Wednesday, Apr. 09, 2003
"I thought the first amendment said that we didn't have to agree?" - Brenda Kahn, posted at 10:02 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I'm seething right now:http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0409-10.htm
The article basically states that the Baseball Hall of Fame is cancelling the 15-year anniversary ceremony for Bull Durham because of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins' opposition to the war. This is pathetic. What an absolute embarassment. McCarthyism is alive and well in America.
Bull Durham is the best baseball movie of all time. Susan Sarandon's speech about baseball is one of my favorite scenes in all of film. It deserves as many accolades as can be heaped upon it.
This decision is pretty damn outrageous and turns my stomach. I'm embarrassed and insulted by the way "support the troops" has become a code word for "if you don't support Bush's policies you hate America." From threats against the Dixie Chicks to booing Michael Moore off the stage while giving a standing ovation to Roman Polanski to this, it's a worrisome trend. The proud tradition of loyal opposition is being buried under a big flag, and you'd better salute that flag or you're next. The fact that a story like this has to be found on some website I've never heard of rather than cnn.com or something demonstrates just how docile our media has become. It's like a Kurt Vonnegut novel. What does anyone's opinion about the war have to do with baseball?
I was throwing around plans to drive up to Cooperstown next week with a co-worker as a spring break endeavor. No longer. As long as this McCarthyist Dale Petroskey is in charge, I'll stay away.
***
I'm tired and should be grading W.O.T.D (Word of the Day) quizzes. I had a great lesson today on how diction creates tone. Students analyzed how Poe's word choice creates tone in the opening paragraph of "The Fall of the House of Usher," then rewrote the same scene in a new tone. I modeled one for them, and that was fun.
The original: DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
My rewrite: So I was having this crazy day and decided to go for a ride on my lazy horse that would rather sit around and eat straw all day then carry around my big butt. But, whatever. He's my horse, right? If I want to take a ride, he's got to carry me. So I was riding across this stupid field with all these weeds in it and all of a sudden there was the big old house in front of me. I didn't know why in the hell there was a house out in the middle of nowhere, but I figured I'd knock on the door and see what's up. Usher opened the door. Usher Raymond. I had stumbled across his hideaway, and he invited me inside to chill.
I was going for a bitter, aloof tone. Most of my students just changed the season and words like melancholy and dark, but I let them go crazy with it if they wanted, as long as the plot stayed basically the same - just the tone changed. It was a good class. They then did it in groups with four other passages I found - one from the Declaration of Independence, one from Downsize This!, one from Whoopi Goldberg's Book, and one from Kinetix. [He wrote this really neat thing the other day about an icestorm that I thought had a pretty clear tone of awe. By the way, Kinetix, do you mind that I used it? I probably should have asked first. :)] The students identified the tone of each, identified the diction that was used to create it, and rewrote it with a different tone. Good stuff. Their brains were working well today.
As Mother Nature continues to be a bitch, we had indoor practice. I beat all my baseball players in the suicide sprints we ran - sprinting across the gym from the side to the free throw line, then back, then to the halfcourt line, then back, then to the 3/4 line, then back, then to the opposite end, then back. I had a decent workout with them, then negated part of it by eating a Cadbury Egg (this season's count: 8) when I got home.
My eyes are getting heavy and Holden went to bed like an hour ago, so I think that is a sign that April 9, 2003 is over.