Posts Tagged ‘points of view’

Have you ever been stranded? You read or hear stories about people who are stranded in all sorts of situations — along a highway, in the woods, on a mountain, in a boat, in the snow, on an island, and many other scenarios. Just recently on the news there was a story of young boy who spent a night in the woods after getting lost while skiing. Once found, he was facing losing several toes from frostbite. Being stranded has been romanticized in literature and on film, but the difficulties, fear, loneliness, and necessities of life would quickly crowd out any dreamy notions.

One time in France we shared a train compartment with an American man and his child. While in Italy the father had been pickpocketed and lost all his money, their tickets, and any form of identification. He didn't speak the language and had to try to rebuild his identity and to come up with enough money to obtain food and lodging and to get themselves back to the USA. He said that beyond the frustrations of his situation was the terror of being stranded and feeling utterly helpless. We shared his horror as he recounted their experience, and I was able to share with him what would have been our Confidence in such a situation.

Today I'm posting three fictitious stories about people stranded on islands and what happened to them.
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New Year's Day is time of reflection and of planning. We look back on the previous year and evaluate, and we look ahead to the new year and prognosticate. 2009 has certainly been a year to remember, or one you wish you could forget, depending on your viewpoint. I don't know of a year in my life when I've seen more of the unforeseen. Dave Barry has a great article about 2009 in review.

One way to see what was on people's minds in 2009 is to view what they looked up on search engines like Google or on online dictionaries. Based on online lookups, here is the Top Ten List of word definitions of the year 2009 at the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. The words in this list give some insights into the year's events.

1. admonish
2. emaciated
3. empathy
4. furlough
5. inaugurate
6. nugatory
7. pandemic
8. philanderer
9. repose
10. rogue

It's interesting that the word of the year was admonish. For some of the words, it's easy to see why they were searched, but for others, it's not so clear.
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Oreo cookies seem to be a dessert that people can either take or leave. I've eaten them through the years, but only when there was nothing much else sweet to eat. If given a choice, I would definitely choose a real cookie instead! I know, though, that some people really like Oreo cookies and other Hydrox-type cookies, whatever that is.... (Sounds vaguely chemical to me....) By the way, Hydrox cookies have been around for over 100 years now. They celebrated their 100-year anniversary in 2008.

Several years ago we had a family conference at our church. The speaker for those couple of days as Dr. Greg Mazak. One of the things he did as an ice-breaker one evening was to give us the Oreo test. There are all kinds of "psychological tests" out there and I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this one, but it was a fun activity as people stood and then he read what their style of eating an Oreo showed about their personality. Here's the test for you to enjoy.

The Oreo Personality Test

Psychologists have discovered that the manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities. First choose which method in the list below best describes your favorite method of eating Oreos. Then scroll down to see what that says about you.

1. The whole thing all at once.
2. One bite at a time.
3. Slow and methodical nibbles examining the results of each bite afterwards.
4. In little feverish nibbles.
5. Dunked in some liquid (milk, coffee...).
6. Twisted apart, eat the inside, then the cookie.
7. Twisted apart, eat the inside, and toss the cookie.
8. Just the cookie, not the inside.
9. I just like to lick them, not eat them.
10. I don't have a favorite way because I don't like Oreos.

Your Personality:

1. The whole thing all at once. This means you consume life with abandon, you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you with their children.
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This past weekend a friend posted on my Facebook wall a link to an article at the Telegraph.co.uk about a new McDonald's opening at the Louvre in Paris. I experienced mixed reactions to this announcement. As a tourist, I know how nice it is to find something familiar while traveling, but as one having relatives in France, I share their disdain of the encroachment of American pop culture in their country.

A few years back we decided to go out for dinner to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Corona. When we arrived we saw on the sign out front that it was "Mariachi night." When we went inside, we saw that the restaurant was all decked out for St. Patrick's Day — green balloons, streamers, etc. everywhere. As we ate our dinner, we were surprised that the special music ended up not being a Mariachi band after all. It was an Oompah band! It was just too weird, sitting there eating Mexican, surrounded by Irish decorations, and listening to German polka music played by people with Southern accents and wearing Lederhosen and Dirndels!
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One of the interesting facets of having completed 36 years of teaching is the observable differences between today's students and those that I taught at the beginning of my career. There's no difference, of course, in IQ — my current students are every bit as bright as those I taught "back in the last millennium," as I love to say when referring to my younger years. One thing I do notice, though, is that what today's students know and don't know is vastly different from what my former students knew and didn't know.

I try to stay current on some aspects of today's pop culture so that I know what my students and others are talking about. I'm not always successful in that endeavor, though — there's just so much to keep up with and so little time! It's quite a balancing act trying to keep up on (dreary) current events and to dabble in several of the many avenues of social networking as well as trying to do as much reading as possible on French Literature from the Middle Ages in preparation for my course lectures. Talk about having one's feet planted in two different worlds!

During one of our many interesting lunch room discussions last school year, a colleague mentioned something he had read online. One professor in a community college contends that he has found only one thing with which his students, who vary greatly in age and background, all seem to be familiar. Here's that portion of the article:

One of the things I try to do on the first night of English 102 is relate the literary techniques we will study to novels that the students have already read. I try to find books familiar to everyone. This has so far proven impossible. My students don't read much, as a rule, and though I think of them monolithically, they don't really share a culture. To Kill a Mockingbird? Nope. (And I thought everyone had read that!) Animal Farm? No. If they have read it, they don't remember it. The Outsiders? The Chocolate War? No and no. Charlotte's Web? You'd think so, but no. So then I expand the exercise to general works of narrative art, meaning movies, but that doesn't work much better. Oddly, there are no movies that they all have seen—well, except for one. They've all seen The Wizard of Oz.

The preceding quotation is from an article in The Atlantic online called "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower" by Professor X (really)

I'm not sure that we could justify applying his findings to all college students in America, but I've made enough allusions to things in the Wizard of Oz in my classes to know that most of my students always seem to catch them. When we learn the French -re verbs, I enjoy presenting one that's not in our book — fondre. I demonstrate its meaning by writhing, sinking down towards the floor, and saying "Je fonds" in a high-pitched voice. Most of my students catch on right away that I'm saying "I'm melting" and imitating the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. I guess that that would lend some credence to Professor X's statement.
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