Please help support the work I do as a teacher and purchase a copy of this book of wonderful poems by Robert Frost. I selected and edited the poems and wrote the explanatory notes, and Coyote Canyon Press did a great job with their high production standards.
Throughout the summer I’ll post news and events related to the book, which should be a steady seller since interest in Robert Frost has been a constant for the past half century.
On this day in 1972, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) office. They were later charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them and two other men (E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy) for conspiracy, burglary and violation of federal wiretapping laws.
The purpose of the break-in is slightly complex, but here goes. Former Howard Hughes business associate John H. Meier, working with Hubert Humphrey, wanted to feed misinformation to Richard Nixon. Meier told Richard Nixon’s brother, Donald, that he was sure the Democrats would win the election since they had a lot of information on Nixon’s illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released. Meier told Donald Nixon that Larry O’Brien, the Chairman of the DNC, had the information. This provided the President with the motivation to order the break-in of O’Brien’s office as he wanted to see if anything was going to break before the election.
All seven men arrested were either directly or indirectly employees of President Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, CREEP, and many people, including the trial judge, John J. Sirica, suspected a conspiracy involving higher-ups in the government. The scandal revealed the existence of a White House dirty tricks squad, which was behind an orchestrated campaign of political sabotage, an enemies list, a “plumbers” unit to plug political leaks and a secret campaign slush fund associated with CREEP, all with high-level administration involvement. It brought into the open the involvement of Attorney General John N. Mitchell in the dirty tricks, funds and cover-up, as well as key White House advisers, all of whom went to prison for these crimes, for sentences of one to four years. The jail terms had been shortened on the basis of the high level of the convicted, and their cooperation in the hearings.
Coyote Canyon Press is publishing a book of Robert Frost’s early poetry, for which I did the editing, selected the poems, and wrote explanatory notes. The idea was a simple one: gather up the poems from Frost’s first three volumes and write notes for the poems that needed some sort of explanation. The title of the book is SELECTED EARLY POEMS. This is a first publication credit for me, with my name on the front cover, and I’m still not even sure how to contain my disbelief and excitement over this.
Here’s a brief overview of the book: In 1913, Robert Frost published A BOY’S WILL, his first collection of poems, a series of sharply rendered scenes of New England rural life. A second volume, NORTH OF BOSTON, followed in 1914 and contained some of Frost’s most brilliant and best-loved works: “Mending Wall,” “After Apple-Picking,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “Birches.” In 1916 Frost followed up these two volumes with MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, which included many of his most moving poems: “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Hill Wife,” and “The Road Not Taken.” The book I edited for Coyote Canyon Press republishes all three of Frost’s first collections originally published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, New York. My explanatory notes reveal Frost’s complex relation to modern and classical poetic traditions, his knowledge of science and philosophy, and his tremendous ear for the rhythms of English, which enabled him to write the finest blank verse since Milton.
The book should be available through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble in about two weeks. I’ll provide links when the book hits the stores.
My students had to draw a creative map of the places in THE GREAT GATSBY. I gave them a worksheet with a list of what needed to be on their maps, and then told them to be creative. To my delight, many of them were. Here are some of the results.
This little video my journalism students shot in 2004 contains the voice of Sandy Ibos coming over the loud speaker. Sandy loved to make after-school announcements. It was something she looked forward to.
The Great Gatsby is possibly the most popular book American students will read during their entire high school career. I remember reading a survey in a newspaper a few years ago when about a thousand people were asked to list their favorite books from high school. The Great Gatsby was ranked number one, followed closely by Romeo and Juliet. I’ve even done my own informal poll and discovered basically the same thing: many adults will tell you that The Great Gatsby is their favorite novel, or at least the one they remember most from their high school days.
STUDY QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER ONE
The following questions are for homework and must be answered by tomorrow.
Explain what Fitzgerald achieved by using Nick’s point of view to tell Gatsby’s story?
What do we learn about Nick Carraway in the introductory section of the novel?
In discussing east Egg and West Egg. Nick states: “To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.” Indicate what the “dissimilarities” might be.
Compare the homes of Nick, Gatsby, and the Buchanan’s. How does each home reflect the personality of its owner?
Fitzgerald’s description of Tom, Daisy, and Jordan creates not only and impression of physical appearance, but also contains added information. What do you learn about their history and interests, and from their gestures and mannerisms?
When Nick leaves the Buchanan’s house, he is “confused and a little disgusted.” Why?
Though we do not meet Gatsby until Chapter 3, we hear references to him in the conversations of others. Note each reference. What impressions do you get?
Tomorrow we’ will a take a quiz on Chapter One and begin reading Chapter Two.
The idea for “Bernice bobs Her Hair” originated in a ten-page letter (circa 1916) that Fitzgerald wrote to his sister Annabel when he was nineteen and she fourteen. He instructed her in great detail in the areas of “Conversation,” “Poise,” and “Dress and Personality” as to how she could become a social success. The story that gew out of this letter was written in January 1920, and it was originally a ten-thousand-word story called “Barbara Bobs Her Hair.” After four magazines rejected it, Fitzgerald shortened it to seven thousand words, altered its climax (making it in his words “snappy), and Ober sold it for $500 to The Saturday Evening Post with its new title, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Written in the same month as “The Camel’s Back,” the story was published in the May 1, 1920, issue and was Fitzgerald’s fourth contribution to the magazine. Bernice fits in to the category of what Fitzgerald called the “wonderful kid,” a young woman of about sixteen who is on her way toward free-spiritedness and liberation, the variety of flapper that Bernice has become by the time of the story’s unexpected turn. With her last gesture in the story Bernice signals her independence from the social hypocrisy of her cousin’s world, though ironically it is the precise world into which Fitzgerald had earlier given his sister the rules of entry. Fitzgerald included “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” in Flappers and Philosophers.
Yes, when the teacher is away, the kids will play. Witness the above video. I was out last month attending a funeral, so my journalism students took the time to have a little fun at the sub’s expense. This and several other videos were posted on YouTube. Now that I think about it, I really don’t know whom the joke is on: the absent teacher, the sub, or the kids themselves.
June 30, 2008 
Please help support the work I do as a teacher and purchase a copy of this book of wonderful poems by Robert Frost. I selected and edited the poems and wrote the explanatory notes, and Coyote Canyon Press did a great job with their high production standards.
Posted in Life of a teacher, Literature 
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I remember clearly the day Nixon resigned.
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