J.D. Salinger Envy

I just read on the BBC that Catcher In the Rye author, J.D. Salinger passed away. I Can remember how I came to it when I was in my late teens: a male friend, whom I likened to a much older brother, handed it to me and told me that it reminded him of me; I couldn't finish the book. I had such a negatively charged reaction to Catcher. It is a feeling I struggle to explain. To me, it was like a migraine to my psyche.

The BBC article stated that after the publication of Catcher, "Salinger shunned the fame it brought him" and so he bought a house in New Hampshire and "retreated into seclusion."

How I wish I had the time, clarity, and organization to write an autobiography, and, my grandmother and mother's biographies; and that they would earn enough to make it possible for me to move to an island in the Carolina's, where I would disappear.  Poetry certainly isn't going to bring it.

Citizenship, Politics, and the Lessons Teaching Has Taught Me

Obama...hmm...

Thousands of children go back to school every fall, and what do they do for the first month or so? Review and refresh. Obama's campaign communicated to Americans the concept and theory behind universal health care; the shameful practices of pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and BIG government (yes folks - Republicans are big government architects because they are in the pockets of Big Corporations). The result of this is that We the People are held hostage to the immense control, suppression, and exploitative oligarchy of power these politicians and big industries hold us hostage to. So, Obama got elected, was sworn into office a bit later (just enough time for citizens to slip back into the passive panacea of materialism and vanity, and FEAR), but he forgot the golden rule of teaching to returning students: he didn't review, but rather, he bulldozed ahead with big plans to shake things up and change laws, rather than remind the country what they voted for with a refresher course in his campaign platform... what he should have done was gradually ease people back into being active listeners and citizens, and, worked with congress to change/modify existing laws around insurance, prescription drugs, and the various other exposures he made during his campaign. When citizens become passive, again, it is easy for Fox and Rush and the rusty regime of the right to sneak in with the old fear-propaganda, and then we are back to red/blue dualist reactionary ignorance and obtuse behavior.

So, President Obama, please learn from this: review review review, and then you can introduce bold new concepts, once everyone is back in the spring of your agenda.

Connections...as a result of all of this, I also see from my experience teaching, that people do not have the skill of making connections from the political arena to themselves. Text-to-self connections are key to comprehension, analysis, synthesis and just being a good, old citizen, patriot...

Here is an analogical lesson for our time:

When you spend eight years eating Twinkies, and then one year eating your vegetables and whole grains, it is irrational to be outraged that your body isn't in fighting condition.

When you spend eight years getting kicked in the head every time you brush your teeth, you might have a fear of going near a toothbrush, even if the kicking ended one year ago. Even if your teeth rot and fall out - some of you will never brush your teeth again. You will simply get dentures and eat mush.

John Locke

So, I'm brushing up on my John Locke in preparation for my Civics classes, and I start to daydream about the idea of ego as this relates to intelligence. This is how my mind works:

Wow, John Locke (JL) is so right on brilliant. I bet that if I had been a woman around during his life, he would have been a pleasant and kind person. But I'm a woman, and maybe he would have been a bastard to women. Or, perhaps he would have been made arrogant by his awareness of his own potentiality? Well, I can't assume that JL would be nice to me...if I were alive and living in Holland or London, or wherever, and I saw him at a party, I would bow (metaphorically speaking) to the awesome power of his intellect, and ..not approach him, but stand back, with profound respect for his brilliance. It then dawned on me that this stream of ideas in my head were absolutely ego-driven. Because, I make the assumption that I am smart enough to recognize what brilliance looks and acts like, and that my opinion is valid because I act on behalf of my opinions...as most of us do simply by deciding what to eat: what tastes good or bad, what we say, painfully trying to be as articulate and exact as possible (when I'm not depressed), where to walk, what door to open or close...and that, obviously I perceived myself to be capable of such divine fact finding, and, what is worse, perhaps, is that I obviously place a higher premium on people whom I perceive to be very intelligent, over people I perceive to be less intelligent -- even though, to my mind, I treat everyone equally, which is a contradiction to say the least!


Of course I think Locke is brilliant because my ideas...values align with his; and I value myself as capable of saying, ah, he is brilliant! I can say that because I know what brilliance looks like.
So, I guess I've exemplified, in small part, Locke's question around examining our own ability to accurately recognize, judge...the ideas of another.

Suffice it to say that, even with all of this babbling, I still would not approach him on the street, and I would be awed with the hindsight of a 21c. advantage.

welcome to my world.