability and cheerful acceptance of the facts to be comforting. Others prefer true crime, delighting to stare death in the face and ponder the existence of criminals among us. I recently finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Whole courses can be given on crime fiction, focusing on the phenomenon of popular culture (I should know, I once took one). This particular book is quite perfect in that it reproduces the comforts of a nearly bloodless whodunnit but with the upsetting notion that perfectly well anybody--even somebody we feel intimate with--could murder.

Tenacity

Some of the most inspiring stories are about talented people who work hard to make the most out of whatever situation they happen to be in, ultimately making it big. But one story has inspired me more recently, and it's the story of someone who is completely unremarkable in his "sheer ordinariness." Red Pollard, famous Seabiscuit's jockey, had no extraordinary talents or advantages. He survived numerous accidents in the course of his job that crippled his body with chronic pain. He was even blinded in one eye and kept it a secret from his employers (and everybody else) so he wouldn't lose his job--as he certainly would have if they had known. But even the knowledge that he should not have been a jockey did not stop him from being one anyway. He was blind, injured, in pain, struggling with alcoholism, poverty, and inadequacy, but he clung tenaciously to his dream and, what's more, he succeeded. He rode Seabiscuit to win the $100,000 Santa Anita cup. Not everything in his life was rosy, obviously. But he lived his ultimate dream, and that is something that not many of us can say. Too often have I been waylaid by the mere thought of pain, failure, or mediocrity. Imagine persisting in the certainty of all those things.

Diner and a biscuit

Surlier than the average diner.

Birthday Wishes

Pain. Chronic pain. Pain that sneaks up on me and has no identifiable source. Others don't believe it's as severe as my symptoms indicate. Some don't believe it's even real because they cannot understand it. Living with chronic pain is like living with a shameful secret. I make excuses for myself. Making up little stories that attribute this to lifting too much, walking too much, sleeping too little, making god angry... Anything to give my pain a source and a solution.
It could be a friend I met in college that I don't want to talk to anymore, but she keeps calling me drunk at 2pm while I'm at work, and I just can't convince her she's not welcome to call me anymore without being impolite. I guess the parallel to rudeness here would be surgery. I know what you're thinking. Why not just have the surgery? If anyone has $30,000 dollars they aren't using at the moment, I would like to take this moment to solicit your kindness toward my hip, my lies, my alcoholic college friend.
Consider it a late birthday present.

The Horror

The dungeon. The employees keep it perpetually dark. I'm not sure if
it's because they can't stand to look at the dismal breakroom or their
dismal lives.

1984

I've been reading 1984 lately. I downloaded an application on my iphone that allows me to read public domain books for free on my phone. This has come in handy recently. Andrew was in a wedding on the 8th of August, and because I don't have a car, I got to tag along for all the long hours of "moral support" required for the wedding and preparation. Which really just means not treading on anybody's toes, therefore staying longer than I want, listening to several odious groomsmen talk about sex organs and alcohol, and reading 1984 on my phone, trying to be inconspicuous. Anyway, it seems all I have to do is mention that I'm reading 1984, which will either shut odious groomsmen up or offend soon-to-be mothers-in-law. But my thoughts on the American wedding are thoughts best left to another blog.
I've also been reading Einstein, His Life and Universe. I find it interesting to note how a relative view of reality could almost be logical in Winston's world. Which is of course what Orwell wanted us to worry about. Although Einstein's theory of relativity was frequently misunderstood for relativism, which Einstein himself denounced, it is interesting to note a trend of the two phenomenons, perhaps the one encouraging the latter.
The thing that bothers Winston the most is he is that he can't prove (or even believe) that the memories he has--specific memories of a past different from that claimed by Big Brother--are in fact true. He isn't worried that he is mistaken. He's worried that if everyone says and believes something that didn't happen, does it change the nature of truth itself? Just as Einstein's critics found it hard to swallow that a rigid measuring rod could be a different length to two separate observers under certain circumstances *note to self: learn to articulate this thought experiment*, even when his thought experiment indicated this was the inevitable consequence of assuming a constant speed of light, we find it hard to understand Winston's nebulous idea of truth. But in Winston's world, that's the only reference he has. And to Einstein, the facts, such as they are, don't lie.

Movement

Moving is both a beginning and an end. Right now all I can see is the
beginning of an enormous mess.

Prelude to the First Blog

I feel like I was working hard all my life to achieve some wondrous accomplishment that I couldn't even articulate or understand. Now I'm past the pre-defined waiting period, and I'm not anywhere. Now I'm doing nothing. I don't want to work hard anymore, on anything. I'm waiting for my life to begin, but doing nothing to get it started. All my life has simply been a prelude to this nothingness. It's all a perpetual prelude.