Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. O'Connor's writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. (Wikipedia)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FLANNERY!!!!!!
This spring, as part of my "Putting the FUN in Dysfunctional Families" Senior Seminar, I am teaching Flannery O'Connor's short stories, I have loved these stories since college, but other than one or two of them, I have never taught the majority of them. They are masterful and complex. They are unsettling and fascinating. Like the very best literature, the stories make us look at ourselves in new ways.
O'Connor was a keen observer of small town Southern life, and she understood the ways in which the people around her placed themselves in a human hierarchy based on race and class and land ownership. O'Connor wrote about people who wielded their Christianity both as a shield and as a weapon. The stories are filled with seemingly random acts of violence that cause us to question her characters' morality. Judgement arrives in the form of an errant bull, a wild-eyed Wellesley coed, a riderless tractor, etc. In one of my favorite stories, "The Comforts of Home," O'Connor describes a thirty-five year old man who lives at home with his mother. The young man is mortified when his naive but kind mother befriends a wayward young girl who has been arrested for passing bad checks. In a classic contest-of-wills, the girl, Star, and the young man, Thomas, battle for supremacy. There are sexual undertones as well and Thomas's late father makes some ghostly appearances in the story too. Ultimately,
Thomas makes a decision to frame Star for stealing his father's gun in order to get her arrested and out of his house. When Star catches him red-handed, a tussle ensues and the gun goes off killing the mother. This is how O'Connor describes the scene:
"Thomas fired. The blast was like a sound meant to bring an end to evil in the world. Thomas heard it as a sound that would shatter the laughter of sluts until all shrieks were stilled and nothing was left to disturb the peace of perfect order."
As the story ends, the reader struggles to separate the heroes from the villains. O'Connor loved to show us worlds where people separated themselves into the righteous and the sinners and then she seemed to take great pleasure in jumbling it all up. Finally, when the pieces settle, the new tableau looks very different.
In most of O'Connor's stories, everyone is flawed. However, the people who proclaim their goodness from the rooftops, and see themselves as higher than their fellow humans, usually end up paying a huge price for their hubris. In her stories, if one is open to them, grace can be found in the unlikeliest places. While it took my students some time to figure O'Connor out, I think that ultimately, they were able to appreciate her unique Southern sensibility and to see the violence in her stories as the price humans pay for duplicity, arrogance and blindness.
If you have not yet had the pleasure to immerse yourself in The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connnor, treat yourself to 31 little gems!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Who inspires you?
Abraham Lincoln inspires me. Though I don't know as much about Honest Abe as I would like to, I have always felt a special fondness for him. I remember seeing his memorial in Washington DC for the first time when I was sixteen. I had travelled to DC with a Close Up group during my sophomore year in high school. Of all the memorials, museums, and buildings we visited, Lincoln made the biggest impression on me. In all honesty, my love of Lincoln may have less to do with any deep understanding of his place in history than it had to do with my burgeoning love of tall, dark and quirky boys.
Nevertheless, when I returned to Washington DC this weekend, Abe was near the top of my list of things to see. Regretfully, I did not make it to the new Martin Luther King memorial, though I would have loved to see it. However, I did see the WWII and Vietnam memorials for the first time. The Vietnam sculpture is startling in its simplicity. It looks as if it could not possibly serve as a fitting memorial to all the soldiers who lost their lives in that unfortunate war. However, as I walked down the gently sloping walkway and watched all the names etched into the black granite, I was incredibly moved and saddened. Halfway through, I thought that the wall must be ending. I thought that there could not possibly be any more names. And as I glanced up and looked at how far I was from the end, I realized that no other memorial could have so perfectly captured the tragedy and futility of war. The loss of innocent lives is etched like a tattoo on my brain after walking alongside American architect Maya Lin's surprisingly simple wall.
When we got to Lincoln, my friend --a true lover of history and a Washington insider--motioned me towards the wall where the Second Inaugural Address is etched. He pointed to the following lines to highlight Lincoln's unique wisdom and humility:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we may be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."
I want to cry when I read those lines. They move me so deeply. Someday, when I have more time, I will immerse myself in Lincoln's life and story. I want to know as much as I can about this great man.
We need great men and women to lead us. We need to believe that the people who serve our nation do so with humility and wisdom. Too many politicians seem to have forgotten that the love of country and mankind should be their greatest motivators.
I used to say that I do not have a political bone in my body. Politics have never claimed my heart in the way that literature has. However, walking around Washington this weekend, surrounded by blooming Cherry Blossoms, I get it. It must feel like such an honor to work for our glorious nation. You may call me naive, but I just wish that all those men and women who profess such patriotism would listen to dear old Abe. As humans, even as humans of different faiths, I have to believe we are more alike than we are different. Jews and Christians. Arabs and Israelis. Democrats and Republicans. We want to be safe.We want to be loved. We want to be able to care for and feed our children. We want work that allows us dignity and hope for the future. We want good health. We want fairness.
We want peace.
Nevertheless, when I returned to Washington DC this weekend, Abe was near the top of my list of things to see. Regretfully, I did not make it to the new Martin Luther King memorial, though I would have loved to see it. However, I did see the WWII and Vietnam memorials for the first time. The Vietnam sculpture is startling in its simplicity. It looks as if it could not possibly serve as a fitting memorial to all the soldiers who lost their lives in that unfortunate war. However, as I walked down the gently sloping walkway and watched all the names etched into the black granite, I was incredibly moved and saddened. Halfway through, I thought that the wall must be ending. I thought that there could not possibly be any more names. And as I glanced up and looked at how far I was from the end, I realized that no other memorial could have so perfectly captured the tragedy and futility of war. The loss of innocent lives is etched like a tattoo on my brain after walking alongside American architect Maya Lin's surprisingly simple wall.
When we got to Lincoln, my friend --a true lover of history and a Washington insider--motioned me towards the wall where the Second Inaugural Address is etched. He pointed to the following lines to highlight Lincoln's unique wisdom and humility:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we may be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."
I want to cry when I read those lines. They move me so deeply. Someday, when I have more time, I will immerse myself in Lincoln's life and story. I want to know as much as I can about this great man.
We need great men and women to lead us. We need to believe that the people who serve our nation do so with humility and wisdom. Too many politicians seem to have forgotten that the love of country and mankind should be their greatest motivators.
I used to say that I do not have a political bone in my body. Politics have never claimed my heart in the way that literature has. However, walking around Washington this weekend, surrounded by blooming Cherry Blossoms, I get it. It must feel like such an honor to work for our glorious nation. You may call me naive, but I just wish that all those men and women who profess such patriotism would listen to dear old Abe. As humans, even as humans of different faiths, I have to believe we are more alike than we are different. Jews and Christians. Arabs and Israelis. Democrats and Republicans. We want to be safe.We want to be loved. We want to be able to care for and feed our children. We want work that allows us dignity and hope for the future. We want good health. We want fairness.
We want peace.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
How Can You Tell When Spring has Sprung?
I am my father's daughter. I have watched him agonize over the selection of the perfect peach at a local market, and I have seen him savor the sweetness of a ripe tomato as if he were eating Godiva chocolate. Dad, you would have loved the sight of all of these farm fresh veggies waiting on my doorstep. This week's bounty included kale, tomatoes, artichokes, spring onions, beets, arugula, spinach, oregano, mushrooms and bokchoy. So, even though the weather is crummy, I am thinking that spring must be in the air.
I stayed in today and made a chicken soup using many of the ingredients from yesterday's delivery.
 |
| a bowl of spring yumminess |
I hope that wherever you are today, you are beginning to feel the rumblings of spring. You are beginning to think of newness and freshness and beauty. Passover and Easter remind us of this season's symbolic meaning. It is a time to savor the new. New love, fresh starts, blooming flowers and bountiful produce.
It is the season that means that winter is over and summer is near.
Robert Frost's poem, "Blue-Butterfly Day" captures some of that feeling.
It is a blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these-sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
Enjoy all your "blue-butterfly days," and let the world show you its majesty and mystery as spring springs forth right before your eyes.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
What can we do to bridge the education gap?
This is a serious question and one that I spent the last two days pondering in a conference for Breakthrough. Breakthrough is a national organization that singles out gifted but under-served middle school children and attempts to fill in the gaps of their education in order to prepare them for Tier One high schools and ultimately strong four-year colleges and universities. Breakthrough consists of both a 6-week intensive summer school program and a school year program that meets about every other Saturday. I have been affiliated with BTH for the past three years as the school year English Mentor Teacher. This summer, I have accepted a position as the Dean of Faculty for the summer school.
The teachers are bright and motivated high school and college students and they are guided, instructed, supported and evaluated by professional teachers (aka Mentor Teachers or the new term: Instructional Coaches). Breakthrough's mission is both clear and compelling; they are trying to change futures.
In order to do this in the most successful and efficient manner, they have had to enlist some of the greatest educational minds and the most recent educational research. Afterall, they have a relatively short amount of time to make an incredibly large difference in a child's life. On top of that, a class is only as successful as its teacher, and the Breakthrough interns are strong students but novice teachers. That means that we somehow have to impart to them decades of educational wisdom in our two weeks of orientation and training. YIKES!
As I participated in the two-day long conference this weekend, I realized that the Breakthrough initiative is like a crash course in educational theory. Suddenly, all the lectures and readings from my time at Rice University came flooding back to me. I'll admit that it was a little overwhelming to do this in two days, and I'm sure that the interns' head will be spinning, but the goal is a worthy one. Just having these kids in class is not nearly enough to make a difference. They have to be consistently engaged, and the instruction has to be both systematic and rigorous.
The national trainer who came down from New Hampshire to lead the conference was both sharp and motivational. She made us want to do our best and give our all. That is the tone that I will strive for this summer as well. This is hard word. There is no doubt in my mind that the intern teachers, young, bright and idealistic, have no clue how much they are going to be challenged this summer. However, they also are not yet aware of the enormous gift that they will be giving. Some great Jewish scholar whose name temporarily escapes me (Hillel perhaps?) said, "Change a life and you change the world."
Breakthrough is trying very hard to change the world, one child at a time! If you are inspired to learn more about Breakthrough in Houston or in your own area, please google them. If your philanthropic list needs a new recipient, they would be delighted to benefit from your generosity as well :)
The teachers are bright and motivated high school and college students and they are guided, instructed, supported and evaluated by professional teachers (aka Mentor Teachers or the new term: Instructional Coaches). Breakthrough's mission is both clear and compelling; they are trying to change futures.
In order to do this in the most successful and efficient manner, they have had to enlist some of the greatest educational minds and the most recent educational research. Afterall, they have a relatively short amount of time to make an incredibly large difference in a child's life. On top of that, a class is only as successful as its teacher, and the Breakthrough interns are strong students but novice teachers. That means that we somehow have to impart to them decades of educational wisdom in our two weeks of orientation and training. YIKES!
As I participated in the two-day long conference this weekend, I realized that the Breakthrough initiative is like a crash course in educational theory. Suddenly, all the lectures and readings from my time at Rice University came flooding back to me. I'll admit that it was a little overwhelming to do this in two days, and I'm sure that the interns' head will be spinning, but the goal is a worthy one. Just having these kids in class is not nearly enough to make a difference. They have to be consistently engaged, and the instruction has to be both systematic and rigorous.
The national trainer who came down from New Hampshire to lead the conference was both sharp and motivational. She made us want to do our best and give our all. That is the tone that I will strive for this summer as well. This is hard word. There is no doubt in my mind that the intern teachers, young, bright and idealistic, have no clue how much they are going to be challenged this summer. However, they also are not yet aware of the enormous gift that they will be giving. Some great Jewish scholar whose name temporarily escapes me (Hillel perhaps?) said, "Change a life and you change the world."
Breakthrough is trying very hard to change the world, one child at a time! If you are inspired to learn more about Breakthrough in Houston or in your own area, please google them. If your philanthropic list needs a new recipient, they would be delighted to benefit from your generosity as well :)
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