voncookie | September 5, 2010
I guess I’m blogging again. Funny. maria callas told me a few weeks ago that I would get back into it. I said “no, no, no” because I couldn’t imagine what I’d have to blog about, since I try not to blog about specific things about work/students/people I know. Or rather, I try not to [...]
voncookie | August 30, 2010
Tomorrow I have to march into the classroom and give a class on the late 19th-century short story in Spain. A story by Leopoldo Alas (aka Clarín) titled “¡Adios, Cordera!” Here’s my problem: while I’ve studied both 19th and 20th century Spanish literature extensively, I feel a little ragged with Clarín, mostly because the last [...]
voncookie | February 21, 2010
A little tidbit of news: I’ve been asked by a faculty member at Big U to teach a summer session SEMINAR on Spanish Lit. The only reason I’ll be able to teach a seminar is because by July, I will have filed. (Hell, hopefully by mid-March I will have filed!) So this will be my [...]
voncookie | November 8, 2009
Like summer in Liberal Paradise, today my brain fog lifted for about 6 hours around mid-day, and then came back, not with a vengeance, as one might assume, but enough to keep me from wanting to drive long distances. I couldn’t even make it to the Sev, for the love of Pete! Stupid Brain Fog. [...]
voncookie | October 17, 2009
I just drove by C’s house– where Dee used to live– to see if C (or anyone else) was there, on the off chance that maybe I could quell this afternoon’s melancholy feeling about Dee’s death with some company and some shared memories, and maybe a little talk about Teh Now, and what’s happening in [...]
voncookie | September 2, 2009
This was the question that I asked in class today as a part of a writing workshop, the first part of which (in the previous class) had involved seriously deconstructing the argument of a traditional essay. Today I wanted my students to start thinking for themselves a bit, and so I had them read some [...]
voncookie | June 6, 2008
I nearly forgot where they were. But now I have them in my possession: my old notebooks from my high school English classes. They’re dated with month and year: Sept-Nov 1991, and peppered with R.E.M. lyrics on the covers, along with whole lists of the literary works covered inside. I have yet to really dive [...]
voncookie | May 22, 2008
I saw something tonight at Big Chain Bookstore that made me giggle. It was a stack on the Remainder table (aka, the “Bargain Book” table) of the hardcover edition of The Bridges of Madison County. What made me laugh was the fact that that book came out sometime around 1995, when I was working at [...]
voncookie | January 16, 2008
Tonight I watched a film adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s 1934 play Yerma, and all I can really say is: ¡Ay! (And not in a good way…) Yerma is part of the Rural Trilogy, comprised of Bodas de Sangre (1932), Yerma, and La casa de Bernarda Alba (1935) (about which I wrote an entry last [...]
voncookie | December 11, 2007
I confess I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t truly support my argument in favor of the book. But I’ve been snooping around (and not on the Internets) and asking people’s opinions about the book, and I’m starting to draw my own conclusions. I’ve even bought the book, against my normal rules against reading [...]
