Watson’s Day of Reckoning

So. Have you noticed I’m repetitive? Well, I am. Today I started every class by making every student face the wall and stare at the dark green border running along it. And what was on that dark green border? Thumb tacks. Thumb tacks that were placed exactly 17 spaces after the previous thumb tack. What was the purpose of this exercise? To remind you that a person who would take the time to place dumb old thumb tacks exactly 17 spaces apart would also be nit picky enough to notice if you didn’t write using capital letters or didn’t answer every question on the assignment sheet or didn’t use quotes in the paragraph. I am that nit picky Thumb Tack Queen and I notice things.

So, if you didn’t do all the questions, your mark is low. And if you didn’t follow the instructions, your mark is low. And if you eliminated parts of the questions, your mark is low.

Today, you had the whole period as a Day of Grace. If you were missing any of the first three assignments, you could hand them in today until 5:00. After that, it becomes Life’s Lesson, not Watson’s Lesson.

UPDATE: File this under the categories of Delayed Reaction and/or Watson Still Having Trouble with Math. Exactly three weeks after this post, I look up to see two of you patiently counting the spaces between thumbtacks. Apparently I have inadvertently lied to you because a) my thumbtack memory isn’t working and b) it didn’t occur to me to recount. There are not 17 spaces between the thumbtacks. There are 38. I stand and sit corrected. I am very flattered that I have my own personal fact checkers. So do Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

English 10: The Metaphor

Well. I was looking for a picture of Miss Hancock. I typed in “middle aged brassy blond” and Victoria Beckham popped up. I don’t think she’d like that. In fact, I don’t think any of the people on the page would like it. I’ll try again. There we go. Is that what you thought Miss Hancock looked like? Can’t you just see her flapping her arms and talking about metaphors? No buses, though. I draw the line.

So, here’s the metaphor story: Only child named Charlotte is in Grade 7, has amazing class with amazing teacher and they go crazy about English for the whole year.  They write poetry and study Hamlet and write metaphors and it’s one great big love-in. Their teacher is Miss Hancock, an over the top, frousy flousy exuberant lady who is just the tiniest bit tacky but the biggest bit great. She has, however, a foil: her star pupil’s mother, the Queen of Black and White Decorating and Household Perfection. That would be Charlotte’s mother.

Charlotte’s mother makes Martha Stewart look like a character off Hoarders. She’s snarky and cold and … very cold. In fact Charlotte, who takes two baths a day, makes up metaphors about her mother in every bath, and in every metaphor her mother is either something cold or something prickly. This we can file under the category of Clue.

Time passes and Charlotte moves to a different town and a different school. No more sitting on the fence, picking daisy petals, and waiting for the Swinimer boy to pass by. She’s now on her way to Cool. So who does she see the first day of class? Miss Now Not So Cool Hancock. In fact, it’s beyond that. It’s Miss Beaten to a Pulp and Bullied on a Daily Basis Hancock. She has what must surely be the worst class of delinquents in the history of education and Charlotte watches her once beloved teacher lose every bit of confidence she ever had. And through it all, she pretends she doesn’t know Miss Hancock, never admired Miss Hancock, was never mentored by Miss Hancock. Then tragedy strikes. Miss Hancock is hit by a school bus and dies.

It’s just too much of a coincidence. Charlotte believes Miss Hancock committed suicide and it was her fault. She slaps the mouthiest boy in class, runs away from the school, and arrives home to find her mother thinking Miss Hancock’s death is a Good Thing. (I’m kind of stuck on the Martha Stewart idea. If I was casting the movie, Martha would be Mom.) Instead of falling in line, Charlotte goes up to her room and writes the best metaphor ever. It’s a tribute to Miss Hancock and you can tell by the story’s end, she’s going to be just like her. After all, she wrote the story.

English 11: The Painted Door

Trust me. I am not choosing grim stories on purpose. There are no other stories to choose from! … Sorry. But didn’t you like this one a little bit?

Okay. The story: Anne is a young wife living in a two room house with her dedicated, dutiful, dull husband. It’s snowing. It’s always snowing. It never stops snowing. Did I mention her house has two rooms? Here’s Anne’s life: Go into Room A, look out window, see snow. Or: Go into Room B, look out window, see snow. Of course, there’s always the other option: Go into Room C (outhouse) after walking through snow. Poor Anne. She’s young, she’s bored, and she’s got nothing to do but paint the walls and make raisin cakes, just in case husband John comes home and neighbour Steven comes over to play cards.

But will John return? There’s a double ring around the moon and that means a big storm. Anne can’t even find her way to the barn. Surely John will be sensible and stay at his dad’s. Oh, oh. Here’s Steven. This is ominous. Steven is insolent, arrogant, and bad news. Anne has a crush on Steven. Where’s John?

Okay, that’s as far as this precis goes. You know the ending. Paint on the door. Paint on John’s hand. John frozen to a fence. And where’s Steven? Nowhere to be seen.

Grim.

Here are some pictures for you. This is what I think John looks like. He just looks tired, don’t you think? And here’s Steven. Now you get why Anne wanted John to shave. I like John better. Steven just looks like some picture you’d find on a site of 1930s movie stars.

English 12: The Destructors

Interactive map of where all the bombs fell in London during the Blitz

English 10: A Christmas in Two Parts

So were you surprised? Never mind. We’ll see if the next two classes are. Don’t tell.

This story is the precursor to The Metaphor. Like the next story, this one was about a fifteen year old girl in Grade Ten. Also, like The Metaphor, it was full of metaphors. You’d almost think someone planned it …

English 11

No work for you. You went to the Assembly and listened to Keith Hawkins.

English 12: The Yellow Wallpaper

Well, aren’t you glad you have a teacher who took Women’s Studies at SFU just when women were starting to study their own history? No? Oh, well. You got me anyway.

So … The Yellow Wallpaper is the penultimate feminist short story. It was written about the same time the earliest suffragettes were campaigning for women’s rights and then later, the vote. The story can be read on many levels. It shows the subjugation of women within the domestic sphere. (Watch how the protagonist is constantly called a “little goose” and a “little dear” as if she’s four years old — and then watch how she isn’t allowed to make any choices at all. She can’t pick the room she’ll sleep in, can’t visit her relatives, can’t even write on a piece of paper. She has no rights. We say this now but it was true then.) It also shows the protagonist’s slow descent into insanity. (Watch how her disgust at the ugly wallpaper eventually turns into her identifying so strongly with the wallpaper she feels she is part of it.)

If you do a little research into Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life you’ll find that, like her heroine, she suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of her first child. In those days, the solution was to offer a “rest cure”; the patient was sent away into the country and told not to think for a few weeks. When this didn’t work, she returned home and resumed thinking. After a period of time when Charlotte was thinking and still depressed, her husband decided the best solution would be a divorce. The family would be stabilized and Charlotte could get her act together. Ironically, that is exactly what happened. She moved to California with a friend and became an intellectual. It is very much the story she outlined in The Yellow Wallpaper. Who knows how much suffering could have been alleviated if she and John’s wife had been allowed to express themselves in the first place.

Here’s an article on Charlotte Perkins Gilman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman

A Watson Mystery

What do you think this is? My son found it yesterday on top of a mountain right on the Canada/US border between BC and Montana. To get to that mountain, you have to go by helicopter and not many people go there. There is nothing on the mountain but … nothing. He went with a bunch of people who went there, stood around, looked at the view, and then left. And he found this rock.

Was the rock already chipped and someone drew the lines within it? Did someone draw the lines and then chip accordingly? Who chips a rock at the top of a mountain no one goes to? What do the lines mean? Are they drawn on or part of the rock? MYSTERY. What do you think? Tell me.

The Metaphor

“Everyone experiences life in a different way.” That was the writing assignment … and here’s the irony. I had every single class write two paragraphs on the same topic. The Grade 10’s wrote it. The Grade 11’s wrote it. The Grade 12’s wrote it. And every single class had The Metaphor, too. One by one, you sat at the side of my desk and I explained the metaphor to you.

Right now I have no picture of it because I left it at school. I will put it on the blog on Monday. For those who missed school yesterday, the Metaphor is a portion of a stump that has been sliced down the side and sanded down. There are three levels of sanding: rough, semi rough, and smooth as marble. When you look at the stump you can see it’s all one piece of wood but it’s been altered. The metaphor is that it’s like your writing. When you do a first draft, it’s rough; second draft is a little better; third (or successive drafts) would be polished and perfect.

The message of the Metaphor is that many people are handing in rough drafts. I’m seeing spelling errors, random capitalization, aberrant punctuation, and ideas that float around and go nowhere. That, obviously, isn’t the case for everyone — but I’m seeing enough of it that I have to say, “Nope. Don’t do that.”

Non Violent Cat Video

You all needed a break from isolation chambers, neighbourhood stonings, mailmen done in by literary devices, and the Yellowknife garbage dump. Here’s a man who loves his cat. What’s not to like?

Real Life Isolation Chamber

Losing your mind: What happens during 48 hours in a pitch black bunker

by NATASHA COURTENAY-SMITH

Not a laughing matter: Comedian Adam Bloom had hallucinations during the experiment

You are in a small underground chamber, no bigger than a prison cell. The door is locked and the lights are switched out.

It is not just dark; it’s pitch black.

In these conditions, it would be impossible to see even the faintest hint of your hand were it inches from your eyes. And the silence is all-encompassing.

The only noise you can hear is the sound of your own breathing . . . in and out, in and out.

The sense of isolation is not just eerie, it’s as if you had been cast into the furthest reaches of space, or into the deepest subterranean cavern.

Now imagine staying in these conditions for hours on end. With no way to tell whether it was night or day, would you pass the time asleep?

Or, if awake, how would you stay alert in the absence of a single sight, sound or stimulus?

Could any human, in fact, endure such total sensory deprivation without losing their sanity?

That was what British scientists sought to discover in one of the most extreme and controversial experiments to be conducted on the human mind.

They put a group of six volunteers into a total isolation chamber, constructed in a former nuclear bunker in Hertfordshire, to monitor the effects it would have on their mind and physical health over 48 hours.

The results, to be shown on a BBC2 documentary tonight, are intriguing. But this was not just a reality show stunt.

The researchers involved hoped to shed new light on the validity of statements given by terror suspects who have been held in extreme conditions in camps such as Guantanamo Bay.

“It is important to look at the impact of sensory deprivation because of the number of places around the world where it is used as a weapon or to aid interrogation,” says Professor Steven Robbins, who oversaw the experiments and is one of the Britain’s leading experts on the effects of psychological torture.

“We know that stimulating the brain helps increase connections in the brain that speeds up information processing, but we wanted to find out if the reverse occurs.”

The risks were considerable. Similar experiments carried out in the Fifties by Canadian psychologist Professor Donald Hebb had to be abandoned after volunteers were unable to endure the conditions for more than 48 hours.

Monitored: CCTV shows each isolation room in the bunker

One subject described the sensory deprivation as being “as bad as anything Hitler had ever done to any of his victims”.

Afterwards, Hebb reported that the “very identity” of his subjects had begun to disintegrate within two days.

That is why sensory deprivation is still used as a means of extracting information from prisoners, though human rights campaigners claim it is inhumane and an unreliable technique.

So, who would be brave, or foolish, enough to undergo a similar ordeal voluntarily?

Step forward comedian Adam Bloom, 37, one of the six human guinea pigs who agreed to undergo solitary confinement in the bunker, and have the effects on his brain monitored for the TV documentary.

For two days and two nights, he sat in total darkness and silence, while the researchers were able to observe his behaviour using night-vision cameras. As with real-life prisoners of war, his only comfort was an occasional meal brought to him by his “captors”.

“I’m a very busy person, with a mind that is always racing with thoughts and ideas,” says Bloom.

“My job involves coming up with new jokes all the time and I work by constantly observing my surroundings for anything that I could use on stage.

“I reckoned 48 hours wasn’t that long and I was sure I could cope.”

So what happened when the door was slammed shut?

“I spent the first half an hour in the bunker talking, singing and making jokes, but that quickly got boring. So, I took to sitting on my bed, staring in front of me.

“My mind filled up with thoughts of my life outside, and I started to worry about my fiancÈe and family. What if something happened to them while I’m in here? Would anyone let me know? It didn’t take me long to feel more anxious that I usually would.”

Gruelling: Volunteers spent two days in total isolation to monitor effects on their mind

Within a few hours of entering the bunker, Bloom fell asleep. But when he woke up, he realised that coping with sensory deprivation was going to be far tougher than he’d imagined.

“In the absence of a watch or sunlight, I’d totally lost track of time,” he says. “I dozed on and off for what I thought was a few hours, but when I woke up I had no idea whether it was day or night. It was really unnerving.

“Even eating the meals I was handed didn’t help me reset my body clock. I felt horrendously bored, and completely out of touch with everything.”

Eighteen hours into the experiment, Bloom began to get increasingly paranoid.

“At one point, I started singing and then I burst into tears,” he says. “I can’t remember the last time I cried, and I felt my emotions were beginning to run out of control.”

“Then, I found myself suspecting the whole experiment was a trick. How did I know who these people really were? What if they’d gone home and I was trapped down there for ever?

“I knew I was being ridiculous, because setting up the experiment had taken months and involved lengthy meetings and e-mails, but I couldn’t shake the sense of paranoia.”

By the time he had been in the bunker for 24 hours, Bloom’s mental alertness was slowing down.

“Without light, it was almost impossible to stimulate myself and my brain felt as though it was going to sleep,” he says.

But his real troubles came 30 hours into the experiment. By then, he had taken to pacing the room endlessly in a bid to keep himself occupied.

“This behaviour is often seen in animals, as well as people, when they are kept in confinement,” says Professor Robbins. “It’s a way of providing input into your life physically.”

Isolation: Time spent in the bunker reduced memory, ability to process information and increased suggestibility

But after 40 hours, events took a more sinister turn. Bloom began to hallucinate: he saw a pile of 500 oyster shells. “I could see the pearly sheen on the oyster shells as clear as day,” he says.

Bloom says: “Then I felt as though the room was taking off from underneath me. For the first time, I realised that the lack of stimulation was driving me close to insanity.

“I felt nothing but numbness, as though I was losing the will to live.

“I considered pulling out, but I told myself that at least I could comfort myself with the thought that my ordeal was soon going to be over. Some prisoners have had to endure these conditions for months, or even years.”

Bloom was released after 48 hours to undergo psychological tests. The results were compared with identical tests he had carried out before his incarceration, and showed a clear impairment of his ability to process information, a reduction in memory and an increase in suggestibility.

How people’s brains are affected by a short spell of isolation is not fully understood, but Professor Robbins believes that dendrites – which connect nerve cells and help them to communicate – may lose some of their efficacy if not continually stimulated.

But for Bloom, there was an unexpected outcome. “When we’d arrived at the bunker before the experiment, I had thought it was all rather bleak,” he says.

“The exterior was all overgrown and the bunker was an eyesore. But when I left after 48 hours, I noticed how green the grass was, how blue the sky was and hundreds of yellow buttercups.

“It was staggeringly beautiful. Even washing my hands under the tap was amazing.

“I made a vow that I would never not notice and appreciate my surroundings again.

“I’m glad I did it, but no sum of money would convince me to go through 48 hours on my own again. It was the greatest endurance test of my life.”

English 10: North End Faust

This is such a good story. I’m sure it’s even better if you’ve been to Winnipeg where it takes place. A couple of you have been there but most of us haven’t. So for the rest of us, here’s some background. This is the actual bridge at the end of the story. It’s called the Redwood Bridge. Here’s the University of Winnipeg, where Alex had his office.

So, to review, story in a nutshell: Alex is a university professor specializing in the effect of isolation on the human psyche. He’s always been interested in isolation because he’s always been isolated. He is, in fact, what’s known as an isolate, someone who doesn’t enjoy the company of others. As a child he was locked in a closet by his siblings and that might have been the start of his predilection.

As a teenager, he was an extreme loner and then he went to university where he continued to be a loner, and then he became a professor — who studied aloneness. He creates an isolation chamber to see how ordinary people will be affected. Read the article beside this post. It matches Alex’s observations to a t. People are absolutely beside themselves with terror in Alex’s isolation chamber and pretty much the same in the real one in England.

Fast forward in Alex’s life. Unlike Mr. Bloom who lasts 48 hours in the English version, Alex toughs it out for two weeks in his isolation chamber. Clearly, he’s figured out how to cope. He creates an interior world that is more real than the real world. He imagines creating a northern cottage from scratch: chopping down trees, hauling them up a hill, building a cabin. Then he realizes he’s actually in a dark room and panics. Not to worry. The door opens and he’s met with instant fame.

That would be all well and good if two things weren’t happening: totalitarian governments are using his techniques to torture people and … he’s slowly going insane. So this is the point to mention the title: North End Faust. Dr. Faustus was the protagonist in a German legend famous for only one thing. He sold his soul to the devil so that he could gain knowledge. He got everything he wanted until the devil came to collect. The same thing happens to Alex. He gained knowledge and fame and then in the end, he lost everything.

So you are left to decide. Was Alex mentally ill or was he at the mercy of the powers of darkness? The author really gives us ample evidence for both views. He also gives us ample warning about isolation chambers. And if he didn’t warn you enough, I will! Being alone in a room with no light or sound or humans isn’t really a happy place.

English 11: The Harness

This is probably the most subtle short story you’ll ever read in high school. No. In your entire life time! The setting is a farm, probably in the 1950s (Clue: price of Coca Cola.) The characters: a man and his seven year old son. The mother died when the boy was born and the dad has been raising him on his own. The boy is 100% focussed on every tiny little nuance in his dad’s mood. ‘

More to come…

English 12: The Lottery

How can I say this in a nice way? I am not overly fond of Shirley Jackson. Apparently she had a wicked sense of humour but I also think she’s just kind of … wicked. I don’t like the people in the town of Lets-Kill-Someone-and-Go-Have-Lunch, Vermont and the two memoirs she wrote on motherhood seem a tetch odd, too. The first one was called Life Among the Savages and the second, Raising Demons. No problems with self-esteem for her kids. I’ll tell you one thing. If I was their teacher, I’d be absent on Meet the Teacher Night. She’s just creepy.

Here’s a nice picture for you. It could be Shirley Jackson, her demented daughter, and her demented daughter’s demonic cat; it could be the people in the Lottery; it could be the cover of one of her other creepy books. Which do you think? (Answer at the bottom of the post.)

Okay, that rant’s over. Back to the plot. Small town, probably in Vermont, probably in the 1950’s. Women wear aprons, call their husbands “the old man,” and take the time to do their dishes before they go out to stone someone on a nice sunny day. People are orderly, agreeable, and believers in tradition.

They don’t remember the tradition or know why they follow the tradition but they do it anyway. They have the black box. They have the white paper with the black spot. They have the dividing up into family units. Isn’t life great in Kill-Your-Neighbour, Vermont?

Okay. Here’s a phrase you may or may not have heard of: suspension of disbelief. That’s when your brain tells you something makes absolutely no sense but you ignore that and keep reading the story anyway. Here’s what my brain asked me. Would these people actually give little Davey a handful of pebbles to kill his own mother? Wouldn’t somebody with half a brain say, “You know this is kind of primitive and abhorrent and I’ve just read the Wikipedia entry for Normal Vermont Behaviour and we’re like five centuries behind the times”? Isn’t a sense of justice inherent in human beings? Isn’t there anyone intelligent enough in this small town to protest this barbaric behaviour? Could they really “speed it up” and go eat their lunches? Wouldn’t someone steal the stupid black box from the grocery store? Wouldn’t someone leave that town? What’s wrong with the young people in this town? Why are they putting up with this? Who likes corn that much that you kill someone to have a good corn crop?

An on another note: Did you notice I just taught you parallel construction? It was in all the sentences with three equal parts up at the top. Want to know about the picture? It’s the cover of her book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. And — no kidding — I found it in an article titled “Creepy Literature.” You see the two weird girls? Their names are Constance and Merricat Blackwood and they were modelled after Shirley Jackson’s two real life daughters: Creepy Jackson and Even Creepier Jackson. Seriously. I really want to find out about her family. I’m digging. Stay tuned.

Addendum: Ha! Knew I’d find something. Here’s an article on Shirley Jackson and her husband, written by someone who doesn’t like either. Take a look at the comments. Most of Shirley Jackson’s children commented. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/03/22/the-strange-world-of-stanley-edgar-hyman-and-shirley-jackson-essay/ Isn’t the internet interesting? You’re too young to remember, but there used to be a time when people had really quite useless ideas and mindless curiosity and they did absolutely nothing about it. That was when we just had books.

English 10: The Portable Phonograph

I know you know what I would keep if there was a nuclear war. That CD of Leonard Cohen I play about fifteen times a day. Of course, I’d have to get him to rerecord it to play on a portable phonograph with a thorn needle because there’d definitely be no electricity. Wasn’t that a weird story today? Four men in a cave: one blocking out memory, one enticing memory, one owning the means to have memory, and one thinking the whole time, How can I steal the phonograph? What would he do to attain it? How violent would he be? How violent would the owner be to protect his property?

There are so many levels to this story: man craving beauty, man doomed to violence, man doomed to extinction. I am really looking forward to reading your paragraph responses. Some of you were getting really quite philosophical. I like that.

Don’t you find it amazing that they still have the will to survive, knowing they are doomed? That must be intrinsic in man, too.

English 11: The Prospector’s Trail

Well, somebody’s been reading the travel guide for Fred Henne Park outside of Yellowknife. I think maybe the writer of this story. Here’s what the guidebook says: “Fred Henne Territorial park: Forest-encircled Long Lake, opposite Yellowknife Airport, is used by visitors mainly for the excellent camping facilities, but it’s also a good example of the wilderness surrounding the city. The four-kilometer (2.5-mile) round-trip Prospector’s Trail, which begins from the campground, is a good way to experience the unique landscape. You can hike to the park from the city center along the trails around Frame Lake.” So that’s where the title of the story came from. The Prospector’s Trail is the hike around the lake Roy took Norman on.

Here’s a video showing the actual campsite in the story. It even has the concrete picnic table Norman stubbed his toe on! It kind of makes you understand why Jennifer went back to Winnipeg.

Here’s a video of the Yellowknife Garbage Dump.

Here’s the shirt Norman is sending Jennifer for Christmas.

English 12: The Jade Peony

The Jade Peony is the story ….

Watch the Shadow

Your Blogs

I’ve been snooping on your blogs and they’re wonderful. When you have time, play around and be creative. This doesn’t have to be a boring school blog. It can be an interesting school blog. Add pictures and videos and audio, if you want. I’m interested in seeing what your interests are.

Miscellaneous Info

How To: Here’s an example of what I mean by finding a quote from the story. You’re not writing a  sentence, you’re finding a sentence.

Lucy’s trait: critical

a. “I promised myself I won’t say another word. But I can’t resist a silent comment: as the car heads toward a curve at sixty miles an hour, I raise a hand deliberately and brace myself against the dashboard.”

Reminder:

• Don’t forget to have your parents look at my blog and read your Outline; then have them sign your Outline. Thanks!
• Don’t forget to make your blog. You can see your classmates’ blogs by going to Blogs English 10/11/12 at the top of this page
• Don’t forget your first Short Story assignments are due next week. English 11: Due Monday Sept 10; English 12: Due Monday Sept 10; English 10: Due Tuesday Sept 11.