Time Management Tricks for People Too Busy to Read about Time Management Tricks

AVC's Most Published Author Shares a Secret

This blog site has been fallow for a few weeks, despite the fact that in and around campus we have had career days and a winner in the Constitution Day essay contest and the first football game of the season and a golf tournament and try-outs in the drama department and emergency drills and power outages at the Palmdale Campus. If you've seen any of the features on the tv news or the Los Angeles Times, you know that Southern California has been blessed with an invasion of blue-footed boobies, a pelican-sized seabird usually found in Baja or the Galapagos.

These have yet to turn up at Lake Palmdale or Piute Ponds on Edwards Base, but there have been local birdwatchers out looking for them, myself included. As we go to press, there are seven blue-footed boobies present on the Marina del Rey breakwater, and they've been seen inland as close as Pasadena. Much drama, much to feature here, and yet the AVC Blog has been silent.

Why? Because the primary author (Hood) has terrible time management skills. And yet I have to say, that's because I have excellent time management skills. Just ask my dog.

Lucy is a rescue dog, and she seems to be part corgi, part Australian shepherd, part mutt, and part goozle hound --- that's my wife's term for a pet that knows how to be so persistent, so cute, so inventive, that despite your best intentions, you give her a treat, or, at the very least, stop what you're doing and get down to roll on the floor with her. Santi Tafarella calls dogs like that "Hooper," his term for a friendly old pooch who thinks the day is never too busy for a scratch behind the ears.

Does Lucy care if I am late for the Distance Ed Committee meeting? She does not. All she knows is that there is a cupboard full of beef jerky and that with my enormous bipedal height and world-famous generosity, it would be no small matter for me to open that magic box up, take out some jerky, and then pet her while she eats it. Paradise is so easily achieved, Lucy telepathically communicates to me.

Our cat --- or to be specific, my wife's cat --- is named Kinsey, after the detective in the Sue Grafton novels. Usually Kinsey is carrying away thumb drives like dead mice or trying to shred the $500 curtains, but once in a while she gets in the zone, especially when she sees me frantically stuffing folders in my briefcase, and she does her Rasta impression. "Hey mon," she says. "Don't worry. Be happy."

Most days my wife works during the day, while I am on the evening shift at the college. Sometimes, just as I am finally ready for work, my wife gets off early. She comes home before I've left, and we overlap a bit. Was I planning to scoot out the door? Sure, but that can wait. She's home and time now to do a bit of catching up.

There has been a lot of speculation among my students what I am like at home, especially given my reputation as being the hard grader who gives such challenging (some might say impossible) paper topics. This curiosity extends at times to my co-workers inside Language Arts, who wonder how I have time to keep up a full teaching load and yet do as much publishing as I do. Do I have full-time, live-in domestic servants? Perhaps I keep two or three hungry grad students chained up the basement, writing all my poems for me. (Charles Bukowski recommends this in one of his poems, and he says, don't treat them very nicely either.)

To satisfy that curiosity, for one time only, I will share a candid photo of me at home in my kitchen. Here is the professor and his wife, sharing a private moment. (I am the one on the left.)

Sometimes my intentions for this blog and the dog Lucy's thesis that she is the center of the universe do overlap. For some months now I have been conducting a survey of water in the Antelope Valley, with the intent of featuring that topic here. I have been taking pictures of sprinklers, lakes, ditches, pools, and storm drain basins. I have over 100 photos now in that file, waiting to be sorted and written up. To quote one of my own essays, for a desert, there sure is a lot of water here.

Here is a preview of that post. Does anybody know about the open-air flume called "Palmdale Ditch"? There were times this summer when it was rushing just as fast as any river in Yosemite. And of course there is the marsh at Edwards, the one I mentioned might have stray boobies, called Piute Ponds. Here is a shot from this amazing oasis. (Note: Air Force permission required for access.) Hard to believe this is so close to campus, isn't it?

Lucy loves to go hiking, and if hiking involves muddy or scummy water, that makes it so much the better. Last week she reminded me it was time to photograph the aqueduct again for the blog. (For a dog, she has a very good vocabulary, and very distinctly can bark the syllables, "a-que-duct.") Okay, then, the goozler convinced me: I'll get the keys, you wait in the truck, and yes, we can go to the aqueduct.

Was I supposed to be somewhere else just then? Probably. After all, the email churns on, day and night. During the morning, robo-dial calls come sometimes ten-a-day. (I no longer answer the phone at all when I am home, especially if I am working on a poem or grading papers. Let the machine pick it up: I need to stay in the groove.) There is always a website to check, an email to answer, a text to consider and then delete. Luckily I don't have Face Book or I wouldn't even have time to take a shower. So I confess: I have terrible time management skills. I have not done this blog, at least three of the sprinkler heads in the yard need to be replaced, and my lovely Aunt Pat (hi Aunt Pat!) wrote me a very nice note and I have yet to answer it.

So there are things to do, and yet, despite that, I give myself a few moments, here and there, just to be human. I stopped wearing a wristwatch, so that has helped. No blood pressure medicine for me, just the lucky fact that I need reading glasses to read the face on my mobile phone, and so when they're off, since I don't have a watch on, I usually don't know what time it is. That's a good thing some days. It helps keep the energy up on the long term, and makes it so that week after week, I feel good about myself, about Antelope Valley College, and about the great and glorious journey we are all on together. Somehow, even without a watch (or a Face Book account), I've managed to get nine books published, and I have three more manuscripts in circulation. All my grading is up and done, and I've not been late to anything all week. Taking a few moments to be human, to be alive, to do something that YOU want to do --- or if not you, then that your dog wants to do --- may be the best time management skill of all.

Here is a final aqueduct shot. It may be hard to see on your screen, but that dark object on the bridge is a man taking an evening ride on his horse. He may not be going very fast, but somehow I think he is going to get there just fine --- just fine indeed.

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This blog does not represent the views of the District, the Board, or Lucy the dog. It is curated (and usually written by) Charles Hood, Language Arts. He may be reached at chood@avc.edu.

AVC's New President

A Brief Introduction to Ed Knudson, New AVC President

For some faculty and many students, the new college President remains a name without a face, so this blog wants to help ameliorate that.

First, here is what he looks like. (If he happens to walk by your classroom, wave him in, introduce yourself, and be sure to act like you know what you're doing.)

Second point, the "K" in his name is not silent, but not too loudly emphasized either --- phonetically it might be like this: "kuh-newd-son." We are used to the k being silent (as in "knife") and it's a lovely pleasure to have some variation on the expected pattern. Frankly, if you don't get the name exactly right the first time, he doesn't seem the sort to mind very much.

So far I have just had one meeting with him, but others agree with my assessment: smart, warm, approachable, happy to be here. Steve Standerfer in campus updates already has shared his background, so I thought it might be more useful to fill in the gaps a bit, as we all get to know one another. He likes dogs, for example --- always a good mark in my book --- with a particular history with golden retrievers. His wife is a soprano and together they love the arts. His son works for NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, and his father-in-law was in the house band the night the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show. Among things that probably didn't come up at the interview: after he got out of the military, he briefly made a living in the pro golf world. He both ran golf courses and also played professionally.

(I didn't ask him if he, as I do, ever has trouble getting through the windmill part of the course. Those spinning vanes seem to knock me back every time.)

Some quotations from a recent interview will let him introduce himself in his own words. About the campus itself he says, "We have tremendous talent on this campus --- the resources here represent the Antelope Valley's best kept secret." Since his interview and first days on the job, he has been pleased to see "how very welcoming and friendly everybody has been, both in the larger community and here on campus." He added, "I am really excited to be here."

Budget guesses? His crystal ball is no more reliable than mine or yours, but he doesn't see big changes either plus or minus. "The budget that the State passed this year will probably hold for two years or so." Why is that? "There will be some reaction to tax increases. It's just inevitable. Sales tax may mean a few people spend less; it may be that a few business continue to move out. I don't think we will see huge increases in the budget, but it does seem solid and likely to hold. AVC is in pretty good shape. It has been well-managed and so we are really well-placed to go forward."

What about our own reserve, or the projected California surplus? Mr. Knudson was direct and quick to answer. "The notion there's a surplus is a bit of a misnomer. Too many things have been deferred for too long. What money that will be coming in will need to go a lot of places, and so AVC needs still to be frugal and we need to continue to be good stewards of our resources --- the community has a right to expect that of us."

I mentioned that I had seen Dr. Fisher recently, having dinner with his family in Palmdale. "Jackie has done a tremendous job --- he has left us in sound financial shape. You walk around this campus and unlike others I have visited, it's obvious that this is a school that despite everything, has been well taken care of. The grounds show it, the staff: people care about AVC. Do they want changes? Of course. Were the cuts difficult? Of course --- just ask any student who can't get classes. But we are in good shape. Headcount is up for fall, people are excited to go forward, and we got through the worst. We have a lot to be proud of. At AVC, people really care."

Yes, it may sound like a platitude, but it's true. I've seen faculty members walk all the way across campus to help a disoriented student find a building, and even in my summer English 099 class, I was really impressed with the ways the students all supported each other, including some of the more successful writers in the class spending hours and hours of time outside class, trying to tutor those whose work wasn't quite there yet. There was no sense of racial barrier or tribalism in this, and certainly no pay involved: it was just person x being nice to person y, in the sense that "we're all in this together." When I thanked student x for giving up his entire day off from work to do this, he told me, "Well, once I was stuck in math and somebody helped me get through it. I figure, if we all just give back a little, we are going to make this become the world we want to live in."

Welcome to AVC, Mr. Knudson, a strangely old-fashioned campus where that generosity still lives on.

And to close, here's just one more head shot --- not fancy, not artsy, but just so that we know what Mr. Knudson looks like when he walks by, I want to put it up again.

If you see him on campus any time soon, be sure to stop and introduce yourself. If nothing else, maybe you can get some pointers on how to bank the windmill shot.

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The AVC Blog is curated by Language Arts member Charles Hood, and does not represent the official position of the Board or the District in relation to budget cuts, mini putt golf, or which breed of dog is more noble than any other. Hood can be reached at chood@avc.edu. The new President can be reached at eknudson@avc.edu.

Mark Covert Runs into the History Books

A Hero and a Legend

The other morning Mark Covert finished off an epic adventure --- he has run every day of the week, every month of the year, for the past 45 years. In all that time, he has never missed a day. Nobody else has ever done this.

Even super athletes wear out, and in the future, he'll still work out regularly, but it won't be by running every day. On the final day of the 45-year streak, several hundred people joined him at the AVC track to celebrate his achievement and show how he had inspired us all. They did a casual, fun, joyful circuit of the AVC campus.

The facts are astounding.

He has run enough miles to be half-way to the moon by now, and done the equivalent of running around the Earth 64 times. He has seen old presidents go and new ones come in, nine different times. He has seen the Vietnam War escalate and finally end, Israel's so-called Six Day War, he has run through the invasion of Grenada and the Panama coup and Gulf War I and the Invasion of Iraq. He had been running thirty years when 9/11 happened. He had been "just doing it" for over ten years before Nike released the first air-soled shoe, which at the time cost an astounding $50, which was $15 more than average for a running shoe.

This is to say nothing about his coaching, and the many thousands of lives his teaching has touched.

No wonder so many people wanted to be by his side for his victory lap.

Here he is coming in for the final few steps, after an amazing --- and record-setting --- 45 years. As he joked later, "Well, when I was younger, I ran a mile a bit faster than this, trust me."

It was truly a moment of sincerity and joy --- and for me, a welcome change from budget cuts and Student Learning Outcome meetings. Here was a true, uncompromised, full-integrity moment of absolute achievement.

Soon it was time for cake and interviews. Here is Channel 3 getting ready to celebrate the moment.

Inspiration is a word used too casually sometimes in modern life, so much so that it has become, at times, cheap or meaningless. I just want to say that on a person level, Coach Covert has done exactly that --- he has inspired me. He selected a goal and he committed to it, and he did so no matter what obstacles came his way.

This really deserves praise . . . and it deserves to be followed. Like some other folks my age, I find myself knowing I need to change. I know that I need to work out more, eat less, take charge of my life. It is of course hard to do --- other obligations always seem to press in on me, and I skip my workouts day after day. Mark Covert really has made me look at the sources of all that --- the ability to change is within me, no place else --- and I will not speak for others, but I will say for me, he is truly an INSPIRATION.

One of the great things about the Antelope Valley is all of the many many miles we have open to use for running or biking or even just walking the dog. Look around: the world is just begging us to be out in it.

Nike is famous for saying "Just Do It." Like the Army's phrase "Be All You Can Be" --- and didn't both come from the advertising agency Chiat and Day? --- the Nike expression is easy to parody and easy to dismiss as mere sloganeering. Yet underneath it is this truth: you won't get anywhere in life if you don't take that first step.

We end with a quote from Mark Covert himself on the final day. He was asked, How does a person change his or her life? "It's a three-part process," he told me with a smile. "First, open the door. Next, step outside. And then, last, here comes the fun part --- go DO something."

Words to live by indeed.

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The opinions expressed in this space do not represent the official positions of the AVC Board of Trustees nor Antelope Valley College. The AVC blog is curated by Charles Hood in Language Arts. He can be reached at chood@avc.edu. If he takes a while to answer, don't worry, it just means he's gone for a run.

Extreme Housekeeping (And Other Signs of the Times)

What signs tell us about behavior and expectation....

On a recent visit with to a job site on the 405 widening project in the Sepulveda Pass, I came across an "extreme housekeeping" sign that made me think about the ways we use language and image to control behavior. (Normally these construction sites are not opening to the public; I was on a field trip sponsored by the Center for Land Use Interpretation.)

For the "housekeeping" sign, see below. First let's put some display options in context.

Sometimes a sign is so obvious, it doesn't need much --- if any --- language. Here's an ad from Sri Lanka. I think we all know what it is telling us to do.

This next sign also reveals its intentions very swiftly. It's odd and sad, yet clear. They offer a service to help a family prepare a deceased person for burial. This was taken in Ghana.

This next sign is very clear and rather mean. One wants to tell the Scrooge landlord, Aw, come on, have a heart. No ball games? That's just mean.

Other times, image and text may be a bit at odds. Have a look at this:

Is it just me, or does this dog seem nearly friendly? And it's sort of fox-like, rather than dog-like. Perhaps the sign should say, "Beware of the Foxes and the Fox-German Shepherd Hybrids."

This next sign seems rather redundant. It's from Boston and has red letters for extra emphasis. I appreciate the polite "Please," but wouldn't the snow and the lack of water keep me out of the pool anyway?

Some signs promise more they can deliver. I am not sure anybody can learn English without some homework and without a bit of grammar study. Of course, my students would be glad if I adopted this secret and magical pedagogy. Maybe for their sake, I should have signed up.

This sign in Reno seems contradictory. "CCW" refers to a conceal-and-carry weapon permit: that is to say, you can keep a .32 in your ankle holster and it's legal. This hotel says its private property rights trump your Second Amendment rights.

Some signs baffle me, or require a bit of translation, even when one is in London where they speak a somewhat legible version of English. This was in a pub in Pimlico.

"Mews" used to be the cages in which royalty kept raptors for the sport of falconry, though in the UK in can mean a short side street and the apartments therein. (Now the Royal Mews are where one goes to see the Queen's horses and carriages.) "Cobbles" means the stone driveway that this pub's open-air seating spills out onto. "Mew" can also be a cat-like moaning or meowing sound, perhaps the sound one makes when one has had too much to drink, fallen asleep on the cobbles, and woken up so sick you're barely able to whimper.

Here's another one that takes a minute to follow through to its full meaning. It's from Ghana.

We call the express highways in L.A. "freeways" not because they have so little traffic but because unlike back east, there are not many tolls. If there IS going to be a road tax, it only seems fair that we all pay equally. That means that zombies and the undead have to pay their highway tolls too, just like the rest of us. Read down a few lines on this sign to come to the appropriate fee for the mummy wagon.

"NB" refers to the now-little-known abbreviation, "Nota Bene," or in English, "note well the following detail; pay special attention to this footnote." It's a rather hyper-literate thing for a sign, since even the MLA doesn't tend to use this abbreviation anymore. Watch out for those mummies, though, in or out of their wagons.

Staying fit to combat the potential onslaught of the undead remains an important factor in modern life. There's extreme skiing, for example, or "crocking" (bungee jumping in Australia in which one lands in water inhabited by saltwater crocodiles, the ones famous for snacking on humans). New to me though is the sport listed below, described on a sign on the sign of a job-site trailer adjacent to the 405 Freeway.

Somehow it makes me think of vacuuming the stairs while simultaneously rappelling down from the skylight in a Ninja costume, or maybe using a jet pack and rollerblades to see how fast I can hose down the driveway. Whatever I do, I better do it well, since "Anything less is unacceptable!!: If I could somehow combine my concealed weapons, a wagon full of mummies, and some virus-laden coconut shoots, I would have the complete package. Of course, the sign itself might be as wide as a billboard. Time now to put on my crash helmet and get a blowtorch ready, to see what can be done about the weeds in the planter. After that, we'll see how the skateboard performs in the bathtub. If I cover the bottom with a scouring pad and lubricate it all with some scum-be-gone foam, I bet I can knock this thing out in under two minutes.

Kawabunga, as the surfers used to say.

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The Antelope Valley College blog is curated by Charles Hood in Language Arts and does not represent the views of the Board of Trustees, the District itself, or Metropolitan Transit Authority, which is the organization behind the interminable freeway project on the Sepulveda Pass. Hood can be reached at chood@avc.edu.

Who's the Greatest Great Gatsby?

Charles Hood and Scott Covell review the recent try at putting the novel on film

Charles Hood: We both were simultaneously looking forward to and yet dreading Mother's Day weekend this year, and it has nothing to do with our families. That's because this past weekend the F. Scott Fitzgerald estate got its last big push towards mega-royalties, when the Baz Luhrmann "Jazz Era on Acid" version of The Great Gatsby opened. Would the movie wreck the book or do it justice?

In terms of straight dollars, there's one winner right out the gate. This classic of American literature is still in copyright, and so the accountants must love it: not just whatever umpteen millions the production companies had to pay for movie rights, but now another generation of readers will be buying copies of the book. This has to be the single most profitable piece of Modernist literature of all, outselling Hemingway, Pound, Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. Only Picasso must be more valuable per square inch. A quick survey reveals that my household has a least four versions of Gatsby, separate from whatever I have in my office at AVC. My wife the lit major has two copies, I have a hard copy I can't find, and I have a Kindle version that I ordered once to fill up the hours on a cross-Atlantic flight a year ago.

Fitzgerald was living in L.A. when he died; his last house is under what is now the 101 Freeway, though his actual site of death was an apartment near Crescent Heights and Sunset. It's now a gated unit but before it was, Bill Vaughn and I once knocked on the door. Current occupants were not pleased to have yet more pilgrims. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack tied to alcoholism and maybe TB; he's buried near Washington D.C., and I have been there too, though this time without Bill Vaughn. Covell (unless he has misplaced it) has an acorn from the grave site, courtesy of me. All of the Fitzgerald work is worth knowing, if nothing else in order to counterbalance the cruel portrait of him in Hemingway's Moveable Feast. Why though has Gatsby been raised to top-tier status? Along with Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick, it ranks as one of the most perfect and enduring novels of the entire American canon.

Like most aspects of high art, from Beethoven to Plato, Gatsby may be better known for being famous than it is appreciated as a rich and deeply moving text. Indeed, I am not sure how many people read it still, but apparently enough people have heard of it that it merits high status as a cultural reference point. Publicity in advance of the movie's release has been ubiquitous. To take two examples (one highbrow, one lowbrow), Vanity Fair ran a squib to feature the clothing recently.

It's a well-lit shot, custom made for the magazine, with a brief narrative on the right about who made which of the costumes. (Brooks Brothers, in the case of the photo.) So for Vanity Fair, the movie is about style, look, elegance. It's not whether it lives up to the spirit of the book, but how the actors look, putting the bodies of the book out there in front of us.

Yet on the supermarket tabloid end of the scale, even the Globe has stepped up to cover the movie, and in this case, turned the interpretive framework into a high school prom queen contest. Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest Jay Gatsby of them all? This one uses a studio-supplied still, though that lines up nicely with stills from the previous movie versions.

So who IS the best actor for this? Why DOES the book endure? We turn now to another perspective, to look at this question in terms of what works, what doesn't work in the most recent movie adaptation.

Scott Covell: The Great Gatsby: Keep the New Versions Coming!

At the end of his scathing review of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (released this past Thursday midnight), The New Yorker critic Davis Denby suggests that --- like him --- “ young audiences”  may not care for this latest of four Hollywood adaptations of the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  He may be wrong about that (the film did a credible 51 mil the first week), and I certainly disagree with much of his review; however, he makes a great point when he states that perhaps the novel: “should be left in peace. The book is too intricate, too subtle, too tender for the movies” (79).  

Indeed, the glorious lyrical and impressionistic writing of Fitzgerald can only be captured through voiceovers and --- in the case of Luhrmann’s film --- rather surreal moments of spiraling letters all coalescing into beautiful Fitzgerald prose on the handwritten pages of Nick Carraway’s fevered journal written years later in a sanitarium. Still, lovers of The Great Gatsby (of which I am certainly one) or not, Luhrmann offers a visual feast that is at once chaotic, swirling and postmodern, and then switches gears with more profound and subtle film-making to allow the audience to sink deeply into the rekindled romance of Daisy Buchanan and our hero, Jay Gatsby.

Having taught the novel a zillion times, and now, especially after just completing an impossible-to-publish 300-page prequel/sequel of Fitzgerald’s greatest work which I titled Gatsby’s Revenge (copyright issues, dang it), I came to the film without great expectations but just sort of hoping to kick back and enjoy myself in the visuals, music, story, and the amazingly-CGI-realized New York City of 1922.  

I found the film very enjoyable and surprising, even with its obvious flaws. The already-legendary party scenes are wild and ravishing (though I still prefer Copolla’s 1974 lavish, vaster and historically-saner parties, music and dancing), the Valley of Ashes is wonderfully realized (though a bit over-crowded methinks), but it is the romance at the core of the Great American Novel that Luhrmann captures so well and makes this film worth viewing. This second part of the novel and film --- focused on this romance --- is carefully and magically crafted by Luhrmann, but it is the outstanding performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and English actor Carey Mulligan which mesmerize us. 

How good are these? Well they are so much more spell-binding than Redford and Farrow. I like Redford, but (like many others) personally, I dread Farrow’s performance in the 1974 version every time I show scenes from it when teaching the novel.  She just doesn't present quite the right look or feel for that role. In the present version, Mulligan is lovely, and she catches the sense of vulnerability so well necessary for the character. That's fine, but DiCaprio is the one who is close to brilliant. What a nuanced, multi-level engaging persona he brings to the legendary love-struck bootlegger of the Jazz Age, Jay (Gatz) Gatsby. 

I was wondering for months if DiCaprio would be able to summon forth that warm smile of Gatsby’s, and indeed he does, while also bringing an intensity that builds in a sort of angsted momentum right up to the penultimate violent argument with Tom Buchanan at the Ritz in New York City, which Denby believes is “the dramatic highlight of [Luhrmann’s] career.” 

I saw the film in Sherman Oaks with my wife, Lori, my best friend and colleague, Mark Hoffer, and my two teenage kids, and while we had some disagreement about the first half of the film (Lori and I generally liked the first half, while the rest of them gave that part a thumbs down), we agreed the second half is worth watching and brings out some of the best aspects of the novel nicely. 

Maybe that’s all we can hope for with film adaptations of our favorite works: does the film capture “the spirit” of the text (in the language of critic Louis Giannetti), and does it at least offer a selection of moments when you go: “Yeah, that’s it! Well done!” I don’t think there’s any doubt that Luhrmann’s version achieves both elements. 

Throughout the film Luhrmann offers us glimpses of that green light on Daisy’s dock, there swirling in some sort of mythic mist: forever beckoning to Gatsby, and to all of us, with its legendary  resonance as a metaphor for the riches and success waiting for those who quest for the quintessential vision of the American dream. Like that strangely mist-hidden green beacon we can perceive clearly on occasion throughout the film, there are a number of times we can ascertain through the unique fog of Luhrmann’s vision, the true essence and beauty of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. And for me, that’s enough.

Charles Hood: Thanks. I think Covell has got this exactly right. Being more impatient than Scott Covell, I saw the movie on Friday night at a sold-out showing in Westwood. My companions were lit major wife Abbey and the famous painter (and super great film buff) Don Bachardy. Bachardy's late partner was the novelist Christopher Ishwerood, through whom Bachardy knew well W.H. Auden and Tennessee Williams and other mid-20th century heavyweight writers. That is to say, Bachardy knew the people who knew Fitzgerald and company, and so his opinion counts double with me. (Once, when I asked Don if he had seen the big Kubrick show at LACMA, he said modestly, "Well, no, but when the Kubricks were in L.A. still, Chris and I saw a lot of them.")

And my group's vote? We agree with Covell, in that all of us defy the astoundingly long parade of critics who want to trash the Luhrmann version. It may not be a great movie or even at times a good one, but it's always trying to do interesting things and it has some absolutely amazing set-piece scenes. When Gatsby is on the second floor balcony of his two-tier bedroom (the bed lined up to face Daisy's house, across the water), he throws down a rainbow of silk shirts onto the bed. I hate to say that images do things that words can't, but this is a perfect instance of a moment having to be seen, not read about. The way they fall like burnt up angels or physical dreams, the lurid, lush, amazing Technicolor rush of it all, just has to be seen to be believed. (Sorry, I hate cliches, but in this case, it's really true.)

And the thing about any movie we dislike of a book we love (which for me, includes many of the early installments of the Harry Potter franchise), if you don't like the film version out now, just wait ten years. There will always be a remake down the line.

Until then, if you're ambivalent about whether to see it at all or not, the answer is yes, ignore the bad reviews on "Rotten Tomatoes." Just go. And if picking between regular format or 3D, go for 3D. If we're going to put frosting and sprinkles on top of our cotton candy, we may as well go all the way. As Vanity Fair said (in advance of the official release), "If Luhrmann has caught a whiff of the self-delusion in Gatsby's belief in 'the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us,' his excessive vision will have done Fitzgerald proud." And indeed it has, indeed it has.

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The AVC Blog is curated by Language Arts teacher Charles Hood and does not represent the views of the District, the Board of Trustees, or the Fitzgerald estate. Hood can be reached at chood@avc.edu, and Covell at scovell@avc.edu.

Triumph and Tragedy in Boston

John Toth provides a runner's perspective on recent events

Inside the LS1 building on campus, across from the Language Arts Division office, we have a glass display case that features news articles and cartoons and public announcements. One of the weekly features is an on-going series, "What I Have Been Reading," which allows a different faculty member each time to share what's on her or his nightstand.

The most recent addition to this series comes from English Department member John Toth, whose response was so thoughtful and poignant, that it merits repeating here.

As many on campus know, John is a very serious runner, and is working on a life goal of running a marathon in all 50 states. That's pretty cool --- I always was happy just to have been able to visit each of the U.S. states, let alone do something that sustained (and healthy).

Many on campus know him, but for those who don't, here's a recent picture.

He was kind enough to let me post his "What I Have Been Reading" essay not just in the display case (where it will be up about a week or so, until the next person rotates into the slot), but here, as well.

The rest of this comes from Mr. Toth:

On my first trip to Boston to run the marathon, I read 26 Miles to Boston by Michael Connelly, which chronicles the history of the marathon as well as author’s personal journey from the start in Hopkinton to the finish line on Boylston Street in Copley Square.  The tragedy during this year’s Boston Marathon brought the work to mind as well as my own experience in 2009 and 2011 and suggested both the elastic and fragile nature of memory.

2009 was an epic fail.  Overcooked the first half and stumbled through the last 13 miles.  I was the lone walker in a river of runners flowing past the Citgo sign, Fenway Park, and other iconic landmarks of the city.  Friends I was supposed to run with were half an hour in front of me crossing the finish line.  Memories of the entire trip are clouded by frustration and shame.
 
2011 provided redemption:  my fastest marathon time on a course without a significant drop in elevation.  Achieving that kind of success there made the accomplishment even more cherished. Boston is a relatively flat, yet challenging course.  The name Heartbreak Hill suggests the physical and emotional torment that many have encountered after the 20-mile mark. Perhaps even more indicative of my performance is my splits. A successful marathon is measured by even or negative splits--the ability to run the second half at the same pace or faster than the first despite the fatigue. My second half was only one second slower than the first—perhaps the closest I will ever come to reaching perfection.  

Despite my exhaustion, crossing the finish line was pure exhilaration, an unqualified triumph.  I wanted so desperately to capture that moment. I turned around to gaze down Boylston Street and the Boston skyline.  In my euphoric state, I imagined that the skyline would always be a reminder of a hard-fought personal victory.

However, the events of Patriots’ Day this year have caused my memory to take on the character of a palimpsest.  Superimposed on my memory is the image of the same view of Boylston Street that serves as a backdrop to explosions capable of throwing a runner to the ground.  My image of triumph shattered by violence, as the bodies of runners and cheering spectators were torn apart by nails bits and other insidious shrapnel.

My heart goes out to those who lost life and limb and suffered other physical injuries.  However, the psychic damage inflicted on all those involved by this act of terrorism should not be overlooked.   Instead of a day that will be remembered with unbridled joy, fear and horror will define their experience.         

For runners, a day that should be a memory of personal accomplishment will always be tarnished by tragedy.

The Antelope College blog is curated by Charles Hood, English. He can be reached at chood@avc.edu. Professor Toth may be reached at jtoth@avc.edu. This blog does not reflect the official positions of the Board of Trustees or Antelope Valley College District.

Marthe Aponte and Aboriginal Art

the sure hand and open heart of a modern master -- or, "Come on in, the water's fine!"

AVC's French teacher Marthe Aponte is a woman of many talents. Based on her work under Jacques Derrida at U.C. Irvine, she understands the difficult and subtle linguistic theory of "Deconstruction" better than anybody on campus. (Her closest rival might be Santi Tafarella, in the English Department, or Nicelle Davis, also in English. When he first arrived at Irvine from Yale, Derrida was all everybody talked about, and I went to some of his lectures but confess that mostly I walked away baffled. His secretary though once tried to steal my office desk, so he and I were rivals from the start.)

For Marthe Aponte, her students in French learn how to have very very good accents, while those classes are further enriched by her cross-cultural Caribbean perspective, since Ms. Aponte taught in Venezuela as well. For Professor Aponte, languages are not just bundles of grammar and rules, but also are delivery mechanisms for expressing the full potential of the human spirit.

We can see attitude that in her solo show up now in the AVC Art Gallery.

(Note to others: please don't touch the art!)

Encouraged initially by Warren Scherich and other local artists, Marthe has developed a substantial body of work in a relatively brief period of time. This show then have several messages. One is the formal beauty of the pieces themselves. Another is a comment on scale and viewing distance; Aponte's art has one kind of structure and elegance when seen from across the room, and then opens up (like a close-up photograph of a flower or a drop of milk) to have other, even more beautiful, worlds hidden inside. Look at this close-up shot:

Here are some more pieces, as seen being studied at the opening reception.

And here now is a more detailed look at the surface texture itself. Isn't this just amazing? You can get lost inside of these worlds within worlds within worlds.

Another message of the show is one of encouragement and invitation. While I am happy to enjoy her pieces and want to talk her about their connections to larger artistic movements, I also think the show just reminds all of us that we do not have to "be" one thing. Marthe could have said, oh, I am too busy to make art, or too old, or too intimidated, or I have too many committee meetings. Instead, she is like a person willing to swim to Antarctica from the Pier at Santa Monica: she just closed her eyes and jumped into the water.

The results are amazing. To have such a rich and substantial solo show as is up now speaks not just to her talent, but also to her courage, and to the ways in which she is modeling a rich, creative life for the rest of us. I write every day (one to ten hours a day, in fact) but often wish I could do more with photography. Here's a recent shot of mine that I like, of a young Joshua tree spike.

I shot it one day and didn't like the results -- the lighting was off, but it was out of focus because I was holding the camera up over my head so put the truck in 4wd and went back on this same trail a second day, this time bringing a ladder. I do take photography seriously, and would like to practice is it every day. Even so, I hardly am ready for a solo show, and never even really thought that I could "deserve" one. Marthe Aponte has lit a fire under me: now I want to make not just more art, but much better art, on a sustained visual theme. It's as if she already swam to Antarctica and is standing on the shore, wrapped in a duvet, waving at the rest of us --- "Come on over, it's not as far as it looks!"

She also reminds me how much our recent visual culture still has to offer. When I look at her large, bold expanses of direct red, I am returned to my childhood pleasures of coloring a blank page with markers or crayons, and to the simple honest pleasure of color as color. It of course calls to mind Rothko, who famously said, when asked about the ideal viewing distances, that he wanted a person to get right up close --- to stand no more than six inches away, in order to fall into the color field completely.

One Los Angeles- (and recently, UK-) based artist who also celebrates color this way is David Hockney. I went to his huge show in London at the Royal Academy last year, and he deserves the reputation he has. (That show had over 700,000 visitors, limited in part by tickets, which had sold out. Longer hours or a bigger venue, and the number could have doubled.)

Hockney says --- and the Aponte show verifies it too --- that color has meaning by itself, even if it's a bit askew from so-called normal reality. Here's a small detail of a much larger panorama of a veranda in Mexico.

Getting up close to Marthe's work also brings to mind that most cliche and yet still-interesting of mid-20th century artists, Jackson Pollock.

Of course the main visual tradition she wants us to connect her work to is that of recent (1980 and after) Australian Aboriginal painting. See for example this piece, "Five Dreamings" by Michael Nelson Jakamarra and friends.

It may not be clear in the blog, but the colors are built up out of small dots, sometimes applied with a Q-tip. This compressed visual narrative tells many stories at once: it is a topographic map of landscape, it is a comment on Australian ecology, it is a family history of clan boundaries, and it's a retelling of a creation myth. Some of us may have seen Biblical art, showing a saint's death or the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, but those works rarely incorporate as many layers as an Aboriginal piece manages to include.

Clifford Possum Japaljarri -- and even his name makes me envious --- includes dingo tracks, a man killed after a fight and chase, territorial claims to water holes, and clan totems, all in the same unified visual field. (There is more of course than just that; see Peter Sutton's "Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia" for a much fuller explanation of the implied narratives and sudden joys of pieces such as these.)

When these paintings first came to L.A. I remember being utterly transported by their overall cohesion and fresh visual look, as well as admiring the minute parts from which they are built.

AVC has something like that now with the Aponte show. Here is another close-up shot. Christine Mugnolo and I were joking that this level of detail would drive us batty. Yet Marthe makes it look not only effortless, but inevitable.

Others think so too; her opening reception was bursting with curious, excited people.

One of the things the AVC Gallery does well is to provide music at openings; the art piece in the background here is a bit blown out (my camera doesn't like the hot spots created by the gallery lights), but we can admire the musician's vest: he certainly fits his visual environment.

This leaves us to ask Marthe one final question, but it's a big one.

It's great that you have come this far . . . what's next?

                                               ++++++++++++++++++++

The Antelope Valley College blog is curated by Charles Hood, Language Arts, and does not represent the views of the District or the Board of Trustees. Hood can be reached at chood@avc.edu.