Christian nation trap ensnares John McCain

October 5, 2007

Let’s put an end to the silly “Christian nation” notion once and for all. Can we?

I am a hopeful person. Of course, I realize that it is highly unlikely we would ever be able to disabuse people of the Christian nation myth.

Okay — then let’s at least lay some facts on the table.

John McCain, perhaps as Popeye

First, some background. John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona and candidate for U.S. president, granted an exclusive interview to a reporter from Belief.net. Read excerpts here.

In the interview McCain falls into the Christian nation trap:

Q: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?
A: I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.

Second, David Kuo properly, but gingerly, takes on McCain′s argument (hooray for Belief.net).

Then, third, Rod Dreher (the Crunchy Con from the Dallas Morning News) agrees with McCain, mostly.

McCain’s blithe endorsement of this myth, based in error and continued as a political drive to shutting down democratic processes. McCain may be starting to understand some of the difficulties with this issue. His remarks are a week old, at least, and there’s been a wire story a day since then. Will it make him lean more toward taking my advice?

Below the fold, I post a few observations on why we should just forget the entire, foolish claim. Read the rest of this entry »

48 Comments | 6th Amendment, Bogus history, Books, First Amendment, Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom, Separation of church and state | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dreaming: What school libraries could do

September 29, 2007

Great piece on the opposite-editorial page of the Dallas Morning News today, with solid suggestions on how to improve high school libraries, thereby improving reading and student achievement. Andrea Drusch, a student at Lake Highlands High School, vents a bit, and we would do well to pay attention.

Most English teachers will tell you, “Kids just don’t read like they used to.” I disagree. Recently my high school treated students who passed all classes with a trip to Stonebriar Centre. Upon arrival, a large group flocked straight to Barnes & Noble, where they stayed until the bus ride home. On the bus, they exchanged books and discussed favorite authors. If high school kids are willing to dish out $17 on books at the mall, then why isn’t a room the size of a basketball gym full of books free of charge appealing to them?

Well, the walls aren’t exactly lined with Oprah’s Book Club selections. Instead, libraries try to appeal to 17-year-olds with the same old Crucibles and Scarlet Letters they have been trying to shove down our throats for years.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks have students lined up out the doors, and it ain’t just for the coffee. At Starbucks, students can pile a table sky high with books and conduct study groups, or just decompress and chat. Barnes & Noble chooses the books it provides to its customers through something called the New York Times best-seller list, not through what 10th-grade English teachers think is appropriate.

Make school libraries more like these places.

I don’t blame the librarians, though — I’ve been to too many school board meetings where the latest cuts in the library budgets weren’t even questioned. I hope that parents, and maybe librarians, will copy Ms Drusch’s article, and send it to their school board, principals, English teachers, and to the social studies and science teachers, too.

Libraries should be places where kids hang out to learn. Getting them to hang out there would be an improvement over turning the library into a book museum, or a book vault, as too many schools have done.

For the record: The latté I had at the Irving (Texas) High School library the last time I was there was pretty good, despite it’s being a bit do-it-yourself. I had to wait in line to get it, there were so many kids in the library.

[Full text of Andrea Drusch’s piece below the fold, in case the DMN ever takes it down.]

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Books, Education, Education reform, Libraries | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fun history: Great blunders, literature division

September 12, 2007

People in literature are different from you and me.

University of Texas history professor David Oshinsky pulled back the curtain on some of the biggest blunders in the history of literature, in an article for the New York Times a couple of days ago: “No Thanks, Mr. Nabokov.”

He documents rejection letters that, in retrospect, perhaps publisher Alfred A. Knopf would rather had not been written — despite the fact that Knopf was enormously successful otherwise. For example, about a book on teen-aged angst:

In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”

Knopf wasn’t alone. “The Diary of a Young Girl,” by Anne Frank, would be rejected by 15 others before Doubleday published it in 1952. More than 30 million copies are currently in print, making it one of the best-selling books in history.

The goof examples roll out of the files:

Nothing embarrasses a publisher more than the public knowledge that a literary classic or a mega best seller has somehow slipped away. One of them turned down Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” on the grounds that Americans were “not interested in anything on China.” Another passed on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” explaining it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” (It’s not only publishers: Tony Hillerman was dumped by an agent who urged him to “get rid of all that Indian stuff.”)

Thousands of high school students would agree with the difficulty of selling animal stories.

Oshinsky is working from the files of Knopf, recently donated to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRC) at the University of Texas, in Austin. University libraries push and shove each other to get troves of private correspondence, and the HRC has worked to get special grants to help things along. Sometimes these treasures lie buried in library archives. In this case, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped fund the cataloging operation.

And Oshinsky, who won the Pulitzer for his book Polio: An American Story, has done a bit of history mining. The few nuggets of history gold he reveals in the newspaper will be “classic examples” of why authors, and students and people in the pews of a church, should keep trying in the face of adversity. You’ll see these examples in Readers Digest and inspirational speeches for years to come, count on it.

Literature teachers should find these quotes useful in comforting students who don’t like the classics they are assigned to read. Preachers will find them useful for a variety of reasons. Others of us will like them for the goofiness, and sheer acidity of harsh criticism that, often, proved wrong. We’re Americans; we like it when the underdog wins, and when the pundits get so exactly wrong.

More examples from Oshinsky’s article, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Books, History, Humor, Literature, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Feynman, on the inconceivable nature of nature

August 27, 2007

NOVA had a couple of good programs on Richard Feynman that I wish I had — it had never occurred to me to look at YouTube to see what people might have uploaded.

I ran into this one:

Richard Feynman struck my consciousness with the publication of his quite humorous autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. I thought it was a wonderful book, full of good character portraits of scientists as I saw them in my undergraduate days, only more famous ones. He followed that with What Do You Care What Other People Think?

By then, of course, Feynman was one of my heroes. His stories are useful in dozens of situations — his story of joining the samba bands in Rio testify to the joy of living, and the need for doing new things. Brazil was also the place he confronted the dangers of rote learning, when students could work equations perfectly for examples in the book — which they had memorized — but they couldn’t understand real world applications, such as describing how the sunlight coming off the ocean at Ipanema was so beautiful.

Feynman wrote about creationism, and about the dangers of voodoo science, in his now-famous essay on “Cargo cult science” — it’s so famous one has difficulty tracking down the facts to confirm the story.

Feynman’s stories of his wife, and her illness, and his love for her, were also great inspirations. Romance always gets me.

I failed to track him closely enough. During the run of the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, we had the misfortune of having scheduled a hearing in Orlando on January 30 (or maybe 29), 1986. We had hoped that the coincidental launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28 might boost our press response. Of course, the Challenger exploded. Our hearing went on as planned (we had a tough schedule to meet). The disaster affected our staff a lot, those who were in Florida, and the rest of us in Washington where many of us had been on the phone to Florida when the disaster occurred.

Feynman’s appointment to the commission studying the disaster was a brilliant move, I thought. Our schedule, unfortunately, kept me tied up on almost every day the Challenger commission met. So I never did walk the three blocks down the street to meet Feynman, thinking there would be other opportunities. He was already fatally ill. He died on February 15, 1988. I missed a chance of a lifetime.

We still have Feynman’s writings. We read the book aloud to our kids when they were younger. James, our youngest and a senior this year, read Surely You’re Joking again this summer, sort of a warmup to AP physics and his search for a college.

And we still have audio and video. Remembering Feynman makes even the most avidly atheist hope for an afterlife, just to get a chance to hear Feynman explain what life was really all about, and how the universe really works.

Other notes:

Tip of the old scrub brush to Charismatic Megafauna.

7 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Biography, Books, Education, Heroes, History, History video sources, Manhattan Project, Reason, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Faulkner, again

August 15, 2007

The previous photo showed Faulkner himself using the machine.

It was a desktop machine. This color shot shows Faulkner’s portable typewriter, a different machine from the one in the publicity still from 1954.

William Faulkner's typewriter, displayed at his home in Oxford, Mississippi; photo by Gary Bridgman

Photographer Gary Bridgman provided a thorough history and explanation, at the Wikipedia Media site, which I quote completely and directly — bless him for the story:

The “Faulkner portable”: American novelist William Faulkner’s (1897-1962) Underwood Universal Portable typewriter, resting on a tiny desk his stepson helped him build. This space at Rowan Oak, the author’s home, was part of the back porch until Faulkner spent part of a Random House advance to enclose it in 1952, long after he had written his seminal Compson and Sartoris family novels. He insisted that this room not be called his “study.” According to biographer Joseph Blotner, “he did not study in it, so there was no sense in calling it that. It was the ‘office,’ the traditional name for the room in the plantation houses where the business was transacted.” As to the typewriter itself, Underwood introduced its Universal Portable in the mid-1930s among a full line of portables such as Champion, Noiseless Portable and Junior. Faulkner had a habit of buying used portables locally, wearing them out, then trading them in on more used portables. This Underwood was one of at least three typewriters in Faulkner’s possession at the time of his death (the University of Virginia has one, too). So, this is no more “the” typewriter any more than those square carpenter’s pencils next to it are “the” pencils. Had Faulkner lived a few more years, this machine would have met the same fate as the rest. Still, the room has a resonance. BOOK magazine was publishing an article of mine on “Yoknapatourism,” and thinking (mistakenly) that the editors hadn’t already selected a photographer, I returned to Oxford on a rainy October afternoon to make my own pictures for submission. The travel piece was eventually illustrated with sunny-day brochure shots, but I was happy to keep this one for myself. There was no direct lighting within the office, so I let the film take its time, soaking up faint incandescent glow from the library and main hallway, which neatly balanced the cloudy daylight. I used the camera’s timer so my hand wouldn’t jostle the tripod, and I even backed out of the room–in part to let the scarce light do its work and, I think, because I wanted Faulkner’s office truly vacant.

Trivia: the book next to the typewriter is the 1939 edition of Writer’s Market. Thanks to Bill Griffith, curator of Rowan Oak, for letting me past the Lucite wall and to Milly Moorhead West for lending me the tripod. – Gary Bridgman

Photo by Gary Bridgman, southsideartgallery.com.

Leave a Comment » | Books, Heroes, History, Technology, Travel, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Harry Potter fan suicide? No, it’s still a hoax

August 9, 2007

It was a hoax then, two weeks later, it’s still a hoax.

Why doesn’t anybody call this guy on this grotesque disinformation? Hoaxes about suicide are not funny. The post continues to rank in the top 100 posts for WordPress’s 1 million+ blogs, as of August 9.

Do people really prefer a grisly hoax to the truth?

2 Comments | Accuracy, Books, Hoaxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Disasters, on sale

August 3, 2007

Cover of NYTimes book on disastersFollow-up on yesterday’s post on disasters:  Looking at the sale books at the New York Times site, I discovered this one on sale:  The New York Times Book of Natural Disasters.  $8.48, while supplies last.

Tuesday’s Science sections in the Times are weekly delights.  This series of books on one topic contains several that I use regularly (especially archaeology and fossils).  Generally these books hold some of the best articles by the stable of thoroughbred science writers on the topic at hand.

Did I say “science?”  Social studies teachers need to know science, too.

Leave a Comment » | Books, Disasters, Natural history, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Harsh judgment on Millard Fillmore

July 23, 2007

Missed this on Presidents’ Day:  The Forgettable Millard Fillmore (in The Los Angeles Times) .

Maybe more odd, or more damning, it’s written by George Pendle, who has written a book, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore.

Which is Fillmore, remarkable, or forgettable?

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Books, History blogs, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: William Faulkner

June 24, 2007

Faulkner at typewriter, Aug 12, 1954 - AP Photo, ShelfLife

William Faulkner at his typewriter, August 12, 1954, at his home in Oxford, Mississippi. Associated Press photo, via Eons website.

The photo was probably posed; the two books to the left of the typewriter are Faulkner books. Faulkner may have written in a pressed shirt and tie.

Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, and delivered a memorable speech about “the human condition” and the importance of art, especially poetry and prose, at his acceptance. His 1954 book, A Fable, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1955.

The typewriter is a Royal KHM.

Faulkner was born September 25, 1897 — 2007 marks the 110th anniversary of his birth.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

—Gavin Stevens

Act I, Scene III, Requiem for a Nun

5 Comments | Books, Creativity, History, History images, Literature, Technology, Typewriters | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bookporn and the historians craft

June 14, 2007

Did I mention I love libraries? Especially, I love those libraries with books and periodicals, in print. Studying and writing history can involve a lot of time in libraries.

Look at this site, by Rachel, a newly-minted Master of Philosophy in Historical Studies: A Historian’s Craft, “Bookporn #9”

Library at King's College, Cambridge

Leave a Comment » | Books, Capturing history, History, History blogs, Libraries, Research | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the Moment: Marjorie Rawlings

June 12, 2007

Marjorie Rawlings' Royal Typewriter, FCIT

 

Typewriter used by Marjorie Rawlings to write books such as South Moon Under, The Yearling, and The Sojourner.

Photo credit: The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida; click here for larger picture at FCIT site

1 Comment | Books, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Jack Kerouac

June 6, 2007

Jack Kerouac's typewriter, in Lowell, MA - Beat Museum on Wheels

Jack Kerouac’s typewriter, on display in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kerouac attended Lowell High School, and Lowell hosts an annual festival to Kerouac. Photo from the on-line photos of the Beat Museum on Wheels (image downloaded and linked on June 6, 2007)

Kerouac appears in almost all U.S. history texts for high schools, and is to cover the post-World War II poetry mentioned in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Poet and author Jack Kerouac was the “King of the Beats.” The Beats were a group of poets and authors who gave rise and verse to the “Beat Generation.” The word “beat” is short for “beatitude.” Not only do most high school kids struggle with this character from U.S. history — in what should be a very fun section — many high school teachers have only vague understanding of the whole Beat movement. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Books, Lesson plans, Literature, Music, Poetry, Teaching, Technology, TEKS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Philip K. Dick

May 21, 2007

Philip K. Dick's typewriter and favorite mug, his "workstation." Image via GavinRothery.com

Philip K. Dick’s typewriter and favorite mug, his “workstation.” Image via GavinRothery.com

Philip K. Dick's typewriter and favorite mug
Philip K. Dick’s typewriter and favorite mug; photo copyright by Philip K. Dick Trust.

Also see:  International Herald-Tribune, “Philip K. Dick:  A Pulp Sci-Fi Writer Finally Wins Respect,” May 9, 2007:

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Books, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Willow death

May 12, 2007

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of trees have died in spring storms this year, from dramatically powerful wind bursts, tornadoes, or drowning or uprooting in floods. We lost only a small branch from our greatest red oak, but locally we lost hundred-year-old eastern red cedars, sizable live oaks, and dozens of hackberries (good riddance in most cases there!).

P. Z. Myers lost a massive branch from an even more massive weeping willow, up in Morris, Minnesota. In fear of the entire tree crashing down, with some sadness Myers had the tree removed. Willows are pretty trees in full health, but they are generally soft wood and a mess to have in an average yard. That the Myers willow grew so large is probably rare among willows. We should mourn such losses.

Trees are great things, providing us with shade and cooler microclimates in the summer, windbreaks, beauty in autumn and winter, sinks for our pollution, habitat for birds, etc., etc. I couldn’t help but think of Myers’ tree when I stumbled on this children’s book Regarding the Trees: A splintered saga rooted in secrets. The cover shows what must be a willow, under which a hundred people enjoy a grand party (click the image for a larger view from Amazon.com). Cover of Regarding the Trees

This book and others by the same author and illustrator, the Klises, offer fine mysteries for elementary level readers to solve. They look like fun.

Arbor Day Foundation logo with Jefferson Quote

Leave a Comment » | Armenian genocide, Books, Environmental protection, Libraries, Natural history, Newspapers, Pedagogy, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Ernest Hemingway’s Royal

April 29, 2007

Hemingway's typewriter in Sun Valley, Idaho


Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter, at the window to his house in Sun Valley, Idaho. Photo image by U.S. Plan B, Inc., a provider of “B-roll” film and video.

13 Comments | Books, History, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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