2010 In Review, Part II: April - August

April was mostly a blur of schoolwork, with the end slowly coming into sight for me. I'm sure the end had been in sight for Kirst (and Teddy and Chris) for a while. On my birthday, I came home to a chocolate cake Kirst made for me, complete with "Happy 25 Birthday." I didn't get two steps in the door before I pointed out, to Teddy and Chris's amusement and Kirst's horror, "I'm not 25." Like Teddy and Chris, I thought it was pretty funny, but I think Kirst still feels a little bad about it (It's ok, hon).

The story went that while decorating the cake, Kirst noted that there were 24 candles in a pack and told Teddy that next year would be annoying because she'd have to buy a second pack for one candle. She apparently said this while writing on the cake and so, put 25 instead of 24. Makes sense to me, and still pretty funny.

Toward the end of the month Mom heard about a listing for Corgi puppies for sale. With Lily's impending departure to Charlottesville in August, she needed a new pup to keep her company. Of course, the listing included at least two puppies, and we had to go meet with them too and help pick out my mom's puppy. The decision to drive up to Winchester that Saturday to meet the woman with the puppies was made early in the week, and it was clear well before we left Blacksburg that we would most likely be returning with the second puppy. We couldn't leave him by himself now could we?

We arrived and met with two little reddish-brown fuzzballs. The woman told us about them and the litter, telling us that they'd been born without tails, that the little one was the runt of the litter, but also the Alpha without a doubt. I was duly appointed with choosing which pup would be mine and which would go home with my mom. I ended up choosing the runt, partly because he had already shown himself to be a bit devilish and I didn't want poor aging Mally to deal with him. I had just about made my decision known when, after shopping at Petco with him in my arms, I was heading for grass to set him down and he peed all over me. Little chet.

I cleaned myself and then declared that the little one was Crash, and he was coming with me, despite the peeing incident. We actually then headed to Fairfax to spend some time with each other before Kirst and I finally headed back down to Blacksburg. We went to Stonegate first so Cory could meet Crash. We were all sitting with Crash in the kitchen and talking for about twenty minutes before I realized I hadn't seen Zubie in a while. I looked around the apartment and quickly found him, sitting in the corner of the living room, ears down, and an ultimately pathetic look on his face. I called to him and he was very excited to find out we weren't replacing him and that we still liked him.

After a while, we headed over to Windsor Hills and got ready to go to bed. We put crash in his crate and he promptly began crying pitifully, regardless of anything we said. The only way we got him to shut up was Kirsten laid on the floor with her fingers through the door of the crate. If, after he fell asleep, she got up to come to bed, he would wake and begin crying almost instantly. So she slept on the floor the first night, I the next, and so on. It didn't take long before we gave up and let him sleep in the bed with us so that we could actually sleep too.

Eventually Crash got over his whining thing (mostly, he still does it in the mornings if we put him in the crate for the night, usually because he refuses to go to sleep). And just a couple weeks later, the semester was over and Kirsten, Teddy, Chris, Katie, and Dylan were all putting on their long, flowing, black robes and getting ready to graduate.

The large ceremony on Friday night was threatened by thundershowers and delayed for a while. Eventually they set up a some-what shortened ceremony in Lane Stadium. The rather more meaningful ceremony took place the next day, with the individual college graduations. While Kirst had wanted to go to as many of our friends' graduations, after hanging out at Katie's the night before for a party and generally the exhaustion (plus amount of traffic), we bailed on the others and just went to the English department's graduation ceremony where Kirst got her well deserved diploma.


I'm sure I'll leave things out, but the summer seemed to be a bit of a whirlwind of activity. We moved out of Windsor Hills and all my stuff managed to clutter up the Stonegate apartment for a while. We also repainted all the walls from their various colors back to white. It was a bit of a rushed job, to the point where the primer we were using was cracking as it dried. However, they renovated the place after we moved out so they didn't charge us a cent, despite the bad paint and the hole in the carpet courtesy of Zubie. A little over a week after I moved all my stuff into Stonegate, we helped Cory move out into his new place.

In June we had our wedding shower, which I was originally advised to avoid, then told to make an appearance where I was promptly wrapped in a toilet paper wedding dress. A few days later, for Kirst's birthday, we went up to Baltimore and took a tour of the park before going to the game against the Nats. During BP before the game, I caught a ball courtesy of one of the coaches. It was the first time I'd ever caught a ball at a game, so I was smiling like a little kid for most of the night.

At the beginning of July we moved out of Stonegate and into our new place. My mom was a saint and drove down for the weekend to help us pack and move everything. Well, to step back, the first day we painted the whole place. Then the next day we had a 14ft Uhaul reserved. We show up at the place and this guy looks at me blankly and tells me they don't have any trucks. I spent the next half-hour or so on the phone with Uhaul, seething, pacing back and forth behind this building. Apparently the guy was a moron and didn't inform Uhaul that they needed to assign the reservation to another franchise. Eventually I got to someone helpful and she managed to find a much smaller truck for 6 hours and gave me $50 off for the inconvenience, which Mollified me a bit.

We hauled ass to get everything packed in the limited time we had. In the end we didn't get everything, but all the big stuff and big boxes. Over the next week we would pick up the rest. The following weekend mom and Kirst's mom came down and helped with the finishing touches and the like. After living in our new place for all of a week and change, we headed up to Northern Virginia to be around for the last minute wedding prep and bachelor/bachelorette parties.

For the bachelor party, Sweede arranged a trip to Atlantic City for two nights. The guys were incredibly kind (thank you all again) and donated money for me to gamble with since I couldn't afford any of my own (which I managed to mostly lose). It was a great time hanging out with the guys for a few days. We concluded the trip with an O's game with terrific seats down the third base line.

A few days later was the big day. It also happened to be the hottest day of the year. I woke up before the sun as near as I can recall, and then sat around not doing much until around noon, when I had the longest, most painstaking shave of my life. A little after two, Nick and I drove over to the Ritz Carlton where Kirst and I would be staying and checked in. We then got over to Meadowlark around 3:00 and made some last minute adjustments for the DJ table and the like, and then sat around some more.

The whole event is a bit of a blur. We had an absolute blast seeing everyone and then dancing like crazy all night. By the end it was just immediate family and best friends, which was a lot of fun. I'm not doing the night justice at all, but then I could spend an entire post on just the wedding and not do it justice (and maybe I'll try at some point).

Someone managed to find out where we were staying and have a baby crib placed in the room for when we got there. The scarier part was that the door wasn't closed all the way when we arrived. I'm still not sure who did it. The little baby-proofing bag came in handy when Kirst cut herself shaving the next morning. She got to wear a dino-band-aid.

A few days after the wedding we were off for the honeymoon in Europe. Once again, it deserves a post of its own, complete with pictures. For now I'll skip over it and just say that Santorini is probably the most beautiful spot on Earth, at least as far as I've seen, and that I want to go back both on a cruise and back to Italy and Greece.

A few days after we got back from Europe, we headed back to Blacksburg and I geared up for my final year of grad school.

This post is long enough as it is, so I will hold off on the last four months of the year for my next post, which I will try to make sooner rather than later.

All the best to you and yours,

-TES

2010 In Review, Part I: January - March

I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning. The end of 2009 saw Kirsten temporarily stranded in Blacksburg by the first of a couple massive snowfalls. Dylan had moved out of my apartment in Windsor Hills and Teddy was readying to move in (once he returned to the states from Hong Kong). I was preparing for my second semester of grad school, taking one required course in theory, and two electives, Creative Non Fiction and Business and Technical Writing. Kirsten, along with my roommates Teddy and Chris, was preparing to graduate. At the time she was considering grad school for the fall, namely Tech and Radford. In an attempt to bolster her resume, she joined an internship program to tutor at Blacksburg High School.

Honestly, the one definably "January" moment I can remember is recieving our electric bill at the end of the month for the period where no one was there. The bill was for over twice our previous highest bill, and unfortunately there was no mistake. However, a fonder memory is the week or so before classes began in which Teddy, Kirsten and I were able to spend some time together, mostly relaxing and catching up, hearing all about Hong Kong and Teddy's excursions to other parts of Asia. On one of his forrays to China, he bought himself a nice (cheap) suit, and very kindly, got one for me too. So of course, we had to wear them at the first opportunity, which happened to be initiation for brothers neither of us knew very well yet.


February seemed to primarily a blur of lots of snow. We had several sledding adventures on the hill with Zubie either in our laps or chasing us down the hill, barking the whole way and getting a face full of snow for his trouble. I got out of class with decent regularity. In one of my nights off, we decided to drive downtown to get some food. This trip should have been unremarkable if it weren't for the fact that Teddy locked his keys in his car, with it running. Fortunately, one door was only partially closed, and after much finagling, we were able to get a wire hanger in and pull the door handle from the inside. Of course, this event lead to a running joke every time we went anywhere, to make sure not to leave keys in the car.

In March, I began the month by visiting New York City during spring break for a few days with Kirsten, Anna, and some of Anna's friends, and we met Teddy there as well, who, along with his cousin, once again served as my guides through NYC. Our trip was only two days, but we did almost everything I had done on my first visit, which was four days. We took a Chinatown bus from DC to NYC Midtown (it drops you off by MSG). Going in, our goals were primarily gastronomic; Anna wanted to try to find the Best Burger in New York (courtesy of HIMYM), I insisted we had to try Katz and a Pizza too, and Teddy suggested we find a good Bagel place (something we'd failed to do in our first visit). We also located the bar that inspired MacClaren's from HIMYM, McGee's Pub, but ended up not stopping in.

Anywho, starting at the beginning, we took the Metro into Chinatown early in the morning and waited at our sketchy "bus stop" which was a sign over the door of an abandoned house's door. The bus, all black, eventually showed up, and we were on our way. We arrived in New York around 1:00 and made our way the half-dozen or so blocks from MSG to Madison Square Park, where our first (and only) Burger stop was: The Shake Shack. It's a little nicer than a shack, but it was a small building in the middle of a park. And we waited over an hour in line for our food. In addition to an amazing, heart-attack-inducing burger, we also got just as unhealthy cheese fries and something called a concrete. Our particular concrete was chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks, and probably some other chocolate items in the mix, with a consistency much like its name.


After our insanely delicious, and worth the wait meal, we took the subway to our hotel to put our stuff down and take a brief break. We then headed out and walked to Times Square. First stop was the Hershey's Store, which smelled deliciously of chocolate. I bought a Reese's shirt, and really hoped that it retained the smell of that store forever. Then we crossed the street and amused ourselves in the M&M's store for quite some time. It was much bigger than Hershey's (what with 3 floors), and was generally a little more ridiculous in the random things you could get with the M&M's logo on it. From there we headed into Times Square proper and looked into seeing a show, but even the cheapest tickets were a good bit more than we were looking to spend, and so we declined. Moving on down Times Square, we headed into the Toys R Us there and enjoyed the myriad displays and various toys themes, the Lego section, the Dinosaur section, and, of course, the Toy Story section. If you've never been, there's a Ferris Wheel inside the store. Truly a playland.

After Times Square, I think it was actually about dinner time, and with Teddy and I enthusiastically leading the way, we headed to Katz's Delicatessen. Kirsten followed Teddy and I's lead and ordered a pastrami Ruben (we probably should have shared). It wasn't quite as good as the first time, but that's like saying winning the lottery a second time wasn't as exciting as the first, it's that good. Anna wasn't nearly as pleased with her Philly Cheesesteak. Unfortunate, but we are in NY, not Philly. After our very filling dinner, we headed to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked half-way across it. We had a heck of a view from there, even if I did keep looking at the ground and water hundreds of feet below through the planks.

Our next stop was Rockefeller Center. One of my driving goals in the visit was to take Kirsten ice-skating at Rockefeller, so we did. While we skated, Anna and the others were entertained by an older Asian man doing interpretive ice-dance. He was so into it and enthusiastic you couldn't help but admire him. After our brief skate, we walked over to Rockefeller center and went to the "Top of the Rock," which is cheaper and much easier than going to the top of the Empire State Building. The view was incredible, nearly indescribable.

The relatively dark spot is Central Park. After we descended from those heights, we parted ways from our guides and I insisted on returning to Times Square, since it is a different place at night. Compared to my previous visit, it was relatively quiet. By that I mean we didn't see any party buses or Lamborghinis. Regardless, it's still an explosion of light and sound. Once we were done taking in all the sights and sounds, we walked our way back to the hotel and gratefully removed our shoes and quickly slipped into unconsciousness.

On day two, we took the subway uptown to Teddy's cousin's apartment to meet up with them, and from there, went to a bagel place for breakfast/brunch. From there we walked a ways and walked by Tom's Restaurant (of Seinfeld fame). Cam, Anna's roommate, wanted to see Strawberry Fields, so we obliged, and went to Central Park, entering by Strawberry fields and then walking through the park to Columbus Circle. We walked by McGee's Pub, then took the subway downtown to see Ground Zero, then walked to the Liberty Island Ferry. We walked briefly around the island, taking the obligatory photos with Lady Liberty, then headed back to the ferry. For the second time in as many trips, rather than get off at Ellis Island, I was in a group that was too tired and too short on time to bother, and so we stayed on board. From there we went to Lombardi's in Little Italy for Pizza.


This was my favorite of the three pizzas: Meatball, green pepper, and sliced tomato. Having tried NY and Chicago pizza, I can't say they compare. They are two completely different things, and both of them are, quite simply, awesome. After dinner, we quickly made our way to Insomnia Cookies, which was just a few blocks away, where Anna got a box of delicious and (at the time) warm cookies. We then bolted for the subway to get us back to MSG to catch our bus. We were cutting it close, and our nerves were not helped by a delay on the line that had us waiting nearly fifteen minutes for the next train, which then stopped a few times in between stations. Getting off the train and in a hurry, we managed to go the wrong way for a couple blocks before realizing our mistake and then I ran ahead to hold the bus if need be. Fortunately, the bus itself had been running late and so we made it. Not by much, but we made it.

I could continue on in March by describing how I got a ticket for a right on red, and then continue on to April and beyond, but this post, due to my love for writing about trips, is already quite long enough, so I will conclude it here for now.

All the best to you and yours,

-TES

Donne's Satire 3

I apologize if you don't care to read old dead white dudes' poetry, but I read this poem for class this past week and really liked what it had to say on religion. It lines closely with my own beliefs.
If you do choose to read this rather long poem, then I hope you enjoy it.

From Satires: Satire 3

Kind pithy chokes my spleen, brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
I must not laugh, nor weep sins, and be wise,
Can railing then cure these worn maladies?
Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
As worthy of all our soul's devotion,
As virtue was to the first blinded age?
Are not heaven's joys as valiant to assuage
Lusts, as earth's honor was to them? Alas,
As we do them in means, shall they surpass
Us in the end, and shall thy father's spirit
Meet blind philosophers in heaven, whose merit
Of strict life may be imputed faith, and hear
Thee, whom he taught so easy ways and near
To follow, damned? O if thou dar'st, fear this;
This fear great courage and high valor is.
Dar'st thou aid mutinous Dutch, and dar'st thou lay
Thee in ships, wooden sepulchers, a prey
To leaders' rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth?
Dar'st thou dive seas and dungeons of the earth?
Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
Of frozen north discoveries? And thrice
Colder than salamanders, like divine
Childern in the oven, fires of Spain, and the line,
Whose countries limbecks to our bodies be,
Canst thou for gain bear? And must every he
Which cries not "Goddess!" to thy mistress, draw,
Or eat thy poisonous words? Courage of straw!
O desperate coward, wilt thou seem bold, and
To thy foes and his (who made thee to stand
Sentinel in his world's garrison) thus yield,
And for forbidden wars, leave the appointed field?
Know thy foes: the foul Devil, whom thou
Strivest to please, for hate, not love, would allow
The fain his whole realm to be quit; and as
The world's all parts wither away and pass,
So the world's self, thy other loved foe, is
In her decrepit wane, and thou, loving this,
Dost love a withered and worn strumpet; last,
Flesh (itself's death) and joys which flesh can taste,
Thou lovest; and thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
Seek true religion. O where? Mirreus,
Thinking her unhoused here, and fled from us,
Seeks her at Rome; there, because he doth know
That she was there a thousand years ago;
He loves her rags so, as we here obey
The statecloth where the prince sat yesterday.
Crantz to such brave loves will no be enthralled
But loves her only, who at Geneva is called
Religion, plain, simple, sullen, young,
Contemptuous, yet unhandsome; as among
Lecherous humors, there is one that judges
No wenches wholesome by coarse country drudges.
Graius stays still at home here, and because
Some preachers, vile ambitious bawds, and laws,
Still new like fashions, bid him think that she
Which dwells with us is only perfect, he
Embraceth her whom his godfathers will
Tender to him, being tender, as wards still
Take such wives as their guardians offer, or
Pay values.Careless Phrygius doth abhor
All, because he cannot be good, as one,
Knowing some women whores, dares marry none.
Gracchus loves all as one, and thinks that so
As women do in diverse countries go
In divers habits, yet are still one kind,
So doth, so is Religion; and this blind-
ness too much light breeds; but unmoved thou
Of force must one, and forced but one allow;
And the right; ask thy father which is she;
Let him ask his, though truth and falsehood be
Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;
Be busy to seek her, believe me this,
He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.
To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong is. On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must, and about must go;
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so;
Yet strive so, that before age, death's twilight,
Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
To will implies delay; therefore now do.
Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too
The mind's endeavors reach, and mysteries
Are like the sun, dazzling, yet plain to all eyes.
Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand
In so ill case here that God hath with his hand
Signed kings' blank charters to kill whom they hate,
Nor are they vicars, but hangmen to fate.
Fool and wretch, wilt thoug let thy soul be tied
To man's laws, by which she shall not be tried
At the last day? Oh, will it then boot thee
To say a Philip of a Gregory,
A Harry, or a Martin taught me this?
Is not this excuse for mere contraries
Equally strong? Cannot both sides say so?
That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those passed, her nature, and name is changed; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
As streams are, power is; those blest flowers that dwell
At the rough stream's calm head, thrive and do well,
But having left their roots, and themselves given
To the stream's tyrannous rage, alas, are driven
Through mills, and rocks, and woods, and at last, almost
Consumed in going, in the sea are lost:
So perish souls, which more choose men's unjust
Power from God claimed, than God himself to trust.

Nature in a Video Game

For my major paper in my Ecocriticism class, I have narrowed down my possible topics to be a focus on one game (and possibly its supporting material) and it's interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. I'm looking at either Final Fantasy VII or Pokemon (Red/Blue/Yellow).

I think it would be a lot of fun and really interesting (and difficult) to work on Final Fantasy VII. I think the way nature is portrayed/interacted with in that game is much more complex than it is in Pokemon. This makes it more interesting, but also less likely that I could actually explore it in any depth in a ten-or-so page paper. Not to mention, I don't have the time to play through the game again, and despite beating it twice, there's still a lot I don't know or understand. After reading (read: skimming) Ents, Elves and Eriador, I think it would be possible and interesting to write a book on it. I feel like a book would be more feasible than an article at this point.

Pokemon, on the other hand, isn't quite as complex, but does seem to have an interesting and unique take on humanity's relationship with nature, particularly in relations with animals. I'm not sure what I would say right now, but I know that, looking at the game through a ecocritic-lens, I'm going to come down on the side of the game reinforcing poor cultural considerations of nature. There's definitely a man-over-nature aspect to the series that wouldn't allow me to approve of it as an ecocritic.

An ecocritic (which I have to pretend to be for the paper) would disapprove of the game's domination of the 'wild' by people. Nature is only valuable based on its usefulness. Tall grasses and the like are valuable because they allow the trainer to capture new pokemon or force their pokemon to fight and become stronger. There is definitely a "dog-fighting" type ethic to this game, which was touched on in the live-action Pokemon movie spoof trailer. However, despite the fact that the character is participating in this domination over animals for his own ends, there are still criminals, Team Rocket, whose cruelty to pokemon must be stopped. So one question I would need to explore in my paper is where the line is drawn.

The TV show could be useful for a backstory to the game, with a character treating and interacting with pokemon in a certain way. The game implies that your character has the same kind-heartedness that Ash does in the show, but there is no ostensible proof of this. Other characters in the game comment that your pokemon like you no matter what you do. The closest there is to a guide for how you are treating your pokemon is the expressions of Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow, and even then, they are pretty much guaranteed to improve as long as you keep Pikachu in your party, and usually conscious. The importance of the feelings of your pokemon became more important in later series, but the fact still remains that the game implies that pokemon (read: animals) are best off under the protection and control of a person (or really, a ten-year-old kid).

While I still have plenty of questions on how I'm going to write this paper, at this point, I've learned that if I don't have questions, my paper will probably not be very good.

All the best to you and your,

-TES

PS. I know, I'm a huge dork, but you should know that already.

Oppression of Literary Studies

I recently found out about a website called The Book Buzz. This website was established by a group of high school parents from Richland, Washington who demanded that the language arts teachers at first one, then a second high school in the area, hand over their syllabi and reading lists. Those who refused were informed that their syllabi and all other teaching materials were in the public domain, presumably because they are government employees. Aside from the horrendous rights infringements of such a statement, the parents then compiled a list the books being taught and set about grading their "content and themes" and supposedly did not presume to judge "the literary merit of the books."

Of the expansive list of books, only eight were judged as deserving an "A" for content and themes. Presumably this would mean that these books are the only ones appropriate for high school students. While my count was a cursory thing, I couldn't help but notice that two of the books given "A"s were The Lord of the Rings and The Giver. I would hope both are more than appropriate, considering I read them both in middle school, if not before.

Interestingly, of the ten Shakespeare plays listed (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest) only one, Romeo and Juliet, was rated, receiving a "B." Now I'm not going to tell these people how to do their jobs, but it seems to me that trysting teenage lovers who end up both committing suicide for their love is not exactly appropriate for these apparently fragile minded children they have in high school in Richland, Washington.

From the standpoint of evaluating books on their content and themes, and not their literary merit, I don't think it would be difficult to give "D"s to any of Shakespeare's plays (these parents have also decided that giving a book an "F" is either too harsh, because no one should fail, or it is likely to make them appear unreasonable). Hamlet's themes include suicide, fratricide, incest, murder, insanity, and plenty of dirty jokes along the way (not that students would ever catch them, let alone most parents). How about Macbeth, Othello, or King Lear, the other three of Shakespeare's masterworks? Well, there's certainly plenty of murder, scheming against authority, insanity, and so on, once again, with a bunch of dirty jokes thrown in.

More on their grading scale, they claim that the grades are associated with the MPAA rating scale, with A = G, B=PG, C=PG-13, and D=R or NC-17. Interestingly, the youngest grade with books rated in this website is 9th grade, were students are presumably 14 when they enter. By their own rating scale, a C and above is appropriate for all classes, with all of their grades being appropriate for seniors and progressively for juniors. So while, ostensibly, the "grade" of a book is solely a way of gauging it's audience appropriateness, then why not stick solely with the MPAA rating scale they seemingly based the grades off of?

The most obvious answer is that saying a book should be rated PG-13 doesn't carry nearly the same weight as giving it a "C." A "C" seems to question its use in the classroom, while rating it PG-13 would not, since all students should be about that age range or above. However, it's pretty clear to me that this grading does not always follow such a grading scale. Case in point: The Lord of the Rings. As a movie adaptation it received a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. Now, granted, the movie had graphic depictions of warfare and the books aren't necessarily as detailed, but there is still considerable amounts of violence and threatening violence that there is no way I think it could be rated G.

On the other hand, Ender's Game, an ostensibly young adult novel, received a "C" or PG-13 rating. The rating was based on "language, primarily crudeness but some profanity." The most frequently used profane word was bastard "(over 13 times)," and the most serious curse word, shit, was used three times. However, it was used three times, repeated in one sentence, so only in one instance was the word used: "Shit-talking, shit-talking, shit-talking!" The primary "potentially objectionable theme" was "Derogatory/disrespectful religious comments," in particular, statements such as "people do strange things for religion." Now, for anyone who has read the Ender series, there is a pretty extensive discussion of religion going on. The books criticize entirely faith based religion. That is, numerous characters are depicted as taking actions based on blind faith which have horrendous consequences. However, other characters who think about their faith, and examine their faith and situation critically, are shown to be more in keeping with their faith. Characters who think about faith follow the message and meaning of their faith, while those who follow faith alone without thinking follow only the word and not the meaning.

This is an aspect of literature that makes it impossible to simply excise pieces of text and use them to criticize the book as potentially offensive or objectionable. By doing so, you are failing to examine the literary reasons why the author included such language and themes. By avoiding a discussion of literary merit, this group excuses themselves from actually thinking about these books. A piece of literature, any literature, is not thousands of words used at random to tell an arbitrary story, and the implication that themes are unrelated to literary merit and thus effort, is an insult to the dozens, if not hundreds of authors in this list, and the millions of people who have read these works and invested time into examining the elements of the themes and content. The words and usages in books are put there purposefully by the author, not at random.

By judging and questioning the choices made by the underpaid men and women who see it as their duty to give the best possible education to their students, the parents who formed this website are questioning the very merit of the people teaching their children. The reason to send children to school, ostensibly, is to allow them to learn from people who know more about subjects than the parents do. The biggest reason children need to go to school is so that they are exposed to the thoughts of people outside their family unit and are allowed to develop critical thinking skills that will give them the best opportunity to be successful.

Socrates said that "the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." Compared to all the knowledge out there, known and unknown, any knowledge you can develop in your lifetime is as infinitesimal as to be nothing. I believe that a parent's goal should be to hope that tiny little bit that his or her child knows is just a little greater than his or her own.

The greatest tragedy of growing up is to no longer ask "why?" to every answer.

-TES

Guilty Writing

The title (and the motivation for starting this post) is mostly guilt: guilt over the fact that I said I was going to start writing more regularly and then haven't posted in 24 days or something like that.

One of my larger concerns recently has been dealing with administration at Radford (not for the first time). This time I'm dealing with departmental policies I wasn't aware of but that could make my final semester worse than it needs to be. Each semester, the English department offers about seven or eight graduate courses at the 600 level (which are the ones we're supposed to take). Of these, at least two have the course number 680, which is broadly classified as Special Topics in English. That said, they're usually extremely diverse and completely unrelated.

Due to limited course options, each semester, I've elected to take one of the 680s. The first was Shakespeare and Film, the second, this past spring, was Creative Nonfiction, and then the third, which I am currently in, is Ecocriticism. About two weeks ago, I was told that you can only have two 680s count toward your required credits for graduation.

The program I'm in requires 33 credits to graduate, and 9 credits per semester to keep my GTA position. If you do the math, that's 36 credits over four semesters. However, we're allowed to take a course that isn't really a course, in order to maintain 9 credits. This course, of course, doesn't count toward the 33 required credits. So, to clarify, I was planning on taking this essentially fake course next semester, requiring me to only take two courses in the spring.

However, with this current problem, unless I get one 680 changed in the records to something else, I will have to take three credits, in addition to taking my Comprehensive Examination at some point, and applying for jobs.

My adviser, eventually suggested that I could petition to change my current 680 to a 698 (Directed Study). However, you can only take one directed study, and I'm planning on taking one in the spring. So that wouldn't work.

I do have a plan of attack, but I have no idea about its feasibility at this point. My plan is to petition to change my Creative Nonfiction 680 to 611, Creative Writing. Both are electives within the English department. Creative Nonfiction was a much more work intensive course than 611 is according to their syllabi.

Now, in order for my petition to have a chance, I have to give reasons why the course should be changed other than my own convenience. Looking at the courses offered last spring, I was happy to discover that none of the courses fell directly into the category of British lit. That is, there are three generic course numbers for British lit that are supposed to be offered one each semester. In the spring, none was offered however, and a women's lit course, that could count as either American or British lit was offered.

However, my argument will be that, considering the fact that I was on the British literature track, and since no ostensibly British Literature courses were offered (outside of another 680), then I should not be punished for taking that particular 680, and would have taken a Brit lit course had it been offered. I can demonstrate that this semester I am taking it, and next semester I will be taking the British literature offered courses.

We'll see how it goes.

Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Environment

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is "Ecocriticism." I honestly didn't have the slightest idea of what to expect from the course other than that I would be expected to read Walden at some point (and we have). I won't lie, the first few weeks of the course were pretty unexciting for me. However, recently we began working on the role of apocalypse narratives in ecocriticism.

Unsurprisingly, I deeply enjoyed reading a speculative fiction book on the apocalypse. The example of apocalypse we used for the course was Margret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and complexity of the apocalypse envisioned in the novel. This apocalypse is not brought about by a singular event, occurance, or discovery, but instead, a chain of interrelated causes, varying from proliferation of science and technology, consumerism, triviality of society, and more.

In class, our professor wanted to try to pin down the biggest causes of the apocalypse Atwood envisioned. Quite frankly, I thought it was impossible, everything was related. Obsession with sex leads to desire for health products to maintain youth. These people provide a willing market for scientific corporations to exploit. The money they bring in leads to the power to advance technology, but also breeds intense competition between corporations, leading to acts of terrorism (often bio-terrorism). Companies gain technological advancements that would allow them to cure disease, but they dare not allow the product to be perfect, because if it was, they would destroy their own market. Economy drives the engine of a vicious cycle.

Another upcoming assignment for the course was to pick any book dealing with ecocriticsm and read it independently, providing a report to the class on the new view we discovered. A search in the library using simply the term ecocriticism linked me to numerous books with mostly uninteresting titles. One caught my eye though: Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien. Jackpot.

While mostly ignored recently, my interest and fascination for fantasy and science fiction had begun resurfacing as a legitimate area of inquiry for my studies when I began Oryx and Crake. Finding a book on the environmental vision of Tolkien solidified the occasional wandering thoughts I'd been having about the genre. In particular, I began thinking of how much science fiction and fantasy (a little more so the latter than the former) depicts nature as a friendly, benign force that we must appreciate and embrace. Additionally, kids movies and stories seem to often be rich in environmental propaganda (if you'll forgive the term).

Think Fern Gully and Peter Pan. In both, man and technology are to a greater or lesser degree, evil, and must be defeated. In The Chronicles of Narnia, the preservation of the natural world is tantamount, with God/Jesus taking the shape of a lion and bestowing sentient life on animals as well as tree and water spirits (not to mention interesting in the blend of Christianity and paganism).

In Final Fantasy VII, you fight to save the world, first from the economic and technological powers that would seek to suck the world dry of all its value, and then from an alien/psychotic who seeks to destroy the world. At the end, the power of Holy is not enough to stop the destruction of the earth by itself, but the Lifestream, an embodiment of the natural world (as glowing green tendrils, in case the connection wasn't clear enough) intervenes, helping Holy to stop the apocalypse and simultaneously overrunning the largest city with green plant-growth.

I'm finding the possibilities for this subject that I was grudging to engage in very exciting (and a little overwhelming). For the end of the semester, I have to write a sizable research paper on some topic within the field. Before I was worried about what I could possibly write that wouldn't bore me to tears. Now I'm worried that I will struggle to define a topic that I can write only ten to fifteen pages on.