Archive | 2/9/2010

LOST Rehash: What Kate Does

Feb9

Wow! LOST becomes Island of the Zombies.

So, to start toward the beginning, this episode is called What Kate Does. In an episode in season two of LOST called What Kate Did, we found out that Kate blew up her biological father, Wayne, and that she has a step-father named Sam Austen. On the island in this episode, Kate kisses Jack, runs away from him, and then has a heart-to-heart conversation with Sawyer who is recovering from being sick and infected and whatever else he was when he trekked halfway across the island with Ana Lucia and her crew.

I’m assuming this episode has something to do with that one, but other than Kate still running, chasing Sawyer, and generally being a fruitcake, I don’t know what. Kate and Claire are bonding in the No Crash World in spite of Kate’s having taken Claire hostage and scared the heck out of her. Claire even lies for Kate and gives Kate her credit card. Is Claire the world’s biggest sucker or what? (Maybe Sawyer should try a con on Claire, except Claire has no money —and now no credit card either.) Oh, and Kate also tells Claire that she’s “innocent”, and Claire believes that, too.

At least, we’re fairly sure that Kate is Kate. What Kate does is run away. Kate is The Fugitive. So since she’s still running, she’s still Kate. But who is Sayid? Is he still Sayid, or has he been “claimed”? Hurley asks Sayid if he’s a zombie, and Sayid says no. But this episode is all about trust, and can we trust the resurrected Sayid? Then, again, can we trust Temple Master Dogen? He says the pill that Jack is supposed to give Sayid is “medicine”; then, it turns out that it’s really poison. If they wanted to kill Sayid, why didn’t they do it while he was on the torture table? If they want to cure him, why use Jack to be the go-between?

How many times tonight did someone tell someone else that everything would be explained? Dogen said that they would answer all the Losties’ questions as soon as they talked to Sayid. But they didn’t. The show’s masterminds told us again at the beginning of the show and at the end that this was the last season when all questions would be answered. Then, at the end in the sneak peeks at next week, Fake Locke tells someone (I can’t remember) that he will explain everything. I think they’re teasing us. To paraphrase Hurley, whenever we go away and allow private conversations (among the writers), we end up doing something we don’t understand.

I am glad that Hurley’s back. “We’ll just wait outside in the Food Court.”
Miles: “As you can see, Hurley’s taken on the leadership position.”

Hurley is my hero, and Miles makes a good sidekick.

Next week’s episode is called The Substitute. Who do you think will be substituting for whom and doing what?

School UNFriendly

Feb9

Maybe it’s my own personal homeschool bias, but a lot of the books I read for the Cybils (Middle Grade Fiction), didn’t feel very school-friendly.

I’ve already discussed the confusing mixed messages from and about school in Barbara Dee’s Solving Zoe, and how the protagonist, Zoe, learns and thrives much better outside of school than she does in classes.

In The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Calpurnia has this conversation with her grandfather:

“What are you studying in school? You do go to school, don’t you?
“Of course I do. We’re studying Reading, Spelling, Arithmetic, and Penmanship. Oh, and Deportment. I got an “acceptable” for Posture but an “unsatisfactory” for Use of Hankie and Thimble. Mother was kind of unhappy about that.”
“Good G–,” he said. “It’s worse than I thought.”
This was an intriguing statement, though I didn’t understand it.
“And is there no science? No physics?” he said.
“We did have botany one day. What’s physics?”
“Have you never heard of Sir Isaac Newton? Sir Francis Bacon?”
“No.” . . .
“And I suppose they teach you that the world is flat and that there are dragons gobbling up the ships that fall over the edge.” He peered at me. “There are many things to talk about. I hope it’s not too late. Let us find a place to sit.”

Not exactly a plug for schools, even if the schools that are being criticized are turn of the century, c.1899.

In several of the books, the protagonist is flunking out of school even though he/she is capable of doing the work:
In Bull Rider by Suzanne Morgan Williams, Cam O’Mara is learning a lot more at home dealing with his injured brother, working on the family’s ranch, and practicing his skateboarding and bull riding skills than he does at school.
Author Andrew Clements is known for his “school stories”, and Extra Credit is not an exception to the genre. However, Abby learns more from her extra credit assignment of writing to a pen pal in Afghanistan, completed outside of school time, than she does from her work at school, even though she spends a great deal of time trying to “catch up” so that she can be promoted and go on to seventh grade with her classmates.
In Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson, Lonnie loses his motivation to study anything at all when an insensitive teacher tells him he’s too young to be a real poet. He gets his math instruction from his older foster brother at home.

The Homeschool Liberation League by Lucy Frank was actually more school-friendly than many of the other books that were not about homeschooling. The message I got from Frank’s book was that many different kinds of schooling situations work for different children and young adults at different times.

Which is what I believe. Different strokes for different folks, and let’s live and let live. I have a child in a nontraditional public high school, four young adults who have graduated from my homeschool and who have never been to a public or private school, a young daughter who is trying out an online virtual academy (public school) this semester, and two children who are still homeschooling. There are advantages and disadvantages to each situation. It takes time and energy to find the best educational setting for each child each year. And some times you just hope it’s not too late.

Let us find a place to sit.

Many Happy Returns: February 9th

Feb9

Hilda Gerarda van Stockum was born in Rotterdam in 1908. She grew up in Ireland and in the Netherlands. Her brother, Willem van Stockum, was a mathematician and disciple of Albert Einstein. He was “the first to notice the possibility of closed timelike curves, one of the strangest and most disconcerting phenomena in general relativity.” (I don’t know what that means exactly, but it does sound rather LOST-like, doesn’t it?) Willem died in combat a few days after the Normandy invasion.

The author’s first children’s book, A Day on Skates, won Newbery honors in 1935. Her aunt, the poet Edna St. VIncent Millay, wrote a preface to this story of a Dutch picnic, saying, “This is a book which mothers and fathers will sit up to finish, after the protesting child has been dragged firmly to bed.”

Ms. Van Stockum wrote two series of children’s stories: one set in Ireland about the O’Sullivan family and another set in the U.S. and Canada about the Mitchells, a family growing together and enduring the hardships of the homefront during World War II. Here’s my review of Pegeen, one of the books in the O’Sullivan family series. I found the book at ratty old thrift store in Pasadena, and knowing nothing of the book or its author, I took a twenty-five cent chance. Good call.