Quick Takes

...because life is going by too quickly.

A couple weeks ago, I think I repeated myself 3 or 4 times in emails or phone calls inquiring “how’s life” by answering: “Same old, same old. Nothing new to report.”  Rain. School. Eat, sleep, read.

Prizes from the library's reading contest

  

Jinx.

This week we’ve had:

1. A chipped tooth.  Permanent, of course.  Dentist seems to have done a pretty good job of patching it up.

2. A call from the assistant principal’s office.  I thought he was calling me asking me to volunteer for something.  No, he had my kid in his office. My kid?  My kid!!  Discipline drama.

3. First assignments came due in my classes.  Work overload!  (But I have to brag: I LOVE my lit class: it’s small - only 11 students, which means I only get paid 75% of the pittance adjuncts earn per class – but they like to talk. And a couple of the older students have decided they want to mama the youngers by bringing in homemade goodies each night. Tuesday I brought home with me a bag of homemade lumpia for my kids – enough to SATISFY the kids. That’s a lot.  This lady really wants an A.)

4. Soccer games! Cross Country meets! Football games! Scout events -  Eagle Scout ceremony to plan! CCD started – husband and I both teaching!  Archdiocesan retreat to attend! So glad nothing here is much further than 20 minutes away. And unless a heavy downpour has just occurred, traffic is a nonissue.

5. The half marathon I’m training for is less than a month away.  I’ve been debating the merits of GU, Chomps, and Jelly Belly Energy Beans with whomever will listen.  Still have to fit in 2 more runs longer than 10 miles somewhere where I won’t have to run uphill more than 30% or run from dogs. I didn’t used to be afraid of dogs back in my school days, when I was running around farmland in Indiana.  But those loose farm dogs would usually stay when you yelled at them; boonie dogs have a mind of their own. I’ve taken to running with pepper spray and graham crackers to throw to followers.  Have not had to use the pepper spray.

6. Have I mentioned how glad I am that I’m on a tropical island for election season?  I know, that means I might be shirking my civic responsibility, but judging by the acrimony on Facebook posts, tension is high.  I might just have to fast from Facebook until November, because it's hard to avoid political pronouncements from people I barely know. I don't want to read any more ad hominem attacks.  It's a little like the playground out there - "you're a hater if you don't agree with me."

The local elections here have quite a different tone.  Guam doesn’t vote in the presidential elections, but it has a local senate and a house and mayoral elections, and it elects a non-participating senator to the national Congress.  Lots of cheerful signs are posted everywhere with smiling faces of candidates.  Most don’t mention political party. Most don’t mention much of anything, except “Vote for me!”  I suppose the candidates’ platforms will be outlined in the paper at some point in time, but it seems a much less acrimonious process than the national scene.

I say that, but I did read some strong opinions in the editorials not long ago about the views on self-determination or independence for Guam.  Apparently, the recent remarks at the outgoing Admiral’s change of command stirred some emotional reactions. 

Finally, the best news:

7. My parents are coming to visit! Ecstatic! Ecstatic!

Recent photos, or "Why We'll Miss This Place."

The trail to Lost Pond and Shark Cove.

Tanguisson Beach

Shark Cove: We snorkeled here. No sharks, but lots of three-banded
anemones, trumpetfish, and other colorful coral reef dwellers. Forgot the underwater
camera, again, of course.

Regenerating starfish.

Lost Pond, also known as Mosquito Love Pond.

Trying on a coral hat.

A monitor lizard determined not to be caught by my children.

Taste the rainbow!

The cliff next to the Two Lover's Point where a
pair of native lovers jumped, their hair tied together, to their death,
to avoid having to see the girl married to a Spanish captain.

Thorny bougainvillea is planted all over Two Lovers' Point:
the tropical rose.

Japanese love tokens.

The bell "Love Called" is part of an arch where weddings are held.

Talking with ghosts

Love this quote from an interview with editors M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt in the New York Times about the Norton Anthology's anniversary:

Has the Norton Anthology then lost its relevance?

Greenblatt: Not at all. The Norton Anthology was based on the idea that it actually matters to plunge into a comic masterpiece written in the 1300s or to weep at a tragedy performed in the 1700s. What would it mean for a culture to give up on its past? It is vitally important to remind people that the humanities carry the experience, the life-forms of those who came before us, into the present and into the future. Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them. Besides — as many studies have shown — cultural knowledge turns out to be good for your career.

And so I continue to stumble through Sophocles and Shakespeare with my students at the community college, even though I'm sure they wonder whether they are getting their money's worth from this class.

Actually, I have been very happy with the way the literature class has been going. It's a smaller group than last semester, and about half of the students are older than I am, so they are happy to sit around and talk about the relationships in these plays.  Last week we had a great discussion about whether it would have been better for Oedipus to live in ignorance than to find out his sins.  The class was pretty well split in opinion.  They may have had a hard time with the language, but they picked up on the themes. They were able to weep at this masterpiece from thousands of years ago.

There seems to be a good rapport among the lit students, and one lady really brought the class to life last week by bringing in warm bunelos. I was only going to eat a bite of one to be polite, but the donut melted away too quickly, reminding me of the donuts from a bakery near where my dad used to work. He could polish off a dozen in no time because they were so airy and sugary when warm that they seemed to evaporate. Only thing missing was coffee, which I'm afraid to drink because this class starts at 8 pm.

We are going to read "Fences" by August Wilson next, because the university next door is staging it in a few weeks.   I just read it for the first time myself, and although the language may strike some students as a bit rough (it was a bit jarring to me, at least - it had crossed my mind to take my kids to the play because I'm always looking for ways to sneak some culture in them, but it's definitely too mature for the youngers), I think the students will really enjoy discussing the family dynamics.  They've enjoyed talking about how the lovers in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" fall into familiar patterns; in "Fences" I hope they'll listen to the ghosts speaking about the next phase of life: marriage and parenting - and how the songs sung by Troy and Lyons and Gabe (like the stories in the anthology) keep the characters waking up in the morning, even when it seems like they've cut themselves off from all their reasons for living.

Now if I could just figure out how to get the same energy to enliven my composition class.  I get a lot of blank stares when I ask for volunteers to read or discuss.  Maybe it's time to bring in hot donuts.