Self is leaving for the Philippines Read the rest of this entry »
December, 1898
December 30, 2008 at 4:49 pm (Philippine History)
Tags: Jose Rizal
December 21: Pres. McKinley issued his Proclamation of “Benevolent Assimilation” with regards to the acquisiton of the Philippine Islands from Spain which reads, in part:
The destruction of the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Manila by the United States naval squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Dewey, followed by the reduction of the city and the surrender of the Spanish forces, practically effected the conquest of the Philippine Islands and the suspension of the Spanish sovereignity therein. With the signature of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain by their respective plenipotentiaries at Paris on the 10th instant, and as a result of the victories of American arms, the future control, disposition, and government of the Philippine Islands are ceded to the United States.
December 30: First national celebration of Jose Rizal’s martyrdom (Rizal was executed by the Spanish on December 1896), on orders of the 29-year-old president of the First Philippine Republic, General Emilio Aguinaldo
Conversations: Luisa Igloria on Juan Luna
December 28, 2008 at 6:26 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Philippine History, Surprises)
Tags: Filipinas Magazine, Filipino writers, Luisa Igloria, poetry
Self missed Luisa Igloria’s reading with Karen Llagas, Joi Barrios and Barbara Jane Reyes, Dec. 6 at the San Francisco Main Library. Luisa’s book, Juan Luna’s Revolver, has just been published by the the University of Notre Dame Press, and self was absolutely ecstatic to get her copy signed, by the author herself, the day before Luisa left the Bay Area.
So there we were, sitting together in self’s humble living room, and self was telling Luisa how much she adored her poetry, and how she loved the collection’s title poem, and Luisa told self that there was another Juan Luna, apparently a mass murderer in Texas who’d had his killing spree at a McDonald’s, and when you google “Juan Luna,” more than likely the hits you get are all about the murderer. Which information self found extremely fascinating. (And, just to show why self can never, ever be a reporter, Luisa Igloria sends self a gentle correction this evening: “The other Juan Luna was a guy in Palatine, IL, who went on a shooting rampage with his high school buddy in a Brown’s Chicken fast food place there – I think this was sometime in 1993 — !!!)
Juan Luna, bless his heart, was apparently so dismayed by reports of his wife’s purported infidelity because he never considered her attractive. So, to make up for this really unforgivable oversight, he killed both his wife and his mother-in-law, but apparently did not serve time in jail (how fortunate for him), but didn’t live long, either, afterwards.
And, self perusing the latest issue of Filipinas Magazine this morning, sees that — whoa! — a newly discovered painting by aforementioned painter/cad/murderer was unearthed and auctioned off by Christie’s Hong Kong (painting is entitled “Las Damas Romanas” and features two European ladies languidly posed on some marble/stone steps, while one of the ladies restrains two very thin, whippet-like dogs on a leash). And this work, which was signed and dated “Luna Roman 1883” fetched over a million US dollars.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
Strybing Arboretum in the Rain
December 28, 2008 at 4:12 am (Family, Places, Surprises)
Tags: memories, San Francisco, San Francisco Chronicle
Self had been wanting to see the “Ancient Plant Garden” that had been touted in an article in the Chronicle from two months ago. The article talked about tree ferns and gingkos, “ancient conifers,” and “hadrosaur footprints.” Which was how she, hubby, and son ended up in Golden Gate Park yesterday afternoon, meandering along the (somewhat muddy) trails in Strybing Arboretum and looking at camellias and manzanitas and ferns and Japanese anemones. Self couldn’t tell where the “Ancient Plant Garden” was, perhaps it was the area with the pond filled with plant scum? It rained in the middle of their perambulations, but it was still a good afternoon. Here are a few observations from the family’s first foray into the park since (gulp) son was in grade school !!@@##
Tree in Strybing Arboretum
- The road leading to Stowe Lake was made so much narrower than self remembered, perhaps because of Read the rest of this entry »
Help Wikipedia!
December 27, 2008 at 8:04 pm (Eavesdropping, Links, Surprises)
Tags: teaching, Wikipedia
Link here to read an appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Self has no personal relationship with this site (she isn’t even listed there, ha ha ha!), but she’s grown addicted to it.
Remember self’s post about “Pygmalion, the Remake: Starring, In Order of Appearance, John McCain and Sarah Palin”? Made possible by Wikipedia’s listing the pair under an entry for “Pygmalion” (Self nearly died laughing)
When self first discovered Wikipedia (in the Works Cited pages of her students’ papers — !), she was distressed. She tried to ban her students from using the site as a reference. But now she thinks Wikipedia is great. Jimmy Wales is great. Jimmy Wales is a genius like Steve Jobs (if not just quite like the late Harold Pinter).
Please help.
What Self Did Yesterday, the Day After Christmas 2008
December 27, 2008 at 1:48 pm (Books, Holidays, Relatives, Surprises)
Tags: shopping
Self went shopping with hubby. At McWhorter’s, the Christmas stuff was 50% off, and of course self headed straight for the Christmas cards, where she was so happy to find a box of Crane’s (Dearest Mum always told self that Crane’s cards were the best kind) that was going for $9.95. Then self bought a couple of gel window stick-ons in the shape of holly and Nutcracker figures (Self does tend to go overboard over Christmas doo-dads. You would think by now her house would look like some explosion of Christmas cornucopia, but strangely enough, these decorations have the annoying habit of walking off and disappearing, in the intervening year, so that when Christmas rolls around again self always ends up having to buy a new cache).
Next, Draeger’s, where hubby professed extreme craving for prosciutto — alas, no one was behind the deli counter, and after waiting for 15 minutes hubby began to get extremely annoyed. As this would be a very very bad development (as annoyance leads to black mood leads to who-knows-what), self directed him upstairs, where there were tables and tables of Christmas ornaments on display, and self was able to buy four “dog” Christmas tree ornaments (last year, she bought four “dog” ones as well), each one different. Joy! Hubby bought a small table-top Christmas tree for $10.
Then, to Wells Fargo, where self made the amazing discovery that she had left her ATM card back at McWhorter’s. Hubby was in conniptions but a quick call to McWhorter’s confirmed that they had it. (Anyhoo, self thought to herself: this is a sign from God that she must not spend any more!)
And, right after that, when hubby and self were at Border’s in Palo Alto, it’s true that self bought only two books: one for dear cuz called 1001 Books For Every Mood (for instance, if you were in the mood “to misbehave,” you would be advised to read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying or Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders or Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors — how very, very fab!), and for niece in Manila, who is 14, what self considers Stephenie Meyers’ best-written book (which isn’t part of the “Twilight” series, self only discovered at check-out), The Host.
And then it was off to Orchard Supply Hardware, where hubby bought a gasoline storage container (spent half an hour waiting while hubby stood in the middle of the aisle, just trying to figure out how it worked: self, extremely exasperated, kept saying, “Don’t you just give the nozzle a little twist, here?” But hubby insisted on reading all the directions, even down to the microscopic print that said, “Made in China”).
And then, finally, home, where self got to watch her Netflix movie (because son was in Santa Cruz with friends), “The Battle for Algiers.” Which was shocking. Moving. Amazing.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
A Depiction of a Teacher’s Inner Life
December 26, 2008 at 3:05 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: short story, teaching, The New Yorker
From “Yurt,” a story by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, in the July 21, 2008 issue of The New Yorker (the one with Obama in Muslim attire on the cover):
- . . . didn’t misery imply a wallowing sort of wretchedness? And a teacher had no time for that. The curriculum was always marching on, relentlessly: the ancient Egyptians melting into the ancient Greeks, the blur of check marks and smiley faces, the hot rattling breath of the photocopier, book reports corrected shakily on the bus, the eternal night of parent-teacher conferences, dizzy countdowns to every holiday, and the dumb animal pleasure of rest. One could
Perusing THE ECONOMIST’S Best Books of the Year 2008
December 26, 2008 at 12:40 pm (Books)
Tags: book lists, reviews, The Economist
Books self is interested in reading after perusing The Economist’s list of “Best Books of 2008”:
Biography
- The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of V. S. Naipaul, by Patrick French, “a singular example of how good authorised biographies can, and should, be.”
- Chagall: A Biography, by Jackie Wullschlager, “both magical and utterly credible in describing an artist who put fiddlers on the roof and made lovers fly through the air”
Politics and Current Affairs
- The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, “an unflinching look at the hidden cost of invading Iraq”
- Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, by Benjamin Wittes, “how the Bush administration came to adopt the tactics that became the hallmark of its struggle against al-Qaeda and its ilk”
History
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes, “a dazzling cornucopia exploring the impact of discovery upon such great Romantic writers as Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron and John Keats”
- The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915- 1919, by Mark Thompson, “a startling indictment of the Italian state’s conduct during the first world war”
Science and Technology
- The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, by Rose George, “a frank and illuminating look at a generally neglected, but very important aspect of human life”
- The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Duelling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, by Matthew Goodman, “the story of how, in the 1830s, the New York Sun tried to persuade its readers that there was life on the moon”
Culture and Digressions
- Cold Cream, My Early Life and Other Mistakes, by Ferdinand Mount, “a beautifully written, poignant and, at times, very funny memoir by a man who describes himself at different points in his life as idle, supercilious, incompetent and emotionally retarded”
Fiction and Memoirs
- Sea of Poppies: A Novel, by Amitav Ghosh, “tells the intricate stories of a cast of hundreds in lustrous and mesmerizing prose”
- Lush Life, by Richard Price, “a whodunnit with literary heft”
- The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry, “a moving and memorable novel about conflicting versions of Ireland’s past”
- The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, by Hooman Majd, an “illuminating, critical and affectionate memoir”
- Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape, by Raja Shehadeh, “tells the story of a lawyer’s fight against Israel’s seizure of Palestinian land and how he seeks solace by walking in the wild countryside of the West Bank”
- The Three of Us: A Family Story, by Julia Blackburn, “a raw and moving story about a chaotic family and a lost childhood”
Woe: The Passing of a Genius
December 25, 2008 at 3:39 pm (Artists and Writers, Plays, Writing)
The renowned British playwright, Harold Pinter, has died. The announcement was made by his wife, the biographer Lady Antonia Fraser.
Pinter on language — no one was better at exploring its obfuscation and its capacity for deflection, at mining the reefs and shoals of ordinary conversation.
He once said: “The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don’t hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”
His influence on the theatre world was enormous. Without Pinter, there would be no David Mamet, no Sam Shepard. Read “The Birthday Party” (brilliant, brilliant — and, a young man’s play: Pinter wrote it when he was only 28) or “The Homecoming.” Then, watch a Sam Shepard play, either “Buried Child” (which self first saw before son was born, at The Magic Theatre in Fort Mason — Shepard’s spiritual home) or “Curse of the Starving Class”, staged just this fall by ACT (with, by the way, a smashing set design by the Obie and Tony-winning Filipino set designer and director Loy Arcenas).
Or watch David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Heck, watch a Coen brothers movie!
Language and its violence were his true subjects.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
