attendantlord – Page 10 – Literary Connections

Thanksgiving – from me, if not from the turkey

Learning about US education at NCTE’s 2008 Convention

Turkey at Lackland High
I didn’t ask them to bring their Thanksgiving Dinner forward a week, though it was flattering to be accorded that honour, even if, as a vegetarian, I was loath to eat the turkey or the pork on offer. The photo shows a victim (it’s not the bird that gives thanks, we assume) with Suzanne Dreyer and me in the library of Stacey High School at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas. Suzanne is Instructional Technologist at Lackland, which involves supporting technology for learning ‘K-12’ (that is, from Kindergarten to the end of high school) – and being a kind of ‘super-teacher’ as well. The tour of the school was an invaluable introduction to the whole range of US schooling – though I was told Lackland isn’t really typical and I could see that Suzanne is exceptionally committed to making the most of the technology.

Welcome, trespassers! The Annual Convention of NCTE (which is the US equivalent of NATE) which Julie Blake, Tim Shortis, Andy Goodwyn and I attended for the next four and a half days, merits more than I have time for tonight. Suffice it to say that we were warmly received and were able to engage in a fascinating exchange of ideas. Chris Warren’s collapsed text idea has now appeared on the US website, LitArchives.com, created by Allan Webb of Western Michigan University. And just to make it clear that despite the notice here, we received a warm welcome wherever we went!

Remembering the War

A rich harvest of material for those interested in the literature of the First World War

Armistice Day this year has seen a particularly rich harvest of material for those interested in the literature of the First World War, coming as it does 90 years after the last shots were fired.

The Guardian‘s excellent series of booklets, with a wallchart on propaganda, provided a very accessible overview with plenty of examples from poetry, reminiscences and art as well as the historical background. The complete series, or missing booklets, can now be ordered here. Much of the material in the booklets can also be found online, here along with other material on the war. The Guardian also carried a moving interview with Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier who fought in the trenches, by Andrew Motion, and a short video on the Battle of the Somme. Oxford University has also just launched a much enhanced version of its excellent First World War Poetry Digital Archive.

At our consortium meeting yesterday, Nadine was an enthusiastic advocate of All Quiet on the Home Front, ‘An Oral History of Life in Britain During the First World War’, by Steve Humphries and Richard van Emden, which she praised for the valuable first-hand accounts to balance the poetry from the front line. Someone reminded us of the value of the approach in Oh! What a Lovely War – script from 1967 and film version in 1969 (remembering the context in which it was produced). And I didn’t even have time to mention, or play extracts from, The Pity of War: a collection of elegiac First World War works by Elgar, Janacek, Debussy with a second disc of Wilfred Owen letters and poems read by Samuel West, interspersed with wartime songs. For literature teachers, the second disk alone is worth the price.

Finally, for a broader overview, I can commend James Anderson Winn’s The Poetry of War, a wide-ranging study of war poetry from Homer to Bruce Springsteen. My review in NATE’s English Drama Media can be found here.

A livingstone, I presume?

A brand new coinage from Chris Warren

Today’s offering from Word of the Day is a present from my esteemed friend and learned colleague Chris Warren – a brand new coinage, no less. We therefore break our usual custom and provide guidance on its meaning and usage, as you will not find this word in dictionaries – yet:

livingstone

First, please notice the lack of an initial capital letter. This is not the Livingstone daisy, nor does it refer to the Scottish missionary and explorer of Africa – though it does derive from the latter. A livingstone is a missing file, originally a word processor file or ‘lost doc’ (as in: “I’m suffering from a livingstone since that hard disc crash”). It is possible to predict that this will lead to the finding of the same becoming known as a stanley (‘Ah! I’ve found the lost doc! “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”‘).

Readers of a linguistic bent (aren’t we all bent a little that way?) will recognise that this word is in the class that includes three which featured in Word of the Day earlier this month: hoover, dewar and newton. These are names which have lost their initial capital letters. It seems, according to Wikipedia, that these are capitonyms: ‘A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when it is capitalized.’

After this lengthy and (we hope you’ll agree) special Word of the Day, the service will be taking a whole week’s rest whilst we roam. Or, to capitalise it: Rome. If you’d like to receive a copy of the (more or less) daily email, please visit the Word of the Day page.

What does it mean to be American? British?

US high school students give us their perspective on what it means to be ‘American’ and ‘British’

This YouTube video gives a fascinating insight into what US high school students think it means to be ‘American’ and ‘British’.

It was created by students at Sacramento New Technology High School, USA to help students at Ninestiles Technology College in Birmingham, UK, with a project about identity. Ninestiles doesn’t seem to have produced a reply, which is a pity – but also a great opportunity for others.

See the video on YouTube, where you can choose high quality streaming and see related material.

Interesting footnote: Weed is where George and Lennie have fled from in Of Mice and Men.

Hard-earned clichés

There’s a cliché crisis

It's a sign - of some kind... A writer to The Guardian worried about the linguistic backwash from the roller-coaster ride in the financial markets. Subsequent correspondence proved, as might be expected, that Guardian readers have readily rallied to the cause:

I notice that there a world shortage of clichés that could see the media teetering on the edge of a black hole tsunami. Is it time for a government injection of new metaphors to stop the drought?
Adrian Greeman 14 October 2008

Adrian Greeman is so right. We need to go back to basics; clichés need to be sexed up 24/7 to win hearts and minds. This government’s lack of action beggars belief.
Adele Zaslawska 16 October 2008

Government hand-outs of taxpayers’ hard-earned clichés (Letters, October 14) will only further dilute international metaphor reserves. Provision of “meltdowns” from the private sector has already reached an eye-watering number.
Henry Fryer 18 October 2008

Byron’s day comes at last

Day of celebration for Byron – in Greece

The Guardian reports today that Lord Byron has won the belated honour of a ‘day of celebration’ in the country he romanticised, Greece. It will fall on April 19, the date Byron died in 1824 at Messolonghi in Western Greece. It’s more recognition than he has won in his home country – where we don’t seem to honour writers at all. Even Shakespeare’s (supposed) birthday and date of death, 23 April, is honoured rather as St George’s Day. The paper points out that it took until 1969 for Byron to receive any commemoration in Westminster Abbey, having been too scandalous to be buried there.

Gabbling on

Gibble Gabble: giving airy nothings a local habitation Yes, there really is a place called Gibble Gabble. More accurately, it’s a street – or, more accurately still, a ginnel. Collins Dictionary defines this as ‘Northern English dialect’ (but you knew that, didn’t you?): ‘a narrow passageway between buildings’. Which is pretty well what Gibble Gabble is – a twisting cobbled path running up a steep slope in the old mill village of Broadbottom. But how did it acquire its delightful name (Gibble Gabble, that is, not Broadbottom)? From the noise made by millworkers streaming down the hill to Sidebottom’s mill, the clattering of their clogs drowned by their loud Lancashire laughs? Happen, lass, that’s how it were….

But wait: my friend Jim, brought up in Tintwistle (or ‘Tinsle’ as the locals call it) has just told me that his mother calls a ginnel a ‘gibble gabble’. This seems to be localised to Mottram and Broadbottom; even in Tintwistle they use the term ‘ginnel’ (pronouncing it with either a soft of hard ‘g’). So calling the ginnel Gibble Gabble is rather like naming your road ‘Street’. Ay, there’s nowt so queer as folk: it’s no coincidence that Vivienne Westwood comes from Tintwistle, after all.

Of course, I’m just makin’ this up and gabbling on about nowt. If tha’ wants to find out about Broadbottom proper, like, tha’s best ignore me and tak a look at the Broadbottom History Project Website. Where you’ll not be assailed by fake Lancashire accents, either.

‘An egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on’

Larkin’s downbeat letters to Fay Godwin among archive acquired by British Library

That’s how Philip Larkin described a portrait of himself; another looked, he said, like ‘CS Lewis on a drugs charge’. These self-deprecating remarks have emerged from letters in the photographer Fay Godwin’s archive, recently acquired by the British Library. You can see a selection of her impressive portraits, including the Hermit of Hull, Ted Hughes and Doris Lessing here.

Reading poetry – at Yale or at home

Reading poetry: join a Yale lecture series online or read a good book at home

A story in last week’s Guardian alerted me to the availability of Yale University’s course on modern poetry online. There are twenty-five lectures to watch, handouts, book lists and even a final exam you can take (though I don’t know if anyone will mark it for you). This is all very commendable, though so far I’ve only had time to watch part of the opening lecture by Professor Langdon Hammer. It has the feel of a genuine lecture, complete with pauses, hesitations and more. No doubt this is deliberate (and anyway much easier than creating broadcast quality material) – but I’m not sure how far this would sustain my interest over a long period. Still, lets not complain – there’s even a session on ‘World War I Poetry in England’ that it might have been good to have seen before I finished my own study guide on this topic! Continue reading “Reading poetry – at Yale or at home”

Migrating menus for Interner Explorer 6 users

Literary Connections menus in the wrong place for users of Internet Explorer 6

Apologies to visitors to Literary Connections who use Internet Explorer 6. I’ve just discovered that the left-hand menus appear at the very bottom of the page and not at the top, as they should. But I’ve also discovered how to cure the problem. Continue reading “Migrating menus for Interner Explorer 6 users”