Book #40: From Pieces to Weight by 50 Cent

Honestly, I don't know what to call the author in this review. Mr Cents? 50?

I feel like he wouldn't be insulted by either because I would be discussing him respectfully.

 I liked this book. Apparently I'm the only (cool) person who hasn't read this book, seen the movie or generally know the author's story. I wish a student had given me this book sooner - I would have read it, suggested it and talked about it.

Not everyone who has a good story to tell is actually a good storyteller. Thankfully, 50 Cent has a knack for telling stories just long and just short enough to pull the reader from page to page, satisfied and thirsty.

Three pages into the book I was hooked by the author's  cadence, his honesty and his brutal denial he had a drug problem when drugs landed him in jail and rehab (repeatedly).

 Actually, I take that back. 50 Cent wasn't a drug addict in the usual sense - he wasn't hooked on crack or dope or anything that would strip him of his pride and possesions.

 He was hooked on the drug of money, on wealth, on the flash of bills and the belief that cash meant status and security in a violent world.

  I'm not judging him for this. I hope I'm not.

Each semester in my classes I have the students do a quick "core value" clarification game and in every class one or two students will announce "wealth" is their core.

 This usually isn't a surprise - it's the guy with the spiffy motorcycle helmet and buttery jacket; it's the guy with that watch that cost more than my first (used) car; it's the lady with the perfect purse nails and manicure who sits in the second row.

None of these guys ever miss class (they pay for classes so why get less than they pay for? brilliant, huh?) so if their pursuit of wealth takes them through the testing field of discipline and respect, more power to them.

The pursuit of wealth brought 50 Cent the courage and drive to find something that would bring him money, and that's how he found his voice. Along the way there's violence, bad uncles, fancy cars, and two guys called Grits and Butter.

If you haven't read this book and you happen across a copy, pick it up.

The central weakness in this book (which isn't very weak at all) is that it is written from the persepective a person still living in an unfolding story.

He ends the story with success, making money, making records, arriving.

If you've already read that book or you loathe reading about rappers I have a book to suggest for you.

Way back in the anciently historic old days of the 1990s when today's students were barely born and I was a grad student teaching at FSU I repeatedly assigned Nathan McCall's "Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America." Every student who read it LOVED it (except one, and she was deeply deeply shocked by it, but this was 1996 and life was full of shocks back then) and at least ten of my students asked how they could write Mr. McCall and thank him for such an awesome book. Good enough?.  http://www.amazon.com/Makes-Me-Wanna-Holler-America/dp/0679740708

Book #39: The Mennonite in the Little Black Dress

The student who gave me this book didn't read it. Not all of it, at least, but that's OK. She'd told me all she had was non-fiction, how-to and advice books so I sent her off to find some fiction.   She already read several books I lent her includingValley of the Dolls, Fault in Our Stars, so she kinda knew what I liked.

A week after everyone else turned in their books she brought me this one.  It's funny is all she said and handed it to me.

She was right. 

This book is a memoir of a really really hard time written by a creative writing professor, and her skill and confidence as a writer and storyteller come through on each page. This book dances (oh wait, Mennonites don't dance, so this book dances-ish) with stories short enough to keep my attention that hold together into a book I didn't want to put down and now I don't want to give back. 

There is a section about a guy with a teeny weenie peenie,  a part where a soldier makes potato salad in his pants and an entire discussion of the most shameful foods Mennonite parents pack in their children's lunch pails (...pancake sandwich??) 

This book will make you laugh out loud, it will let you put it down and pick it up, and it will make you a bit more creative and smarter by reading it. 

With that said,I can't believe I've finished 39 books.

 OK, I can believe it. 

Ask my kids, all I do at home (when Gordon Ramsey isn't on) is read read read. 

Ask my students, I use reading all these books for an excuse to not constantly update their grades on blackboard. 

When I was in college we didn't see professors as ATM's that had to give us our "balance" at any moment, but this generation of students seems genuinely pained if/when they don't know exactly what their running weighted grade is at any moment during the semester.  I'm glad they care, but sheesh, back off, I'll get to it in good time, just like I have every semester for 20 years.

Now I have a minute or two now before class, and  I'm choosing to spend it with a new book, not typing grades into spreadsheets on this beautiful Spring day. 



Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home Rhoda Janzen

Pretest: Name 2 events from the Civil Rights Movement....

• Black panthers
• Women can vote
• Bill of Rights
• All men equal
• Birmingham Church bombing
• Give freedom to black
• Race mixing
• Movement 1 and Movement 2
• MLK and Malcolm X
• Rosa Parks and I have a dream
• No more war
• women voting rights
• Rosa Parks on bus; MLK speech
• Freedom writers
• Prohibition
• Rosa Parks doesn’t move
• Riot in Watts
• Slavery changes
• Racial voting controversies
• A lot of marching
• Racism rights
• Ronald Reagan
• Vote
• Space frontiers
• The March
• The Speech
• MLK Speech on Washington
• Malcolm X dies
• Alabama school segregation where they let colored kids in a white school
• Greensboro sit-in
• Million man march
• The Red Cross goes to Africa to help racial segregation
• Lots of people shooting
• People hating each other
• Ping pong became a big thing
• Probably some marches/protests
• Boy-cott
• Protests to protect women’s rights
• Blacks rights
• Taxes being lowered
• Voting
• Assassinations
• H-Bombing
• Segregation
• A better working environment
• JFK is killed
• The bus issue
• Give rights to gays
• Woodstock
• Boycots agains racial mixing
• No segregation
• More laws
• Women working
• Slavery
• Cuban revolution

Phone-jacking: The Chevron-Cuba Story

Times change and you have to change with them. I'm a grown up. I know this. So when a problem emerges with data and new plans and all that, I find a simple plan. I give Zoe my phone (heads up - don't call it unless you want to talk to Zoe).

She says thank you, she gets sooo excited and then -- after adding apps and synching things -- she announces she needs a new phone case for this ohone

A new case? We are saving money here!

She gives me big sad eyes.

How could she face the world with this ugly white and pink case (the same one of mine she fawned over before, mind you)?

 I shake my head.

No new case. And you have to give me your iPad. 

I think to ask for her teal chevron dress AND the jeans with the sparkly butt but I hold back.

I need the iPad! It has all my pictures!

I don't push it, but suddenly I want her iPad, the one she jacked from her dad.

 It's my turn to jack something, whether I need it or not. Or maybe not. Anyway.

She frowns but doesn't disagree. Somehow I think I might come out ahead here.

Fast forward to the next day.

She is hunting high and low for the pink sharpie.

Of course it isn't anywhere she looks.

I took it.

Writing in pink sharpie is fun, I makes me feel whimsical. So there. I took the sharpie, and I'd do it again.

Without admitting guilt (what is guilt? I bought the pen! I'm the mom! I need beautiful things!) I slip to my purse, pull out the sharpie and hand it to her.

Thank you she says and walks away too happily.

I love it when she's super occupied (her brother is more often like me - leave him alone and when you find him he will have built a sniper nest, boobie traps and made a you tube on it; leave her alone she gets lonely).

  Suddenly there is space and time to put this away, move this, get that done. More time passes.

Ta-da! She announces. Like it?

She's holding a phone cover with a pink and teal chevron design.

 It is meticulous, beautiful, craft, cheap and -- beyond all that -- resourceful.

I love it.

So I scowl angrily.

What's wrong? Isn't it gorgeous?

I hate it.

Her brother stops chasing the invisible (doomed) enemy behind and around the kitchen island and looks up, shocked by my criticism.

This might be a first.

You hate it? She looks at it again and it's still perfect. Delightful, cute, perfect.

I hate it. I had that cover for a YEAR and I never thought to write something cute on it like a heart or um....

Both kids look at me.

What would I write on my phone? The pressure is too much.

I could've written "Cuba" in really cool lettering.

She shakes her head.

He blurts out, Cuba? yeah Mom, write Cuba on your phone. See where THAT will get you.

The both laugh.

Then he dismisses me and goes back to chasing his doomed enemy with a gun held together by rubberbands and duct tape.

I too and go on with my Sunday, Cuba-free and iPad free, for now.

Exam #2 Bloopers: No, YOUR horse does...

Your horse has diabetes should include a discussion of moonshine and prohibition. 

Pretty much everyone who was in class winced enough to remember the story.

 Some of these guys might've missed that particular day.

• No. Your horse does.
• Poor guy can’t eat snickers
• I’m sorry
•  People said this at alcohol.
• Probably ate a lot of McDonalds
•      It was a specific “coffee” but in reality was a liquor mixed with coffee or tea. A guy asked “is this horse pee” would want some more alcohol. 

•    American companies were coming up with diseases or small stuff to be cured.
•  I missed this lecture but I’m glad I don’t have a horse.;-)
•  When your horse is sick it is said your horse has diabetes but it was really pregnant.
•  This was a saying about horses and diabetes because no one wanted to join the war.

SupercalifragilisticexpiHALITOSIS

The correct answers discussed consumerism and how "fear" used in marketing.

These discussed other things.

·      sounds like a word Mary Poppins would use 

·      was like athlete’s foot?

·      Halitosis was a disease that spread because of women

·      Halitosis was when all the soldiers were getting STDs from Victory Girls.

Exam #2 Bloopers: Cold War Craziness

• The Truman Doctrine was issued by Woodrow Wilson

• Berlin is technically a Warsaw country but keeps its independence.

• The Iron Curtain Telegram and Long Telegram were physical boundaries set up to separate areas in a country that was the Soviet Union.

• Treaty of Versailles was when they took all of Germany’s land so Germany could have peace.

• The Truman Doctrine states that the US will stay out of foreign affairs.