Shared Text: College Scavenger Hunt

May 14, 2010 by 6 Comments

Last Saturday, I rose with the sun to travel to Philadelphia for the Dad Vail Crew Regatta. My daughter Sarah, a freshman at the University of Chicago, was rowing in their Novice Four boat that had qualified against all odds the day before for the Regatta semi-finals. It was a delight to see her compete, even if her boat finished fourth in the semis and didn’t qualify for the finals.

I didn’t realize until much later that, as much as she lives for Crew, Sarah’s coming to the Regatta represented a huge sacrifice for her because it meant missing all but the final hours of the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt. Her College House, Charles Hitchcock Hall, had won three years in a row, and. Sarah, as a freshman, was missing out on the four days of madness and fun and often disgusting challenges that make ‘Scav’ a highlight of the Hyde Park year. What no one missed, I’m sure, was the Harry Potter reference in the 2010 Scavenger Hunt list of items. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Shared Text

More ‘Hunger Games’ Bird Thoughts: Katniss and Prim as Dead Duck and Brilliant Mockingjay

May 13, 2010 by 9 Comments

No piece of critical writing is every truly comprehensive, covering every possible base. In a March post on bird images in The Hunger Games, I hit some of the highlights of bird connections with the two segments of the trilogy we have thus far, knowing that I wouldn’t get every single reference, of course, but happy to see that we had some great conversations on our feathered friends in Panem.

This week, however, a bird connection occurred to me that I had not pondered before, and it seems like one we might want to address. I wasn’t even thinking about HG, strangely. We were doing a memorial service for Civil War soldiers on a particularly chilly evening, so I wrapped my daughter up in an old fur cape, cast off from a college theatre department, which looks charming with her 1860s garb (in our neck of the woods, we tell folks it’s bearskin, though I guess it’s mink). The poor thing is pretty bare in spots, and, as Isabella was patting the soft fur, she noticed an old, rusty straight pin stuck in the hem. Thankfully, we got it out and discarded before anyone needed a tetanus shot, but it started me thinking about Mrs. Everdeen pinning Katniss’s old Reaping outfit on Prim.

That’s a very poignant scene, in my mind, as Katniss is so concerned about Prim’s shirt coming untucked, what she calls a “duck tail.”  At first, I thought this just a throwaway, a moment of tenderness and levity as the girls quack at each other before the Reaping, but, as I pondered it further,  I noticed that it is the sight of Prim’s “duck tail” that specifically incites Katniss to volunteer. It’s the trigger that sends her “flying” to the platform to take Prim’s place. The bird connections here may be far more complex and meaningful than an untucked blouse, as the duck is replaced by the Mockingjay.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Elizabeth Baird Hardy, Hunger Games

Hating Michael Gambon: Fandom’s Favorite Sport?

May 11, 2010 by 9 Comments

There is a Hog’s Head Forum page devoted to the subject of the esteemed actor‘s portrayal of Albus Dumbledore (‘Just Say No to Michael Gambon’) and a diverse Fandom seems to share a common disdain for the movie Headmaster post Richard Harris. But Mr. Gambon, CBE and Knight Bachelor, has only fond memories of his life on the set, saying recently, after wrapping up filming of Deathly Gallows:

“I enjoyed it!” he says proudly of his Dumbledore days, though he admits the role may not have stretched him particularly as an actor. “There’s no character really, it’s just me! Me dressed up in a costume! I’m essentially playing myself, that’s all I’m doing.”

Still, he misses the Harry Potter films. “It’s fun laughing all the time, and I know all the other actors, I’ve known them for years. It’s like being with friends.”

Love him or hate him as Dumbledore, do read the whole Irish Times article from which this snippet is the smallest and perhaps the least interesting part. A fascinating man, however unfortunate the decision to cast him as Albus Dumbledore…

Filed Under: Movie Thoughts

Shared Text Note: ‘The Voldemort View’

May 10, 2010 by 4 Comments

Readers here know that I like to note instances of allusions to Harry Potter in current media pieces as a marker of the degree to which Ms. Rowling’s novels have become and act as our “shared text” in the 21st Century. Today’s reference (H/T to Charles, who knows my thoughts on Education courses and degrees!) is from the National Review Online’s ‘Corner’ page in an entry written by John Derbyshire, the author of We Are Doomed. That blogpost, ‘Gapology,’ discusses the three explanations of the so-called “achievement gap’ in education, the last of which — the common sense one never-to-be-named in politically correct academic circles — is tagged “the Voldemort View.” Mr. Derbyshire after this allusion then adds another Potter reference, this time to the climactic confrontation in Philosopher’s Stone, that no one not very familiar with that book will ‘get.’ [Read more…]

Filed Under: Shared Text

Chronicles of Narnia Set Second-Most Expensive Sale in December 2009 for AbeBooks

May 9, 2010 by 7 Comments

AbeBooks is a great resource for new, used, and rare books. Some real treasures apparently change hands through its website, which recently posted the list of its ten most expensive sales for December 2009.  Some of the listmakers are a little surprising, including several non-English titles (and somebody really is that interested in Dutch medals? Who would have guessed?). Much to my delight, second on the list, pulling in a whopping 8,132 dollars, was a complete original set of the Chronicles of Narnia. Aside from the obvious value (to me) of being in the original order, there is something very appealing about having the same set Lewis would have had from the publishers. But even if I had eight grand to toss around, is this how I would spend it? I’d probably still read my well-worn editions (the last set published in original order), both to my childen and on my own frequent returns to Narnia.

 I suppose many of the books in the vast piles around my home and office are valuable. Perhaps the only person who will really care is the executor of my estate. As far as I am concerned, books are valuable for what they mean to me, rather than for what their monetary exchange rate might be. The ratty paperbacks with my comments scrawled in the margins of them are priceless to me, though a collector, like Madam Pince, would shriek in horror at the sight of them. Of course, I do take care of my books, banning certain volumes from the “reading room” (that one with the tub and sink in it) and making sure that the more elderly meembers of the collection get treated with extra respect and care.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis