Archive | May 2007

LOST Rehash: The Brig, or Who’s In Prison?

May2

Brigantine Built in Nova Scotia in 1861
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! You say, I can’t do that: don’t tell me what I can’t do!

I. don’t. get. it.

O.K., it’s called “The Brig.” A brig is a ship’s prison. Obviously, Locke locked his daddy up in the brig, and James/Sawyer was locked up, too. James has also been “imprisoned” in his revenge, and now he’s free? Are all the LOSTies in the brig, so to speak? Imprisoned on the island until they work out their own salvation with fear and trembling? We’re back to purgatory. Locke’s dad Sawyer thought they were all dead and in hell, but if someone’s already dead, how could James/Sawyer kill him?

I don’t think they’re in hell or in purgatory.

Why did The Others want Locke to kill his dad? And why didn’t Locke either do the deed or tell Ben and The Others to go jump in the lake? If Locke’s capable of finding his own private assassin and sitting outside listening while Assassin James strangles his dad, why couldn’t he just do it himself. Why does the whole plot remind me of a Greek play? Not Oedipus, but some other Greek play where a guy is supposed to kill his father out of revenge? Locke’s on his own journey. O.K., Locke is a loose cannon, no more to be trusted than is Jack.

Is Kate an idiot? She decides to tell Jack about Parachute Girl, Naomi, and then because Juliet won’t leave immediately, Kate blurts out everything to both of them. Again, is Kate an idiot?

Is Naomi telling the truth? I rather doubt it. I think she’s a plant. Maybe she’s one of the Others or someone sent by the Dharma folks to spy on them. That communication device isn’t going to work.

Oh, nice touch, Sawyer’s fake name was “Tom Sawyer,” the ultimate con artist. Tom Sawyer was really interested in pirate ships and kidnapping people and finding treasure, too.

Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan

May2

Unlike everyone else in the known universe, I hated The Time Traveler’s Wife. I thought it was way too long, way too confusing, and way too crude and sexually and violently graphic. This book, A Portrait of Jennie, is a much gentler, shorter (125 pages) book with a plot comparable to The Time Traveler’s Wife. I liked it very much.

A Portrait of Jennie was published in 1940; it’s out of print but available used from Amazon. In the story, it’s 1938, and the narrator, a starving artist, meets a little girl named Jennie. She’s a girl from the past, and she inspires a painting that captures the interest of an art gallery owner. As the girl re-appears in the narrator’s life, a bit older each time, she continues to inspire paintings and, finally, love.

Author Robert Nathan wrote many novels, a couple of children’s books, and some collections of poetry. According to Wikipedia, he had seven wives. You wouldn’t think he’d know much about romance and long term love and commitment, but A Portrait of Jennie is poignantly romantic.

A Portrait of Jennie was made into a movie in 1948 starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten. Nathan also wrote The Bishop’s Wife, a novel which was also made into a movie.

Quotation Time:

“I suppose most artists go through something of the sort; sooner or later it is no longer enough for them just to live —to paint, and have enough, or nearly enough, to eat. Sooner or later God asks His question: are you for me, or against me? And the artist must have some answer, or feel his heart break for what he cannot say.”

Mother Goose Day

May1

May 1 is Mother Goose Day.
My favorite nursery rhyme is one that Organizer Daughter altered when she was little:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and taco shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.


The Mary in the rhyme was either Mary, Queen of Scots or Bloody Mary (Elizabeth I’s half-sister) or Mary Magdalene. And the silver bells and cockle shells are either decorations on a dress or instruments of torture. The pretty maids? Mary’s ladies in waiting or the guillotine. Take your pick. Admit it. Don’t you like our version better than the original? Taco shells are so harmless and good to eat, and they have no hidden symbolic meaning as far as I know.

For more information on how to celebrate Mother Goose Day, go to the Mother Goose Society website.
For recipes, crafts and coloring pages, try mother goose.com, or go to this Nursery Rhyme page for more educational links. Also, DLTK has coloring pages and craft ideas.

Mother Goose-based games: Mother Goose Caboose.
The Mother Goose Pages: Nursery Rhymes.

My favorite nursery rhyme/Mother Goose books:

In a Pumpkin Shell illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund.

Lavender’s Blue: A Book of Nursery Rhymes compiled by Kathleen Lines.

Mother Goose: If Wishes Were Horses and Other Rhymes illustrated by Susan Jeffers.

Mother Goose illustrated by Brian Wildsmith.

Old Mother Hubbard by Alice and Martin Provensen.

The Real Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright.

The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose: A Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes collected and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.

The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.
– Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme

What’s your favorite Mother Goose rhyme or book?

Cross-X by Joe Miller

May1

My initial, knee jerk reaction to this book? Despair.

Cross-X is subtitled “The Amazing True Story`of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to Challenge the Debate Community on Race, Power, and Education.” It’s about the debate program at Kansas City’s Central High School and about how the author himself, a journalist, became a part of the story he was chronicling. Mr. Miller starts out observing and following the debating adventures of these black, inner city high school debaters, and by the end of the book he’s an assistant coach and an advocate for ending what he sees as institutional racism within the debate community and inside the education system as a whole.

The problem that I see is that these kids are being trained to see racism in everything that happens to them, and their teachers are so biased and despairing that the kids come (are lead) to the conclusion that the overthrow of the government and the education system is just about the only thing that will get them their “rights” as human beings. Their argument against any and all comers is that the system is racist and oppressive and until that fact is acknowledged and changed (how?) they won’t discuss anything else. Period. This argument is their response to problems in mental health care, foreign policy questions, and nuclear war, to name just a few of the debate questions that Central High debaters answer with their all-purpose “end racism first” response.

My near-despair comes from reading that we have students in inner city high schools who are being taught that making up a rhymed rap about how racist everything and everybody is will get them into the upper echelons of power and change the world for the better. In other words, if black young people can be trained to see themselves as victims and to articulate that vision, then eventually the white oppressors will see the light and —what? Reading this book reminds me of the OJ Simpson trial and what a gulf that trial revealed between the perspectives of white people and black people in this country. Are we really so far apart? And are we moving farther apart? I pray not, but I am discouraged by the stories in this book.