A Little Research Project That Made Me Wish I'd Taken GARM!!!

Greeks of a Feather: Aesop and the Birds

“[Man] is terrified by the doleful hoot of the owl, or finds a suggestion of victory in the fierce swoop of the hawk…”(247). So notes archeologist and historian Sir William Reginald Halliday of King’s College in London. In ancient Greece, the prophetic flights and songs of birds were interpreted in formal ceremonies. They were seen as embodiments of the gods and bringers of signs: “The type of bird one saw made a difference. Unquestionably, the powerful birds of prey, and especially Zeus’ eagle, were at the top of the list as far as portentousness went, but even the woodpecker had its place as a bird of good omen for carpenters, hunters and those on their way to feasts” (Johnston, 129). The Greek slave Aesop, credited with the didactic and somewhat cynical fables, frequently features birds as characters in his stories, and specific types of birds at that. If the stories are compared side-to-side, patterns begin to emerge. The raven, for example, is a powerful bird and a self-satisfied one at that. The partridge is always involved in discovering misrecognition[1]. Consistently, the Greek slave who was so bold with the criticisms in some of his tales was also ingenious in using the cultural assumptions of his audience. The birds in Aesop’s fables were crafted alluding to well-known deities and stock characters, pulling in the familiar to add further credibility to his morals.

In both Greek and Roman times, the peacock was associated with the jealous wife of the king of the gods. Whether she is called Hera or Juno, this goddess is known for her near-constant wrath and the creative punishments she devises for her wayward husband’s mistresses. Curiously, however, the peacock fables appear to focus on male birds. In one case, the peacock chides the crane for her modest plumage. In another, he announces that he feels he deserves to be king of the birds on account of his great beauty. In both cases, wiser birds rebuke him. Aesop’s peacock is as vain and self-satisfied. Hera is equally vain and self-satisfied; many of her myths involve herpunishing mortals and lower goddesses for laying with her husband. Her punishments are creative and cruel, dispite the fact that the other women frequently were powerless to resist Zeus, a problem that she never had[2].

Traditionally[3], the eagle is the sign of Zeus, the king of the gods. Appropriately, fables involving eagles paint them as unpredictable characters. When a tortoise and a jackdaw both attempt to throw off their identities to be more like the eagle, the former ends up dead and the latter gets captured by a shepherd. The eagle can be selfish, stealing the fox-pups of her friend to feed to her[4] eaglets. The eagle can be arrogant, dismissing the protests of a beetle who is trying to defend a rabbit. In both cases, the eagle suffers as a consequence of her actions. The foolish eagle misdirects a gift offering; the noble eagle saves the life of a ploughman who saved his; the just eagle punishes a braggart cock. While there seems to be little consistency in these acts, they do all illustrate qualities attributed to the king of the gods.

The case of the crow is a curious one. As one reads about the crow’s hardy and earthy beauty, one really suspects that this is indeed the familiar of Minerva. While the Romans associated the crow with the goddess of knowledge, the Greeks connected crows to Apollo, and it is Apollo’s personality that Aesop’s crows display. Both god and bird show insight when critiquing others, but they are frequently careless when dealing with their own situations[5]. When the dove brags about how many children she has, it is the crow who reminds her that she hatches her children into slavery. Similarly, when the swallow boasts of her beauty and wails about being raped and having her tongue cut out, it is the crow who wonders at her ability to speak so without a tongue. However, he rashly picks up a snake to eat, only to dies when it bites him. The crow also finds that he cannot pray to any of the gods as he has stolen from each of their sacrificial alters. This is a situation that Minerva would never have found herself in; the crow is thoroughly Grecian.

Aphrodite embodies the type of passionate love that even she understands to be fleeting. Appropriately her bird, the dove, is also focused on instant gratification. Proud of her fertility, she brags about how many chicks she has, only to be reminded that she is a captive and so can only offer her children a life of slavery. Thirsty, she flies at a fountain and in her rush fails to notice that it is only a mural on a wall. When she hits the wall, she is stunned by the impact long enough for the painter to capture her for his dinner. Her impulsiveness, like Aphrodite’s, can also be a positive trait. There is a fable in which she notices a drowning ant. Unable to let the need of the ant go unmet in that moment, she rescues him. Later, the ant saves her from a bird-catcher out of gratitude.

For some birds, I could not find correlations to any major dieties. These include the rather popular jackdaw who seems to always be getting into trouble for trying to be something he is not, the nightingale who always has good ideas at the wrong times and places, and the partridge who discovers the usefulness of conformity. However, Aesop still uses thems, and the personality that he assigns each would have been decided in part by the perceptions he already had of each. Such perceptions, if they existed, may have been drawn from his experiences with myths and diviners in society.

The hen is one bird that doesn’t show up specifically in any of the deity tales. However, Aesop’s hens are consistently overly generous[6]. In two famous stories, the hen is killed by her greedy master or mistress. She is either a reliable egg-layer or a layer of golden eggs. By sharing her gift, in either case, with one who is driven by self-interest, she exposes herself to danger, and is indeed killed. Another tale demonstrates the hen’s Orgon-esque[7] qualities without the interference of man. The hen comes across a nest of snake’s eggs and decides to hatch them, thus giving life to future hen-killers. Though she isn’t associated with any goddess, the hen is never-the-less an unmistakable sketch of one who gives without disgression: a stock character charlatin and a warning to the audience.

The swallow is always a bold bird. The trait sometimes gets her into a bit of trouble and sometimes works to her advantage. The overly zealous swallow once started to sing before winter was over, and she froze to death in the cold. When the hen hatched the snake’s eggs, it was the swallow who asked her why she would nurture the children of her enemy. A snake ate her children while she was living at court, though she was particularly saddened that such tragedy should befall her in a place dedicated to helping victims of violence. Finally, there are two stories about the swallow living close to men for protection. It works; they grow accustomed to her and they do not use mistletoe birdlime to poison her as they did the other birds who were too afraid to follow her example. It is admirable to be bold within reason, one might read in her stories, and some risks pay off in the end.

Initially, I theorized that the characterizations of the bird species’ were perhaps rooted in the meanings of the birds according to the practice of augury, divination through observation of birds. In my research, however, I discovered very little explicitly identifying the omens associated with each species. What I did find were birds being mentioned in association with deities: “In the book Ancient Greek Divination, the author focuses on exploring the etymology of all words connected to augury.[8] She says, “The fact that the title and cognate words survived for hundreds of years suggests that birds were always perceived as one of the most important means of conveying information from the divine world to the mortal world- appropriately so, given that birds literally move between the earthly and heavenly spheres” (Johnston, 129). In Aesop’s fables, the birds deliver information to adult readers regarding the personalities of their gods, the characteristics of their peers, and the potential consequences of certain behaviors. For contemporary readers, each tale directly preaches its moral, but beyond that it subtly transmits a cultural tradition that colors our perception. We see patriotic eagles, proud peacocks, love doves. We see mysterious bats, cunning hawks, innocent swans and foolish larks. The messages of the birds travel, not only from the heavens to the Earth, but from past times into the present.

Sources Cited

Aesop. The Complete Fables. trans. Robert Temple. London: Penguin Classics, 1998.

Beny, Roloff and Arianna Stassinopoulos. The Gods of Greece. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 1983.

Fontaine, Jean De La. "Selected Fables." trans. Christopher Wood. Selected Fables. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 20-23, 26-27, 38-41, 66-69, 110-111, 160-163.

France, Marie De. "Fables." trans. Harriet Spiegel. Fables. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 2-7, 42-49, 122-129.

Johnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. New York: A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication, 2008.

Schwab, Gustav. Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946.

Sources Referenced

Aesop. The Complete Fables. trans. Robert Temple. London: Penguin Classics, 1998.

Beny, Roloff and Arianna Stassinopoulos. The Gods of Greece. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 1983.

Berchman, Robert M. Mediators of the Divine: Horizons of Prophecy, Divination, Dreams and Theurgy in Mediterranean Antiquity. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998.

Fontaine, Jean De La. "Selected Fables." trans. Christopher Wood. Selected Fables. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 20-23, 26-27, 38-41, 66-69, 110-111, 160-163.

France, Marie De. "Fables." trans. Harriet Spiegel. Fables. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 2-7, 42-49, 122-129.

Greek Gods. 16 February 2010 .

Halliday, W. R. Greek Divination: A Study of its Methods and Principles. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 1913.

Johnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. New York: A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication, 2008.

McTigue, Bernard. The Medici Aesop. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1989.

Roman Gods. 16 February 2010 .

Rose, H.J. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1957.

Schwab, Gustav. Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946.

Ustinova, Yulia. Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Vaahtera, Jyri. Roman Augural Lore in Greek Historiography: A Study of the Theory and Terminology. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001.

---

[1] An anthropological category of social conformity in which there is an unspoken ritual that never-the-less holds the weight of a law. The partridge, innocent of these rituals, stumbles into situations that force her to recognize them. For example, she is initially upset to find herself treated somewhat violently by a group of roosters. She then realizes that they treat each other the same way, and she is soothed knowing that their behavior indicated that they had accepted her as one of them.

[2] Hera was Zeus’ sister, equal in power and temper. Many of the other women he pursued were tricked or coerced into submitting to him.

[3] To punish Prometheus for stealing fire on behalf on mankind, Zeus chained him to a mountain, decreed that he should stay there for 30,000 years minimum, and sent an eagle every day to devour his liver (which regenerated so as to prologue the torture. The end of the tale is quite interesting: “Heracles laid his club and his lion’s skin on the ground before him, bent his bow, launched an arrow, and shot the cruel bird from the liver of its anguished host. Then he loosed the chains, delivered Prometheus, and led him away. But to satisfy the conditions stipulated by Zeus, he brought Chiron, the centaur, as a substitute, for even though Chiron had claim to immortality, he offered to die in the Titan’s stead... Prometheus, who had been sentenced to the cliff for a far longer time, had always to wear an iron ring, set with a chip from the stony wall of the Caucasus, so that Zeus could boast that his enemy was still forged to the mountain” (Schwab, 36). What is curious here is how willing Zeus appears to be to boast falsely. The centaur is not his enemy, nor is Prometheus chained to the mountain so much as a piece is chained to him!

[4] Note the gender difference. As with the peacock, the bird is a different gender from the deity. In the case of the eagle, the gender of one eagle is different from that of another. It follows that Aesop is writing about different birds each time he mentions a species, and so the correlations between the birds and the gods are drawn from the personalities of the species instead of the personalities of individual anomalies.

[5] The first three romantic pursuits of Apollo ended with the women turning into a tree, an unheeded prophet, and a disembodied voice respectively. In reference to Apollo: “The god who embodies light and truth and beauty wreaks destruction in the world of love and the feminine. The dominance of an exclusive masculinity, detached and dispassionate, is Apollo’s dark side” (Beny, 59).

[6] To lift a phrase, she “gives too much to the wrong people” (Dr. Bruce Grant 2.16).

[7] From Molière’s Tartuffe

[8] “Oiōnoskopeia,” as she would call it in Greek. The most frequent legend about the establishment of the practice speaks of a man who goes into a vineyard. He sees a bird of good omen flying to one side of the field, so he looks to that side of the field. The bird begins to fly on one half of that side, so he looks only to that half. The bird then begins to fly over a certain quarter, and so this continues until the man finds a giant bunch of grapes where the bird indicated good fortune awaited him.

You know it's true...

...when my anthro professor takes time from his lecture to say it: Valentine's day is one strange holiday. But there really weren't too many strange happenings this past week.

Wednesday February 10th was NYU's first snow day in 13YEARS! And I was somehow here for it! I got up to walk to yoga, and there were a few flakes of snow. Poor Alex wasn't feeling good, so I got to Saint Mark's Street (the home of Yoga to the People) and decided to come home and crawl back under my covers for a few hours. We really didn't get a whole lot of snow...especially compared to how much Philly got... but it was coming down. Alex and I had a nice lunch at Hayden, and then we planned meals for an upcoming dinner party. When it was time to return home, I walked through Washington Square Park and was delighted to see that children of all ages had stepped over the chains and past the "Lawn Closed" signs to build snowmen and have a snowball fight or two. Want to see Thomaz bodyslam an innocent snowman? It's actually a pretty cute video.

Dear Rhoen, thank you for inviting all of us who don't live in your hall to trek there through the snow for dinner. I got a wonderful picture of Kim and Shizuyo shivering in their snow hats and that would have never happened without you. Plus, I got to wear my boots, which are nifty.

Thursday I had classes- Anthro, Sociology of Ed, and Czech- before a quite busy evening. I left Czech a few minutes early so that I would have time to walk down to the Puck building on Houston. They were having a panel discussion for graduate students; the title was "Teacher Quality: The Key to Closing the Achievement Gap?" Ready for some notes?

-What is the best way to assess teacher quality? How do we measure student academic achievement/ student character development/ teacher efforts towards improvement?
-What is the most appropriate way to use test scores in assessing teacher quality? (This one made me cringe. It's such tricky territory. Test scores- if not from well-designed tests or if given on a curve or if the student had an off day...- can be misread. At the same time, they can be so useful if used carefully... hmmm)
-Peter Oroszlany said that he hires teachers based off their practice lessons that they run for him. He looks for teachers who are innovative and strive to creatively make use of all the resources available in the community.
-Argument about the role of passion in making a good teacher. How does one measure such a thing?
-What are the best forms of professional development and how much should schools expect teachers to pursue on their own? (The state does have some requirements.)
-Top three reasons people leave teaching: not sure how to improve, tired of lack of professionalism in the field, little to no room for career advancement.
-What is the role of the union? [At this point, two of the men got into a polite but heated debate. One is a member of the teacher's union and one of the principal's union. The teacher said that the role of the union is to protect the teachers from corrupt administration. The principal said that the role of the school is to protect and care for the children, and that a union that allows something like $65,000,000 a year (approx.) to be spent because the union can't admit that some teachers need to be fired and because some principals can't do their job and fill out the mountains of paperwork to fire them anyway...well... he was not happy to say the least.
-Value of teacher coaches, either education experts or effective teachers on the verge of retirement...

So that was that. It makes my head spin. After that, I headed over to Hillary's for a group dinner. I was worried about being late, but in fact I was early enough to help cook. Unfortunately for you, I can't quite remember what we had. It was delicious, though!

Friday I did homework for most of the day. Then I realized that Rhoen's birthday party was going to be in my apartment and I had little to no food. So I went out and got ingredients to make a chocolate cake (which was ok but not spectacular), cornmeal and dried cranberry cookies, and strawberries in balsamic vinegar. Shizuyo brought a blueberry coffee cake that was delightful. And the new room arrangement survived its first real test. People were in and out, meeting each other, eating, talking. We played around with the Proust questionnaire and I realized that I should always start such games by announcing that if someone wants to pass then everyone has to respect that without further pause. I assume sometimes that people know these things. Oh well. Lesson learned.

That was actually a good round of conversation, though. We talked about sisters and the definition of success and the best way to be a college student. I really enjoyed listening to everyone think.

Cindy and Shizuyo stayed the night. We had eggs and toast for breakfast the next morning before I went to the bus stop in Chinatown to find Maura! In the flurry of birthday-party-planning activity, I hadn't planned too extensively as far as what to do when Maura arrived. Luckily, we got it figured out. First we went to Babycakes- which serves gluten-free dairy-free cupcakes and doughnuts. Then we took the subway to the Brooklyn museum where we admired mummies, masks, and feminism. The mummy exhibit was arranged to show how members of the lower classes cut costs so that they could afford the funeral rites that were so necessary for the entry of the dead into the happy field of food. They made multi-purpose tools, painted stone in imitation of more expensive materials, re-used coffins... and did some other things in the embalming process that I'm sure were shortcuts but were just not pleasant to think about. Yes, even more so than pulling the brain out the nose with a hook. Oh delicious. There was an exhibit on African masks that we strolled through as we headed upstairs, and I recognized a few pieces, which was cool. Upstairs we admired the gallery of American art. Where other than New York can you walk into a museum gallery and find paintings of the street you just walked in off of? There was one that described "the road frequently by drunks, gamblers, and prostitutes." Hm. The street sign said Bowery. Guess where I live!

Finally, we went to the famous/infamous feminist wing. "The Dinner Party" by Judy Chicago is- of course- the focus of the collection. I wish I had been able to study the timeline of famous women longer; it included brief biographies of women whose place settings were on the table, and it explained some of the symbolism used on their pieces. The table itself is in a triangular room with glass walls. Everything is dark except the installation itself. I hadn't been sure if all of the- erm- imagery would be too much for me, but actually I found the place settings meticulously designed and pleasantly intriguing. I was more curious than anything else, and really enjoyed the piece.

Now the installation that wrapped around the outside of the room was beyond me. Maura and I were both really confused. It just wasn't appealing and didn't make sense. We did, however, find a nook with a crazy installation about the wedding ritual. There were pictures of women on the two walls of the hall, and then there was a big room at the end that you could look into. The room was very pink. At first glance, it looked like a party! There was a bed piled with a cake and jewelery and flowers and streamers. Then you realize that the cake is made of tampons, the jewelery made of birth-control pills, and the streamers made of garters tied together. The piece is called "Reception" by American artist Vadis Turner. I couldn't quite tell if Turner was hating on marriage or just trying to point out that we romanticize a complicated reality, but the creativity in the use of materials for the piece was admirable. I mean... a cake made out of tampons? Who thinks of these things?

After the museum, we attempted to go the the gardens (which were closed) and then to a restaurant (that I couldn't find). We ended up back in Manhattan, where we ate yummy Thai food to finish off our night. Then I took Maura to her bus uptown. We hid from the cold in a Duane Reid until the bus came.

Sunday was Valentine's day, but as mentioned earlier it was a fairly normal weekend day. Hillary invited everyone over for scones, lemon curd, jam, and tea. Such good tea!!! It was rose flavored. Hil gave me a bag to bring back to my dorm, and I'm saving it for a special occasion. After our all-girls Valentine's tea, we headed uptown to a Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club party on 59th st. I was really amused at first because Nicky (who was the planner of the party) is from England. I was loving the Beatles reference until one of the girls at the party told us it was her idea. Still cool. But...

Hillary and I ended up leaving relatively early. Which was good because the subway seemed to be having problems. We waited a half hour for our train back to Union Square! I had been planning to go back up, but after another 20 minutes of waiting, I called it a night.

We didn't have class the next day (President's day) so I ended up being very productive. This has actually been such a productive week. I'm going to post the research paper I wrote instead of writing all this sooner. I hope the libraries at the abroad sites are as good as Bobst. I don't know how I'll survive paper-writing otherwise. Soooo many boooks!!!!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my dad was in town on Wednesday to meet with a friend for dinner. After they finished their meal and I finished my classes, I met them uptown for dessert and conversation. It's fun watching dad with friends. I feel like it's been a while since I've been witness to such an interaction. Well... that and at home I always felt as out of place with the adults as with the other kids. Regardless, it was wonderful to see them both. They were even gracious enough to talk about education for a bit. I was fascinated and learned quite a lot. I only hope they weren't completely bored. It's an odd topic sometimes...

Thursday Hillary and I went to a story-telling slam. The theme was tradition and...let's just say I left humming Fiddler on the Roof songs. The guy who won told a story about how his family decided that they were scared of sending their children to school in the US in the 70s so moved them to Israel. Then when they moved back, he went to a religious school while his siblings went to public school. Surrounded by Orthodox Jews, he became Orthodox and drove his family nuts for a while ("I used to bury silverware and throw out pizza..."). Then he went to college and was convinced to try shrimp. Suddenly he realized that non-Orthodox Jews and even gentiles could be pretty cool. The plot was there (though very loose), but his style was great. A favorite was a father who was, after the circumcision of his son, given the foreskin and told to bury it under a tree. Living in New York City, the father had to sneak into a park to bury it (apparently it's illegal to carry gardening tools in the parks in New York?). He talked about looking for the perfect tree and imagining his son getting arrested some years in the future when he returned to cut a branch from the tree for his wedding canopy... It was hysterical. There were others, too, about pot olympics, Jewish wedding traditions (apparently the parents meet the groom in the middle of the aisle and hand the bride off there), the power of an Italian grandmother's "evil eye", stealing the grooms shoes at an Indian wedding... We picked a good night to go.

After the stories, we went to Cafe Habana for a delicious dinner. Hillary always knows these places. Thank you thank you, Hillary!

Friday I went to the gym for a bit and then did a lot of homework. Today I've just been doing more homework. The next two weeks are some of my busiest, but I'll be entertaining friends for the next few weekends so I need to get the work done now. Which is what I'm off to do. Ciao!

Is it Tuesday already?

NYU College of Arts and Sciences (CAS for short) offers a program called Speaking Freely, and the spring sections started last week. Speaking Freely classes are weekly language classes offered in a sort of "no pressure" atmosphere. Attendance isn't mandatory. There are no grades. You just know going in that you'll get out of the course what you put into it. Hoping to take a semester of German, I looked up the schedule last week and found that I had a time conflict with the German class. Logically, I then registered instead for French 3 (Wednesdays), Czech 1 (Thursdays), and Hindi 1 (Fridays). Have you ever looked at the phonetics of the Czech alphabet? Check it out.

So last week was a big week. I started tutoring at University Settlement, and then I started all three of the language classes. It feels good to be getting involved. Thursday after class, the fantastic Chef Hillary had a dinner party. We made blood orange olive oil cake, beet risotto, and swiss chard (this isn't the exact recipe we used, but it's close). Not only was the food wonderful, but the company was just... I'm so grateful for my friends here. I've met some really amazing people and am so lucky to get to spend time with them.

Despite the late night, Friday Kim and I met Alex at Yoga to the People for 7am yoga. We then came home to clean up and change before our Hindi class. Kim had to work after class, but I met up with Cindy and two of her friends for an excursion to P.S.1, which is a branch of MoMA. To be honest, the exhibit we say -1969- wasn't my style. I'm not usually a fan of that kind of art anyway, but the exhibit was a compilation of all the pieces they collected during that year. I couldn't tell, but I don't think they had to be made that year. It just wasn't my style. The fact that they have an art exhibit in an old school is great though. And on the way there we passed a huge building covered in elaborate graffiti. It turns out that the building is the site of 5PTZ. They were closed for the season, so I'll be checking back, but from what I could gather they're dedicated to preserving authentic hip-hop culture. Which was coincidental because I just finished reading a book called "Yes Yes Y'All" about the history of hip-hop. Like I said, I'll be checking back there.

When we returned to Union Square, Cindy and her friends went back to their dorm. I started going back to mine, but then I ran into Hillary. She was on her way to a free concert, so I turned around and went with her. We met up with Maggie and her friend Colin, who was wonderful fun because this was his favorite band, and got in line. The band was called Hot Chip. I have no idea why they picked that name, but there you are. It was good party music, the lights were really well done, and the crowd was into the music without being terrifyingly wild. It was a really good time.

We came back and realized that it was still pretty early; however, it was pretty cold out so- after a trip to Artichoke Pizza for Rhoen- we gathered Rhoen and Cindy and Shizuyo in my room to watch "Paris, Je T'Aime" and eat ice cream. I'd heard a lot about the film, but was still surprised by how much I enjoyed it. "Paris, Je T'Aime" is a series of short sketches (in French) that deal with the theme of love in Paris. And they touched on all kinds of love: new, misunderstood, paternal, maternal, misplaced. There was a junkie with her love for her drug. There was an American with her love for Paris. There were even two mimes with their perfect and unspoken love for each other.

We also discussed how Rhoen should start a chocolate business. Rhoen, start a chocolate business.

Saturday I had a long class. From 10 am to 5 pm I was in a seminar about identifying child abuse and neglect, identifying drug abuse, and being a socially responsible teacher within the regulations of the New York City school district. We looked as cases, listened to a panel of teachers, listened to Battina Aptheker speak about her experiences and her memoir "Intimate Politics" (which starts: The poet Muriel Rukeyser once asked, 'What would happen if one woman told the whole truth about her life?' And answered, 'The world would split open.'), listened to a student panel, and discussed the factors that contribute to a child's resiliency. I met some really amazing women there. One, Alethiea, had been a high school drop-out, lost her mother, worked for the post office for 11 years, gotten her GED, attended CUNY for her undergrad, and had somehow rolled her scholarship over from the city school so she could attend NYU free. Her goal is to educate students who are in situations like she was about their options and about how they can pay for school by combining grants and being proactive. Power to her. I was inspired.

It was pretty draining. Soooo when I got home I sat down to do some homework (reading fairy tales to be exact). Then Emma texted and informed me that it was Bob Marley's birthday and she wanted to do something to celebrate. Let me be explicit: no, we didn't smoke up. Instead, we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox with Thomaz, Hillary and Maggie. After the film, we got fries and a hot dog at...well, I misplaced the flyer, but I'll put it up when I find it. Then we had a very relaxing night with their new cat, Anthony Bourdain in Jamacia (happy birthday Mr. Marley), and some delicious 4 am pizza. One thing I dislike about the dorms: I have no space to invite friends to. I mean... so long as they are also students who live in the dorms we're ok. But if they are out of the dorms or visiting from another school, I can only have 3 people over. I can't exactly offer friends the couch; the floor remains disgusting no matter how many times I clorox it; space in my room is limited; table space for dinner is limited; I have a roommate whose napping and television-watching I try not to disturb. I've been to dinner at Emma and Thomaz's before, and I always feel bad that I can't return their hospitality as completely as I would like to.

Sunday was a lot of homework. Monday was yoga (Alex wants to do this regularly) at 7 and then classes. Today I had classes and tutoring, and then I met up with Alex for a poetry reading by Ersi Sotiropoulos. I picked up a copy of the book, and she was kind enough to sign it for me. Now I'm off to do some research on fairy tales before going to bed and praying for snow. Put a spoon under your pillow tonight, New York!

A Research Fairytale (written for my research seminar)

Once upon a time, a girl wandered into a wood. Now this wood was not particularly magical, or so she thought. She liked the wood- she always liked places where she could hide among trees- and she had been in and out a half dozen times before. But that had been different. This time, she had a purpose. And when one catches onto a purpose, one tends to notice things that had somehow escaped the mind’s notice before.

You see, one day the girl had been sitting and listening to an admired tale-turner speak about fairytales. The tale-turner mentioned that one could interpret fairytales differently depending on one’s worldview. Having read various versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” another girl questioned the amount of violence in Roald Dahl’s version. The first girl, the one who found herself in the wood, had stitched the two ideas together almost involuntarily. The butterfly that often perched on her ponytail voiced the question for her, and once a thought is voiced it gains a life of its own.

“I wonder,” began the butterfly, “whether Dahl makes Red bloodthirsty to show her exercising her power as a woman (for the tale itself- in some telling- seems to have been a puberty story of sorts, marking a loss of innocence) or whether he is commenting on the corruptibility of women.”

“That’s a very complex thought for such a silly bug,” remarked the girl.

“It was your thought,” the butterfly retorted, “Now go ask the tale-turner what to do with it.”

The tale-turner had suggested that they search for the answer inside the wood. She had instructed the girl to notice particularly the blue leaves and purple flowers, which would guide her to her answer. And so it came to pass that the girl entered the forest with a purpose: collecting the blue leaves and purple flowers which could be arranged into an answer. Hardly more than two minutes into her journey, she realized that she didn’t know what kind of tree had the oddly colored foliage that she was searching for. So she sat down and grabbed a handful of wireless data from the air around her. She was close enough to home still that the air was just filled with emails, text messages, journal articles, pictures, and other useful things. She shook her handful of data and asked it where she could find these trees. The data shimmered for a moment, and then it told her to look for the species known as PR6054.A35. After taking another moment to find the butterfly and writing this name down on one of its legs, she thanked the data, released it, and headed on her way.

A little further on, she came across a shimmering pool of voices. She asked the pool what it could tell her about Roald Dahl, careful to remember that the voices were not all-knowing and were sometimes even mischievously deceptive. At first, she was frustrated. The pool refused to help her because she didn’t have the right plugin. Something about Flashplayer. Then, however, she coaxed it into giving her the basics.

She found out that Roald Dahl had experienced a lot of loss and violence in his early life. His sister and father died when he was very young; he had been beaten by teachers (mostly female) and hazed by classmates at British boarding schools; he had fought as a fighter pilot in World War II; he had been blinded temporarily as a result of a plane crash (and, she read skeptically, he fell in love with one of his nurses during this time and fell out of love only after he regained his sight). He had buried one daughter, nursed a maimed son back to health, and nursed his wife back from a debilitating pregnancy complication that left her partly blind and paralyzed. This before divorcing her to marry her recently divorced and much younger business friend, with whom he had been having an affair.

Knowing that the voices are not always accurate and are rarely objective, the girl still noted these fragments of fact on the butterfly’s legs. If she could find two or three other sources with the same claims, she would give them credit. In the meantime, they gave her a rough place to start.

The pool also told her that Dahl was born during the first surge of violence in the feminist movement. He was born in 1916, three years after Emily Davison- whomever she might be- was trampled by the king’s horse on Derby Day- whatever that is- while protesting for women’s rights. She learned that Dahl was Norwegian and also that he died in November of 1990, the month and year in which she was born. Finally, the pool told her to begin her search 800 paces north and 79 paces to the left.

Lo and behold, at the location indicated by the pool she found four trees with blue leaves and purple flowers. She quickly climbed the first tree and began to search among the golden winter leaves for the few oddly colored ones that would somehow help her out. First she found “American in style.” Then she found “schooled in Derby 1929.” As she wondered if this Derby was the same as the one where that Davison person was killed, the butterfly pointed out to her that the branches of the trees were widely spread out and that the sun was setting quickly. Realizing that she didn’t have time to teeter out onto the edges of the tree-limbs, she decided to settle for the leaves and petals that she could collect from the ground beneath the trees.

There had recently been a strong winter wind, and so there were plenty of fragments on the ground for her to collect. She gathered them into a black bag with a picture of some pears on it.

“Boarding schools used corporal punishment,” she read. Maybe Dahl was bitter about the adults who beat him in schools. Maybe this was why he gave the youthful Red such power.

“Buddies with Hellman, author of The Children’s Hour,” she read, “Married Children’s Hour actress Patricia Neal.”

“Wrote The Honeys about two sisters who murder their controlling husbands.”

“Wrote Madame Rossette with strong sexual undertones but which ultimately features a man stopping a woman (a brothel owner) from abusing other women (the prostitutes).” Could this indicate feminist sympathies? Or perhaps this is more about the corruptibility of women in groups, whether they seek to destroy each other or an external being such as a husband?

As she threw these leaves into her bag, she stopped to admire the shape of one of the leaves. She fell into a daydream about writing an ecological version of the three little pigs in which there are actually four pigs. The first two build their houses of straw and sticks, using nature but not using the brains that nature gave them. The third builds his house out of bricks that he molded out of the clay-heavy soil and dried in the sun, using nature and his brains to construct a sturdy home. The fourth pig builds his house out of glass and screens, rejecting nature and getting eaten along with the first two pigs. The girl was then torn between wondering what would happen if the wolf were an orthodox Jew, and so refused to eat pork, and wondering about whether the life plans that she and her boyfriend had been recently discussing could be described as made out of hand-molded brick. She hoped so, murmured something about a garden, and startled herself back into real time having wasted only 3 minutes of sunlight. Still, she rebuked herself for being so foolish.

She focused on collecting as many leaves and flowers as she could in the remaining time. As soon as she found a flower which seemed to absolutely declare that Dahl was a feminist looking to empower the meekest of women (“The reviewer for Time made special note of Dahl’s gallery of females’ Intrigued by the deceptiveness of these characters’ gentle demeanors, this reviewer described them as ‘lovely ladies, indeed, but heaven help the poor man who falls into their clutches”) she would find one which asserted with equal confidence that Dahl was focused on the flawed nature of both women and men (“He presented caricatures of human frailty”).

He seemed to be preoccupied with sex to an extreme extent. Some leaves of a different shape, consistently sympathetic to his first wife whom he divorced, claimed that he was obsessed with it, emphasized his interest in D.H. Lawrence as if such an interest indicated nymphomania automatically, and subtly implied through choice of diction that he was particularly feminine and insecure even as he engaged in multiple affairs and wrote shorts for Playboy. The girl wasn’t personally familiar with Playboy, but she found these leaves curious when contrasted with the leaves from one of the other trees (for there can be many varieties of a single species of tree, and the girl knew this quite well). The other leaves seemed to focus on how he was protective of young girls- possibly due to the early loss of his sister- and how he frequently wrote about one sex struggling for power over the other.

As the last glimpse of sunlight sank below the horizon, the girl caught a glimpse of a woman’s shadow flitting between the trees. “Follow me,” she ordered someone out of sight, “I’ll bring you where you need to go, but don’t think I’m staying around once we get there.” She was one of Dahl’s characters, a twilight apparition. The girl thought about the leaves and flowers she had gathered. There was not time tonight to collect enough for her to construct a full picture out of them. She was hardly sure how interpret even the little that she had. She looked at the butterfly.

“It seems,” he said, “that Dahl placed women over men but children over all. And he couldn’t stand cruelty without a purpose.” The girl shook her head.

“It seems,” she said, “that I shall wait in the dark for a while yet. But I learned about yet another children’s author whose life wasn’t exactly G-rated-“

At this moment, the tale-turner appeared to guide the girl out of the woods and into the safety of her home for the night. However, when they arrived at the girl’s home, she declined to enter.

“If you don’t mind,” she began, excusing herself to the tale-turner, “I would like to sit out in my garden for a bit. You see, I’m just fascinated by stories that pretend to be for children but aren’t. I’m intrigued by authors who pretend to write for children, but who really have their own agendas. This is why I’m interested in fairytales in the first place; this is why I’m curious about Seuss and Sendak…and now Dahl.”

“A garden is a good place to think,” responded the tale-turner, “and if you can propose three wishes…well… I can’t guarantee that I can grant them, but I can point you in the right direction.”

A murmured “thank you” was all that the girl could manage. She thought a moment and then shook her head. “I don’t even know enough to know what to wish for yet,” she confessed, “I need more time in the woods.”

“Take your time and get all you can from the woods,” encouraged the tale-turner, “Just remember to look other places too. Try a meadow or something. There are flowers there too.” And with that, she vanished, leaving the girl in the dark garden wondering what it would be like to be a sunflower.

**"Trees" used included:

Roald Dahl by Mark I. West (Twayne Publishing, NY 1992)

Roald Dahl by Jeremy Treglown (Jeremy Treglown, NY 1994)

Over to You by Roald Dahl (Reynal and Hitchcock, NY 1946)

Picking Apart the Blur that was My Weekend!

The whirl of the past few days started on Wednesday the 27^th. I got up for my first Anthro recitation…in fact, my first recitation in my college career. Our TA signed off on our fieldwork proposals; I was thinking about looking at flower shops. There seem to be a lot of places in the city to buy plants, but where do people put them? Does this speak to mankind’s need for contact with nature? Regardless, that’s what I THOUGHT I was going to do. The idea lasted until Thursday… but first!

Wednesday I started seriously looking at how to get cleared for classroom observation at a school within walking distance. I only need 15 hours for my class, but since I’m not sure yet what grade I want to teach I’m trying to find hours at both a high school and at an elementary school. I sent out a few emails, but then I found an advertisement for something called a portfolio round-table at East Side Community High School. Picturing something akin to a science fair, I signed up to go to a section of 10^th grade English students. I walked to the school and waited to sign in with the security guard. She was busy with a couple of students who showed up 36 minutes late for their Regents Exams which, if I understand correctly, they need to graduate to the next grade. The couple didn’t look too worried. They got their room numbers from the guard and then strolled upstairs. I know so little about the New York City School District. Sometimes it’s frightening.

When I got into the classroom, I noticed first that the students were at their desks and divided into groups of four. The teacher introduced herself; she goes by her first name even among her students. On the walls were comic-strip style posters that the students had made dealing with bullying, standardized testing, socio-economic tensions. Next to those posters was one clearly listing the teacher’s classroom rules and expectations. I was directed to a table with three boys, one Chinese, one Polish, and one Dominican. What happens in a portfolio round-table is this: the students have been writing all year and keeping track of books they read. The guest at the table, me, is the facilitator. Each student takes a turn presenting his or her personal essay (a statement on the use of reading and the definition of a sophisticated reader), reading and analyzing a short paragraph, presenting his or her other essays and reading log, and answering any questions that the group might have. There are rubrics for each student filled out by the facilitator and other students in the group.

I apologized to the boys in my group up front; I had no idea what I was doing! It worked out pretty well though. The first boy was only on his second year of English, but he talked about how Catcher In The Rye (rest in peace J.D. Salinger) was his favorite book and how he wanted to master English because it would give him the power to succeed in the US. He also wrote a piece on water conservation in which he rebukes a friend who likes to take long showers for warmth. “Showers are for cleaning yourself,” he insists, “Not for getting warm.” The second boy had been in the states longer. He might even have been born here; I couldn’t tell if he had an accent or if he was just speaking very softly because he was shy. Again I was amazed. While his writing was impatient, simple paragraphs formed by simple sentences, his ideas and ability to comprehend text were advanced. He talked about The Things They Carried, his favorite book. He also wrote about watching his dad watch a fight once. I didn’t know quite what to say. The third boy either is very new to English or is new to typing. He wrote about Perfume and The Summer of the Butterflies, both long sad books. He mentioned, though, that he read a lot in Spanish. The one boy expressed envy at that point because he said the school didn’t have any Chinese books. I wonder if being forced to read English helped him pick it up faster. His writing was more advanced than his friend’s.

I asked at the office when I left about how I could get cleared for classroom observation. They gave me an email address and I sent out a note, but I haven’t heard back yet. That evening I had Myths and Folktales, which was great. I really wish the rest of my books would get here though. I’m getting behind! After the class, Gallatin was having their eco-friendly fashion show downstairs, so I hung around to see that. I’m glad I did! Two of the designers were friends from Gallatin, and one was this crazy brilliant Tisch senior who made her whole line using found umbrellas.

Thursday was quietly disturbing. I connected with my Ed as a Social Institution professor when I followed up after class on a topic he mentioned in passing: the New York rubber rooms. I mentioned having to do a fieldwork project for Anthro and he suggested looking into it. My research led me to these:

A radio broadcast including stories from inside the rubber room

The start of a documentary on the rubber room

A NY Times article sort-of covering the rubber room

A video of neighborhood people protesting the closing of their old school

Have I mentioned that sometimes it hits me just how little I know about the NYC School District? Those are terrifying moments.

After being so thrown off-balance, I packed up and headed to tutoring orientation at a program curiously close the community garden I found last weekend. I’ll probably end up working on English and standardized test prep. Hopefully. The students range from 6^th to 8^th graders, and most of them live in Chinatown. I’m excited to be working with kids, although this age group is going to be a challenge. Wish me luck!

Friday was strange. I spent most of the day reading and writing. At some point in the evening, Shizuyo came over and we skyped with Cass and Miranda. Video-chat is such a funny thing. They sort-of met, but not really, but they were able to pick up on each others’ mannerisms and speaking patterns… but there was no hugging. Oh technology. After she left, I worked until around 4am and then went to bed only to be woken up at 5am by the fire alarm. Mel and I threw on shoes and jackets, I grabbed my ID/phone/keys, and we shut both doors behind us as we left. There wasn’t any smoke or anything, but they don’t exactly run drills at that hour so we were pretty nervous. As the fire trucks pulled up, my friend Michelle and I walked to one of the other dorms so we could wait inside where it wasn’t 14 degrees. When we got back we learned that the fire had been in one of the other towers and that it somehow connected back to someone smoking indoors. If you’re going to insist on smoking cigarettes, you have to accept that your addiction isn’t going to go on vacation just because it’s cold outside. You’re going to get cravings when its below freezing out. If you put yourself in that position, suck it up and go smoke outside! Instead of forcing the 900-some other people in the building (some of who are not having cravings because they don’t smoke) out into the cold and annoying the fire department. I hope that was one damn good cigarette. Hope it was worth it. Ugh.

Saturday I woke up late because my phone had died during the drill (i.e. no alarm). As such, I missed getting to the garden this week. However, I did wake up in time to pull off a trip to the beach! I love the beach in the winter. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I love the cold sea breeze. And the beach is just so peaceful when it’s empty and when the grey sky meets the green-grey ocean at the horizon. It’s so refreshing.

Rhoen and Alex and I hopped on the subway to Coney Island/Brighton Beach and enjoyed walking on the sand, collecting shells, climbing on a playground, and trying to keep feeling in our fingers despite the cold. We admired a mural about the history of Coney Island, mosaics of eggs and koi, and Cyrillic signs in shop windows.

After the beach, we were supposed to meet up with a group of people to go stargazing at Inwood Hill Park. There’s an astronomy program there that has free stargazing nights where they provide telescopes and constellation guides. It looked really cool (and it’s free). However, you’re supposed to always call their hotline the day-of to make sure that they’re going up that day. I called while on the subway back from the beach, and the automated voicemail informed me that there were too many clouds so the program was cancelled for the night. But, he continued in the same voice frequently used on car commercials when describing limited time offers, on TuEsDaY there would be another chance to ExPlOrE the ExTrAgAlAcTiC UnIvErSe!!! It was such a good message that Alex and Rhoen each called to listen to it too. Then we came up with plan B for the evening.

Plan B included Rhoen, Alex, Shizuyo, Cindy and Sophie mixed with cheese, bread, ice cream, blueberry-apple gallette, and warm spiced cider.

Once we were all enjoying food-comas, Rhoen left and the girls were left discussing which movie to put in. That was, of course, until the fire alarm went off. Again. So at 2 am we were taking our time collecting our things. Coats, IDs, phones, keys, boots, hats… we were moving, but we weren’t terribly alarmed after Friday’s evacuation. We just wanted to make sure we were actually warm tonight. This relaxed state lasted until the first person opened the door and saw the hall filled with…well… it was cloudy and white and thick. We found out later that it was the chemical from the dry extinguishers, but at the time it had all the qualities of smoke- save that it didn’t smell like anything was burning. We peaced out pretty quickly when we saw that.

Ready for this? We found out later that THAT evacuation was the result of some genius pulling the alarm as a prank. 2 am on an icy Saturday (Sunday by then I guess) and that somehow seemed like a good idea. Great. We strolled around and then came back once things were clearing up. Everyone else was able to go back in, but Sophie was signed in at the security desk so she and I waited in this line that wrapped around to the front of the building (which isn’t terribly far but it seems it when your toes are numb from the cold) and had to sign back in. Which was highly efficient once we got to the desk. I have to hand it to our security folks: the procedures can be a pain but these men and women sure are good at what they do when it comes down to it.

So we pulled out blankets and pillows when we got back up to my room. We put in the movie 500 Days of Summer and started warming up. The cinematography in that film is beautiful at points, but I couldn’t really get into it. The story is a kind-of romance. The main male isn’t satisfied with his life and is waiting for “the one” when the main girl comes to work at the greeting card company where he works. She doesn’t believe in “the one” and has no interest in a steady relationship. They get together and start getting serious…and then she dumps him. And the rest of the story is him feeling sorry for himself, finding out that she’s engaged, and feeling even worse. He confronts her at one point; says he doesn’t believe in true love or fate or anything anymore. She says that he was right all along about such things being real. “You were right,” she says, “just not about me.” He quits his job and becomes an architect. She gets married. The ending is really sappy, but I won’t give it away. Let’s just say that I thought we were deviating from the “happily ever after” ending, and I was disappointed. There was one scene in which he draws a city on her arm, and that made me smile because it reminded me of a coffee date I had once. Other than that though, I really wasn’t too impressed.

Sunday was the last day of January. Can you believe it? One month of 2010 already gone. Cue Sondheim: “One midnight gone!” Sunday was fairly relaxed. Another fire, this time a real fire… something in the dining hall kitchen. I hid in Rhoen’s room with Kim, Hahna, and Shizuyo before returning to clean and read GIG (which is fabulous and which I will review in full upon completion). At some point, my whole suite was in front of the tv watching Lady Gaga sing with Elton John on the Grammy’s. Then Beyonce covered Alanis Morrissette, Stevie Nicks lowered herself to sing with Taylor Swift (I’m not anti-Taylor, but she sounded like such a little girl singing with such a full-voiced woman), the Black Eyed Peas couldn’t keep up with their music, Slash blamed it on the alcohol, Pink sang while hanging from the ceiling, and the crew from the Green Day musical blew my mind while I was wondering how Green Day’s album beat AC/DC’s for best new rock album. Can those bands really be compared?