Tag: the great escape

On that Stack of Essays I Got Through a Few Weeks Ago…

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Out of a small stack of essays, I gleaned the following interesting insight that I’d never thought of myself: It’s possible to argue that the main difference in the conception of the uncontrollable in Greek Mythology and Bible stories is that, for the Greeks, human problems were often a result of the gods and their machinations, while for the ancient Hebrews, humans were just as often responsible for getting themselves into a heap of trouble, out of which God would sometimes bail them, if they were good. That’s it. Hours of grading, and precisely one idea I’ve never seen before. …

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If You Wanna Be My 형…

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Yeah, sung to the tune of that horrible Spice Girls song. Ugh. Miss Jiwaku and I talked after she got back from her film program meeting today, about her frustrations. To what do her frustrations mostly connect? Older people who insist on “respect” and special treatment on account of their age, regardless of incompetence, rudeness, or plain stupidity. There’s an older person in her film program who is particularly useless, who apparently was constantly rude to her, who finally warmed up to her… why? Because she poured him soju with two hands and used the magic “term of respect” address …

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What I’ve Learned About Crises, or How My Vaguest Shadow of a Doubt Died Today…

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It’s been snowing heavily the last couple of days in my area. The thing about snowstorms–like other crises–is that they reveal a lot. It’s difficult to gauge the stability of a system in normal times, though of course you can guess. But a crisis, that lays bare a lot. Now, when I say it’s been snowing “heavily” allow me to adjust that comment: I don’t know what’s fallen so far, but the prediction for was 10cm, which just barely qualifies as heavy. (And today’s snow certainly was not heavy, though it was constant.) So… why did one of my colleagues (wisely) …

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Jah Wobble on Balance, Another Lovely Subway Encounter, and a Countdown

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I was listening to Jah Wobble’s album of William Blake-inspired music, which starts with this track: Doing a little more investigation, I found a neat interview with Wobble from around the time he put that out. He talks a lot about the  struggle to balance anger and integrity with the mental, emotional refreshment and grounding that one needs in order to be creative: He’s right: a certain degree of anger and honesty is energizing, but too much of it will just embitter you, and I know I’m certainly on the unbalanced side of it — and I know how it …

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