Author Archives: Nerdishly

I know.

By Posted in books, music 2 Comments

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Posting a pic of new books (and, yes, these latest acquisitions did violate my resolution, so I lasted, what, six weeks?) is not writing an entry. In sketching out my plans for the upcoming four-day weekend, though, I added “Write about books read so far this year,” so fingers crossed. (I don’t think I’ve contributed a single post to this year’s version of 52 Books. Here’s hoping they remember me when I finally make my way over there.)

My part-time job is not the culprit, by the way. It’s the flute. Deliberate practice requires time, and in addition to my weekly lesson, I must prepare my band pieces. Yes, I joined a community band, and what a lot of fun it’s been! But also a lot of work. Although I played clarinet in middle and high school, my music education was spotty, at best; so much so that I generally maintain it truly began when I took up flute in late 2014. By that definition, I am the least experienced member of the band and require a great deal of practice time to feel prepared for our rehearsals.

I do love it, though, even it means Nerdishly is heavy on photos for a while.

Inheritors

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Over the weekend, we saw Boy at TimeLine Theatre (timely, moving, worth your time) and Remy Bumppo’s staged reading of Susan Glaspell’s 1921 play, Inheritors.

From the latter:

SILAS: You took aplenty. Tell in your eyes you’ve thought lots about what’s been thought. And that’s what I was setting out to say. It makes something of men — learning. A house that’s full of books makes a different kind of people. Oh, of course, if the books aren’t there just to show off.

GRANDMOTHER: Like in Mary Baldwin’s new house.

SILAS: (trying hard to see it) It’s not the learning itself—it’s the life that grows up from learning. Learning’s like soil. Like—like fertilizer. Get richer. See more. Feel more. You believe that?

FEJEVARY: Culture should do it.

SILAS: Does in your house. You somehow know how it is for the other fellow more’n we do.

I love that… A house that’s full of books makes a different kind of people.

“You’re standing on a stage…”

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From Alexander Maksik’s novel You Deserve Nothing:

p. 87
You always begin the same way. You’re standing on stage, presenting yourself, happy to be back. Which is not to say that you don’t believe in teaching, because you do. There are few things you believe in more and you want to do something good. But along with that comes the wonder of standing before a group of people who love you, who imagine that you are strong and wise.

All that attention, it’s hard to resist. And if you’re honest you acknowledge that before you ever became a teacher you imagined your students’ reverence, your ability to seduce, the stories you’d tell, the wisdom you’d impart. You know that teaching is the combination of theater and love, ego and belief. You know that the subject you teach isn’t nearly as important as how you use it.

p. 169
That’s why the ones who stay are some of the most depressing people you’ve ever met in your life. It has nothing to do with their age. They’ve stayed because of their disposition — bitter, bored, lacking in ambition, lonely, and mildly insane. With few exceptions, these are the people who are capable of staying in a school. This is what it takes to teach for half a life-time. The ones who care, who love the subjects, who love their students, who love, above all, teaching — they rarely hang around.

Earlier this week

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5B498219-EE1C-4A99-B05C-67A5CFD56FF3Chocolate nirvana coffee and good books have helped me negotiate some of the inevitable letdown that follows my daughters’ return to campus after break. My work takes me out of myself, too, and we’ve also had a number of those “Well, life is just like that, isn’t it?” moments this week. Examples: The plumber has visited. My car required a repair shop visit. Our ductwork was replaced. (And no one put his foot through my ceiling!) Now I’m feeling a bit like I need another break. Heh, heh, heh.

An Enemy of the People

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From Act IV:

Dr. Stockmann (with growing fervor). What does the destruction of a community matter, if it lives on lies? It ought to be razed to the ground. I tell you– All who live by lies ought to be exterminated like vermin! You will end by infecting the whole country; you will bring about such a state of things that the wholecountry will deserve to be ruined. And if things come to that pass, I shall say from the bottom of my heart: Let the whole country perish, let all these people be exterminated!

Voices from the crowd. That is talking like an out-and-out enemy of the people!

Billing. There sounded the voice of the people, by all that’s holy!

The whole crowd. (shouting). Yes, yes! He is an enemy of the people! He hates his country! He hates his own people!

Aslaksen. Both as a citizen and as an individual, I am profoundly disturbed by what we have had to listen to. Dr. Stockmann has shown himself in a light I should never have dreamed of. I am unhappily obliged to subscribe to the opinion which I have just heard my estimable fellow-citizens utter; and I propose that we should give expression to that opinion in a resolution. I propose a resolution as follows: “This meeting declares that it considers Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Medical Officer of the Baths, to be an enemy of the people.”

❧

By the way, if you haven’t already nabbed tickets to A Red Orchid Theatre’s Traitor — an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People written by Brett Neveu and directed by Michael Shannon — stop what you’re doing and get them. Elsewhere, I have described it as think-y, inventive, and, well, feckin’ brilliant.