Ties: A Prose Poem

Big Brother approached a stolid teacher:
"Where's your tie?"
"I've noticed you haven't worn yours today!"
He replies, with a grin
"I had a rough night —"
An interminable set of chores ...
"I don't want to hear it. Wear a tie to work"
Apples and trees; bells ring.
The mosaic of color blends. He scrambles for a rejoinder.
0
So, the stolid teacher sighs
and taught another class of happy, eager student to whom an entirely different set of restrictions had been laid out:
Overstuffed maroon sweatshirts
Lack of earrings for the men
Pleated skirts for the girls
Conservative appliqué
Legs outstretched, one chews a pen to its raw carcass center.
The bitter avowal of knowledge and lessons; Socratic questions; plaintive pleas for individualNESS.
Time bleeds
A former student visits:
An altercation in form:
Wearing a French-style hat, bold cerulean colors, he says, "hi" — fresh from some college where self-expression is allowed: its own set of burdens.

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A Few Stray Observations On William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (With a Copy of the Poem)

Shakespeare wrote "the marriage of true minds admits no impediments" and true love remains constant even in a tempest, a fixed star in love's night sky; even though Time rages; rosy lips fade; love never dies - at least spiritual love.
     An astute observer, by the way, as an aside, would notice that the stars are not truly fixed in the sky. Every atom in the universe, stars included, are moving outward at a quickening pace. Where's my astrophysicist when I need him?
     And I don't recommend remaining unshaken in a storm. King Lear barely pulled it off on the heath and you're bound to get hit by a renegade umbrella to the head. 
But, I digress.     The sonnet reminds readers of everyone who has ever loved: Heloise and Abelard, among them. They never tasted physical love, but their eternal love lives on forever in their passionate letters.
     I think of love that inhabits a lifespan. Love that lives on even after the first love.
     I think of Cupid and Psyche: the marriage of Eros and Mind.
     The poem is fresh in my memory for we did a close read of it on Friday last (N.B. I am a high school English teacher).
     I like the sonnet's solution: it is a typical Shakespearean jest. I would rephrase it thus: if you can't agree with me on love, then I could never have written these words and this sonnet could never exist.

Sonnet CXVI (116) by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Celebrating My Friend Tony's Birthday Party at "Corks and Canvases"

Tony was surprised and feted for his birthday: everyone created a painting in his honor: a coffee cup fleur-de-lis.

Mae chooses to be inspired.

Andre works diligently.

My painting: ying-yang instead of fleur-de-lis:

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On Talking About Prime Numbers With a Math Teacher (When I Am Just a Lowly High School English Teacher)

I am an English teacher (and thus not a Math teacher). I was mussing with the in-house math guru today at work, helping him make a powerpoint using a "fly-in" effect and we discussed "what is a prime number?"
And How I Failed Miserably to Explain Prime
    I took a stab at a cursory definition and said, " it's a number divisible by itself and two!" My colleague chuckled, "Remain an English teacher, Greig. Your definition could be any number! A prime is an integer greater than 1 whose factor is only itself and 1".
    Albeit, I can't remember a sufficient definition for a prime number, but I find it fascinating that (1. There are an infinite set of 'em and 2.) There is no way as of yet to determine the pattern of how they appear on the number line. Mathematicians are hard at work, though.
    Four primes exist between 1-9. But, how many between 1,000,000 and 3,000,000? Is there a pattern? And why so many primes between 1-9 but so few between larger sets of integers, like 600,000 - 700,000? The questions never cease!

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Photo: "Mr. Chips"

Photograph of "Mr. Chips"

This picture was a demonstration of how instantaneous mass communication can be. Taken from my iPhone, the photo is instantly uploaded to the web. Once I take the picture on my phone I can send it to the cloud and it's available anywhere from a device with Internet access. Welcome to the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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Rant on Fashion: "I hate . . ."

My sad koi face does not like thee.

A blog post you really don't need to read because I just merely list the popular name brand clothing corporations I truly despise:

I Hate:

Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, American Eagle, Aeropostale, Ed Hardy, American Eagle Outfitters, Wal Mart, Macy's, Mervyn's, JC Penny, Gotschalks . . .

Thanks, francbecerra (for the inspiration)
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Let's Go to the Museum: "Oedipus Wrecks" in the Ninth Grade English Classroom

In this post, I write about a recent Ninth Grade English lesson based on the New York Times Learning Center curriculum where we turned our classroom into a museum full of objects based on the Greek Tragedy Oedipus the King by Sophocles.

Museum Exhibition of Oedipus the King
In all periods of my Ninth Grade English class at De La Salle High School in New Orleans, we created a museum exhibition for Sophocles tragedy Oedipus Rex.

Students create a puzzle game based on
Oedipus the King in a Ninth Grade English class.

In every corner of the room galleries were set up to showcase different significant objects from the play: the noose, the brooch, the crown, the walking stick, the nail, the masks the actors wore, to demonstrate non-linguistically the themes of the Ancient Greek tragedy.

In quadrant one museum-goers played the memory game, trying to remember different objects from the play. Can anyone remember where the brooch went? If you look carefully you can see one museum-goer chose a noose to demonstrate the noose Jocasta chose to commit suicide; I thought they performed the act with appropriate cheer.

Ouch.

I am glad we didn't have demonstrations of the brooch.

One group of students brought Oedipus cupcakes.


One group had sword fights to act out the fatal battle between Oedipus and his father at the crossroads. Clever. But, I heard one girl say, "He wants to kill his father?"

I liked the Oedipus crossword puzzle the kids created on the smartboard. That was fun. I found "furnace" and "citadel".

But, I could not get the smartpen to work. Doi *me imitating Homer Simpson*. So we had to remember what words were previously discovered.

I noticed that the success rate for the project was high. I should try to implement more projects like this one in the classroom. What do you think? I think it is important to try to encourage students to express in a non-linguistic form the themes of a piece of literature. Students react to thematic significance when they see the potent art of the literary piece brought to life. Isn't this what the Greeks did? They did not sit around in a classroom and underline important passages. In a way, it is the artistic expression of the work. It is a way to bring the work back to life; to take it from the textbook and reify the dramatic action.

I got the idea for the project from a New York Times learning center lesson plan using the idea of Orhan Pamuk's new novel the Museum of Innocence. In his new novel, every chapter is devoted to an object the main character Kemal associates with his ex-lover. We read the article in class and discussed ways we could create our own museum of innocence for Oedipus Rex. Fun stuff.

Well, I am off to attend a birthday party for my cousin. He turned sixteen today. Ain't that sweet?

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