I’m reading Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude M. Steele for summer reading for my work. I can’t stress enough how much I don’t like this title for this book at all. (Speaking of stereotypes.) “Whistling Vivaldi” just doesn’t read “Awesome and Amazing Book about Stereotypes, How They Fuck with Our Lives, The Implication for Systemic and Systematic Racism, and How We Can Use This Knowledge to Burn Racists and their Racist Bullshit to the Ground.” But it should.
(more…)It’s nearing the end of August and there’s 4 months left of 2020. I can’t even imagine what November is going to bring (my guess is an election scandal, voter suppression, military coup, you know, that kind of thing), and December will definitely be the worst holiday season in years. So I’m not going to focus on that. Instead, I’m going to focus on the fact that I’m two books from meeting my 2020 goal of reading 50 books. Excellent!
(more…)BUT FIRST – I feel like I’ve officially graduated into big girl pants. I got a new web host, my own domain name… not sure what else there is? There’s a lot of fancy things that I have absolutely no clue about, but they’re available if I choose to use them. If I can figure them out. But I’m here now, readingisthenewblack.com. I wanted to nail ‘er down, put a ring on it, tie myself to a hitchin’ post. Frankly, I never been good with idiomatic expressions. If you know any in the same vein as these, send them my way!
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I read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson earlier this year. I loved this fable from the book and copied it by hand as soon as I read it. I don’t think it really needs any preface.
❧ ❧ ❧
Once upon a time, in the forest, lived a woman who was so beautiful that
the mere sight of her healed the sick and gave a good omen to the crops.
She was very wise too, being well acquainted with the laws of physics and the nature of the universe. Her great delight was to spin, and to sing songs as she turned the wheel.
Meanwhile, in a part of the forest that had become a town, a great prince roamed sadly along the corridors of his palace. He was considered by many to be a good prince, and a valuable leader. He was also quite pretty, though a little petulant at times.
As he walked, he spoke aloud to his faithful companion, an old goose.
‘If only I could find a wife,’ he sighed. ‘How can I run this whole kingdom without a wife?’ (more…)
What the actual fuck is happening in this world. I honestly don’t even know where to begin. There’s been too much, way too much for me to get through. So I’m not going to. We know where we’ve been and where we are. Will we make it? I fucking hope so.
When the Covid shit hit the fan, we stopped going to school and everything was done online. My workload went up by 150%. I was able to teach for 4 hours straight every single day, no interruptions (besides my weirdo dogs), which is the complete opposite of what teaching in person feels like. It felt exhilarating and exhausting, but it worked for me. I do miss people, but I’m happy.
I also started grad school. Again. I’m going to be dual certified to teach elementary ed and special ed. I’m taking my special ed classes for the next year. I’ll do my elementary ed classes after. It’s literally taking me about 5 hours daily to get all my work done. I’m also teaching summer school. Needless to say, I’m not having much of a summer.
So I’m barely reading for pleasure right now. My Read Harder challenge probably won’t get finished. I’ll hit my goal of 50 books this year, so I guess there’s some consolation in that. But with everything going on in the world, I’m having trouble concentrating on anything. Even before school started, I felt that reading (let alone reading for pleasure) was really frivolous. The reading I’m doing for school is giving me purpose, though. I know I’m reading things that are going to help people, that I’m going to be using what I’m reading to make kids’ lives better. But it’s still hard.
So I’m at 45 books so far this year. End goal in sight. Let’s hope the world gets better. I’m so ready for it.
Here we are, a quarter of the way through this year’s challenge! I’m stoked with my progress so far.
Keep reading to see what I’ve been up to!
(more…)I had a conversation with a friend recently about the concept of love languages and whether or not it stood up as a paradigm through which we can view our needs and wants in a relationship.
(more…)I started watching a movie about Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus over the weekend. The movie was terrible, so I didn’t finish it, but I did find a few quotes that I really loved. One was an actual quotation from Shelley’s father, William Godwin, which I shared in my previous post. Another was this:
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