whistle while you work.

Howdy-doo! Where have I been? Why, I've been here all the time, you just couldn't see me, as I was/am in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Or maybe YOU were/are in a state of quantum flux. You should get that checked out, dude.

Here I sit, proctoring my own exam. (did I use that correctly? Should I say "administering," like a much-needed vaccine against ignorance? "Inflicting," perhaps? Like a tool for the mass genocide of the tribes of "Iforgot'tostudy" and "yourclass-istoo-hard" ?) and reading blogs, for the first time in, quite actually, months. What a relief--- it's nice to have blogfriends that are readers and thinkers and livers. (ew.)

So much going on, but most of it the same-old, same-old, muchness-of-going-on-ness. Clearly I'm in linguistically playful (or playfully linguistic) writing mood/mode today... isn't this fun?

Enough of my self-indulgence on that score. Let's see...my students are diligently working on some of the toughest exam questions I've ever seen. The best part? I know they're going to be just fine. These kids* are not stupid, they're not even from a poor educational background. Most of them simply lack the tools + confidence + confidence in ability to use the tools that a literature course requires.

What are those tools, really? Well, that's what I'm working on.

Obviously, reading skills. (duh.) But, I actually mean that in a more advanced sense than simple phonetic awareness or so-called "fluency," or even simple vocabulary comprehension. I'm thinking about all of those skills that we IRD teachers learned, and subsequently taught, summer after summer, wherein comprehension isn't simply understanding what happened, rather it's the connection of this what to the questions of character motivation, awareness of narrative structure (even at a subconscious level), connections between action and consequence, and reader response input, i.e., what the reader brings to the work and thus, either consciously or subconsciously, imposes on his own interpretation.

And this is what I think about as my students compose BRILLIANT (I just know it) essays on The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Oedipus, the King, the Book of Genesis, and Akhenaten's "Hymn to the Sun." **

Oh, and I'll put some knitting up soon... I was a hat-knitting-crazy-person this Christmas, and I have a few scarves n' things to show off, including an almost done gift for Linda Musgrove ... that I can't talk about b/c I haven't given it to her yet.

And, oh yeah, that OTHER THING. You know what I'm talkin' about. Hehehe. I love secrets.

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* Yeah, um, many of my students are hardly kids - and those that are not under the age of 25 are just plain awesome.

**Not all in the same essay, of course. I have to read these, you know!