Brenda Slaby Reaction

She was an assistant principal in a public school.  aha.  Confirms the horrible nature of stress of working in public school.  That was my first reaction.  I always am telling my students about how my brain has to hold so many things in it at once, that no, I cannot remember to ask the P.E. teacher if she recieved their registration for the running race, they will need to do it if they want it done.  How terrible.  I saw her on "Where are they now?" on Oprah.  She has gained weight, her husband and her divorced.  Just like on "Extreme Weight Loss Makeover," many of the participants are eating their way through grief.  My heart goes out for this woman.  How do you even remain on the planet after something like that, facing society, the workplace, every interaction?  How do you find the courage?  I would need heavy meds and therapy and I hope she has both.

Undaunted Courage Excerpts

From p. 109, explaining Lewis' writing style:

Geographer Paul Russell Cutright speaks of “Lewis’s recurrent artistry in stringing apt words together colorfully,” and notes that among his virtues as a writer were “his sizeable working vocabulary, his quietly authoritative statements, his active unrestrained interest in all natural phenomena, his consistent adherence to truth and above all, his wide command of adjectives, verbs and nouns which repeatedly give color to his sentences.”

 

P.149, journal excerpt

“So magnificent scenery in a country thus situated far removed from the civilized world to be enjoyed by nothing but the buffalo elk deer and bear in which it abounds and savage Indians.”   Possibly the captains puzzled over why God had created such a place and failed to put Virginians in it, or put it in Virginia.

 

P. 239, because such things are amusing

“I amused myself in fishing, and sleeping away the fortiegues of yesterday.”

P 246, Flow Theory, in my opinion

“The men all appear perfectly to have made up their minds to succeed in the expedition or purish in the attepmpt.   We all believe that we are now about to enter on the most perilous and difficult part of our voyage, yet I see no one repining; all appear ready to met those difficultie which wait us with resolution and becoming fortitude.”

P. 260, How Sacagawea reminds me of my Mom

About Sacagawea: “I cannot discover that she shows any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or joy in again being restored to  native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere.”

P. 266, working towards success

“Thus far I have accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in allying my thirst with this pure and ice coldwater.”

 

P. 458, connection to my husband to be and his friends, the aging bachelors

“I am now a perfect widower with respect to love… I feel all the restlessness, that inquietude, that certain indescribable something common to old bachelors, which I cannot avoid thinking my dear fellow, proceeds from that void in our hearts, which might, or ought to be better filled.  Whence it comes I know not,but certain it is, that I never felt less like a heroe than at the present moment.  What may be my next adventure god knows, but on this, I am determined to get a wife.”

 

 

Into the Woods

The songs and writing were well-done.  I could use excerpts from the Prologue song to use in my Poetry Unit with my fourth graders...

The way is clear,
The light is good,
I have no fear,
Nor no one should.
The woods are just trees,
The trees are just wood.
I sort of hate to ask it,
But do you have a basket?

Read more: Into The Woods - Prologue Into The Woods Lyrics | MetroLyrics

It got me thinking, about the mile-wide, inch-deep nature of our nations Educational pacing guides and public school expectations.  Why do all kids need to write poems?  Why do they need to recognize forms of poems?  Isn't it enough to appreciate being around it in their culture, such as the wit in the songs from this movie?  In their leather, reclining seats in the cineplex?  I am going to show the excerpts from these lyrics just like I did with Frozen last year.  It is more engaging.



Interpreting standards these days has got me like...

 

 

 

In every kid's movie or play, I enjoy seeing and connecting to the pieces for adults.  This part of the Prologue fits what people my age in early adulthood and early marriage and complex relationships need to learn:

The spell is on my house.
Only I can lift the spell,
The spell is on my house.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
No, no, the spell is on our house.
We must lift the spell.

Read more: Into The Woods - Prologue Into The Woods Lyrics | MetroLyrics

The baker feels guilty for bringing that into the marriage so he feels it's his burden to take care of.  The wife insists that since they are married, they will address it as a team.  This is something I am learning too. 

Frozen's song "fixer upper" is about relationships too, the song is written for adults.

Bulda: We're not sayin' you can change him,
'Cause people don't really change. (Girl Trolls: Ahh Ahhh)
We're only saying that love's a force
That's powerful and strange.
People make bad choices if they're mad,
Or scared, or stressed.
Throw a little love their way.

Female Trolls: Throw a little love their way.

Bulda and Female Trolls: And you'll bring out their best.

All Trolls: True love brings out the best!
Everyone's a bit of a fixer-upper,
That's what it's all about!

Read more: Soundtrack - Fixer Upper Lyrics | MetroLyrics

My therapist helps me know that when people in love take it out on each other in relationships it is because that person is "the safest one in the room to do so."  The timing of this movie with my personal relationship was very serrendipitous.