Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Kindle

To whom it may concern:

This is in response to your recently advertised 30-day trial for Kindles.

I am a teacher and have used Kindles in class in conjunction with book studies. They have not been at all conducive to the classroom. Students cannot take them home (since purchased at such high cost), so I cannot assign reading at home and must therefore rely on class time for students to complete all reading. It has tripled the normal time it would take my classes to read a book.

Inconvenience aside (ironic, considering the device's touted convenience), I also will not purchase or promote Kindle, or any other reading/ book application, regardless of platform because the popularity of such technology could very well lead to the elimination of physical books in the near future, which a corporation's demand for limitless growth must necessitate.

Physical books possess the innate capacity to survive decades without a reliable power source. If the electricity goes out, physical books retain all usefulness. Kindles (and the like), on the other hand, would quickly consign themselves to no more than expensive plastic paperweights in such an event.

What will a paperless world do in the event of an EMP attack or solar storm sufficient to collapse "The Grid"? H.G. Wells imagines such a scenario in The Time Machine, in which mankind's malignant addiction to technology leads to its utter collapse (I would offer to let you borrow my copy of the book, but sharing has become nearly as outdated as paper-based text. So, for the sake of modernity and progress, I'll #KeepItForMyself).

I recognize that I represent what is likely an overwhelming minority. The masses, no doubt, perpetually swing from swoon to climax at the release of each successive, highly addictive gadget, contraption, iThis, iThat, and Smartwhatever. Their acutely addictive nature is, no doubt, the reason for such ostensibly benevolent invitations to Free 30-Day Kindle Trials.

The name Kindle itself stands in a blaze of irony. And I wonder if it isn't intentional. What, precisely, do they hope to kindle? A love for reading or, perhaps, the pyres of book burning? If your people intend the former, is it the device that excites interest, or the content of the literature? Has the populace become so dull as to mistake packaging for substance? No doubt your quarterly earnings statement would suffice to answer.

Or is the Kindle popularity due to the increasingly warped and superficial nature of human sexuality in our society? I suppose books are too fat to be loved and cherished, when skinnier, sleeker, sexier (which is to say, more technological) substitutes can be purchased at irresistibly attractive rates.

Yes, I am likely a minority. Give me slow food cooked at home over McAnything, hand-written letters rather than text messages, time with a person not FaceTime.

And yes, give me a library holding a finite number of physical volumes over an electrified contraption loaded with hypermegaterrabytes of compressed files. 

Birds in and around Allensville, Kentucky

My grandmother, Grandma Jean we call her, is a lover of creatures. She feeds just about anything with fur or feathers. Above all, she loves birds and maintains a small avian oasis in her backyard. When I would visit as a child, I would shoot straight for her kitchen window, looking for gold finches, cardinals, hummingbirds. Some seasons a robin would nest in the window sill beside her sink. My brothers and I would watch the soft blue eggs, waiting for the little ones to break free.

At home with my parents, who lived on a wooded dead end, I'd often spot larger species -- hawks, osprey, vultures, and the occasional pileated woodpecker, drilling dead trees with its unmistakable Morse code.

The early fascination has grown up with me. Now that I live south-western Kentucky, among fields the row croppers rotate from wheat to soybeans to corn, I see birds I had only known from field guides -- meadowlarks, quail, common night hawks, Mississippi kites, eastern bluebirds, indigo buntings. 

The last one I mentioned -- the indigo bunting -- is one that has just recently begun visiting our place. On Monday morning, two indigos darted in front of me as I drove out the half mile gravel driveway between my house and the road.

A Gathering

I woke this morning thinking naught but a confirming text message stood between me and a snow day -- or an ice day, to be more specific. Instead, I scraped thick ice off my borrowed 18 passenger van (usually used to transport seasonal farm hands) before motoring the 4.9 miles between the Adams homestead and my school.

This iciness is a recent change, as last week's warmth and sun followed by wind and torrential rain hinted at April. Between the downpours lay Saturday afternoon and early evening, and my industrious wife took to the yard as I prepared Sunday's sermon. 

After our landlady sent a group of men in late autumn to take out several of trees in the front yard -- trees which served as a sort of privacy fence at the house end of our half-mile gravel drive --  many of their branches still littered the front yard. 

Taking a half broken metal rake, she combed the yard clean of more than one season's debris into several heaps. By the time I finished my studying and outlining, she ready to begin hauling her work about 75 yards away to the edge of the field where a gaping sinkhole frustrates the yield of row-croppers.

She gathered. I carried. 

Soon, work complete, we retired to the house. 

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A Gravestone Made of Wheat

A couple years ago I met a girl. Or shall I say re-met a girl. The kind of girl who makes you want to figure out what life is about.

One night at her parents house we watched one called Sweet Land, a little known film from a few years ago. Set in the rural Minnesota shortly after WWI, the film follows the difficulties surrounding the marriage plans of a new German immigrant to a "Keillorian" Norwegian Bachelor Farmer.

Stunned by the film's visual and narrative beauty, I scoured the Web for "A Gravestone Made of Wheat," from which the film was adapted. After reading the story, I came to a startling conclusion. For the first time, I think, in my life I thought a film told a better story than a book. Several plot changes, such as the historically compelling additon of a banker who preys upon "Bigger Better Faster" believing farmers creates a conflict between Man and Biblical Beast that the original narrative lacks.

The young couple evokes Wendell Berry's understanding of ecomony in their relationship and work. In the films penultimate scene, the couple brings in the wheat harvest by hand after being ostracized by the rest of the community.

As Khalil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, "Work is love made visible."

To Jelal ad-din Rumi

Having been an English Literature major in college, I am often guilty of ignoring the rest of the world's stories, essays, drama, and poetry. My sin is not one of prejudice so much as ignorance. Occasionally, someone crosses my path and shares a writer who wasn't born one of the British Isles sometime in the last thousand years.

One of those someones is Aaron Weiss, a humble, spindly man from Philadelphia. Meeting him, one could believe in his city's name. Although he is a poet and a singer (or more accurately, poem-shouter) of the band mewithoutYou, he is a listener. Most nights, still covered in the sweat of frenetic concert dervishes, Weiss listens one by one to the line that has gathered at his feet. With poetic lines such as Why not let's forgive everyone/ everywhere, everything, and If your old man did you wrong/ then maybe his old man did him wrong, the gathering is not surprising.

After my first time seeing his band, I waited to see him too. Other lines of his poetry seemed to fit his stance towards others - No clever talk nor gift to bring/ requires our lowly lovely king./ Come, you empty-handed/ you don't need anything. 

Seeing first hand the care he offered hurting folks, and the way they fed on such attention, I wanted to know who fed him -- what writers have helped him see more clearly God and creation within God and man within creation and God.

When I arrived at my turn, he stuttered through a few familiar names, as well as Scripture, and then he mentioned Rumi, an early Persian Sufi poet.

Since I'd heard of neither Rumi nor Sufis, I made that my next mini-research project. As it turns out, he lived in 13th century Persia (modern day Iran) and inherited a leadership position at a religious school at just 25, and was very much within the religious "in-crowd."

Around a dozen or so years later, he met an ascetic named Shams. As a result of their friendship, Rumi transformed to embraced asceticism. Rumi's change prompted such controversy that (allegedly) Shams was kidnapped and killed, probably at the hands of Rumi's son.

Despite (and possibly due to) the pain of that loss, Rumi continued in ascetic Sufism, typically expressed through poetry. As a Sufi, his basic goal was to experience/ sense/ feel/ know the fullness of God every moment.

And, interestingly, Rumi made some jaw-dropping statements regarding Jesus. Here's one:

In the fire of the Divine love,
behold I saw a whole universe
Each particle there possessed Jesus’ Breath.

I'd encourage anyone interested in Christianity, faith, life, art, and/ or poetry to read up on his life, not because he was perfect or always spoke the whole truth, but because his work reveals beauty and compelling affection for Jesus.

What I have learned this semester that might not necessarily be overtly graded

Here is a top ten list of a few of the lessons I have learned over the past semester at Whitley County High School.

1. A teacher’s effectiveness is proportional to the planning that goes into each lesson.

2.Planning itself isn’t enough. The planning must be intelligent, reflective, and undertaken in light of what is known about the individuals within a class and the class as a whole.

3. Time management is essential. Teaching is a commitment that requires saying no to other potential commitments.

4. Growing as a teacher requires constant learning.

5. Growth in terms of methodology must be accompanied by growth in terms of content knowledge and understanding; otherwise, methods are hollow.

6. Student A may not learn at the same pace or in the same way as Student B. A student is an individual and must be treated as one.

7. The best students have learned to teach themselves.

8. The way a student performs and behaves in class needs to be understood within the context of the rest of student’s life.

9. Sleep deficits haunt.

10. Peanut butter and jelly isn’t as appetizing in December as it is in August.

Blogs for the week of November 9.

Clearly, it’s very nearly a month past November 9th. I am hoping, however, that late is better than never. Here is what Dr. G asked us to blog about this week:
This week in your blog I would like for you to find out what community resources exist in your school/community that are available to help you teach. Report in your journal (one day) what you did to find out this information, who you asked, what you learned. A second day (yep, only two days this week!) post a list of the resources that you found.

In preparation for my unit, I talked with my ST, Mrs. Manning, about community resources, and specifically about people who might be able to come in as guest speakers. She encouraged me to set up a meeting with WCHS’ assistant principal, Mrs. Rice, the former chair of the English Department at the school.
A few days later I was able to sit down with Mrs. Rice. After discussing resources and my unit, she agreed to speak on the first day of my unit on the importance of language. Other resources include libraries in the area – the high school library, community library, and University of the Cumberlands library. In addition, I have a tight-knit relationship with the English Dept. at UC and have used them at different points throughout the semester as a resource for deepening my understanding of writing, literature, and grammar. Several of the professors would be willing to be guest speakers and have offered to assist when possible.