a list of books

Cuz Melvis made me, and I'm too bland to post anything else.

1) One book that changed your life:
Professionally? In the Middle, by Nancie Atwell, about teaching writing and reading workshop. Personally, the last one would be... A Mother's Plea, by Fr. Anthony Bus.

2) One book you have read more than once:
U2: At the End of the World, by Bill Flanagan

3) One book you would want on a desert island:
A book large enough to build a vessel or turn into ample kindling for firewood. So, this Ming dynasty manuscript with over 23,000 chapters would be perfect. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind plowing through Moby Dick again, being in the middle of the ocean, since I'm the only one I know that likes it anyway. It's got plenty of pages for kindling, too.

4) One book that made you laugh:
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. "YOUR MOTHER HAS THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS."

5) One book that made you cry:
I haven't cried while reading, but I got really sad after Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. 9/11 seen through the eyes of a kid.

6) One book you wish had been written:
A Decade of Dominance: The Hegemony of Asian Men over Mainstream American Society and the White Sox Championship Run, 2005-2014.

7) One book you wish had never been written:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. Ugh. So. De. Pre. Ssing. This made midwestern winter nights during high school a LOT more bleak.

8) One book you are currently reading:
Prayer Primer, by Fr. Thomas Dubay.

9) One book you have been meaning to read:
Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami.

insurrection of the brain

I have to reel my summer mind back into work mode.

The headaches have ceased with increased water consumption. Coffee is out of the diet, except on weekends.

Now to eliminate waking up mid-sleep cycle. I'm guessing the key is, no naps.

It's great seeing my brother. But I feel that I haven't spent very much time with him, and he's gone for two weeks to Kansas already. He'll have two weeks when he comes back, at least. Mostly, I think I'm looking for an excuse to go to another baseball game and to hang with low intensity, low maintenance people.

A lot of my kids are Sox fans. Bonus. Much different than the north shore burbs. Or perhaps the bandwagon is bigger than I thought.

It's hard for me not to compare leading retreats and teaching, since the parallels are pretty obvious. What gets me is how much *harder* teaching is. You'd thinking spending all day on a retreat would be harder than 90 little minutes in the morning involving writing, but... you'd be wrong.

O-F-F to the J-O-B

Off tomorrow for new teacher orientation, followed by meetings (?). Not sure how long the day will be, but getting antsy about starting up; I think if I *had* gotten a job last spring, the wait until August would have killed me. Dunno if it's jitters or ennui or something I ate, but I'm feeling nervous, like I'm fighting myself to do anything aside from laying awake in bed sweating about not knowing what the heck to do when Wednesday comes (which is dumb, I know). I'm hoping it'll subside some more once work gets going.

On a more positive note, it was nice to get out and mingle with nice, normal people (Mel's friends are, despite "adult" treehouses and rollerskating parties) and have a reasonable answer when they ask "so what do you do?" It tells me that I put a lot of stock in what I do, as long as it's doing something. Which strikes me as weird, then, when I lack the overwhelming gratitude that I suspected I might be gushing with when I finally found work. It was more, "alright, finally; let's get going." Which led to the aforementioned mental tossing and turning. I'm some weird psychosomatic hypochondriac. I'm hoping once I get a few days under my belt, I'll be more thankful.

But, as often happens, hardships (even supposed ones) are not unaccompanied by joys. My brother comes home to visit on Tuesday.

Dear sweet baby Jesus...

... thank you for DVD players, that will allow me to enjoy Ricky Bobby indefinitely.

Right before the lights go out, my friend D: "I think this is going to be life-changing." Mmhm. Really solid cast, a la Anchorman, with John C. Reilly, Gary Cole, whoever those two little kids were, and Amy Adams, my favorite Redhead in Hollywood (C).

Odd fact: John Irving writes great stuff involving characters who have strange injuries. There's always somebody around who has a missing finger, eye, nose, etc. It's hard to write about a freak injury in a way that seems totally plausible, and he does it pretty well (yeah, I'm trying to do the same thing).

Good to see the Sox get off on a roll against the good teams (5 of 6 from the Yankee$ and the Tigers), despite the derfman's constant noise about a sweep before it actually happened. I just think it's one of those things that you leave unsaid until it's over, like a no-hitter.


To whit: Last week's game against the Yankees, Randy Johnson (warming up before the game, above) is cruising into the 7th inning, and the Yanks fans in our section start chanting "no-hitter, no hitter!," which is pretty much a guarantee that you're going to lose it. No sooner than they settle down, then the Gooch strokes a sharp single to break it up. I heard later on that the Yankee broadcast team were even mentioning it on the air. Any sports fan worth his/her sand knows that you *never* mention "no-hitter" or "perfect game" until it gets broken up or it actually happens. Lady Luck and her loyal stepbrother, Mo Mentum, don't look kindly on being so brazenly called out. Just one example of some egregious breaches in sports fan etiquette I've been noticing lately. A public service announcement of acceptable conditions would be:

1) Know the basics about your team. Lots of "fans" don't seem to know the names of the players, or the name of the opposing team, etc. That's totally acceptable, you can't know everything. But you can't call yourself a fan of that team, then.

2) Understand what level of fan you are. For instance, if you've just started following a team, then start with the fundamentals, like learning the players' names, what positions they play, etc. like mentioned above. I'm doing this right now with Premier League soccer, with the help of our boarders (Tottenham and Liverpool are their faves). You cannot wade into more advanced topics of fandom until you've learned up the basics. For instance, a newly christened White Sox fan, caught up in the frenzy of last year's playoff run, should not be engaging in any Cubs/Sox debates for the time being. Brashness in a newbie is intolerable, because you'll most likely make the rest of us look stupid. (I.e. Caroline trying to make fun of Maximus for being a Cub fan by taunting him about the Sox's success, except she doesn't know anything about the Sox. Ugh.)

3) Only take middling interest in the success of other teams, unless it directly affects your team. If Detroit ends up winning the whole thing, then good for them, but I'm definitely not sitting around and watching that happen. I'm a fan of MY team, see, so what other teams do is irrelevant. This also means you can't be a fan of two teams; none of this "Cubs AND Sox" or "Mets AND Yankees" nonsense. What's the point? Monogamy is more satisfying, in real life and in sports fandom.

4) If you're taking someone to the game with you, and they're not a fan of the teams that are playing, or don't know anything about the sport, then help them out. I know lots of good female fans, so this is not meant as a stereotype, but I've gone to too many games where a dude brings his clueless girlfriend to the game, and then they're on the cell, or talking about work 75% of the time, or asking really inane questions like "how do they know which direction to run on the bases?" (the only exception to this is little kids). I can't help but think about more deserving supporters who would've really enjoyed those seats. Help your non-sports literate friends out at the game, for everyone's sake. Or just go to Wrigley, where they (mostly) don't care.

no-no

It figures that I'd go the game where my team gets no-hit for 6 innings. Also, blogger is being lame and not letting post pictures. It was fun to be at the ballpark with a playoff atmosphere and ride that emotional rollercoaster on every pitch, but it was the same old story for the Sox. Pitching gives up an early lead that the offense make up the defecit for, defense and bullpen were solid. I just don't see the weaknesses getting better, because there's no consistency. Four guys (Thome, Konerko, Dye, Crede) are carrying the weight of the entire offense, all 5 starting pitchers have been schizophrenic, and the execution of subtler baseball tactics (holding runners on, laying down bunts, taking pitches) has been subpar. There just isn't enough cloth to cover all the holes, not enough consistency and reliability to make it to the postseason. I'm tired of "bases loaded, no outs" and coming up with zero runs.

And despite all this, they're still in the thick of the wildcard hunt. Sox faithful cling to the hope that the sum performance will finally equal the parts, but there don't seem to be any indicators that say otherwise. It's been the same-old, same-old since Opening Day; when the starters do ok, then the offense has enough room to win it (the starters don't really win it, the offense does). When they don't, then all the defense, hitting, and bullpen pitching in the world can't save them. And until that changes, I expect to see some more "bases loaded, no run" situations.

---

So, for those who do not know, I got a teaching job up here in the north 'burbs. (Thanks to y'all who've helped me along for the past 20 months, I know it hasn't always been a picnic.) Off to the races of Adulthood and Responsibility. In the midst of trying to figure it all out, I wrote a lot of personal manifestos, because 1) writing it out makes me feel better and 2) I was trying to figure out if I wasn't having any luck because my teacher antenna was all wrong. Anyway, here's a little blurb. It was sort of an open letter type deal:

...I get along with people. I like making them feel comfortable, because if they're comfortable, then they're willing to listen to me. It's reciprocal, isn't it? If I listen to you, then you might listen to me. I want people to get better at whatever it is that they want to do. I want to serve them in this way. Not because I know so much more, necessarily, but because everybody needs that
help to get better. I don't see them as empty vessels that I need to fill and anoint with my Knowledge. I want them to be good people. I want them to be the ones making the decisions in the future that are going to change the world. Because, you see, this is how I change the world, by affecting the ones that will change the world in the future. And I wouldn't be a responsible mentor to them (yes, I see myself as a role model, and I take that seriously) if I didn't give them an ability or a desire to choose to do the right thing, whatever that right thing may be in their different, unique, individual selves. Not some fakey all-inclusive, mind-flabby "tolerance" that just accepts everything, but to hone their minds as a sharp tool that desires to know the truth about everything. Because knowing that "true thing" is how you do the right thing. I believe that if you follow what's true, then it follows that you'll do the right thing. I think that's the key to finding happiness and fulfillment and deep, substantial joy with yourselves, and isn't that what we want? Isn't that what we want our kids to have? This is what we do when we study literature; we're searching for the truth. We talk about wanting to shape and nurture young minds; what better lesson can be taught than this? To discern what is true. To understand what the guiding principles are for how we make our decisions.

I suppose the true proving ground for all this idealism will be the classroom, starting in late August. Can't wait.

3 up, 3 down

Checked out the new Miami Vice yesterday. It's a competent remake, but seems to lack a certain energy to it. Maybe it has to do with the excessive handheld camerawork (IiIiI LlLooOOvvVeee sSShhHaaAAkkKKyyyYYy iiiIImmMaaAAAggGGeeESSSss), or the slightly out of focus screen at the theater, or the mumbled dialogue.

Also, Colin Farrell is a fungible part in almost every movie he's in, but he did ok here. It seems to me that he's best when he has some kind of controlled fury in his performances, but he's never done that except in Daredevil. Yet, all the hype. Again, the vagaries and mystery of celebrity-dom.

Schlepped over to Lula Cafe for some excellent food and wine. Highly recommended for small groups for dinner, and it has that Logan Square indie chic about it. Yes, it was tempting to jump on the piano that we were seated by, but we refrained from punishing everyone with my version of "The Entertainer."


Capped off the evening by heading over to watch Exit Clov, a DC band fronted by two acquaintances from undergrad, who happen to be identical twins. It's weird watching and hearing two people sing that have the exact same voice; it's like a living, organic echo/delay. (As a side note, it's also weird to see people that you knew in younger, more formative settings go on to do things like be in a band, or broker deals with multimillion dollar corporations, or doctors, etc. You know, really respectable or cool or responsible things. I guess it's only weird because I still see myself as really young still.) They're a pleasant mishmash in the land of No Doubt or the Cranberries, but Veruca Salt with more musical talent strikes me as the best description. Good times all around.

...and all i got was this shirt

Nothing says "I had a good trip" like a happy group photo.

The kids? Deep. And hungry, starving, for truth.

The leaders? Selfless. And patient.

Our priests? Generous, with their time and their care.

Me? Humbled, at the way God moves souls.