Traditions

"A person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed." - Bennet Cerf


I just found the blog of someone I met on Monday who has just moved here from Utah. Her most recent post is about the insane amount of school spirit my school apparently has. I read this and thought "...aren't all high schools like this?"


Kids wear school T-shirts all the time, apparently the local Rite-Aid sells a ton of school merchandise that the SCHOOL ITSELF doesn't actually sell, our speed bumps are painted school colors, and the seniors were all told to wear "senior crowns" on the first day and some decorated their cars for the occasion. Oh, and the water tower across the street reads "Class of 2012." (I feel like this water tower is a countdown to my simultaneous doom and freedom. I've watched the number rise my entire life, and soon it'll be painted with mine.)


Those were some of the things she listed, and when put like that, I guess it is a bit unusual. And yes, some kids take it to an extreme (there's a guy who wears a school-themed RUG as a cloak on the last day of spirit week. We have no idea where he got this rug.) I just never thought about it that way before--this is all I've ever known.


You read in books about kids going "Blech. School sucks. I just want to be done with it. This is boring. I have no school spirit." And the thing is, my school has plenty of those kids. We just...keep them well-hidden to outsiders or something (or maybe the spirited ones are just louder).


Some of it's all tradition, though. This school has been around for over 100 years, after all, so a lot of kids' parents (or even grandparents) went there. We have a road named after the guy who was the band director in the 70s. One of the town's two biggest events of the year centers around our marching band, and the other's a massive craft fair at which the band also plays.


You can see the depth of the tradition just by driving downtown (it's just one street):

• Train station
• Library
• Methodist church
• Baptist church
• Drug store
• Bank
• Post office
• A couple restaurants with "through the decades" murals
• The building that used to be my high school up until the 60s, now a Performing Arts Center

See? Everything a small town needs (although it's grown explosively in the past 20-30 years).


I may have blogged a long time ago about an elderly couple I once saw on a bench outside the drug store enjoying ice cream cones together: I bet they walked down the street to go get ice cream when they were teenagers.


My parents grew up in a (different, and even tinier) small town, so even their stories make the fading vestiges of those days around here seem familiar/normal. This might be the early 21st century, but in some small respects, my town (although it's big enough now that I don't know if that word applies anymore) has yet to grow up.




I can't wait until homecoming week when this girl sees the guys running around campus with giant flags yelling "GREEN! WHITE! GREEN! WHITE!" Ha.

Thing 1 & Thing 2

"A quiet mind cureth all." - Robert Burton

Novel 1: 80,015 words 

Novel 2: 80,035 words

Now that second number is definitely going to change (in the upward direction) during revisions, but...dang. 20-word difference.


Although this is interesting:

Novel 1: 430,506 chars 

Novel 2: 445,399 chars

Apparently I used bigger words.


And according to Random Online Writing Analyzer I used yesterday...


Novel 1, which is the thing of which I am most proud and the piece of my writing I love best: Reads like Cory Doctorow (YES!)
Novel 2: Despite being epic fantasy, apparently reads like a James Bond novel


I have never read a James Bond novel, so I do not know what this means. Although their algorithm probably thinks very little happens in it other than conversations about the weather, given that most of the main characters are conscious embodiments of seven aspects of a hurricane.

An Abundance of Quotes Part 20

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum." - Arthur C. Clarke


"This is your world. Shape it or someone else will." - Gary Lew


“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” - Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul


“I sing of time, concealer and revelator, time which will rejoin you to the dead, time which like water destroys all that it nourishes.” - epigraph of The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. However, there seems to be some controversy as to whether or not he made it up himself as Fitzgerald did in The Great Gatsby.


"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." - Robert Louis Stevenson


"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." - Saul Bellow


“Some days, it seems to me like the purpose of life is to convert energy into beauty.” - Hank Green


"For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies." - Laurence Sterne

Review: Chime, by Frances Billingsley

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it." - Christopher Morely


I am such a hypocrite.


First, the summary off of Shelfari:

Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony blamed herself for all the family's hardships. Now Briony has worn her guilt for so long it's become a second skin. She often escapes to the swamp, where she tells stories to the Old Ones, the spirits who haunt the marshes. But only witches can see the Old Ones, and in her village, witches are sentenced to death. Briony lives in fear her secret will be found out, even as she believes she deserves the worst kind of punishment. Then Eldric comes along with his golden lion eyes and mane of tawny hair. He's as natural as the sun, and treats her as if she's extraordinary. And everything starts to change. As many secrets as Briony has been holding, there are secrets even she doesn't know.

There is a serious discrepancy of opinion on Chime in my book club, and having been thinking about it off and on since the last meeting, I thought I'd write a post supporting my position.


The main objection to the quality of the book is that it is exceedingly verbose. I don't have a copy, so I can't quote the most-often-used example, but take my word for it. That particular example is some of Eldric's dialogue, so I do not have an excuse for it. However, for some of the rest, I do.


There are several sections of narration self-acknowledged to be in the style of The House That Jack Built: 

"This is the girl called Briony. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained; which angered the BoggyMan. This is the girl called Briony who lived in a swamp that was being drained, which angered the BoggyMan, who sent the swamp cough."

And so on for another three quarters of a page. Now I listened to the audio book, which is another form of storytelling so perhaps this sort of writing was not as annoying read aloud as it might be when written out. (I was kind of annoyed when looking the passage up on Google Books so I could quote it to you.)


That being said, since it's only used a few times, this style matches Briony's character. She makes references to the writing of novels repeatedly throughout the book, and has so many secrets that she's used to thinking to herself for long stretches of time. When in dialogue, such verbosity is not good. But when in narration, it's more excusable. (However, I'd be interested to see my reaction to the written version.)

Moving on to the things I loved about it.


Chime did an amazing job of what in the world of fiction is called "plants and payoffs." I was listening to this (while eating pizza and playing Diablo 2 back when my sisters were both out of town) in the afternoons while working on another editing swipe at my first novel in the mornings, and when I got to the end of Chime, I was practically salivating with jealousy of how well Frances Billingsley made it all come together. Then again, I was also reaching the end of a 13 hour car trip when I finished, so perhaps the happiness was for another reason altogether. With regards to that, I wish I had written this book.


Then there is Briony herself, who was great. She claims to hate herself and the world...yet the reader doesn't. She's one of the most unreliable narrators I have encountered, but it works so well. I knew something was up from the first few minutes of the audio book, and I knew which sections of her life smelled fishy, but I had no inkling as to the nature of the truth she was covering up. 


Briony's unreliability also allows there to be romance without it being the ridiculously cheesy and over-blown romance that we love to mock. It's romance about friendship rather than friendship about romance, if that makes sense. Again, something I wish I had written (even if I didn't always like Eldric himself).


So I recommend the audio book, and the textual version as well if you can put up with the style. It's an extremely well-crafted story, even if the quality of the actual writing through which it is told is subject to doubt.

Review: To Timbuku, by Casey Scieszka

“Literature is more than just paper, you know - it affects every aspect of existence.” - Al, The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers


This post comes to you less than a week after I stated I found it pointless to blog about books because I'm just going to talk about them at book club anyway. Clearly I've just been lacking in books worth talking about.


To Timbuktu is worth talking about.


It tells the true story of two people who, after finishing college, knew three things about how they wanted to proceed:


1. They wanted to leave the country.
2. They wanted to pursue creative projects (writing for Casey, art for Steven).
3. They wanted to be together.


They ended up teaching English in China for half a year, exploring Southeast Asia for a few months before settling in Mali where Casey researched the role of Islam in the education system on grant money and Steven drew portraits, painted education murals on the walls of schools, and both of them continued to teach.


This is the first book of its length (nearly 500 pages) that I have read in a single day in a very, very long time. While writing/illustrating the book, they used their journal entries (both written and drawn) to help them along, which results in a tone that I loved-- a combination between real journal entries, letters to home, oral storytelling, and regular fiction. All of the things I normally would have objected to in a fictional novel made sense in this case, given the perspective.


And then there were the pictures. My sister could tell you more about their actual quality than I could (she liked them a lot), but what I noticed was their role in the storytelling. Sometimes they included punchlines the prose left out. Sometimes they were placed on the page so as to play an active role in the progression of events. Sometimes they were simply illustrations whose inclusion I enjoyed. The cover does not say "Written by Casey Scieszka, Illustrated by Steven Weinberg." It says "Words by Casey Scieszka, Art by Steven Weinberg." They told the story together-- just using different mediums.


There are people who stopped in the middle of Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes (by Maureen Johnson) to look up plane tickets to Europe. I didn't look up tickets while reading To Timbuktu, but now all I want is to teach while travelling the world with someone I love--be they friend or boyfriend. (There's a teacher at my old elementary school who did exactly that with her newly-wed husband in Japan for two years, as a matter of fact-- says it was completely life-changing.)


Actually, upon finishing it I had a strange sense that I had gone on an amazing adventure myself, and as irrational as it sounds, I couldn't wait to get online to tell all of you about it.

To Be, Or Not To Be

"And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born

Then it's time to go

And define your destination

There's so many different places to call home

Because when you find yourself the villain in the story you have written

It's plain to see

That sometimes the best intentions are in need of redemptions

Would you agree?"

 - Death Cab for Cutie, "You Are A Tourist"

There is the Awkward Silence. There is the Ominous Silence. There is the Two Good Friends Sitting But Not Speaking Silence and the Anticipatory Silence, but the kind I want to talk about here is, for want of a better name, the Quaker Silence. Because, once again, I went to Meeting with my best friend.


We aren't quiet because we have to be, but because that's just how it works. There's an important distinction.


There's something incredibly special and mind-blowing about a group of people sitting together not talking or interacting, but not in an awkward "Wow, we're all just sort of sitting here. Hm" sort of way.


It makes you realize that each and every one of the other people in the room are in the middle of their own thoughts, and their own experiences--whatever it is they do/think about during the Meeting. You aren't viewing them as they relate to you...because for the moment they don't. You know they aren't going to say anything to you--or if they do speak up, it will be to the room as a whole. It isn't "you" and "them." It's you and a whole room full of other yous.


The silence isn't awkward, or anxious. It may as well not even be silence, since it's not silence for silence's sake but to eliminate distractions and draw focus away from the immediate surroundings.


It's a safe place in which you don't have to worry about the present. It gives you the opportunity to...be, I guess.


Unless, of course, you're like me and are too busy contemplating the value of such a silence.

Personality <> Books

"A joke is a very serious thing." - my eighth cousin five times removed, Mr. Winston Churchill

First of all, look at this. For right now it's just through phones and special glasses...but just wait until it hits contact lenses.


Neither of my sisters is particularly eager to take book recommendations from me. The youngest claims she doesn't like the books I liked when I was her age (yet is perfectly willing to read and then loves them when people other than me say they were good), and the other...I don't actually know.


She refuses to read John Green books not because she doesn't like his writing, but because I watch him on YouTube. I do not understand why this is a problem. And just to be clear, I was halfway through An Abundance of Katherines in May of 8th grade (God, it's been awhile) when I realized that this John Green was that John Green. It (originally) had nothing to do with the fact that I like his videos.


But okay. Nerdy vlogger probably writes nerdy books (he does). Fair enough. But then, having started Maureen Johnson's The Last Little Blue Envelope last night, I tell my sister that she should read Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, or really anything by her, because I've read and enjoyed all of them.


My sister says "You shouldn't have told me the author, because now I'm not going to read it." Maureen Johnson does not write nerdy books. Just because I follow her on Twitter and she's friends with John Green...Most American YA authors are friends with each other. Twitter isn't even a nerdy thing anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time. It's a social networking tool. I'd wager that most authors are on Twitter, even if Maureen has won a few awards for being one of the best personalities to follow.


Every author puts a little of themselves into their writing, but books are still separate from personality. You can really like a person and not like their writing, or you can really like their writing and agree that the writer is a jerk. And just because I like what an author does as themselves as well as what they do as a writer doesn't mean that their books are bad and I'm just horribly biased (I will be biased, but not that much).


But on the note of recommendations, if you're going to read one of Maureen's books, I'd suggest starting with The Bermudez Triangle. It's been labeled, not by me, as a book that absolutely everyone, regardless of gender or age, should read. It's about three girls who are about to start their senior year of high school, and I read it in a single afternoon-- which is saying a lot, since it's nearly 400 pages.

With A Blank Slate

"A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering...than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." - John Stuart Mill


"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a food satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question." - Also John Stuart Mill


I've gotten to the point in Justice--which arrives about halfway through nearly every nonfiction book I read-- at which I stop reading and begin skimming. Kant's thoughts, as described by the author, are...dense.


However, one of the sections that I did read thoroughly was the one about how to make fair laws.


John Rawls (who inhabits the chapter after Kant) discards utilitarianism and libertarianism and suggests that if people were able to forget everything about themselves--economic status, gender, religion, etc.-- for a few hours, we'd be able to make laws that really were fair for everyone--or at least fair enough that we wouldn't mind being on the losing end.


You want to have social programs just in case you wind up as one of the poor people. You want religious freedom in case you're one of the minorities. You want tolerance in case you're one of the ones not being tolerated. Self-interest doesn't involve bias anymore, because we don't know which possible self we're supposed to be interested in.


And I like that. (Psst. Congress! Come listen to Rawls!)

A Better Life

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." - Eric Hoffer


I went to see A Better Life with my aunt and cousin last night at this, for want of a better word, indie theater near my house. It's about an illegal immigrant trying to support and take care of his teenage son. While it was very depressing and employed every stereotype about Mexican immigrants we could think of on the way home, I enjoyed it and have some thoughts I wanted to share.


I know that there are real people who suffer just as much as and in similar ways as Carlos and his son. I'll leave the politics alone, but the movie made me think...


How dare I write a blog post about how I'm pissed my school doesn't accomodate my every academic whim? How dare I wish we had the money to send me to Ireland for spring break to visit our family friends who will be there for the semester (this is actually a possibility, but that's beside the point)? How dare I...I don't even know. How dare I be so spoiled?


There are kids all over the world who want nothing more than to be able to go to school, and that's not even counting people like Carlos' son who just go to bad ones. And here I am complaining about the school that I really do love.


Does this make our middle class problems any less "valid," though? It's still real emotions and all, but...we take so much for granted. Yet who doesn't yearn for a better life? Carlos' son has an argument with his father about how he wants money to buy school supplies. Less than an hour earlier, I had an argument with my parents about how I wanted money to go see a movie about a boy needing money to buy school supplies.


This is all fairly typical culture shock, I know, but then again, my best friend's sister is currently building houses in Guatemala, so perhaps I'm not one to talk.


I'll definitely be returning to this theater-- it helps that it's within walking distance of school. 

People Grade

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought." - Jean Paul


Yesterday was Freshman Camp, so the debate team and I showed up with out trifold board and fliers to attempt to recruit new members. 


After the morning session for those whose last names fall at the beginning of the alphabet (How I loathe thee!), a few of us decided to walk down the street to the Dairy Queen to get lunch. On the way there, we were talking about some of the stuff we've been doing this summer-- more specifically the things we've been learning on our own.


This post spawns partially from that, and partially from my mother's recent observation that I have befriended a lot of homeschoolers in the last two years.


While I am a public-schooled child, I will never ever say that it within itself is a perfectly sufficient way to gain one's education. As someone I know said last night, "I come from a good branch of a flawed system." I love my school, and I do believe there are advantages to all forms of schooling, but the advantages of public school unfortunately do not make up for the disadvantages if learning is abandoned at 2:15 every day.


My debate team friends agree with this. A quote from one of them: "Doesn't everyone (teach themselves stuff outside of school)?" And the answer, sadly, is no.


I'm not going to make any statements about whether or not there is a single system (or lack thereof) that is enough, but there are a lot of people who learn faster than their classes are taught (and who have interests outside of said classes). The school isn't going to accomodate that, so we have to take it upon ourselves to explore the world on our own time--while still making sure we do our homework.


This is why I read several physics books last fall. This is why I just finished a book about cognitive neuroscience, and why yesterday's post came from a conversation with my dad about evolutionary biology. This is why I'm finishing up the first draft of my second freaking novel. This is why I'm currently reading Harvard's most popular course (Michael Sandel's Justice) in book form, and why my friends and I discuss supposedly "academic" topics without prompting: because public school simply isn't enough.


And I'm sure a lot of conventionally homeschooled kids are the same: they do their schoolwork, whether it be assigned by their parents or an online teacher, but that doesn't mean they stop there.


I'll be entering eleventh grade in two weeks, but I'm also, as I now refer to the status of my unschooled friend, in "People Grade."