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Jay's WRITER'S PARADISE Post - New Classroom Website - Rosario Tijeras - Paraiso Travel - New Favorite Author - Jorge Franco - and Classroom Writing Project for Fall 2024

   Living here in Mexicali, I can often  open a lengthy conversation with the simple “De donde es usted?”    Where are you from?   I ask the question, and I can get a literal novel, an oral history  in return.  The people here like to speak about their tierra.  They come from Sonora, Sinaloa, Michoacan, Oaxaca… They’ve been here in Mexicali for 30, 40, 50 years, but they talk about where they came from as if it was home.  Because I read a little bit, I find places to  interject something I’ve come across in a novel about their land, and OMG, suddenly their chest swells and their color deepens.   They  paint me a picture.  Like a Picasso..     This is what Jorge Franco does in Rosario Tijeras.  He paints a beautiful but frightening picture of Medellin, Colombia.  The people there are full of life and color,  but violence can shatter all illusion.     The main character  lives in one the poorest, most dangerous barrios that climb the surrounding hillsides.   She’s called Rosario Tijeras - her last name means scissors. “But Tijeras wasn’t her name,” says the novel’s narrator.  “It was her history.” 

From the time Rosario was eight years old she had to learn to defend herself.  Sadly, it was the people closest to her that she would have to watch out for.   She was raped and abused as a child by one of her mother’s lovers.  Her mother has had so many boyfriends coming and going that Rosario has trouble  counting all of her brothers and sisters.  As far as she knows, her brother Johnefe is the only sibling she shares the same mother and father with.  For this, he cares for her and protects her, but that doesn’t mean she should trust him.  He’s a gangster.  She’s lived a hard life.  She knows she can’t trust anybody.  That’s where the scissors come in.  Sharp pointed  objects become an important part of Rosario’s everyday life. Guns later come into play.  Any sense of peace or love has been taken away from Rosario.    She’s a cold-blooded killer.  This is how the novel begins:  “While Rosario had been shot at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of death with that of love…” The novel is sad as it is violent.  It’s told by the one person in this world that loves her.  Antonio, the narrator, is the one who brings her to the hospital in his car after she is shot.  As he watches her hemorrhaging in the passenger seat of, he recounts his love for her.  No two people could be so different.   Antonio benefits from the money, prestige, and connections  that come with a blue-blood, with an upper-class family name. Rosario has only her “Tijeras.”

The rest of the book is like an open love letter from Antonio to Rosario.  Antonio doesn’t know how to say it, but he thinks his love can save Rosario.  My favorite scene comes when Antonio is in the waiting room staring out the hospital window.  What he sees is so beautiful:  “Medellin looks like a Christmas crèche. Tiny lights encrusted in the mountainside twinkle like stars.  There are no dark spaces along the slopes, which are covered with lights from top to bottom, and the “silver cup” shines as never before…” I love stories of amor prohibido.  Impossible love.   Romeo and Juliet.  Madame Bovary.  Ana Karenina.  Rosario Tijeras.  These are tales of lovers who relentlessly defy the rules of nature and society to be together.  They’re dreamers.   Outside the hospital window,  Antonio must see a glimmer of hope in the lights that sparkle through the darkness hanging over Medellin, but man – I hope I‘m not spoiling anything -  it’s not going to work.  The forces that be won’t let it happen.  People like that, blinded by love, have no chance.  The only ones who don’t know it are those right in the middle of it.

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If you ask me – and nobody does –  the most successful English instructors base their reading selections upon their own passions and interests.  It’s a lot of work to create a dynamic atmosphere in the classroom.  You have to like what you are doing.  Imposing your will on your lesson plans can’t hurt. In the Fall, I will introduce Colombian writer Jorge Franco’s novel Paradise Travel to my classes.  I’ve read it six times now.  Three in English and Three in Spanish.  Jaja. I feel my literary activities will be both Funky and Engaging.   Paradise Travel is about Love, Life and Rebellion.  Two Colombian teen-age lovers sacrifice everything for a better future in New York CityIn my reading each time,  I’m never so sure about the love they have for one another, but one thing is abundantly clear, they are committed to their American Dream.  Nothing will stop them.

As I write this, Immigration Reform is taking center stage in the presidential debates. President Biden has already proposed a bi-partisan bill that could shut down the southern border - if needed. You know what the "other guy" is saying to his loyal MAGA followers.  These are the people who have felt ignored and cheated by our own government. Their rhetoric is both racist and violent.  They blame their misery on people of color who come to this country to seek a better life.  Because I live in Mexicali, I meet my share of immigrants that have been turned away at the border.  They are not rapists, murderers, criminals.   To my students, I often repeat the phrase, "We Are All Immigrants."  My grandparents came to this country at the turn of the twentieth century to escape Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe. This is the United States.  We all come from somewhere. 

As a rule, I try to keep POLITICS out of the classroom, but I can see how reading Paradise Travel could inspire my students to share their own immigration perspective.  And, Hell Yes, like let's make it PERSONAL.  Would they like to analyze and share their own family experience of coming to the U.S.  Or have they come across a friend or a neighbor with a story to tell that’s different than theirs? I don't want to spoil anything here, but the journey of Reina and Marlon,the two teen-age lovers in Paradise Travel, was both sad and lonely.  

Haven't  immigrants made important contributions to this country?  Do they not add important elements of culture and/or diversity?  Can't we  accept that immigrants have provided a much needed work force in key areas of the economy?  Half of this country  feels differently. Many of them feel  threatened by the arrival of immigrants that don't look like them. They believe they take jobs away from citizens? Their families overwhelm are schools, hospitals and social services.  They are a drain on our economy?

I’m an old guy, so sadly,  I never had much the chance when I was the age my students are now to read books like Paradise Travel. In today's educational climate, I believe in the thoughtgful examination of minority groups in the classroom.    My students will be much closer to the themes and ideas of what we will read and discuss in class.  This fact will raise our levels of critical thinking.    Marlon and  Reina turn their lives upside down to make it in New York.  From the beginning,  I wondered how the change would affect the way they see themselves in the mirror.  Of course, the change they experience will affect the way they see each other.  Whatever dreams they had, I just can't believe will match their reality. We all know a few Marlons and Reinas in our lives. Below I share a poem I will try to fit into one of my lesson plans:

 

“Prospective Immigrants Please Note” – by Adrienne Rich Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen.

If you do not go through it is possible to live worthily to maintain your attitudes to hold your position to die bravely but much will blind you, much will evade you, at what cost who knows? The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.

 

This I Believe:  Each of us has something valuable to contribute.  Like an old Chinese proverb goes: “As a river gains strength and momentum from joining waters, so I America is blessed and enriched by new people and new energy.”  I hope Marlon and Reina capture the imagination of  students. In my mind,  there is not much of a debate: We should look at people for who they are, not how they look. 

 

Jay's GIRLIE SHOW Post - Visual Analysis - Edward Hopper - Meg Abbott's Queenpin - Marilyn's Birthday Dress - Faye Dunaway's Gangster Fashion - Beautiful and Lonely Nico

In several of my classes, I bring in Edward Hopper's painting, Nighthawks. I put it up on the Big Screen to help my students understand the requirement for visual analysis in their research papers. If you don't know already, Nighthawks reflects the anxiety and isolation that pervaded this country in 1942.  Hopper completed this painting just a few weeks after the Pearl Harbor Attack.  It's from the viewpoint outside-looking-in at a group of very lonely people sitting in a New York City all-night diner. Their faces are hard.  Their gestures are nervous.  I ask my students, "What is the message here?"  Personally, I think I know these people and what they are feeling inside the painting.  They have nowhere else to go. 

The lesson appears to work.   I follow Edward Hopper with a visual analysis assignment for our sixties research papers.  I share a picture of Marilyn Monroe in her famous sewn-on "Happy Birthday" dress she wore at Madison Garden in 1962.  She's standing between President Kennedy and his brother Robert.  Marilyn doesn't look too  happy.  Her jaw is clenched.  I tell the story behind the story, that these two pendejos passed her back and forth like a football, and after they were done with her, they tossed her aside upon the risk of a scandal.   My students dissect Dealey Plaza crime-scene photos.  They examine the parade route.  The position of the limosine prior to the killshots.  They detail on-stage fashion choices for historic perfomers at Woodstock.   They capture the expressions on faces of Elvis, Nixon, and Charles Manson.  This is so cool.  We look at a few of Hopper's paintings.  Watch a couple of art-history videos.  Hopper's work seems to capture our imagination.  Students respond in a variety of ways. At the end of the semester we are all Hopper-heads.

I now can draw on multiple Hopper books and biographies I have here on my shelves in Mexicali.   I  have an anthology of poems that were inspired by Hopper paintings.  The book is called The Poetry of Solitude.  In class, we read a Joyce Carol Oates poem that depicts the sadness of the Nighthawks woman in  the red dress.  For a women, who is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at a bar with a handsome man, why does she look so lonely? Currently I'm reading an anthology of  crime-fiction short stories based on Hopper's paintings: In Sunlight or in Shadow.  Each author responds according to his/her own style and perception.   In a favorite story of mine, author Joe R. Lansdale has named one of his characters Mr. Lowenstein.  He created blackmail scenario based on the painting of a young woman usherette featured in Hoppers New York Movie.  Two wiseguys approach Mr. Lowenstein, the manager/owner of a neighborhood theatre with an offer he can't refuse. He either has to pay for protection, or his building burns down.   This young women will be beaten.  Or worse. In this collection, I have discovered a new favorite hardboiled writer.  Her name is Meg Abbott. She created a story behind Hoppers Girlie Show. I won't spoil the story for you here, but the woman in the painting is Hopper's wife.

Somewhere in the middle of my classroom instruction I will tell my students Hopper's wife, Josephine, posed for all his female figures.  Ed and Joe married after they had reached their forties, so the woman you see sauntering across the stage naked is married and middle aged. The only thing she is wearing is a tissue-thin piece of blue netting between her legs.  Her nipples have been dabbed with rouge. In her story, Meg  Abbott compares their shape and color to clown hats. I've read my share of biographical material about Hopper and his wife.  She was known for her diminutive size and firecracker-red-colored wild hair.   She was a determined artist in her own right.  You can see it in her face in the painting.  That's her, Josephine,  I know it.

I also know Meg Abbott must have read the same biographic material that I did before she wrote "Girlie Show."  Ed and Joe maintained a brutal relationship.  He could be, and mostly was,  an abusive husband.  He was known to strike her on various occasions, and she was known to hit back. In the 1930s they lived in a modest Greenwich Village with only a small kitchen stove to keep them warm in the winters.  On many a night, apparently, Ed forced Jo to pose naked for hours upon end in the biting cold of the apartment kitchen.   He would become increasingly angry if he she moved, but the colder it became, the closer she would move to the stove.  On one of these nights, she got so close, that she seered her ass.  Ed would not let her treat her wound until he was done with his painting. Meg Abbott reconstructed this scene in her short story "Girlie Show."  Her protagonist is married to an asshole who happens to be a painter.  At the end of the story, when this woman steps onto the stage she feels hotter than she has ever felt before.  Her breasts are bouncing. The trombones are blaring.  The wolf whistles are calling.  Her unsuspecting husband is sitting in the audience.  He is shocked at what he sees. He screams her name, "PAULINE!"  She doesn't care.  She doesn't love him now, and never will again. 

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Below I provide my students  with an image I chose for a Marilyn Monroe research paper.

* I looked for something with specific visual elements that would lead to my analysis.

* Of course the dress!  I have articles in my research folder that describe the dress and Marilyn's "Happy Birthday" perfomance at the  president's party.  This gave me a great start.

* But also, I know of the story behind the story.  I was able to look into this image and find important meaning. I notice Marilyn's jaw is locked. Her hands are clenched. This may be a tense moment. 

* I tried to follow my own directions (above) as closely as I could.  I chose the writing prompts that worked best for me. 

* When I was done responding to the prompts, I copied everything together.

* I look forward to your interpretations of your sixties images.

They told her not to come, but she came anyway.  That's Bobby Kennedy on the left.  That's President Kennedy on the right.  And you know who that is in the middle - That's Marilyn Monroe.  She had flown to New York to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president on his 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden.  Of course, the first thing anyone is going to see in this picture is the dress.   It's skin tight.   It was so tight that it had to be practically sown on to her body for her performance.  This is a black and white photo, but the color of the guaze material is the same color as her flesh.  So, it looks almost transparent, like you could see right through it.  What you are not going to see is Marilyn's underwear.  She's not wearing any.  There was no room for any garments underneath that dress.  The dress is famous for all the jewelry that comes with it.  More than 2,500 crystals are sewn into it.  Her platinum blonde hair is arranged into a stylish bouffant.  It rises up and flows downward on one side to cover part of her face.   But nobody is looking at her hair.  I notice both the Kennedys have their heads tilted forward and their eyes pointed downward.  You can guess what they are looking at.  In this picture, their behavior surprises me.   They may be flirting with Marilyn right out in the open in front of everybody at the party.   They knew of the rumors going around.  People were whispering of their affairs with Marilyn.  And the rumors were true.  They were both sleeping with her.  Reports say they warned her not to come because at this point, both of them must have feeling nervous for the truth to come out.  Reports say they warned her not to come. But that’s Marilyn Monroe.  She’s not a small nation president, princess or queen who might be intimidated by the Kennedys. She’s calling the shots.  Nothing is over until she says so. 

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Visual Analysis is a Great Writing Tool!

* Visual Analyis will open up the eyes of my students to greater meaning for their topics.

* Visual Analysis will draw their readers deeper into their discussions.

* I below I provide a visual analysis for a research paper I did for another class - I shared a research paper I once wrote on Bonnie and Clyde. 

* Bonnie and Clyde is not a sixties topic, but Faye Dunaway is. She played Bonnie in the famous sixties film.  A lot of research went into her wardrobe, I'm sure. 

In 1968, Faye Dunaway appeared on the covers of Time, Cosmopolitan, and Paris-Match.  She became an overnight sensation for her appearance in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. (See her light up a Life magazine cover to the left.)  Her stylish portrayal of 1930s "gangstah" Bonnie Parker created a world-wide fashion craze. In the spring following the release of Bonnie and Clyde, women clamoured for berets and knit cotton pullovers. They all wanted to look like Bonnie.  The men wanted to look like Clyde.  In this cover photo, Faye styles a wool beret flat on top of her head about three-quarters of the way up the forehead and an inch or so behind the ears. Her golden hair softly falls just below her chin.  This cut is called a "Bob."  It first became popularized in the 1920s and 1930s.  Back then, women like Bonnie cut their hair to show off their free spirit.  A woman's chopping off her hair was a sign of independence.  The color of this beret might be described as a soft-blue gray.  It coordinates well with her cream blouse, blue jacket, and matching pencil skirt.   Faye's make-up touches appear minimal.  I mean she doesn't need it.  In this photo, her attitude dominates the camera.  The film Bonnie and Clyde is known to be modeled on New Wave French Cinema of the 1960s. French women are known for their  "less-is-more" approach to beauty.  I'm not sure if the real-life Bonnie knew anything about French style, but she knew everything about outlaw fashion.  Whenever she had the chance, she liked to pose - feisty, gun-slinging, and cigar smoking - for the cameras.  (See photos below.)

Faye's pose is angular, erect and confidant.   She hikes up her skirt to show her legs.  Her open jacket allows for a peek at her breasts. Her shoes are high-heel peep-toe pumps.  That must be an caraciture of Clyde in the upper-right-hand corner.  He's dressed in a pinstripe double-breasted suit. His shoulders are rounded, his pants are narrow, and his shoes are pointy.  Of course he has a gun in his hand.  He's a stone-cold killer.  But here in this image, Bonnie is the star of the show - and equally as dangerous. 

Below:  In the original photo on the left, Bonnie is twenty-two years old and stands just a fraction under five-feet tall.  This must be a year into Bonnie and Clyde's famous 1930s crime spree.  Bonnie holds a stolen police revolver at her hip and props her foot on the bumper of a getaway car.  She has a cigar clenched between her teeth.  On the right, Faye captures her defiant stance. I read somewhere, that in April of 1933, Bonnie and Clyde were holed up in a rental house near Joplin,  Missouri.  They were lying low, looking forward to meeting up with Clyde's brother who had just been released from prison. When a neighbor became suspicious of their behavior, she called the police, and an intense gunfight soon followed.  Bonnie and Clyde were able to escape, but not before they left a number of lawmen dead and/or injured. In the ensuing investigation, police found a camera with undeveloped film. The photos from this roll somehow found their way to newspaper front pages across the country.  The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde Was On.

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I hope this works. Marilyn, Faye, and Nico are the most beautiful women I can think of to represent the sixties.  Important figures, all of them.  Below I talk about Nico - that Nico - who became a rock star legend for her short stint with the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s. She was with the band for a very short time, one album, before she was kicked out, abandoned by bandmates who may have been threatened by her good looks and ambition.  This is the story of a woman who was born into poverty in the ruins of World War II.  Her father fought for the Wermacht on the side of the Nazis.  She never knew if this was true, and she would never have the opportunity to ask him about it.   He did not return to the family after the war was over.  Someone had told her he was shot by his own command.  Nico's mother wasn't one to confide in.  She was mentally ill. Nico grew up in a cloud of mystery and despair.

I spent a lot of time looking for the most interesting images to model for my students. I mean each one of these fotos did not come from my first Google search. I have biographies of each of these women on my shelves here in Mexicali.  Most of my research, however, came from magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair. 

Nico became a rock star legend for her short stint with the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s.  When she came to New York City, she was a successful fashion model and part-time actress.  On her resume, you might say, she could post her experience of cutting a record in Europe, but it wasn't very successful.  Because this is a visual analysis, I won't spend much time on Nico's singing abilities. She had a low, monotone voice.  She didn't have much of a feeling for rhythm or pitch. Famous pop artist Andy Warhol would later say her voice was everything "from eerie, to bland, and smooth and hollow, to a 'wind in a drainpipe."  But that didn't matter.  When people saw Nico for the first time, they could not take their eyes off of her.  No one was going care what she sounded like.  Warhol was committed to finding a band to play behind her.  She was a real Nordic beauty.  She was tall, distinctive and beautiful.  She was like a rock 'n' roll statue in a museum.

The first thing you might notice about Nico is her high cheekbones. I say they are high, because they are closer to the bottom of her eyes than the bottom of her nose. Maybe they give her an icy look, for she was a very cool customer.  This probably came from her modeling experience. She was non-flamboyant.  She showed little expression.  Her hair, long and straight, falls to her shoulders and down her back.  Her look is accentuated by her bangs, which  are full and cut straight across the face.  This page-boy look accentuated her cheekbones.  The golden blonde hue of her hair sharply contrasted with the dark tones of her bandmates.  The Velvets were famous for dressing in black and wearing mirrored sunglasses on stage.  I just read some place the lips are the face's most sensuous feature. The structure of the lips is thought to offer information about a women's sensual aspect.  In this photo, Nico looks extremely attractive but at the same time very sad.  Nico's time in the Velvet Underground may have been the most exciting time of her life; however, the jealosy and anamosity she felt from her bandmates brought her down. They were serious musicians.  She was a pretty face.  They didn't like being pushed into the background. The expression that appears on Nico's face may have nothing to do with her sensuality.  It probably has to do a lot with her depression.   Bandmate John Cale once said, "She hated the idea of being blonde and beautiful, and in some ways she hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her was grief.”

Jay's BEHIND THE GREENE DOOR Post - No Porn - Unreliable Narrator in Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear

I became hooked from the first chapter of Graham Greene’s novel The Ministry of Fear. This is when Arthur Rowe decides to attend a London carnival setting in the middle of World War II London.  The story takes place during the time of the deadly Nazi Blitz.  For nearly eight months, the German Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. Later on in this book, Greene depicts a nightly routine of people abandoning their above-ground homes and apartments for the safety of below-ground bomb shelters. This is first-hand, real-life as Graham Greene had lived it in 1942. For the first chapter, however, Arthur Rowe seems to be quite capable to put the death and destruction out of his mind. These carnivals remind him of his childhood. He feels like a kid again. Who doesn’t want that?

But here is the thing: Greene doesn’t start his novel at the beginning. We soon understand that  Arthur Rowe has just been released from a mental institution.  When he decides to pass through a beaded  curtain into a forune teller’s tent, we will never be so sure how innocent he is anymore.The tent was a red or purple color, but that’s not clear, for it was was close to “black-out” time.  In a few minutes all of London would go dark in preparation for Nazi air strikes. Inside, Arthur could make out an older lady dressed in a peasant costume wearing a large head-dress.  There are probably candles flickering in the shadows.  Maybe a crystal ball on her table. This was funny to me, to see a guy walk straight out of a mental asylum and into a mysterious alternative universe. “Sit down,” the lady said, “ and cross my hand with silver.”

  The Ministry of Fear is like the third or fourth Graham Greene novel I’ve read this year. I’m not delving into any sort of book report or analysis here, but I know enough of Graham Greene to identify a “foreshadow” technique when I see it. Usually when something humorous is said or done in Greene’s novels, something horribly tragic soon follows.  In Our Man in Havana, a devoted father shoots a man who has betrayed him.  In End of the Affair, the main character and narrator is a writer who enters in the most intense of adultorous romances with the wife of a friend, but I’m not going to tell you how it comes out.  You can infer from the title.  (Jay’s Note:  The end of “this” affair is lot sadder than you could ever expect.)  From what happens inside the fortune teller’s tent in The Ministry of Fear, I, myself, can predict Arthur Rowe’s future. Like other Graham Greene characters, I suspect this man just might be a psychopath, headed fatefully towards a very lonely place.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell where Graham Greene is going with each novel.  This book might be a political thriller.  I mean, at the same time the author was writing this book, he was working for England’s top spy agency, MI6.  Greene was assigned the task of  detecting Nazi spy rings active in London.  This book is crawilng with spies. In fact, the gypsy fortune teller might be intimately involVed in one of these groups. She gives Arthur Rowe the exact weight to help him win a cake in in a carnival raffle. The person who can "guess" the weight of the cake closest to it's actual weight wins.   If Arthur Rowe submits this weight, he will walk out of the carnival with a secret Nazi message baked into it. I suppose as soon as he walks out the gate, someone will remove the cake from innocent Arthur, or kill him.

Wait!  This is the funny part I told you about.  Before the gypsy fortune teller tells Arthur the exact weight of the cake, she makes a show of her gypsy prowess to make things look good.  She reads his palm and tells him that he once made a woman very happy. I can see how gypsy fortune tellers all over the world rely on the same ploy.  The statement is an attention grabber for anyone who walks through the door (or curtain.) In this case, it worked, because Arthur Rowe suddenly pulls his hand back.She has his COMPLETE attention.  He wants no part of any fortune this woman tells him because he knows he has a secret of his own: HE KILLED HIS WIFE. We find out Arthur Rowe is a murderer. The subplot here revolves around Killers trying to Kill a Killer.  OK, that's not Funny-Funny, but you'll have to take my word for it.  It's Funny-Strange.

I’m trying to be very careful not to give up the plot here – that’s because I’m not really sure of what it is. The part where Arthur guesses the correct weight of the cake is GREAT.  The carnival crowd huddled around Arthur goes silent when he takes his cake.  He backs away slowly with his prize.  They were all looking at him like they were seeing a ghost. The rest of the story is a sequence of irrational and inexplicable coincidences.  It doesn’t make sense that everyone in the carnival knew that this cake contained hidden microfilm vital to the Nazi war effort. This pattern of impossibility will follow Arthur through the rest of the novel.

We never know who or what Arthur Rowe is.  Graham Greene lets us see his world through his eyes, but now he is totally UNRELIABLE.  He believes that he killed his wife to end her pain from a terminal illness.  That’s not how the courts saw it. They sentence him to two years in an insane ayslum.  Now when Arthur realizes that people are out to kill him, he can’t go to the police, because they think he’s either crazy or a killer himself.   He is on his own.  Like I said,  all alone from the start to the finish. I’m saying this is FUNNY, because most Graham Greene readers will root for this guy.  We know he’s TWISTED.  But so are we.

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Jay's WRITING RAINBOW Post - Color-Coded Paragraph Development - The Beatles on Ed Sullivan - First Responders at Marilyn's Death Scene

  Topic Sentence: Rock stars come and go, but the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan television show in February 1964 changed the world forever.

Transition:  Rock critic Michael Simmons explains in his online article, "The Beatles Debut on the Ed Sullivan Show,"  that performance became a life-changing experience for many future artists  (Mojo).  Young people sitting around the television set were out on the street the next day looking to buy guitars.  I have read that for Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzie Osbourne this was very true:  "You have to understand, the arrival of the Beatles was like going to bed one night when everything was gray and dismal and waking up to a world that was sunny and alive" (Meyers).

Background:  Before Ed Sullivan, few people in  this country had ever seen or heard the Beatles. This was before the internet.  Television at the time offered maybe three to four channels. Ed Sullivan was a variety show.  Every Sunday night, families gathered around the television set to watch Ed Sullivan introduce his comedians, juggling acts, tap dancers, stuff like that.  But, on this night, more than 73 million people were tuned into the show, the largest audience of all time.  They wanted to know what was so special about the Fab Four?

Example (#1): Singer songwriter Roseanne Cash’s shared the memory of this night in her memoir Composed,. She was only eight-years-old at the time but she said, “I loved the Beatles so much, it was physically painful.”

Explanation/Elaboration (#2): Of course she was not alone in this sense. Witnesses in the Ed Sullivan CBS theater say the crowd screamed so loud, you couldn’t even hear the words of the songs.  No one had ever experienced the sound, look, and/or vibe of a group like the Beatles before.  They were good looking.  They had long hair.  And, Man, they could play!

Example (#2):  Lives were inspired on this night.  Like Roseanne, young people (and old) all around the world picked guitars and/or began writing songs as soon as they could.  I know that because I hear it all the time on radio station interviews with rock stars.  If they were around in 1964, they claim to have watched the show.  They loved the music.  They loved the style.  They were just blown away.

Explanation/ Elaboration (#2): The Beatles gave them something to dream about.  John, Paul, George and Ringo were poor boys from Liverpool. They started with nothing, and they made it big.  Boys and girls, men and women, that’s all they wanted from the time they saw them on the Ed Sullivan show, to be Beatles.

Conclusion:  Almost 60 years later, and the Beatles are still HUGE.  John and George are dead, but not forgotten.  Paul and Ringo are still selling out concerts, and they are in their eighties.  Today, many of my students listen to the Beatles and write essays about them.  Whatever they meant to their fans back THEN, there are plenty of fans that feel the same NOW.  As I write this, few of my readers will recognize the name of Ed Sullivan, but some of them will.  They will know that Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles to this country, and it hasn’t been the same since.

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  This week, I ask my students to develop their first paragraphs for their Sixties Research Paper. This summer, I’m purely online.  My class is Asynchronous.  I’m not bringing any color-coded charts to help my student develop their paragraphs, but on Canvas, I  color-code my writing models:  the topic sentence & conclusion, evidence and elaboration.  There is no one way to write an effective paragraph, I tell them, but balance and structure will beef up their cred with their readers. Color coding is a powerful learning tool.  It makes writing FUN.  Today I practice with the RISE of the Beatles and the FALL of Marilyn Monroe.  (I'm not saying there is anything Fun writing about Marilyn's death, but the codes helped me write a balanced paragraph.)

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When Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose in 1962, the official L.A. county coroner determined her death was a probable suicide, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest murder.  

Many people today might claim that a crazy conspiracy surrounds her tragic death, but in his book The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, author Donald H. Wolfe documents her illicit sexual relationship with the Kennedy brothers. According to Wolfe,  the C.I.A  and the F.B.I suspected they were sharing national secrets with her in bed.  Pillow Talk.  They dumped her to avoid scandal.  When Marilyn threatened to take her story to the newspapers, she was found dead very soon after. 

At the age of 36, Marilyn was a well-known drug addict.  Doctors gave her pills to get her going.  Every night she took other pills to help her sleep.  Her life was complicated.  She had grown up with an emotinally disturbed mother.  She never knew her father.  In those days, doctors knew little about biplorar disoder, but today's experts suspect Marilyn must have suffered from extreme bouts of depression.  She is known to have attempted suicide three times in her life previous to her final drug overdose.

Days after the autopsy report, however, police investigators learned that it would have been very diffucult for any one person to physically swallow the amount of pills that had entered Marilyn's system.  They put forth the theory that the fatal dose had to be adminstered by a second or third party, by "another mode of entry" (Summers 325). Proof of the drugs adminstered by injection of enema would end any discussion of suicide.  But the case was never re-opened.

At the time, Marilyn was broken hearted from ending a love relationship with the president of the United States.  When word spread that President Kennedy was sleeping with the famous actress, he severed all contact with her.  This didn't sit well with Marilyn.  Se became so angry for the "brush--off," that she threatened to tell her stories to the newspapers.   Moreover, she implied that the President liked to tell her things in bed - jokes, political gossip, and NATIONAL SECRETS - that she would write down in a little red notebook as soon as he left.  She had a lot to say bout this president.  48 hours after her last phone call to the White house, Marilyn was found dead and alone hin her home.

60 years after he tragic death, we still don't know the truth.  We know that in the sixties President Kennedy supported the assassination atempt of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.  If he could order the death of a foreign leader, who was going to stop him from urdering a Hollywood movie star?  At age 36, Marilyn had a lot going for her.  She was renewing her relationship with her second husband, Joe DiMaggio.  She had plans to produce a new film on the life of legendary actress Jean Harlow.  Marilyn had a lot to live for.  The case is filled with false statements, lost evidence, and disappearing witnesses. Yes, Marilyn took a lot of pills, but her autopsy doesn't show evidence of those pills hin her stomach.  I'm not saying Kennedy killed her, but this I believe:  her death was a tragedy, a mystery, and quite possibly a murder.

Jay's 'CAUSE I'M FREEE, FREEWRITING Post - Sixties Research Project - Marilyn Monroe - Dolores Huerta - Tips to Get the Ball Rollin'

  Marilyn Monroe Freewrite

One semester, I can’t remember why, I uploaded a video about the death of Marilyn Monroe to inspire a classroom discussion.  It worked better than I expected.   I mean, I had everyone’s attention.   From that  day on, I began collecting books about Marilyn off of Ebay and Amazon.  My goal was for one day we could all read about Marilyn together.  Soon thereafter, we read the play Bus Stop – this was a theater piece that Marilyn was able to transform to the big screen. In class, we talked about Norma Jeane, maybe as much as we discussed Marilyn Monroe. To understand the story of Marilyn, we began with her tragic childhood. She was separated from her mother at age four. Her mother suffered from schizophrenia and was committed to a mental hospital. Marilyn never knew her father. She lived her life bouncing from one orphanage to another. In foster care, she was mistreated, abused and sexually assaulted.

We know her characters on screen, but do we know much about her struggles off it? Depression. Anxiety. Prescription Drug Abuse. Psychiatric Hospitalization. Suicidal Tendencies. Did Marilyn suffer from Bipolar Disorder? In the '50s and '60s, mental health officials knew little about the disease. Her doctors prescribed her uppers to lift her mood and downers to help her sleep. When the police found her lying face down in her Brentwood home - naked and dead - her room was filled with empty pill bottles. Her doctors were right there. Their stories were weak.

When Marlyn was a young child, her mother Gladys worked in a Hollywood movie studio. I think she was a filmcutter. She was very pretty herself. She was also a drinker and a partyer. At one point in her life before she was separted from her mother, Marilyn/Norma Jeane asked her mom who was that guy in the picture hanging on the wall of their home. The picture was framed in silver. The guy in the picture wore a mustache and had his hair slicked back. It was a picture of famous movie star Clark Gable (see above). Gladys told Norma Jeane, "That's your father...."

Norma Jeane grew up without a father. When Gladys was commited to a mental hospital, Norma Jeane was handed off to an orphanage. She grew up obsessed with finding her father. Later, she found out that her mother slept with a lot of men. Clark Gable slept with a lot of women. Everyone knew that. Thirty years later, Marilyn met up with Clark on the Misfits set. They were to play lovers. I wonder what was going on inside her head and her heart when she shook hands with the man in the picture in the silver frame.

We end the semester with Joyce Carol Oates’  famous short story “Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?”  It’s about a naïve high-school girl caught up in her own beauty.  Everywhere she goes, she is  flicking her hair back and checking her lipstick.  She’s obsessed with her image to the distraction of everything else.  I didn’t know this until recently, but JCO’s original title for this story was “The Death and the Maiden.”  Here, the Maiden’s name is Connie. She’s pretty and she’s knows it.  She’s a flirt!  Based on the original title, you can guess what happens to her at the end of the story.  JCO uses the same theme in her novel Blonde.  Here, the Maiden’s name is Marilyn Monroe. 

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  Word to My Students: Freewriting is a creative writing technique similar to brainstorming except you write in sentences and paragraphs  Your freewrite is FREE – 300 to 500 words. You write what you want to get the ball rolling.  You write what you already know. You write what you have read.  You write what you want to know. It’s up to you.  You will find that much of what you put down in your freewrite will make it to your final essay.  If it is interesting and important to you now, it may be interesting and important for your readers.   The process should increase the flow of ideas and create more developed ideas than brainstorming. What comes out should be a constant stream of ideas- sometimes called “stream of consciousness” writing.Hopefully, by now, you’ve chosen a great subject and/or topic.  My students find this part of the writing process helpful.   NO STRESS. They put down their thoughts and ideas on paper.  Most often, they can transfer this writing directly to their essays.  ( Later we take out the BORING stuff!)

Jay's Tips:  Write down why you decided on your subject.  What is so interesting about it to you?  Write down what you already know or have heard about. Write down anything new you have read on the internet.   What is the coolest information you have found so far?  Let us know. How do things compare today?  How are they different.Would you want to live back in the Sixties?  Would you make a good hippie? Explain why or why not.

Below, I practice with a FREEWRITE for a research paper on Dolores Huerta.  Basically, I ask my students to consider, "WHY IS ANYBODY GOING TO CARE ABOUT THEIR TOPIC?"

Dolores Huerta was the co-founder of the union that became known as the UFW.  Everyone talks about Cesar Chavez, but without her there would be no union.  She was a dedicated and fierce community activist.  She dedicated her life to protecting the rights of farmworkers, women, and immigrants. She grew up in Stockton, California – in a world where agricultural workers were cheated, mistreated, and exploited.  The working conditions and standards of living were well below poverty level.   In 1960, Cesar called her up.  He needed her.  He said, “We’ve got to start the union.  If we don’t do it. No one else will.”  It was Dolores that came up with the slogan, “Si Se Puede!”

In the early seventies Dolores was at the forefront of the Coachella Grape Boycott.  She lived in Coachella.  She Dolores kept an office in Indio. Her efforts to protect and organize farmworkers were beginning to pay off. There were now water jugs, work breaks, bathrooms where none had ever been before. Women were placed in higher-paying jobs.  Young people were given opportunities for training and advancement. But that was before the Teamsters came to town.  They threatened UFW strikers with violence. These Teamsters were big guys.  They were thugs.  Criminals with tattoos, heavy biker boots, and sticks!  They would beat on anyone who looked remotely connected to the UFW.    In the Spring of 1972, Coachella became a war zone. It was the UFW against the Teamsters. Dolores and Cesar had to find a way to keep the peace and advance the cause.

I found two books that will help me shape my essay.

* A Dolores Huerta Reader by Mario T. Garcia. It’s a collection of essays written about Dolores Huerta.  The voices included in this book are from friends, family, journalists, professors, historians, and farmworkers.  The book begins with Dolores’ early childhood.  It ends with her continuing fight for human rights.

 * The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmwokers Movement by Susan Ferris and Ricardo Sandoval. This book doesn’t mention Dolores on the cover, but there is plenty of Dolores inside on the pages.  At one point, they made a PBS documentary based on the book.  I could go to Youtube and see clips. 

Whenever we talk about great civil rights leaders we talk about Cesar Chavez, but we don’t speak about Dolores Huerta.  She was very tough, competitive and independent woman.  Because of that, she intimidated many of the men she tried to lead.  Because Cesar was a man, most farmworkers looked to him for direction.  But that doesn’t mean Dolores wasn’t a critical part of the union.  She was a skilled negotiator.  Cesar might have been in front of the cameras, but Dolores was always in front at the table in union negotiations with the growers.  She did the dirty work.

The story of Dolores Huerta is the story of a fighter.  In fact, she is often called la Pasionaria.  The passionate one.  She must be 85 years old, and she is still working for the causa.  I read somewhere that during the Mexican Revolution, there were a group of women soldiers that followed Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa into battle.  They were fierce woman warriors. The people called them Soldaderas.  This might be a good title for my research paper: Dolores Huerta: Soldadera for the Farmworkers Movement.

Oquei, that may be a little long.  But I will be able to use A LOT of it in my Sixties Research Paper.  ( I'll take out THE BORING STUFF later!)

 

 

 

Jay's LAUREL CANYON Post - Sixties Research Paper Topics - The Byrds - Sonny and Cher - Two Truths and One Lie

   Today is the second day of my Semester Session 2024.  Yesterday we broke some ice with a “Two Truths and One Lie” assignment.  My students were asked to submit three paragraphs about themsellves on our Canvas classroom discussion board.  Two of the paragraphs need to be TRUE. One has to be a LIE. It works.  They wrote about their travels, passions, families, jobs, tragedies, successes. It took me two or three hours to grade their submissions. I have several great LIARS in the class. 

Later on tonight, I look forward to reading my student topic selections for their Sixties Research Projects. That’s TRUE.  We are reading a Vietnam-era stageplay, and to reinforce our understanding of the decade, we will will write 6-8 page MLA research papers. One goal in this research project is for my students to explore how we got here today.  What is going on in this country relative to Race, Gender, Power, and Access?  Here I encourage my students to discuss how gender stereotypes are reinforced and undermined under our current administration.  This isn’t anything new!  We all know about Cesar Chavez, but when I discuss Dolores Huerta, an eerie silence often overcomes the room.  Dolores fought most of her life for the rights of farmworkers, but sadly, as a woman, her accomplishments been pushed into the background of most history lessons. In high school, my students studied the contributions of Martin Luther King Jr to The Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, but they never have heard of Women’s Rights Leader Gloria Steinem, who TODAY is still speaking Truth to Power.  Several of the essays you will see published on this site will express the voice of young women in this class, truly grateful for the unyielding  courage, spirit, and sacrifice of the women who have paved their way.  I think it was Sam Cooke who said it:  “A Change Is Gonna Come.” I can feel it in the air.  

I have no formal experience or training that would  help me to develop a Sixties research project, but that’s probably why I have so much fun working with my students. I lived through the sixties.  I was much too young to understand what was going on then, but I’m old enough now.   My shelves here in Mexicali are crammed with Sixties books and materials. I didn't think about it until now, but the time is RIPE for my students to compare a PROTEST MOVEMENT from the SIXTIES with a PROTEST MOVEMENT from TODAY!  They  are living in a time of CHANGE.

•  Do they know  about the Watts Riots in 1965?  It all started when white policemen mistreated a black motorist. Sound familiar?  An aggravated argument escalated into six days of violence and brutality.  When is all this going to change?
•  Do they want to write about Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement?  Could they take a look at how Mexican  farmworkers were treated in the sixties.  Could theydiscuss our government's policies toward Mexican immigrants today?
•  A few of my students have written about the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.   Police, with their riot clubs out,  raided a small gay bar in New York City.  They didn't expect any confrontation, but that's exactly what they got.  Patrons of the bar weren't doing anything wrong.  They  felt they were being hassled for being gay.  The whole neighborhood fought back.  This riot began a Gay Liberation Movement.  Do you know, it was only this week, until the Supreme Court ruled that you can't fire someone for being gay?  For the last 50 years, discrimination against gays has been perfectly legal.  Can they compare what was happening THEN and NOW?
• Do they know of the BLACK POWER protest in the 1968 Olympics?   Two African-American  sprinters were sent home from Mexico City after they raised their black-gloved fists in the air during the medals ceremony.  Compare that one with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. 
• Do any of them  know about the EAST L.A. BLOW-OUTS of the sixties? - Thousands of Mexican American high school students walked out of their classes in protest of unfair educational opportunities.  This walkout inspired the Chicano Movement.

  This week I re-read a book off my shelves called Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-And-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood.  I'm happy to share excerpts of this one with my students, for it gives me the chance to compare and contrast our music.  The book begins with an analysis of a new type of singer/songwriter sound coming out of the Canyn: Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, the Byrds. Each of their stories would be interesting to research.  Charles Manson has his own chapter. How did he fit into this environment of Peace and Love?  It because author Michael Walker's writing transcends the music.  Across these pages there is a pattern of Sex, Drugs, and  Tragedy. Too much coke brought everyone down. Everyone knew where things were headed, but they just couldn't stop.

On a more positive note, my favorite part of this book is about Sonny and Cher. El Centro's own Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre.  I'm not going to encourage any of my students to write about Sonny and Cher.  I want them to focus upon historical ideas and/or political events. But, Sonny and Cher make for a great story.  As a struggling songwriter, Sonny hounded the legendary Phil Spector into giving him a job.  "Mr. Spector.  I want to work for you.  Just you.  And I'll work for any amount of money, for any amount of time."  Phil gave him a job in promotion,  and Sonny learned the business from the ground up. One night, Sonny sat down at a 50-dollar piano, and told himself he wasn't going to get up until he had a hit. Somehow, he was going to use everything he learned from Phil.   That night, He wrote a song for his then girlfriend, "I Got You Babe."  His girlfriend's name was Cher, and she loved him as much as he loved her.  The next day, he worked out the production of the song with help from the Wrecking Crew. "I Got You Babe" topped the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. Sonny married Cher.  Together they became a No. 1 television show. 

Many of my students will write about Hippie Culture. They may want to begin Sonny and Cher. The two were Fashion Trailblazers.  Upon their rise to the top of the charts, everyone clamoured for what they would wear next ( see image above.)  They were HUGE on the Sunset Strip. Wait!  I will ask my students to include Quote Sandwiches in their research papers.  They will have to identify an analyze  meaningful quote from their research.  In Laurel Canyon, I read about pioneer Rock 'N' Roll agent Johnny Hartman laying eyes on Sonny and Cher for the first time on a television show called Shindig. "I remember when I knew Sonny and Cher were onstage live and the kids the audience were going "'SONNY!'  They were more interested in Sonny standing int he wings watching the Stones than they were in the Stones."  THAT'S TRUE.  Today that would be as crazy as screaming Justin Bieber at a Taylor Swift concert. 

A Word to My Students:  Before you choose your Sixties Topic, look over the campus databases to see if you will have enough information to develop a 6-8 page research paper.  The Beatles are GOOD.  Cesar Chavez is GREAT.  Gloria Steinem, she connects the THEN and NOW.  But, if you want to do a good job with Sonny Cher, I suppose you will have to read one of my books from my shelves here in Mexicali.  This is going to GREAT.  You will see.

 

Jay's WRITE TO THINK Post - Joan Didion - Stephen King - One Step at a Time - LET'S DISCUSS - Student News Conference Spring 2024

    On Monday, I begin my new Summer Session 2024, and I ask my students to write from the moment they walk through the door – so to speak.   OK, we are  a purely online class, synchronous learning, no classroom meetings, but that’s why I will want them to write something down every day.  That’s how you learn.  I suscribe to this theory: “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”  Some teachers might call it METACOGNITION.  This word relates “thinking about one’s thinking.” This means the more aware you are of what you are doing, the more effective you are in your learning.  I hope my assignments help my students focus on their writing. Concentrate on what you are doing, I’ll tell them.  You will see a big difference in your writing performance before you even know it. 

By the end of the first week, I ask my students to submit an ABOUT ME PAGE.  My goal this semester in the design of my assignments is to offer something for everybody.  The more we engage, the more we learn.  Each week, Our reading and writing will bring us closer together.

• I encourage my students to share what they think is Meaningful and/or Important.  If they want to draw pictures, that's cool.  If they  want to upload pictures from their  computer files, that will work. 
• How will they REPRESENT themselves to their classmates? Of course, I practiced with my own writing.  That’s what I do with each assignment ( see all ABOUT ME above.)
• I chose Running, Cooking, Spanish, and Gardening.  I wrote something about my teaching philosophy. 
• My students should feel free to write what they want.  They decide on their design.  IT'S ALL  GOOD!
• I arranged a Favorite Author quote in the bottom-right-hand-corner of my grid.   I think it comes from Joan Didion’s collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: 'I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.'   This is how I represent to the class.  To me, if I don’t write it down, I don’t learn anything.  If my students don’t understand this from my ABOUT ME PAGE, they will get a sense of it from my daily correspondance.  It’s coming.  It’s coming.  I write something every day.
• When I was the age of my students, my first year on a college campus was the most EXCITING time of my life.  Of course, this was before computers.  I met someone new everyday.  I  can see how taking classes online could become such a DRAG, if you can't connect with your classmates.

Each week I ask my students to participate on our class Discussion Boards.  These assignments are designed to reinforce  critical thinking and writing skills.   Active participation will contribute to a positive learning environment.   For many of my students, their  first few years in college will be the most memorable time of their lives.  THEY WERE FOR ME!  The Discussion Boards promote meaningful connections with their classmates.   Everybody Wins!

Jay's Tips:  Online classes still may be new to many of us - Below are a few rules and guidelines to help my students succeed:

• Participate - Do not hide in the background; it is not fair to lurk and let others do all the work. Contribute to discussions to get as much as possible from the course and to maintain your participation grade.
• Write for Success - Each time, Try to Improve - Do not fall into  sloppy or illogical thinking -  Challenge yourself and one another - Write like you mean it - Like you are writing in an essay.
• Reread and check your posts - Practice professionalism. Be mindful of how you look online; others will likely judge the tone and quality of your writing. Reread your posts and edit for clarity and mechanics.
• Follow Jay's Step-by-Step Instructions and Models -  300 Words - BE INTERESTING! - Write what you think is important. 
• Don't Forget  to Respond to Your Classmates (2) - Support your classmates in a meaningful way - Respond to something specific in their posts - Try to contribute clarifying or reaffirming information or a new idea to a discussion - Show you care - "That's a real good job"  by itself is not going to help much.  Ask thought-provoking questions.
• Grammar Counts - Punctuation Counts - Sentence Variety Counts - Work hard to get better each time.
• Don't Wait until the LAST MOMENT - Submit EARLY - Leave Time to RESPOND to your Classmates

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JAY'S REWIND:  It's been ten days or so since my Spring Semester 2024 Final Exam and Student Press Conference.  For Final Exam Day, I asked my students to share their favorite writing of the semester in front of a live audience in the campus library.  We brought  in a professional podium.  We  reserved a large screen for students to support their discussion with meaningful visuals.  In a brief three to five minutes, they highlight the most interesting aspects of their writing projects and writing experience. At the end of their presentation they took  questions from the audience. 

  In one of my classes we read a Sixties Novel and developed Sixties History Research Projects. The academic goal was  to supplement our reading with greater perspective and knowledge of the decade.  In the sixties, I was too young to understand what was going on in this country. But I'm certainly old enough now. I encouraged my students to learn from the past to understand what is going on today.  The result was  a six-eight-page MLA style research paper.  For many, this project has been both rigorous and challenging.   MLA format, thesis development, in-text citations, are all fairly new and complicated. But, as we advanced deeper into the writing process, I saw my students becoming more knowledgeable and engaged.  Their sharing their research and writing experience at the end of the semester  became a rewarding experience.

Not only did students examine important political ideas and figures, they also defined turning points in our culture and society.  I was happy to read the causes and effects of "Beatlemania."  Several students identified "The Pill" as the century's greatest invention. English 105 student Cassandra Macias (left)  chose to write about the "end" of the Sixties.  Her paper focused upon Charles Manson.  The  image of Charlie on the big screen behind her comes from her project binder design.  

Also included in the Press Conference were group presentations to discuss the most important aspects of the novel we read.  Thank you very much, we saved time near the end of the semester to practice our presentations in the classroom. This is where students collaborated on their presentations and practiced in front of each other.  Pretty much, I asked students to avoid any semblance of reading a speech. The press conference was designed for them to engage the rest of us in discussion about ther topics. 

Jay’s Origin of News Conference Idea:  This Student News Conference idea came to me at the beginning of the Trump presidency; from watching news clips of Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Sara Saunders, Rod Rosenstein, presenting important information to a roomful of reporters.   And taking questions!   I thought what a great format to generate and perpetuate student engagement at semester's end.   The communication goes two ways.  Everyone wins!   envision our Student News Conference as an exciting, non-threatening collaborative atmosphere to reinforce our semester learning and motivate my future students to do the same.   I call it a “Celebration of Student Writing.”

 

Jay's SUMMER SNEAK PREVIEW - M. Butterfly - Soundtrack of Our Reading - Alanis Morissette - Ironic

  We first get a sense for who Rene is when he reveals his love for the opera Madama Butterfly. The  first line he speaks in the first scene of the play is "Butterfly, Butterfly..." He's serving time  for treason in a prison on the outskirts of Paris. He once lived the international life of a French  Diplomat; now he's confined to live out his life in a tiny dark prison cell. He has nothing to live for. Everything he has ever had has been taken away from. The only thing that keeps him going is this fantasy he has for Madama Butterfly. It dampers his reality. The story gives him hope. He shares it with his fellow prisoners: "My name is Rene Gallimard - also known as Madame Butterfly." Rene became hooked on the  romance of the opera Madame Butterfly. It's about a young Japanese geisha girl who devotes her life  to an American sailor. She just about lives for him. In fact, even when he disappears for three  years without a word, she continues to love him. When Cho- Cho-san - that's the girl's name - finds  out that her American sailor has married a white woman, she can't control herself. She kills  herself with her uncle's knife. Rene thinks the opera story is so beautiful. From witnessing Cho-Cho-san's passion, Rene becomes obssessed with the Asian woman. He wants to experience the same feeling of having a woman submit to him the way Cho-Cho-san submitted to her American Sailor. That's the "irony in his blood": At the end of the play, we learn that Rene has lost his woman. She  was a man. Now he's dressed in make-up and a wig - like a woman. After he tells his audience his  real name, Rene Gaillamard,  he now reveals he is "Madama Butterfly." This is right before he drives a knife into his stomach. Clearly, Rene longed for the life he saw in Madama Butterfly, but I bet it just wasn't this one.

Here, the lyrics from Alanis Morrissette's "Ironic" fit nicely to the text of M. Butterfly: “And isn’t it ironic…”

Alanis Morissette Lyrics – “Ironic”	David Hwang Text – M. ButterflIy
It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought, it figures...	This is the ultimate cruelty, isn’t it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it’s only air — too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.Why can’t anyone understand? That in China, I once loved, and was loved by, the Perfect Woman. ( Act Two – Scene 11 )
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife It's meeting the man of my dreams	The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things — unfaithfulness, loss, even abandonment. But how can it face theone sin that implies all others? The devastating knowledge that,underneath it all,the object of her love was nothing more,nothing less than … a man. (Act Three – Scene Three)
He won the lottery and died the next day It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay	My mistakes were simple and absolute — the man I loved was a cad, a bounder. He deserved nothing but a kick in the behind and instead I gave him … all my love … ( Act Three – Scene Three)

Many people have criticized Alanis’ interpretation of irony in the song. Irony is the use of words to express the opposite of what is expected. They say her lines are weird or funny, but they are not ironic.  For example, “like rain on your wedding day.” Stuff happens. The weather on you wedding day may be unfortunate, but it’snot ironic. Still, I like the song. You can’t say that the lyrics won’t make you think about possibility and expectation. What goes through the mind of a ninety-eight year old man who wins the lottery? How can he expect to spend his money? He’ll probably have a heart attack trying to figure it out. In M. Butterfly, Rene must have felt the same way for his relationship with Song. He had waited his whole life for her, and when he finally found her in his arms, he didn't know what to do with her. For Rene, Song gave him everything that he had ever wished for, and it killed him. That’s both funny and cruel.

 

Jay's SUMMER READING Post - Graham Greene's End of the Affair - It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate

   I just  read the story of a “Jealous Guy.”  Like in the John Lennon song, author Graham Greene, in his World War II novel End of an Affair, reveals how his love for a woman dominated his life and his art.  Greene details the deep real-life obsession he had for American married woman, Catherine Walston. Their tortured relationship lasted 13-14 years. During this time Greene claims he may have written his best work. It’s like Graham became addicted to the love he had for Catherine.  With her at his side, the writing just flowed.   In his End of the Affair,  he transformed Walston into a secret lover, a character named Sarah Miles.   He wrote the novel in first person as writer Maurice Bendix.  “This is a record more of hate than love,” writes Greene/Bendix on the very first page, foreshadowing the jealousy, betrayal, and despair to come.  This is an autobiographical novel.  Greene was a jealous guy.

Greene wrote the End of the Affair in 1951. In my copy, Graham dedicates the novel to “C” – Catherine Walston. From the first page to the last, the story is about a love triangle.  Middle-aged British Writer Maurice Bendix relentlessly pursues the wife of a wealthy Labor politician in England.  His name was Henry Miles and despite his service as a public servant he was obscenely rich. In the novel Henry Miles represents Harry Walston, Catherine's husband.  Just so you know, when you read this book, there is a lot of cheating going on, backwards and forwards. It never stops. 

Before I get to Maurice and Sarah, I’m compelled to tell you how the affair between Graham and Catherine began.  The story is HOT.   Caliente.   A few years before Greene published this novel, Catherine approached Graham’s wife Vivien through a mutual friend.  Thirty-year-old Catherine wanted to convert to Catholism, and as an ardent fan of Graham’s writing, she proposed that  the famous Catholic author become her godfather.  Both Vivien and Graham thought this would be a splendid idea, and visited the Walston farm near Cambridge.    I imagine it’s no rare thing for famous authors to entertain these types of propositions from their faithful followers, but when Graham laid eyes on Catherine, he knew this was going to be far different from any previous experience.  She was beautiful and lively and flirtatious and RICH.   The Walston family farm covered several  thousand acres and required the  employment of one hundred servants to manintain its grandesse. Harry and Catherine owned a yellow Rolls-royce convertible. After the the Greene visit, Catherine offered to fly the couple back to Oxford in an available plane they kept at a nearby air base.  This is what happened:  as they boarded the plane, a lock of her hair fell across Graham’s face, and that’s all it took.  Later in Oxford,  Graham and Catherine were walking a few steps behind Viviene on the tarmac, when Catherine reached over and kissed Graham on the mouth – behind the back of his wife.  Their intense love affair was on.  Somewhere in the letters preserved for the famous author, you can find a hand-written note to Catherine that says,  “I can smell your hair in a every plane I take.  I look for you in the seat alongside.”   

I’m not writing a book report here, but Graham’s choice to insert himself into the novel through his narrator Bendix makes for an intense reading experience.  On many pages, I’m not clear who is  doing the talking.  The author or the character.  Like I said earlier, Maurice becomes obsessed with Sara from the first time he meets her.  He cares nothing for Sarah’s husband, who professes to be his friend. For the entire novel, Maurice is a lonely, tortured man.  When he is not writing, he’s thinking about Sarah.  When he is not with Sarah, he’s writing something incredibly bitter. The affair begins with a friendly date, ironically encourgaged by Sarah’s workaholic (and dull!) husband who apparently has trouble fitting his wife into his schedule.  Maurice takes Sara to dinner and a film that has been developed out of his most recent novel.   This scene inspires me for a number of reasons.  One: Sarah appears equally entranced by Maurice.  I mean she has just watched a film, sitting next to the screenwriter.  At dinner, she shows cosmic insight for what the author was trying to do.  Two:  The scene in the film featured a date between two lovers who share a dinner at a cheap restaurant.  The topic of their conversation were the onions that came with their steaks.  I won’t fully develop the scene here, but the onions were more than onions. They were a symbol for the deciet that both were playing on the husband and friend. The film’s female character refused to touch the onions for fear their smell would reveal her illicit relationship with her lover.  From then on, jaja, the word “onions” became code for “sex” between Mauricio and Sarah.  “Is it impossible to fall in love over a dish of onions,” Maurice ponders.  “It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love.  It wasn’t, of course , simply the onions – it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable.”

Here is the juicy part:  At a certain point, Sarah breaks off all contact with Maurice without explanation.  I mean, she’s Catholic, and she will never ask for a divorce from her husband.  But, when Maruice meets up with Henry a few years later, he learns that Sarah has been cheating on her husband with another man.  Henry is in such a state of despair that he considers hiring a private detective to investigate his wife.   I say “consider” because he doesn’t have the guts to follow through.  Maurice, on the other hand, has no problem spying on his ex-lover.  He hires the investigator to follow Sara wherever she goes.  I’m not so sure I can analyze the rest of the book without giving away the plot.  I don’t plan to read any Graham Greene in my classes anytime soon, but I can see how the examination of the bitterness and jealousy and lessons from this type of book can draw my students into their reading.  The detective brings Maurice Sarah's personal diary that he was able to steel from her room.  Of course, Maurice reads the diary and finds the TRUTH about Sarah.  To no one's surprise, there would be no relief for his despair. 

This story is not linear.  It jumps around through time and space.  From page one we learn how the love affair began, and very soon we learn of betrayal. Everything about Maurice is hard-edged and distinct. Everything about Sarah is vague and unclear. As readers, we can clearly see signs of their self-destructive behavior.  Their love is too good to be true.  With each chapter, we know Greene/Bendix is guiding us to a depressing end.  It's not so much WHEN but HOW. Of course, Greene paints his characters with such intimate detail.  I mean, he knows both of them inside and out.   I couldn't put the book down. 

 

Jay's WRITERS PARAISO Post - Introduction to New Writing Project - Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana - Travel Paraiso by Jorge Franco

When I was the age of my students are now, I was reading Graham Greene spy novels.   He’s the guy that opened my eyes to the most unusual and exciting places I would never see. He spent a lot of time on the road in war-torn and/or third-world countries as a political correspondent - like Vietnam, Haiti, Kenya - right in the middle of historical events while they were developing in real time. You see, before he became a writer, Greene worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War. He knew his way aroung the back streets, as well as the front streets. Much of his spy knowledge finds its way into his fiction.

Greene wrote Our Man in Havana in 1958, pretty much right in the height of the Cold War.  The story takes place in the lead-up to the Cuban Missle Crisis.  In our country, we feared the H-Bomb and nuclear war.  In Greene's Cuba, his characters worry about  their own government corruption -- A revolution is in the air. James Wormold, the main character of this book, grinds out a living selling vacuum cleaners while having to watch the Havana police chief pursue the hand of his sixteen-year-old daughter. Wormald is a single parent who wants the best for his daugter, but Capitan Segura is not it.  He is famous for torturing his prisoners and carrying around a wallet made of human skin.  I re-read Our Man in Havana this week.  Several of my students this semester had chosen to write about the Cuban Missle Crisis.  One of them was able to interview his Cuban grandmother about life back on the island. I look forward to reading more about  Cuba and sharing bits and pieces of its culture and history with my students along the way.

I'm not going to assign this book any time soon, but I'm looking for a way to open my students eyes to the rest of the world. I write this with the idea in mind that immigration will be a critical issue in the upcoming presidential election.  We all know what Trump will have to say about it, and just this week, President Biden issued an executive order to restrict the ability for migrants to cross the U.S. Mexico border.  Currently, by all accounts, whether you stand on the Democratic and/or Republican side of the aisle, the border is in crisis.  2500 people per day find their way to cross.  The sheer numbers of people trying to make it into this country is overwhelming local resources and communities. Border officials say they have no room in their detention centers to handle more arrests,  so they  release 1000 people a day at bus and train stations.  I know, I know  little of our current immigration policy relates to Our Man in Havana, but in my opinion our students should develop a better understanding for the economic hardships and political persecution of people who live in other countries.  I live in Mexicali, Mexico. On occasion, I will meet somebody who has come from a far-of place to be stranded in my city.  I don't know what to say about the problem, but I can see how a meaningful discussion can be developed in the classroom.

 Graham Greene is well known for serving as an MI6 agent in his own British Secret Service.    After the war, Greene was assigned to investigate, interview and interrogate ex- Nazis in Portugal.  Here he came across one spy who seemed too eager to trade secrets.  As a writer, Greene was able to recognize the Nazi’s subterfuge.   Greene found this guy had no real information to sell.  He would just make stuff up.  Desperate to come up with anything that would save him, the Nazi got his hands on the Blue Guide to England,  a popular and renown tourist resource, and had begun hatching detailed geographical reports of secret military outposts in England. 

From this imaginative scheme, Greene wrote Our Man in Havana.   In this novel of Cold War intrigue, Jim Wormold is not desperate, and he is not remotely connected with military or politics, but that is what makes the story so great.  He is living in 1950s Havana and struggling through a bad streak in his life where his wife has left him and his vacuum business is failing.  The only thing he has going for him is his beautiful 16-year-old daughter, but if he doesn't  come up with what she needs, he is afraid of losing her as well.  That is when he walks into this scheme to fabricate false reports for British Intellegence.   After all, Wormold  is a business man.  He imagines secret nuclear installations structured like modern vacuum cleaners being developed in remote island landscapes and sells them to a very demanding clientele: the British Secret Service.   When the head office hears of his reports, they send more agents and a support staff to support his espionage.  That is when things intensify.

My favorite part of the novel has to be the relationship that Wormold maintains with his daughter Milly. It is obvious that he loves her very much, but unlike himself, she is a Catholic.   This becomes interesting.  Wormald is a heavy drinker and a bad businessman, but he is a devoted father.  He is ready to give his daughter the best the world has to offer.  It is not going to be easy, he knows that.  Milly is a looker, and when she walks down the crowded Havana streets she attracts a lot of attention.   It is up to Wormald to give her what she can get anywhere else.  In this sense, Wormald is a real hero.  Forget about the Cold War and the secret espionage.  He puts daughter ahead of his country and his life.  He is willing to make the sacrifices that all good fathers make.

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Currently, I'm re-reading many of the novels I read in college.  Now that I have put down Our Man in Havana, I'm reading Greene's The Quiet American. I'll save any commentary on this one for later, but I've grown to greater appreciate my reading experiences the second and third time through, for I now read these novels with a greater historical perspective and understanding for the author's background.  In fact, I'm concurrently reading biographical account of Greene's personal life during the 50s.  It begins with a painful breakup with a long-time lover, Catherine Walston.  The book is titled, of course, The Third Woman.  Somehow Green managed to transform his despair into inspiration for his writing of Our Man in Havana. The juice stayed with him through his writing of The Quiet American.  His story is about a tired Brit journalist who maintains a lurid affair with a young Vietnamese woman as a violent U.S. intervention looms in the background.  From reading this book, you could say Greene's writing is prophetical.  I can now say it's autobiographical. 

This Fall 2024, I plan to read a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco.  I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream - two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellin, Colombia, who successfully make the long, ardous journey to New York City, but learn tough, life-changing lessons along the way.   I like this novel, for the CHANGE in characters that happens right before our eyes.  Both Marlon and Reina become Hard and Knowing.  They are entirely different people at the end of the novel.  Did their journey to the U.S. change the way they saw each other. How did their struggle to fit in, to find their place, to define their identities...Affect Their Love? I'm wary about sharing a 1950s novel in the classroom, but Paradise Travel will push us to understand more about ourselves.  Everyone comes from somewhere. We are a nation of immigrants.  I can envision my students putthing themselves in the shoes of the characters they read about.  For this reason, everyone will have something to write.