Notes from Around the Block

Where is the French voice?

December 9, 2009 · 6 Comments

My blog is usually about writing, literature, people, dignity, and philosophy.

So you will bear with me as I deviate from my normal humor and address one of  of life’s unfinished horrors— France’s role in deporting 78,000 men, women, and children to death camps and its current reluctance to surrender to its role in these crimes against humanity and own up historically and publicly.

For the last month, this historical issue—a big one—has been replaying in my mind, over and over. It won’t let me go, for some reason.

Perhaps Andreas Kluth’s lovely retelling of the story of the German White Rose started this thought process. Now is the horticultural time we bury bulbs deep into the frozen ground and then await their ascension in the spring.

What has been planted in my mind is trouble. No white rose, crocus, or daffodil is coming from this bulb. The French have submerged it, deep into a collective consciousness that doesn’t seem to care…and they get away with it. No one really cares, it seems.

I’ll make it succinct and perhaps, in opening this topic, someone might lead me to an answer that will make sense. I doubt it, though.

Forty years after the Nazi camps were liberated, Germany began doing the right thing: that is, making the Third Reich and its Stephen Kingish horrors a part of every German child’s education. In places around Germany, where Jewish families lost everything, the government has made signs and arrows and directions to museums and locations where visitors can learn the truth. The Holocaust and Germany’s role in creating it, is part of German education now.

Good for Germany.

But what about France? Is Vichy France part of French eduation? What about the folks in Paris sipping a coffee on the Champs de Elysee? Can you direct Jewish tourists and historians to sites historically important to them? Can you find tiny signs?

As I understand this piece of heinous history, Vichy France and its soldiers were directly responsible for deporting over 75,000 Jews to Auschwitz after separating the children from their parents. The history of the French Jewish children during the Third Reich is one of the most heartbreaking chapters in this bad book. Anyone who has an 18 month old child, or a six year old whom you read to every night, cannot seriously imagine the horror of giving that precious being up to a guard.

And yet, only in 1995, did Jacques Chirac acknowledge this fact in a weak statement, a waffling and pathetic statement.

When one travels around France or when a French child is in school, why are the facts not being told? Where are the markers, the historic apologies?

This is what I am thinking about tonight.

Maybe there is a page torn out of this book that I have missed.

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Frost to the max

December 8, 2009 · 12 Comments

We have snow on our lawn, still sticking from yesterday’s arctic blast.

The frog is blue; the succulents, red and frozen.

The last rose of the season opened her petals before she heard the weather forecast.

Out in the meadow, the walnut trees shrugged and said, “This is nuts.”

Then, Judge Blah tried to drive to his physical therapy appointment but couldn’t get out.

The day began and ended in black and white.

So much for sunny California.

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Max on Frost

December 3, 2009 · 8 Comments


Most children educated in the United States are familiar with the sweet poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.  Because it is short and intellectually manageable, I use it to teach literary analysis to my younger students in middle school.

I teach in the late afternoon and early evening.

Listening to this poem as the Winter Solstice approaches on December 21-22, my students gaze out the windows at the darkening skies.

Last year, those lofty literary goals of mine took a back seat to a creative interpretation of this poem by Max.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Max: I like the rhyming. I see that one line doesn’t rhyme. I see the sound of the rhyme is a long “o”.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

Max: The speaker is out in the forest on December 21.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

Max: I wonder if the harness bells mean something more. Mrs. Sabraw, they could have a double meaning, you know. Do ya think?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Max: Clearly, this poem is about Santa Claus.

So much for the deep interpretation about the final repeating lines, those dark images of loneliness and death, and maybe suicide.

Ho, Ho, Ho, Max. Nice going.

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aardvark, here

December 1, 2009 · 8 Comments

by cheri block sabraw

When podcasts first became vogue  new media, I began listening to Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl.  I downloaded her podcasts from  iTunes. Everything about her business endeavor was hot:  five thousand or more hits a month on a user-friendly website, a book contract, and an appearance on Oprah.

That year, on and off,  I suffered from  insomnia, awaking  at 3:30 am.  Like a thoroughbred filly ready for the Kentucky Derby, I would bolt in a hot flash downstairs, make coffee, commune with the dog, and turn on my computer.

Out of boredom, I suppose, I began answering grammar questions on Mignon’s website in the comments section.  I did this just for fun. In a way,  I felt akin to the Nighthawks,  the radiologists from India reading  x-rays for American hospital emergency room docs, while American radiologists slept.

One day, in March of that year, an  e-mail came into my box from Mignon herself. She liked my answers and my humor. Would I be interested in answering questions for her? Wow! Grammar Girl in my mailbox.

Sure, I said.

Judge Blah said, Are you going to get paid for your time?

I said, No. What else am I going to do at 3:30 am when I can’t sleep?

He shook his head. How bout correct your own papers? You always have a stack of them. Cheri, You are a very busy person, running a business. I don’t know why you would do this.

Sounds fun, I answered.

Mignon gave me the password to her website and suggested that my code name be aardvark, a blue little creature she used in her grammar examples, along with a yellow snail named Squiggley.

May I give aardvark a personality when I answer questions? I asked.

No, she said. I am hoping to write a children’s book and don’t want your take on aardvark to prejudice my ideas.

Ok, I agreed.

So aardvark I became. My compatriot, Squiggley,  quit after a month. Answering a grammar question accurately takes time and sometimes, research.

I learned a lot about people that year. Know-it-alls, Meanies, Braggers, Idiots–they all submitted questions along with the Sincere, the Kind, and the Witty.

For one year, I answered questions. Here is a sample of my little buddy aardvark’s work:

aardvark
7/14/2007 4:33:04 PM

Hi Paula,

As you know, the word apology can be a singular or plural noun, so aardvark would recommend the following advice:

If someone has apologized for one transgression, you would say, ” I accept your apology,” or “Apology accepted.”

For those individuals (or creatures) who transgress more than once and want forgiveness with a multi-pronged apology, then I would use the plural of apology.

Squiggley, on occasion, has tracked goo into my den and has eaten small pieces of my geranium. So, when he says, ” I am sorry for the mess I left in your den, as well as for the hole I left in your geranium,” I would reply, ” I accept your apologies.”

Please accept my apology if this explanation doesn’t clarify the issue for you! —–

I am not sure how many answers I provided, but during that time, my grammar improved.  Soon, after her book deal, her New York  publisher asked her  to change her website design. The comments section changed too, so I could not reply to an individual question. Aardvark lost interest and quit.

Yes, those days were fun.

But the nights were long.

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The Fiddler’s Three

November 28, 2009 · 16 Comments

Old Judge Blah

by cheri block sabraw

The dishwasher groaned last night, pleading for a respite from its nonstop labor.

Limp stalks of celery hung over their glasses, swollen with tomato juice and salt.

Even the dog gave up her incessant hunt for the micro crumbs of food hidden under the clump of dirty napkins, tablecloths, and bibs.

The merriment ended Thursday night.

Nephew Adam, a late arrival,  won the Turkey Shoot in the dark. That’s right– in the dark with  flashlights illuminating the target, 25 yards away. Sixteen-year-old Brent, the early leader, shook his head and retreated to the couch with his girlfriend Phoebe.

Judge Blah never left his recliner the entire holiday.

Propped up with pillows and ice, like Old King Cole, Judge Blah kept that knee above his hips.

He’s a pretty smart guy. There’s a reason he’s a judge.

He chose to have his knee surgery the day before Thanksgiving, thus to be AWOL for the dinner for 27 people.

His mother arrived and fawned over him, as did his sister, his grandchildren, his own children, his brothers, and even his friend Doug, his radiologist.

His usual chores—fire making, dish washing, porch cleaning, garbage hauling—were left to his Fiddler’s Three—Me, Myself, and I.

I’ve written about men before. I’ve been admonished by some that I am attracted to this type of man.

This morning, from the recliner, he asked for prune juice.

I have one more small can, your honor, I said with some satisfaction.

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Asian Fusion

November 24, 2009 · 18 Comments

 

 

by cheri block sabraw

Funny people are hard to come by.

With over 5000 former students in my mental Rolodex, only three types of kids come to mind: brilliant ones, defiant ones, and funny ones.

One of the funniest students I have instructed is Albert Guh. We met when he was a little 7th grader and reconnected later when he had grown into a big junior in high school.

I always think of Albert this time of year when the wild turkeys come for Thanksgiving.

Albert was the first person I know to turn a nationality into a verb.

Most of my students are either Chinese, Korean, or East Indian. Before every Thanksgiving holiday, I ask them about their holiday plans. Invariably the discussion leads to the food.

Does your mom cook a turkey?

Yes, Mrs. Sabraw, she does, but being a Chinese mother, she Chinese-a-sizes everything we eat, Albert said, waiting for the reaction.

How does  she do this to the turkey? I ask.

Well if we have turkey, she adds Chinese spices and some noodles. My mom is from Taiwan and everything American that she cooks, she Chinese-a-sizes. Pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs, you name it. She puts soy sauce in hamburgers and stir-fry on the pizza. Albert liked my reaction.

My East Indian students found Albert’s story their own.

Oh yes, my mom does the same thing, commented Divya. She puts curry in the stuffing.

Yummmm, I said.

 

Today, I came home with my 31-pound turkey that I hope will feed the 27 people who will come to our house for Thanksgiving.

As I drove in, other turkeys had arrived in their ironic time frame.

Up on the hill, an Asian Fusion occurred.

As I snapped the picture above, their feathery fans turned to stunning onyx Chinese fans, lined with gold and I thought of Albert Guh.

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A Cup of Li

November 23, 2009 · 10 Comments

by cheri block sabraw

Joe and I got together last week to discuss the Analects of Confucius.

Our conversation took a detour when a sinewy male waiter approached our cramped table, under which Joe’s sore knee waited in an angle of repose.

Hello, my name is Mahid, he said. His thick silver and black glass frames distracted me.

You don’t look like a Mahid, Joe barked.

You look like an Ernest. An earnest Ernest. Joe winked at me.

Mahid missed the word play, robotically delivering the daily specials in a high pitch.

Our soup is creamed asparagus. If you are willing to take a survey right now, you can get a free appetizer. Would you like nachos with artichoke-cheese dip?

Screw the survey, Joe’s aching knee said through Joe’s mouth.

Mahid backed off.

I tried to wink at him to let him know that Joe was cranky, but he missed that signal, too.

You know Joe, from Confucius I understand that learning teaches one how to moderate inner passions. By being good, people will follow. The education of the leader is to be a role model for the followers. Do you agree with those beliefs?

I don’t think that by being good, people will follow. No, baby, I don’t buy that, Joe concluded.

That’s what I like about you Joe. I like your Qi. My Qi likes your Qi, I said, enjoying the sound of the syllables. I always know where you stand on all issues. You are straightforward and frank. Why here in our booth today, the vital energy of the universe  swirls around in a natural way. That’s Qi, right?

It’s Qi, but it’s a little Li, Joe added.

Lunch arrived, just in time for my Li.

I like the ritual of our Li and our lunch, I said, as I put my napkin in my lap.

Ritual is what keeps Qi under control, Cheri, Joe added, pushing the cream across the table for my coffee.

The Analects of Confucius is about Li– how to behave as a civilized person. Did you read 3.8 in the Analects? In a nutshell it says that you cannot hide the real Qi of a person by covering it with Li, or make-up.

I missed that one, Joe.  Let’s finish up with Run. What is Run as opposed to Qi and Li?

Before Joe could answer, Mahid was back. He looked at Joe with worried eyes, hidden behind those damn rims.

Would you like a refill of coffee? He squeaked.

Joe’s crustiness flaked off as he considered Run.

Yes, son, thank-you. Thank-you Mahid.

Run is the Golden Rule, a sense of reciprocity. Do unto others….baby.

Mahid, would you please bring the check? I gotta run.

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The Boy Zola

November 20, 2009 · 4 Comments

by cheri block sabraw

One of the best examples of American Naturalism is Frank Norris’ The Octopus: A California Story. This  600-page book  examines the 1880’s conflict between the Southern Pacific Railroad (in its own Manifest Destiny) and the wheat-growing farmers in the fertile Central Valley of California.

Frank Norris, who attended U.C. Berkeley and lived in San Francisco, called himself The Boy Zola and carried Zola’s writing around in his back pocket. Like Zola, Norris was a naturalist who felt a scientific Darwinian connection to a sobering philosophical belief that we, mankind, are pawns of an indifferent universe, governed by nature.

In trying to help my students understand the writing movements in American literature, I turn to analogies that I can draw on my whiteboard.  To teach Romanticism and its offshoot—Transcendentalism, and Realism and its offshoot—Naturalism, I use a big offshoot from the duff on nature’s floor—a tree.

First, a teaser.  Students, what is American Naturalism?

<shrug, shrug>

Picture a dead Yankee soldier in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, leaning against a tree. Ants run up and down his young face, oblivious to his violent death and lost promise.

Picture a school of hungry sharks, circling a small boat in the Atlantic Ocean. The capsized skiff holds four men in a delicate balance so precarious that when a seagull lights on the Captain’s head, he cannot even swipe it away. The Open Boat by Stephen Crane.

Let’s use the tree analogy. Here is a large trunk with heavy roots that anchor this magnificent oak to the ground.

[The brown pen slides down the board skillfully, outlining the tree and shading the crevices of roots.]

The high branches, thinning as they arch skyward, stretch out to form a round canopy of leaves.

[Colored pens in orange and yellow push to the outer reaches of the tree, decorating it with leaves.]

This is the Romanticism Tree, not the Giving Tree! Who might be sitting up in the branches?

[The hand with the pens responds to the voices calling out Hawthorne! Melville! Whitman! Cooper! Irving! by writing their names on the branches and attempting mini-portraits]

Transcendentalism is an off- shoot of Romanticism, so let’s put an odd branch sticking out of the big Romantic trunk.

[The red pen works horizontally as a supernatural looking branch sprouts from the trunk of the Romanticism Tree.]

All Transcendentalists were Romanticists; not all Romanticists were Transcendentalists. Get it?

[The green pen draws flags on the Transcendental branch and on each flag writes words such as intuition, the individual, and the Over-Soul.]

Who would be perched on this branch? Thoreau! Emerson! Alcott! Fuller! Ripley!

There you have it in the picture of a big tree.

The Romantic Movement in American Literature lasted from around 1820-1860, producing the first elegant works of literature in the New World. The culmination of the Romantic sensibility peaked with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Gone were those political tracts and travel diaries of Patrick Henry and William Bradford. Gone were those fiery religious sermons of Jonathan Edwards. Fiction became a possibility and imagination germinated along with machines that made more free time to read something other than the Bible.

The Supernatural and Gothic literary responses took hold during this time. Hawthorne’s characters wore black veils, entered Gardens of Immortality, and wore letters on the bodices that became hot and bright. Melville captured the reading public’s attention with a personified white whale.

We were having soooo much fun reading these imaginative stories.

The Civil War ended our reverie.

Realism took Romanticism’s place. Twain sauntered down to the South and mucked around the swamps of racism, alcoholism, poor white trash.

Crane wrote about prostitutes.

So had Zola in Nana.

Out of the literary photography of mankind’s sores, flaws, hatreds, and moral collapse came Naturalism.

Hey dude. Nature’s in charge, not man.

Darwin is right.

Only the strong survive and sometimes, even they fall victim to Dust Bowls.

[The brown pen draws a Realism Tree and in Van Gogh brush strokes, thick and uneven, another off-shoot emerges from the trunk--a Naturalism branch.]

Steinbeck, Dreiser, London, Crane and my Golden Boy, Norris, use colors and politics and sex to blur the lines of crisp realism into a painting that begs for interpretation.

Get it, kids?

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Labrador: Moose, Flies, Tennis Balls

November 16, 2009 · 4 Comments

310px-Greek_Phalanx

Labrador Retrievers were named for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and for their amazing retrieving skills.

When traveling in Nova Scotia last August, so close to Newfoundland and Labrador, I wondered about that northern Atlantic Canadian province. Who lives there? Is it a travel destination? Should Judge Blah and I go to its largest city, Goose Bay?

Unsure of our next move, I asked several Nova Scotian locals, folks of Scotch, English and French roots, about some of Labrador’s attractions.

One chap, Charles was his name, an Englishman living in Digby, exclaimed,

Why, they invented tennis balls in Labrador!

My sister Augusta and her husband Dennis live up there. Dennis works in the local tennis ball factory. I believe he tests twenty balls a minute for bounce and resiliency. And those balls are tough. Bloated under the sea, lodged in rocky crags, stuck in woodpiles all over the province—tennis balls abound in Labrador.

They manufacture those balls up there for their darn dogs, he concluded quickly.

His ferry to St. John’s had arrived, so he hurried away.

I was left to continue my investigation.

Other folks around Nova Scotia corroborated Charles’ story, adding that in addition to those eking out a living in the tennis ball business, many yellow, brown, and black retriever dogs, lots of stinging flies,and moose live up there. The waters are frigid; the tundra stark; the dogs intense and single-minded; the balls tough.

I returned from that trip with a new respect for a breed of dog hailing from such a barren landscape where moose were road-kill.

And on the day I returned, I resumed a Labradorian tradition known as fetch with my Labrador, Dinah.

Far away from her frigid ancestral land, Dinah reinforces the notion that tennis balls trump all waterfowl. You may have seen photos of a three-ball mouth.

If given the opportunity, Dinah would retrieve a tennis ball until she dropped and died. No kidding.

Up and down our driveway, she speeds, delivering the thrown ball in utilitarian fashion, immediately turning back at full tilt, in anticipation of the next flying sphere.

If the Athenian phalanx of 431 BCE had been made up of Labrador Retrievers, it may have beaten the Spartans.

If only focus and execution like this could be mass –produced and part of my business, I could quit my job to write and read.

180px-Labrador_Retrievers_yellow_and_red

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Dido, Queen of the Ancient Meltdown

November 13, 2009 · 7 Comments

200px-Dido_Cochet_Louvre_ENT2000.10

by cheri block sabraw

The ancient poet Virgil, commissioned by his patron, Roman Emperor Augustus, to write an epic poem that would commemorate the founding of Rome, died before he finished his massive text, a work we know as The Aeneid. On his deathbed, he ordered his work of twelve years to be burned.

I find Virgil’s last wishes to be entirely in keeping with the fire of this poem.

One of the hot  books (chapters, if you will) is entitled The Passion of the Queen, which is a bit of an understatement.

It represents, perhaps, one of the greatest feminine meltdowns in all of ancient literature.

The queen is Dido, Queen of Carthage.

She is lonely, lustful, romantic, generous, conniving, and finally destructive.

In short, Dido is a young beautiful woman whose husband Sychaeus has died, leaving her to rule the city alone. Until the handsome Trojan warrior Aeneas arrives on the beaches of North Africa, with his ramshackle fleet of ships tossed and almost destroyed by the fury of the Goddess Juno (the Greek Hera), Dido had not considered remarriage.

Before the end of this book, Dido and Aeneas have had an affair in a cave and this sexual union Dido wrongly interprets as a marriage.

Aeneas forgets his mission—to found Rome—and spends his time completing Dido’s Honey Doo list, in addition to enjoying a fiery sexual relationship.

When his mother, the Goddess Venus (the Greek Aphrodite) sees that her son is off course, shall we say, she send the messenger god, Mercury (the Greek Hermes) to remind her son of his duty.

Aeneas decides to sneak away without telling Dido and for this slimy decision and her own impending love, sexual, and public loss, she will curse him and predict the Punic Wars that Rome will fight three times against Carthage.

In the end, Dido loses it, as we might say today.

Virgil’s description of her mindset, her manic energy, her Furor, her complete psychic meltdown is unparalleled in ancient literature.

Before we, the reader, tumble to Hades with Dido, she utters the following words:

“I die unavenged,” she said, “but let me die.

This way, this way, a blessed relief to go

Into the undergloom. Let the cold Trojan,

Far at sea, drink in this conflagration

And take with him the omen of my death!”

Then, crawling up to the top of a funeral pyre in a rant, wailing about Fate, she stabs herself to death with a steel blade.

Out in the sea, readying the ships for the trip to Latium (Italy), Aeneas sees the fire of the pyre.

But he is off to Italy.

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