Opps...I think I just ran out of pictures, at least for tonight. Anyway, I tried readings the first in Tolkein's series last night and, give me a break, I don't give a damn about a fictional history of dwarfs who are related to royal dwarfs, and what battles dwarfs fought for their ring. One of my students chided me today that I needed to read longer and get into the series. Imagine that--one of my ADD students telling me to slow down and be patient! But I've tried that, forced myself to read long past my interest level, and I never seem to come around. I read "All the Pretty Horses" over Christmas vacation, and despite my love of the Southwest, and even though I slogged through the first 50 pages of deliberate confusion created by Cormac McCarthy, I didn't end up loving the book even by the end. I read it because Natalie Goldberg raved about it in one of her books. Now I'm taking Pat Conroy's advice about trolls? Forget it.
Don't ask me how I got the idea that hobbits are rabbits. Embarrassing...I hope none of you noticed my mistake. Turns out they are trolls or dwarfs...whatever the difference is, I have no idea. Which reminded me of Cappadochia, Turkey where you can go through this rather innocuous and back-breaking door in a small hill, which leads to a hole in the ground and it turns out that it enters a vast, cavelike structure of endless floors where people lived in a kind of city. The early Christians hid there from the Romans, and the people who lurched around up and down floor after floor were called Troglodites. People called ugly people Troglodites when I was in high school. The real Troglodites were short and lived inside this vast anthill of people, making their own beer and alcohol in a brewery, living in the endless apartments. There was even a jail! I'd rather read a book about that--somebody write me that book! Maybe I'm sick of fiction.
At work today, one very very nice teacher wrote an email to the maintenance staff, copying all of us, and she raved about what wonderful work those guys did in getting the iced and snowy campus back into shape for the kids and for us. And, indeed, they have worked their asses off for several days now. But then, doncha know, one after another teacher began a game of one-up-man-ship, proving that they, too, were appreciative and compassionate people. They wrote emails including poems or a song sung to the tune of "God Bless America", all honoring the maintenance crew. What the hell? Nauseating! I like kindness, but it can take a bitter corner and become mush and empty words, all said to prove something. Email exposes us to some of the most ridiculous bullshit. Niceness taken to this extent has a nasty underbelly; I think we should take a day off from such insincerity, or even send insulting emails to everybody one day of the year, balancing things out a bit. Just don't send one to me.
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