atticus

When the three of us came to her house, Atticus would sweep off his hat, wave gallantly to her and say, "Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening."

I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she'd have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.


-chapter 11

Miss Maudie

"People in their right minds never take pride in their talents."


-to kill a mockingbird.

entering ME

it's been so long, i've forgotten where i left off in summer-travels-posting...

...we went up to Boston, and then over to NY, and then through VT and NH...

It was raining when we left New Hampshire. We were sad to leave. We dropped off Jeremy at the Manchester airport, and the area was none too pretty. We didn't really have much of a plan, and the rain stifled ideas. We headed for the coast and starting looking for a place to camp. I think the hope was that it would be nice in the morning for a bike ride along the waterfront. Instead, we drove along 1A where we were told we'd have nice views. Which we would have had if it were clear.

And we headed up into Maine.

We stopped at the state welcome center, only to find it closed. But we were saved by a few computers that let us navigate the parks and camping sites online. So we found a few options and got back on the road, figuring we might as well cover ground so long as it was raining.

Our destination: the desert of Maine. oh yes.

We chose the spot because 1. we could find it and 2. it was by L.L.Bean which was a stop we had in mind.

So, we camped in the rain.

(hot dogs and couscous presumably. hot dog buns: side loading.)

The next morning we actually showered since we were wet and gross...
and then we had to spread e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g out in the back seat to dry: sleeping bags, sleeping bads, tent, towels, tarp, clothes....
And we went to visit the desert, since we had a coupon after camping there.

it was as you can imagine: ridconculous.
Courtney explains it here.

So we left and headed into Freeport. Here we visited the L.L.Bean outlet where I found a pair of hiking boots (to go very nicely with the socks daddy gave me, which are on my feet far more often the boots are). And then we went to the actual store which is huge and quite entertaining.











and then lunch, the most memorable: we had a lobster roll. amazing.


We got back in the car and started driving; we hugged the coast on Route 1 passing through Camden.

It was here I believe that we found a grocery store to buy some dinner - some fillets of fish and gnocchi. We were looking for a place to picnic, and found a state park where we drove up Mt. Battie for this lovely view of Penobscot Bay.
But the park was closing, and I had my heart set on picnicking by the water. We figured we'd stop for dinner, and then spend the evening driving all the way up to Acadia. So we drove onward looking for a nice spot on the road. We came across a small public beach, and proceeded to unload the car of the necessities for cooking dinner. I think this is probably where the photo of me in the back of messy Scout comes from. I can explain: besides the wet things drying in the back seat, we had our bikes on the back of the car. This makes using the trunk a huge ordeal. The result is that we would pull things out through the back seats, creating serious disorganization in boxes of foodstuffs and bags of clothings. And when the wet tent and sleeping bags weren't in their pouches, well, it was a bit like a volcano of camping gear had exploded in the back of Scout.

Anyway, we set up the stove on the beach and started cooking our food, enjoying the water and sand. But the folks there sure thought we were weird. We got sideways glances, and heard stern warnings to their kids to stay away from us. Beats me. We had such a nice meal of our salmon and gnocchi. And then got back in Scout, heading for Acadia NP.

Why we oppose votes for men:

1. BECAUSE man's place is the armory.

2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.

3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.

4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums.

5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them peculiarly unfit for the task of government.



more from Alice Duer Miller

folks call me Dill

(for Carol)


"I'm Charles Baker Harris.  I can read. ... I just though you'd like to know I can read.  You got anything needs readin' I can do it..."

"How old are you," asked Jem, "four-and-a-half?"

"Goin' on seven."

"Shoot no wonder, then," said Jem, jerking his thumb at me.  "Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school yet.  You look right puny for goin' on seven."

"I'm little but I'm old." 

scout

"Dill was becoming something of a trial anyway, following Jem about. He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good. "


- chapter 5

Why we oppose pockets for women:

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pickets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife has to whose pockets were to be filled.
   
6. Because it would destroy man's chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.
   
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.
   
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We so no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.
   

Are Women People?: A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage
by Alice Duer Miller


(we're studying the Twenties right now)

flagpole sitting

"If you'll concede the necessity of going to school, we'll go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?"

"Yes sir!"

"We'll consider it sealed without the usual formality," Atticus said, when he saw me preparing to spit.

As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, "By the way, Scout, you'd better not say anything at school about our agreement."

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by the more learned authorities."

Jem and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and we were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

"Huh, sir?"

"I never went to school," he said, "but I have a feeling that if you tell Miss Caroline we read every night she'll get after me, and I wouldn't want her after me."

Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of print about a man who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason, which was reason enough for Jem to spend the following Saturday aloft in the treehouse. Jem sat from after breakfast until sunset and would have remained overnight had not Atticus severed his supply lines. I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running errands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

means spring

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthosue sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; boney mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock napes, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

I love spring. and I love To Kill a Mockingbird. And reading To Kill a Mockingbird means spring. This is the fourth year of reading this book, ushering in spring in Atlanta. It's full of memories of blossoms and light green buds, reading on the porch and smelling the spring smell. It's my favorite book, and I love that it has associations so lovely too. I love that when we finish, we will watch Gregory Peck, and it will be truly warm, and nearly time for the lovely festival outside my front door.

I love everything about To Kill a Mockingbird. I love every word and the way it sounds when you read aloud. I love the part above, especially those last two sentences. I can hear the narrator's voice in the film saying it with that gentle lull. And then I can hear Dill, popping out of the collards patch, and Atticus's voice calling, 'Scout'...

lamentations

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceaes,
His merces never come to an end;
They are new every morning
Great is Your faithfulness.

"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."

3:21-24

fingerpost

i really like this quote.

hugo, the end of the frogs

When I titled the previous post Hugo, I had a premonition.  I had a feeling that I would return to school to find our second frog gone.  And indeed, word was given to me within five minutes of arriving, that Hugo hadn't survived our absence.  Victor died at the beginning of the year.  Hugo lived to a ripe old age.  He lived in the company of goldfish who didn't always treat him kindly, but who will miss him dearly. 

Hugo died in the care of the fifth grade, who no doubt gave him a solemn funeral with a sweet dirge. 
Remembering Hugo

Hugo

I finished reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret before departing on my recent journey to the Capital. It was a nice story. I thought the mixture of word and picture storytelling was creative. And I like the strong image it gave me of the story.

The setting was a train station in Paris in probably the 30s. It was a bit of a peculiar story. I don't know that I can say I loved it. I was really hoping to love it. But it was just all right. I wish I could pinpoint what was lacking. It was nice in the end.

night sky

Tonight I saw one of the coolest things I have ever seen with my own eyes (and not a picture). I saw Saturn.
And it really looked like that! It was tilted at just the angle of this picture. I couldn't see any of its color - it was just a bright white ball. Way more beautiful than this picture. I couldn't see that darker stripe in the rings, but I could see the shadow of the rings on the planet, and the black spots on their side of the planet between the rings and the planet. It was amazing. And it wasn't a picture - it was the real thing. I learned that to date we've counted 60 moons around Saturn. A satellite of Saturn recently found 12 more. And this just out: last Saturday they discovered rings around a moon of Saturn's - the first moon found with rings ever!

I've never done anything like this before. One time, when I was in a park in Utah, a ranger had a sun-telescope set up and I got to look at the sun and see a sunspot. That was aMazing.

I can't believe I've never done it before. It's free - I can just go to the observatory and hang out there and look at the sky, and it's only a few miles from my house. The whole observatory is on top of a little building, and it's like the Black Maria - the roof has a hole in it and it rotates to see a piece of the sky. And in the middle of the room is a huge telescope. A computer operates the whole thing - the astronomer just types in what he wants to see and the ceiling and telescope start moving. And he explains very nicely what you're seeing. I also saw a star that's actually two stars - looked like headlights coming sideways. Binary star? And a cluster of stars - beautiful. M34 maybe? Can't see them with the naked eye - but you could with binoculars. And a fuzzy nebulous with stars in the middle in Orion's sword. M42 I think. And then I waved at the Little Prince on B612 and went home.

DaFont

Wow. I got some sweet fonts here. All free. Really fun stuff.

Check out:

Bleeding Cowboy

Jane Austen

Tiza

and there's lots more.

Here's how you do it:
Download the fonts that you like from http://www.dafont.com
Just stick em on your desktop.
The files are zipped. Double click to open.
Click on "Extract all files."
You choose where you want them to go: send them right to your font folder at C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
Re-open Word.
Voila.

it needs more than a footnote

this blog is hilarious: Stuff White People Like
this post in particular caused me to laugh out loud: hope i didn't awake sleeping, flu-y Courtney.
oh, and this one too about moving to canada. brilliant.

of course, here's the post I was referencing in previous entry.


oh, this is funny: the author is interviewed here on npr.
he is, by the way, as white as they come.

white people like npr

Tonight I heard an interview with Naomi Wolf on her book End of America. It's not online yet, but I found this earlier interview here which includes a rebuttal. Listen.

To sum up, Naomi Wolf has noticed connections between our government and the end of democracy in several states around the world in the twentieth century. She distinguished ten steps that these governments had taken in becoming fascist and argues that we have taken two: loss of privacy and torture. ....man, I don't feel like putting words in her mouth, so just listen to the interview.

There was more detail in tonight's interview; look back for it.

So, I realize this is quite an extreme statement. And I'm not about to jump off a cliff over it. But it got my mind spinning on a lot of issues. I realized two things fundamental to my thinking that I ought to challenge:

1. the idea that the government is trustworthy. I guess I've always had the view that I could trust the people in leadership and that they were there to protect me. I'm not really sure how I could learn and teach about all the governments that do terrible things and not get the idea that government is capable of terrible things. Now, I do think we have a good constitution, and I know we have good checks and balances. But I think my assumption that our government is trustworthy is where, I think now, I am fundamentally off: my government is populated by humans.
   
2. that I don't care that much about the Patriot Act because I'm not worried about the government reading or paying attention to anything I say or write. With assumption 1, I was convinced that the government would suspend my rights in order to protect me, and I felt OK with it. But Wolf's connection between loss of rights and privacy to a totalitarian state suddenly made me realize how much I wanted to protect my rights. And with loss of assumption 1, I feel this more strongly.
   

After the interview with Naomi Wolf, a man is interviewed who refutes her position. So listen to that too. Near the end of the rebuttal, the interviewee made this point: he said Wolf was defeating her own argument by being so extremest; that while her concerns with the Patriot Act and Guantanamo are valid and important, she is discrediting herself by likening our government to the Nazis.

but, for me, seeing the historical connection -not that I am necessarily fearing a fascist future for America- but that realizing the connection between loss of privacy and torture to fascism sure made me think again about my previously ambivalent opinion of the Patriot Act. And strengthened my conviction against torture.


open to discussion.


[ps: there is an excellent Op-Ed on the blog linked in this post's title: White Like Us]