Anna Karenina Chunks

As a comment on the blog post, do a point sentence and DIDLS chunk for the excerpt from Anna Karenina. (4 sentences total)

Point sentence: In Chapter One, Tolstoy uses _ to ___.
Detail: From the text (Embed quotations, signal phrases....) Make sure to SHOW the rhetorical strategy you are talking about in the point sentence!
CM1: Significance of the strategy, work in the lit terms
CM2: How is this strategy working towards the author's purpose?

A Call to Care

Hell on Earth. This phrase brings with it so many images. Fire. Destruction. Death. Hollywood has provided scenes for us in countless movies, but I do not picture some contrived moment of special effects. Real life provides enough images, more horrifying in their reality than any screenwriter or director can produce. After viewing Los Angeles Times reporter Carolyn Cole’s moving piece of photojournalism entitled, “So Many People Who Need Help”, I have seen “hell on Earth.” So many people in our privileged country need to see these images to remind ourselves of our incredible good fortune and the multitude of less fortunate people in this big world that need our help.

Cole’s audio slide show documents the days after the tragic 7.0 earthquake that hit the small Caribbean island of Haiti on January 24, 2010. Amid the pictures of buildings crumbling to dust and UN officials doling out much needed aid, I am struck by the faces of the victims. Their eyes hold such agony, yet I could see such resiliency of the human spirit as well. Incredibly human images of a man carrying his sleeping child and families huddled together around the light of a single candle remind me that these are people, not so different from myself, and their world has been turned upside down. The final shot of the police officer, struck down by another officer who mistook him for a looter, is telling of the experience itself. The streets must have been chaos. I can imagine that authorities desperately tried to do something, anything, to bring order to the pandemonium, but the screams and the panic and the death just continued on. Hell on Earth.

Worse than these pictures were those that I found as I searched through the attached galleries. These images were too strong to show my class of high school students. They were too strong for me. People walked calmly past mounds of bodies piled in the streets. A man was caught on camera in his greatest moment of pain after finding his wife and ten-month-old baby on the top of a gruesome stack of dead human beings. My nightmares will be haunted by these pictures, but I chose to not bring those visions to my students.

It always strikes me at the oddest moments how blessed I am to be so safe and sheltered from the world’s tragedies. I can put my daughter to bed in her pink nursery and sip ice tea on my couch and almost forget that others are starving and frightened. It is so easy to see the victims as images on the news. But these are people with families and dreams, and when hell on Earth came to them, they had to survive and go on. Who am I to sit on my pedestal and pretend there is nothing that I can do? I can give blood. I can donate. I can spread the message. I can care. If we all just cared... Imagine the good we could do.

Dreams

Dreams kindle our hearts
With a burning flame of desire
A beacon in the night,
They guide our paths through the darkness.
Oh, but how quickly the harsh wind
Can dampen their flame!

But what happens to lost dreams?
Do they die,
Leaving only the acrid smell
Of dreams lost,
And a permanent darkness,
Or do they continue to smolder,
Waiting for the chance to light again?

I Am....

I am flighty and unpredictable.

I wonder if I'll ever be whole.

I hear the ocean singing me to sleep.

I see magic sparkling in the air.

I want to read every book on the shelf.

I am flighty and unpredictable.



I pretend to dance before a crowd.

I feel the caress of the mountains.

I touch the miracles of God.

I worry that life will pass me by.

I cry when my daughter reaches for my hand.

I am flighty and unpredictable.



I understand that life is a gift.

I say seize the day.

I dream of living on the edge.

I try to teach love and openness.

I hope to leave footprints behind.

I am flighty and unpredictable.

A Whole New Movie!

I am staring in my own personal movie all the time. I am the heroine. There are villains, supporting actors, a romantic lead... Somehow, every song on my iPod speaks to me personally, giving my movie a soundtrack that is always perfect.

But wait! Doesn't everyone have a movie? I may be one of a series of supporting actors! We all have history. We all live with our memories, joy, and pain. The world is so much bigger than me! When I take some time to step outside myself, even for a moment, something beautiful happens; I remember my humanity. I snap out of my self-possessed stupor and engross myself in another's movie.

After reading through the plethora of suggestions to heighten the "six senses" in Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind, I decided that I wanted to do everything. Of course, then I realized that I had to get a blog post finished quickly, so I would have to start with one. I do own the fact that I am a bit dramatic and self-absorbed, so an exercise I need... reality check! Just look how many times I have used the word "I"! It was time for me to reach out, connect, and listen to someone besides myself. I thought of my sister-in-law. I would be surprised not to find her picture next to the word "mom" in a dictionary. She's warm, loving, and completely super-human in her ability to mother three boys without having a nervous breakdown. But, what do I REALLY know about her? Do I know what moves her? Do I know her adventurous side? Do I know which memories make her tick? So, knowing I needed to get a blog post done, I took the only natural recourse available to me; I literally attacked her with a video camera at her son's baseball game. I "[whipped] out the tape recorder" (well, actually the iPhone) in an effort to enhance my sense of "story" (121).

First, I should make it clear that I have known Stefanie for more than twelve years. Naturally, I should already know everything there is to know about her, right? Pahleease! Who sits down and spouts out a life story at the dinner table? What do I know? The events that have unfolded in the past twelve years. We all seem to live in the here and now all the time, as if our past mistakes, triumphs, and mundane experiences have absolutely no bearing on our day-to-day lives. My first question- How did you and your husband meet? The on-camera "mutual friend" evasion turned into an off-camera story that told me so much about her personality! The picture in my head- a good girl who set standards for her own behavior, but who would help out a friend-in-need without judgment, and a bad boy that proved to be too tempting! Loving it! Of course, that "bad boy" turned out to be pretty great in the long run. My brother-in-law is a terrific husband and loving father.

If my romantic heart yearned for a boy-meets-girl type of love story, though, I was quickly brought to heel. The love story that prevailed in this interview was between mother and daughter. I have met Stefanie's late mother. I know of her kindness and compassion, and I loved her as well, but I hadn't grasped the full impact that she had on Stefanie's life. When asked about her best and worst memories, Stefanie quickly answered both questions with thoughts of Brenda- beginning with the Christmases spent giving to local families in need and knitting stockings for the people she cared about, and ending with the heartbreak of Brenda's last breaths when cancer claimed her as its victim. It was clear that Stefanie's story- the one that runs central in her life- tells of the impact of a mother's love.

This impact has spread into all aspects of Stefanie's life. It has become her motivation for being. When asked about her goal in life, Stefanie responded that she hoped to be "at least half the caring Christian, mom, friend, and role model [her] mom was to [her] and to everyone that was blessed to know her." This drive has pushed her to give herself to her kids and her community in a way that makes me, honestly, feel a little lazy! After watching her own mother succumb to illness at a young age, Stefanie knows that we must make the most of life while we are living it. She eloquently stated, "You aren't promised tomorrow, much less your next breath." Perhaps that's why this self-described "not a gutsy gal" flew with my husband in the Skycoaster in Gulf Shores a few years ago! But her biggest adventure? Being a mom. How could it be anything else? Her own mother shaped so much of her life. No one knows better than Stefanie the power a great mother can hold. She will ultimately teach her children to live. To love. Is there any role that could be more fulfilling, or terrifying, than that?

Perspective. We all need to find it periodically. What truly moves the people in our lives? What really moves me? Only when I listen to the stories of my own life and those of the people around me can I come even close to grasping what's "real" in the world. So, am I all finished heightening my "six senses"? Not even close! I have signed up to volunteer. I will watch my daughter play and revel in her curiosity and wonder. I will thank God for a new blessing every single day. I will attempt to do something that I am not good at and take pride in every mistake I make. I may even read The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D. (241) because, come on, who doesn't want to read a book that will tell you the secret to happiness? Most importantly, I will remember that my creativity and compassion are the aces in my deck of talents. These mental muscles need to be exercised with a P90x-like regiment, for these right-brained strengths will be the factor in my success as a teacher, a parent, a friend, and a person.

“A Legacy of Paper Cuts and Reading Glasses”

My mother swears that I came out of the womb reading. I can just picture myself as a tiny newborn with a newspaper and reading glasses! Even though I know this can’t be true, I have no idea how I actually learned. One day I just read, and from that day forward, I was hooked. Of course, in my family of self-proclaimed bookworms, who could have expected anything less?

Like any pregnant English professor and bookaholic, my mother began reading to me well before I was actually born. Even though I’m sure this was more for her benefit than mine, I like to think that something may have rubbed off on me. After birth, the evening reading ritual truly began. Every night, I curled in my mother’s lap and was treated to a magical story that unfolded on the brightly colored pages of a book. As I grew into a precocious toddler, I began to request my favorites. I am sure Mom memorized every word that Dr. Seuss ever put on a page! One night, when I was about three years old, I simply began reading along. My mother swears to me that it was not a book we read often, which negates the theory that I simply had the story memorized. Between phonics-inspired educational toys and the constant exposure to written language, I seemed to just pick it up.

When it came to reading, I stayed several grade levels ahead of the majority of my peers throughout school. Boredom prevented any real reading instruction in elementary school that I remember. My memories of reading during that stage of my life still centered on my mother. Our nightly reading rituals did not stop because I simply started school. I crawled into bed with her and, one chapter at a time, read classics such as Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Black Beauty, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We took turns reading, and every chapter ended with a talk about our thoughts, feelings, and predictions about the story. I imagine this was training for a future English teacher.

When reading on my own, I discovered the true abandonment of the conscience mind that a book can produce. I poured through series after series, such as Sweet Valley Twins, Nancy Drew, and Sweet Valley High. I will never forget the Christmas that my aunt, the librarian, bought me a boxed set of the series, The Chronicles of Narnia. After falling in love with Aslan, the lion, in the most popular of the series, I devoured the entire set of Lewis’s novels. As a child, I often chose books instead of television. Only through reading could I truly escape into a fantasy world. This was the world I reenacted when pretending to be one of my beloved characters. An only child, I spent countless hours playing out my own scenes in the make-believe worlds I read about.

In middle school, I discovered the forbidden world of adult romance novels. Because my mother’s dissertation and many of her lectures and publications focused on romance writers such as LaVyrle Spencer and Jude Deveraux, our house was teeming with the kind of novels that depicted young couples in passionate embraces. It was inevitable that I would one day decide that these looked more interesting than my juvenile fiction. The lasting results of this leap into adulthood include unrealistic expectations of romance and a deep love-affair with the genre. I am always in the middle of a historical romance novel. Every time I read the final page of one, I feel an immediate sense of withdrawal. I often practically push my husband out the door to the nearest store to pick out my next guilty pleasure.

Without a male role-model or an example of a healthy romantic relationship, these novels became my teachers. I spent my early teenage years fully expecting my true love to sweep me off my feet like the swarthy pirate captain that kidnapped the beautiful, spirited maiden that he could not stop thinking about. Thankfully, I did not remain a complete blithering idiot. My ideas of feminine strength and independence clashed with the treatment of women in some of the older “bodice rippers” that depicted forceful, almost brutal, heroes that completely overpowered their heroines. One story made me so angry that I remember stomping into my mother’s room one night, berating her for having a novel like this offensive trash under our roof. Having no idea that I had been reading these in the first place, she found herself at a complete loss for words. After the uncomfortable conversation that ensued, I kept the rest of my opinions to myself until she became acclimated to my interest in this literary genre.

I did eventually develop a taste for more sophisticated literary works. A love for poetry has been as ingrained into my being as a love of literature itself. My mother, my aunt, and my older cousin consider literature and politics to be completely normal topics of dinner conversation. It took the stunned silences of several boyfriends to teach me that not all families had the same interests. My cousin loved to quote poetry at the dinner table. I was entranced by the beauty and power of the words. When he quoted a poet, I vowed to read all I could by this poet and, eventually, out-quote him at a future dinner. In this manner, I became a true fan of Dickinson, Poe, Frost, Byron, Keats, Shakespeare, and many other masters of poetic language.

With such a literary family, it would have been difficult not to develop a true love for reading. I bring a bag of books I have finished to every family gathering, knowing that I will come home with a new bag of books carefully selected from those filling the studies and closets of my family members. My mother used to predict that I would one day follow in her footsteps, bringing my love of literature to a classroom of impressionable students. I steadfastly refused. “I will be a veterinarian, not a teacher!” I used to proclaim. I became a special education teacher instead. She smiled to herself when I decided to focus on English instruction, but she positively crowed with smug delight when I informed her that I wanted to get my master’s degree in English. I can only imagine her glee if I confided my secret ambition. One day I may write the novel that she has always dreamed of.

Grandmommy's Christmas Candy

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk
• 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
• 1 package chocolate chips (6 oz)
• 1 cup chopped nuts, walnuts or pecans
• 1 cup miniature marshmallows

Preparation:

 

In a large saucepan, mix the sugar, milk, and corn syrup. Bring

the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Keep this boiling for another

two minutes, stirring frequently.

 

Grandmommy always measured times like this with a song. Not a

normal song, of course. Her song was about a bird that pooped while

sitting on a telephone pole. There were sound effects... I remember my

mother gasping in shock when Grandmommy sang it in front of me,

but I always laughed hysterically. The incongruity of my sweet and

rather reserved grandmother singing a song about poo got me every

time.

 

She was standing at the stove stirring the sweet, bubbling liquid

as sugary steam danced across the kitchen. I darted around the

kitchen, rushing from counter to table to pantry, carefully lining the

Dollar Store Christmas tins with wax paper for the candy that had

firmed from earlier that morning. This was the routine of the day, an

entire Saturday, from breakfast until dinner, spent catching drippy

fudge on wax paper and filling the mountainous stack of tins. I had

begged to get out of it. Couldn’t we just settle for Christmas cards and

candy canes? Why did every poor sucker we ran into during the month

of December have to go home with enough candy to effectively rot a

mouthful of teeth? But no, I had neglected to help with enough chores

lately, and this was my penance. All vaguely interesting aspects of my

teenage life would have to wait; I was the candy assistant.

 

Grandmommy chose to ignore my incessant whining, sarcasm,

and general brattiness. She had an assistant and the companionship of

her granddaughter for the day, as unpleasant as I might be. The

afternoon sunlight poured through the wide kitchen window, splashing

across the white and blue tiles of the floor. The warm scents of laundry

soap, coffee, and melted chocolate chased any lingering chill from the

room. As she moved to the counter to chop the pecans harvested from

my great-aunt’s front yard, she tuned out all but the redeeming

aspects of my presence and listened to the blare of the television from

the living room.

 

“Libby, it’s your turn to stir in the chocolate chips,” she reminded

me.

 

Remove the boiling mixture from the heat and add the chocolate

chips, stirring until completely melted. Let the mixture cool for fifteen

minutes.

 

Sighing, I looked around for a way to entertain myself as the timer ticked away again. My eyes fell on the deck of cards on the cluttered table, almost hidden between the pans of cooling fudge and Santa-bedecked containers.

 

“How about a quick game of Rummy?”

 

Her eyes lit up. “I’ll pour us some coffee. No cheating this time!”

 

Groaning, I set about relocating the trays and tins. “I never

cheat. You just don’t want to admit I can beat you.”

 

I began shuffling the cards as she sat down, two steaming cups

of coffee in hand. I tried to make it look natural as I carefully folded the

cards into what I hoped would be the perfect waterfall shuffle, just like

she taught me. She smiled slightly and nodded as the cards fell

perfectly into place with a soft whoosh. I handed her the deck to cut,

and then, shoving the halves together, I dealt the hands. My inner

grump retreated momentarily as I concentrated on the rules of the

game, searching my hand for a run. This hand was red... very red... I

struggled to maintain my poker face as I mentally organized the hearts

into their proper order. I just needed one. Grandmommy smiled smugly

as she laid down a group of fours. With each turn, I could feel my

serene façade slip as I again didn’t draw the card I needed. I continued

my silent pep talk to myself (“Of course you’ll get it! How could you not

get it with a hand this good?”) until Grandmommy, her eyes dancing

like the most mischievous flame that ever lured a poor moth, slapped

down four jacks with a crow of laughter.

 

“No! My card! I needed that!” I shouted in frustration.

 

“Oh, is this the one you’ve been over there panicking about this

whole time?” she laughed. “You should work on that poker face.”

I sputtered an unintelligible reply that wobbled somewhere

between flat denial and embarrassed admission. She chuckled and

gathered the cards to shuffle and deal again. “You’ll get me next time,”

she soothed.

 

The timer went off, and we returned to our stations of wax paper

and chopped nuts.

 

Add the chopped pecans and miniature marshmallows. Stir until

the marshmallows are melted. Drop candy by the spoonful onto a large

baking sheet lined with wax paper.

 

Her role was to drop, mine was to catch. She spooned the sticky

goop onto pan after pan. Years later, I would remember the taste of

the fudge as the beginning of Christmas. New friendships and

relationships would know that they earned the sweet seal of approval

by the delivery of a Dollar Store tin packed with soft chocolate. The

memory would become distant, though, overshadowed by the

memories of forgotten recipes, forgotten moments, forgotten names.

Eventually, Grandmommy couldn’t play Rummy, and the steps of

following a recipe that she had once known by heart confused and

agitated her. The tastes of the holidays would leave my family for

years as we watched Alzheimer’s gradually take over the matriarch of

the family. We didn’t want to make tins of candy or German chocolate

cakes or dressing with the perfect amount of sage in it while

Grandmommy lived in a nursing home forgetting each visit and each

face. We watched her body overwhelm her, processes gradually

shutting down as she faced Alzheimers’s, cancer, heart disease,

diabetes...

 

It’s been nearly fifteen years since I’ve tasted that candy. My

mother has learned to make the dressing for Thanksgiving, and the

sage is still perfect. My uncle makes the beans with ham, and my aunt

has figured out that elusive German chocolate cake. The best

memories of my life are those simple moments playing cards in a warm

kitchen, the smells wrapping snuggly around me in a comforting

embrace. As a family, we continue to grieve, but we move forward,

preserving those memories. We set the holiday table with the recipes

that remind us of her, ensuring that she will always be with us. This

year, I’ll make candy and my daughter will help. We’ll sing songs and

play games while we wait for the fudge to cool on sheets of wax paper.

And I’ll know that she’ll be there with us.