Snow! The white stuff filters down with about an inch on the ground already. Well, nothing unusual there if you're "local." (Remember Bill Murray in What About Bob? appearing near his psychiatrist's vacation home wearing a "Don't Hassle Me I'm Local" T-Shirt?) Snow can appear 12 months of the year here and if you grow certain plants in summer you have to be prepared to cover them overnight if the forecast is for frost.
But that's part of the charm (I think)!
Yesterday I got back the edited version of the second draft of my second article and the vast majority of what I wrote was intact. Slowly, I'm getting it. Older students are just as capable of learning as younger students, I have read: it just takes them longer. It's the slow turn of the ocean liner.
We rented No Country for Old Men. A very very well-made movie, though we of course longed for a traditional Hollywood ending instead of "film noire": Tommy Lee Jones is sitting in his kitchen telling his wife about a couple depressing dreams he's just had which obviously have some deep philosophical significance to the filmmakers. In a different mood I might have enjoyed trying to figure what the heck he was talking about, but basically we'd gotten the movie out for it's entertainment value, to be distracted after a busy week. You know, it's what Hollywood, and TV, does best.
I agree with Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death that watching lots of TV and thinking you're getting educated or nourished much by it is delusional: that what TV and, by extension, Hollywood-style film, does best is to entertain. But sometimes being entertained is what we need and Postman himself says that it's perfect for people when they're sick: zone out watch the tube. Maybe the reason for the popularity of Hollywood entertainment and low brow TV is that frenzied people these days need lots of recovery time. The ideal, of course, would be to get ourselves out of the rat race so we don't require oodles of down time with the idiot box and instead begin to enjoy reading substantive novels or puzzling over just what it was the Tommy Lee Jones character was getting at the ending of No Country for Old Men. This certainly is the direction we hope to be moving...
But that's part of the charm (I think)!
Yesterday I got back the edited version of the second draft of my second article and the vast majority of what I wrote was intact. Slowly, I'm getting it. Older students are just as capable of learning as younger students, I have read: it just takes them longer. It's the slow turn of the ocean liner.
We rented No Country for Old Men. A very very well-made movie, though we of course longed for a traditional Hollywood ending instead of "film noire": Tommy Lee Jones is sitting in his kitchen telling his wife about a couple depressing dreams he's just had which obviously have some deep philosophical significance to the filmmakers. In a different mood I might have enjoyed trying to figure what the heck he was talking about, but basically we'd gotten the movie out for it's entertainment value, to be distracted after a busy week. You know, it's what Hollywood, and TV, does best.
I agree with Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death that watching lots of TV and thinking you're getting educated or nourished much by it is delusional: that what TV and, by extension, Hollywood-style film, does best is to entertain. But sometimes being entertained is what we need and Postman himself says that it's perfect for people when they're sick: zone out watch the tube. Maybe the reason for the popularity of Hollywood entertainment and low brow TV is that frenzied people these days need lots of recovery time. The ideal, of course, would be to get ourselves out of the rat race so we don't require oodles of down time with the idiot box and instead begin to enjoy reading substantive novels or puzzling over just what it was the Tommy Lee Jones character was getting at the ending of No Country for Old Men. This certainly is the direction we hope to be moving...
posted by Ted | 6:57 AM
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