The uses of theater

2601 students: An interesting article on women and theater in Afghanistan.

Allen Ginsberg's laundry

2601 students: Lysistrata's famed wool analogy is almost certainly an inspiration for Allen Ginsberg's poem "Homework," which you can read here. "Homework" first appeared in Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977-1980, published in 1982.

Frenetic

From the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day service:

The Word of the Day for November 26 is:

frenetic \frih-NET-ik\ adjective: frenzied, frantic

Example sentence:

It’s the day after Thanksgiving—a day described by Amber Veverka (Charlotte [NC] Observer, November 10, 2003) as “the official, frenetic kickoff for the Christmas shopping season.”

Did you know?

When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane—at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. “Frenetik,” in Middle English, meant “insane.” When the word no longer denoted stark raving madness, it conjured up fanatical frenetic zealots. Today we’re even willing to downgrade its seriousness to something more akin to “hectic.” But if you trace “frenetic” back through Anglo-French and Latin, you’ll find that it comes from Greek “phrenitis,” a term describing an inflammation of the brain. “Phren” is the Greek word for “mind,” a root you will recognize in “schizophrenic.”

As for “frenzied” and “frantic,” they’re not only synonyms but relatives as well. “Frantic” comes from “frenetik,” and “frenzied” traces back to “phrenitis.”

Yecch

I noticed these in a catalogue. Of course, they’re online too:

A replica of Rosebud

A replica of Kane’s snowglobe

Casablanca barware

Casablanca poker chips

What is it that bothers me about these items? The idea that we can somehow possess, even in simulated form, what rightfully belongs to “the movies.” (There’s an especially awful irony in the idea of Rosebud, unique in its signficance, being mass-produced.) I also don’t like the implication that one shows real devotion to works of the imagination by buying expensive items designed to cash in on said works. How many owners of a Rosebud sled or Rick's Café Américain barware are likely to have read a single book (or even an essay) on Citizen Kane or Casablanca?

Football : baseball :: Iliad : Odyssey

I woke up this morning remembering one of the lines from George Carlin’s football v. baseball routine and realizing that it provides a good way to think about the contrasts between the Iliad and the Odyssey:

“The object in football is to march downfield and penetrate enemy territory, and get into the end zone. In baseball, the object is to go home! ‘I'm going home!’”

You can find a transcription of one instance of Carlin’s routine here.

Why would such an un-sports-minded guy as me wake up with this thought in mind? Perhaps because I was watching ABC’s Nightline last night, devoted to the basketball brawl in Detroit.

A Frasier Casablanca moment

From "It’s Hard to Say Goodbye If You Won’t Leave" (third season). Niles has brought over a videotape of Casablanca to watch with his father:

Daphne: Oh, I just love that movie. Is there any more heartbreaking moment in all of film than when Humphrey Bogart tells Ingrid Bergman to get on that plane with Victor Laszlo even though Bogey loves her? What an ending.

Niles: Well, there goes my need to finally see that one.

Not long after, Frasier pleads with a lady friend not to leave Seattle and more or less reverses Rick’s words to Ilsa at the airport (“If you’re on that plane, we’ll regret it”).

Here’s looking at you, doc

Hanging around the house today, I was browsing through Will Friedwald’s Stardust Memories: A Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs (2002). Here’s something from the chapter on Herman Hupfeld’s 1931 song “As Time Goes By”:

The Warner Bros. cartoon division was keen to capitalize on “ATGB”’s hit status, especially since their parent company already owned the rights to the song. It appears in one form or another in almost a dozen Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, but gets its best moment in Unruly Hare (1944). That’s the one where Bugs Bunny sings a generous chunk of Hupfeld’s lyrics on screen, and, upon reaching “Woman needs man / And man must have his mate,” the philosophical rabbit turns to the animation camera and directly addresses the audience with the affirmative observation, “Ain’t it the truth?”

Bugs is right, and so is Hupfeld. It’s been seventy years since “As Time Goes By” was first unleashed, and, old-fashioned as it sounds, the world is still welcoming lovers. They may not be traditional lovers circa 1931, they might be men with long hair and women in pants, or they might be of the same sex, as Hupfeld’s own loves seem to have been. But love goes on, and it’s still the only thing that will redeem us all. And that, my friends, is something that no one can deny.

Ted Berrigan

Before too many days go by, a poem from Ted Berrigan, American poet, born November 15, 1934; died July 4, 1983. Here is the last poem from The Sonnets, a landmark in postmodern American poetry. The poem collages a number of earlier sonnets along with Prospero’s words from The Tempest.

A FINAL SONNET

                                   for Chris

How strange to be gone in a minute!         A man
Signs a shovel and so he digs         Everything
Turns into writing a name for a day
                                                            Someone
is having a birthday and someone is getting
married and someone is telling a joke         my dream
a white tree         I dream of the code of the west
But this rough magic I here abjure         and
When I have required some heavenly music         which
    even now
I do         to work mine end upon their senses
That this aery charm is for         I'll break
My staff         bury it certain fathoms in the earth
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
It is 5:15 a.m.                                      Dear Chris, hello.

Survey says

From an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Only about 11 percent of full-time students say they spend more than 25 hours per week preparing for their classes—the amount of time that faculty members say is necessary to succeed in college. Forty-four percent spend 10 hours or less studying.

Yet students’ grades do not suggest that they are unprepared for their academic work: About 40 percent of students say they earn mostly A’s, with 41 percent reporting that they earn mostly B’s.

Those are among the major findings of the latest National Survey of Student Engagement, a summary of which is being released today. In its fifth year, the survey covered 163,000 freshmen and seniors at 472 four-year colleges and universities.

Some of the survey's findings . . . suggest that many students are not taking full advantage of their academic opportunities. Two-fifths of freshmen and a quarter of seniors said that they never discussed ideas from their classes or readings with a faculty member outside of class.

The survey also found that:

About 90 percent of students rated their college experience as “good” or “excellent.”

Approximately 60 percent of seniors and 37 percent of freshmen did volunteer work.

Only 10 percent of students said that newspapers or magazines were their primary source for local and national news, while more than half said they relied on television for such information.

More than 25 percent of students said they had not attended an art exhibit or play during the current academic year.

Twenty percent of students spent no time exercising.

Among the new items in this year's survey was an assessment of “deep learning”: the extent to which students engage in self-reflection, the integration of knowledge and different skills, and activities that require higher levels of mental activity than rote memorization. Students who scored higher on this scale spent more time preparing for class, working on campus, and participating in co-curricular activities than students with lower scores.

PBS Genesis links

3009 students: Here’s a link to the main page for the PBS series Genesis: A Living Conversation. These pages are badly in need of updating (one of the biographies lists an address for someone who died several years back), but there’s still much useful stuff.

And here’s a link to the page about Genesis 3.