Quotable

regrets are illuminations come too late - Joseph Campbell

(Yes, as I’m teaching Gilgamesh, I’m revisiting some of The Hero With A Thousand Faces.)

Great Movie News! (With a little bit of luck, it is)

Some of you know of my (near obsessive) self-identification with Henry Higgins.  Some more of you know that I identify more with the Higgins of Pygmalion, but vastly prefer My Fair Lady (I may be in the minority on this one).  And a few of you know that My Fair Lady renders me a weeping baby every single time.  When she walks in at the end, oh my God, the waterworks start like nothing else.  And then when Rex Harrison has the look of love and relief and thankfulness on his face- for only a split second-  and then turns right back into the old Higgins and says the line (One of the best lines ever in movies- you should know it!) and slides into his hat- my heart leaps in admiration and self-recognition.

And finally, one person knows that all day Tuesday I was listening to MFL soundtrack- multiple times.  I don’t know why- just was struck by the mood.  And that very night one of my gay poker buddies told me about this at Atlantic Station (scroll down to September for the goodness).  

A whole month!   Now all I have to hear is that it’s being presented in 35mm.  I know I’m a snob about stuff like that, but I can watch it at home on video anytime.  I may not even see it if it’s just a projected DVD.  But if it’s in 35mm, just try to keep me away.  Would love to do ALL of them.  (A regret:  it’s Thursday at about 9pm, so students who studied & watched  it with me last year really can’t go see it- which is a shame because the unit was a blast & they LOVED it.)

Nevertheless:  With a little bit of luck, it’ll be in 35mm and I’ll be unavailable for text messaging on Thursday the 10th!

Total. Baby. Weeping. Me. Here. Yes, The Gayest Thing I have Ever Heard In My Entire Life

Gilgamesh Deciphering Activity- Moderate to Good Success

The deciphering activity I posted yesterday met with moderate to good success.  1st period was more interested in the solution to the puzzle; 5th period enjoyed solving it.

It wound up being simpler than I thought it would- the teacher and “trial run” student I ran it by both thought the original was too hard, so I added an extra letter or two.  The whole puzzle was solved in about 15 minutes by most pairs (I was hoping for a minimum of 30). 

The key to the puzzle, I thought, was reasoning out that _ eco_ _ would become “second.”  Once that was solved, enough letters could be placed in other blanks that other trial-and-error attempts could be made.

As I wandered around the class, I watched the students begin to modify their approach to the puzzle.  Some pairs took the “_ eco _ _” and began to go

The Rosetta Stone- Something I've based many activities on. (not just the one described here)

through the alphabet to see how many letters could begin a word with “eco” as the next three letters.  Sort of a hangman, and I saw several columns on student’s papers- the letters going down the side reading, for example a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z.Other pairs were just running through it ramshod.  Some took the context/content-based approach to see what words from the Babylonian/Gilgamesh unit might fit-  vocab and contextual words like “firmament, pantheon, Gilgamesh, Tigris, Euphrates, Hammurabi’s Code.“  (One group actually recognized “Hammurabi” and was able to use that as their main word to start codebreaking.)

It was fantastic to see them applying both content knowledge, problem solving skills, cooperative effort (something, you know, not all gifted kids are famous for), and, when I have them write tomorrow- metacognition (I have added a paragraph asking them to explain what the “break” was in their deciphering.).

The activity wasn’t 100% success- it wasn’t as difficult as I hoped, nor did every child “get the point,” (but then again, when does that happen?  I just wish a few more in first period would have explored deeper.) but I did accomplish my goals of exploring content, thinking skills/ application to situations other than the content, and communication of their ideas.  Hence, I have titled this post “Moderate to Good Success.”

Gifted Ed. & Gilgamesh (albeit no hot gay love this time)

Despite the fact that the gifted program at my school has been diminished and devalued in lieu of pumping AP classes as full as possible, I persevere in trying to bring higher education- which develops the sort of thinking skills that goes beyond test scores.  Here is a nice activity helping kids understand translation in action- in a text such Gilgamesh, etc.   The rationale for the activity comes after the jump.

Gilgamesh Deciphering Activity Revised

Frodo’s age (cont.) & a preview of years

Taro comments, below:

Again? Surely by now you’ve read that book-Frodo wasn’t all that old by hobbit standards. Hobbits normally lived over 100 years compared to our 70; and yes the tweens corresponded to our teens, so that a 33 yo hobbit was the equivalent, physically, our 21 year old.
Yes, I’ll grant that EW was under 21 himself, but I think he did a fair job of playing a mature man.
Frodo, at fifty, would have been about the equivalent of our early 30’s. Most 32 year-olds do not consider themselves middle-aged. But anyway, as you were sort of pointing out, I think that PJ’s much-shortened version of the story kind of pretended that he started out years sooner.

Rankin Bass' Frodo from "Return of the King" (1980)

Without wanting to belabor the point, at the beginning of Frodo’s quest, he is already 20 years beyond his “tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.”  (Fellowship of the Ring p.22)  Arguments about middle age aside,  Frodo certainly is a lot older than an irresponsible child, and still has a sense of tiredness about him- a wearing thin- when he begins his journey. 

Moronic textbooks (and Hot Gay Love, a.k.a. Gilgamesh…)

Okay, so as I’m reading Gilgamesh [which, by the way, I left at a movie theatre- and so had to go find another identical copy tonight of the Penguin edition and try to re-annotate the whole thing!   ], and this was the passage that stuck out to me, as Gilgamesh questions Utnapishtim why he cannot have unlimited life:

Utnapishtim said, ‘There is no permanence.  Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time?  Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure?  it is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory.  From the days of old there is no permanence…’ (p.106-107)

Beautiful passage.  Poor Gilgamesh now faces the fact that he must eventually die.   It plays into a lot of the anglo-saxon stuff that I do so enjoy.  

So here’s the issue, and it’s not with the passage, but rather the textbook I am teaching out of: 

Hot Gay Love (Babylonian Style)

So I’m teaching Gilgamesh for the first time next week.  Truth be told, I can’t even remember the last time I read Gilgamesh, or even if I have ever done so in its entirety.   I would prefer to have picked up Mitchell’s verse translation, but the student textbook  has excerpts from N.K. Sanders’ prose.  So I picked up the Sanders’ Penguin Classics prose edition, from which the excerpts were taken.

Anyway, onto the Hot Gay Love (Babylonian Style):

The Fellowship of the Ring & Peter Jackson’s Biggest Crime

As I have espoused before, and will surely espouse again, Peter Jackson’s movies are masterpieces and should not be criticized.  As film, they are flawless.

If one insists on comparing them with source material (again, I think this is a mistake, but still….), there is a fatal flaw.  It is not, as many have suggested, the omission of Tom Bombadill, nor, as Mr. Lyles suggests, the altering of the scene between Eowen and the Witch King (which I agree is sad, but not unforgiveable), or the omission of the Scouring of the Shire (I actually view this as an improvement- ask me why).

No, Peter Jackson’s biggest sin, if we view the LOTR films as an adaptation rather than a stand-alone narrative, lies in the casting of Elijah Wood. 

Now, I think Elijah Wood did an excellent job, and is an excellent actor.  And it’s not just because he’s the first cousin of one of my closest friends.

It’s because he’s young.

The Hobbit- Isn’t this interesting?

Unfortunately, at GHP this year, the Anglo-Saxon class has gone over like a lead balloon.    Very different from previous years.  It also is a shame because in going back through the hobbit, I have several different direct allusions (i.e.- allusions the kids would get) to various parts of the Anglo Saxon culture I teach in class, such as kenning, riddling,  and the fierce bond between maternal uncle and nephew, among other things.  To wit:

“I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly, I was chosen for the lucky number….. I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water.  I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me…. I am the friends of bears and the guest of eagles.  I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider…”

The Hobbit

Dale (and others) insist that Tolkien (in addition to telling a good story, which I totally concede) writes good prose.  I’m rereading, for the first time in 20 years, The Hobbit. We’ll see if it’s true. The prose is as simple as the story, but I don’t know that that’s a bad thing at all.

UPDATE:  I have started a long Tolkien project.  It has been years since I read Lord of the Rings, and I have not read them since I did my Anglo-Saxon studies in graduate school.  I’ll be re-reading them through that lens.