Author: Dale

Reading Caves: theory & practice

Posted on by Dale

On the Nature of Reading Caves

At Newnan Crossing Elementary, we’ve been celebrating Read Across America, as is our wont, with our Reading Caves event. I thought it might be appropriate to talk about the theory and practice of this curious cultural artifact.

First a photo of this year’s caves:

As you can see, teams of teachers come in and transform the media center with bulletin board paper and fripperies. The idea is that students will come in and secrete themselves in one hidey hole or another and read for a short time. It’s just something out of the ordinary and fun.

But why? Why don’t I bring in multitudes of volunteers to read books, usually something by Dr. Seuss, to classes all over the school?

I used to do that, actually. As the school got larger, however, it became more and more of a problem to line up the number of volunteers needed, then match their availability to our insane patchwork schedule all over the building.

And then one year, I forgot. I looked at the calendar, and it was February 25, and I had done nothing about Read Across America Day on March 2.

I panicked.

But then, somehow, I remembered a thing I had read years before.

The Theory of Reading Caves

A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, et al., is a tome published in 1977, and it bears every hallmark of the sensibilities of the 1960s and their aftermath: utopianism, rejection of urban/corporate life, respect for older ways, optimism, etc., etc. Large parts of it belong to the “isn’t it pretty to think so?” school of planning, but a great deal of it is not only heartfelt, but valid.

The book is essentially a grammar of design for living spaces: towns, buildings, homes, neighborhoods. More than 250 ‘patterns’ in this grammar are presented, hierarchically listed and interlinked. The patterns are derived from the authors’ observations about how healthy cultures live(d), and many are precisely archetypal.

Late in the book, p. 927-929, we are presented with a detail pattern: 203 CHILD CAVES. I will quote the pattern in its entirety:

Children love to be in tiny, cave-like places.

In the course of their play, young children seek out cave-like space to get into and under, old crates, under tables, in tents, etc. […]

They try to make special spaces for themselves and for their friends, most of the world about them is “adult space” and they are trying to carve out a place that is kid size.

When children are playing in such a “cave”, each child takes up about 5 square feet; furthermore, children like to do this in groups, so the caves should be large enough to accommodate this: these sorts of groups range in size from three to five, so 15 to 25 square feet, plus about 15 square feet for games and circulation, gives a rough maximum size for caves.

Therefore:

Wherever children play, around the house, in the neighborhood, in schools, make small “caves ” for them. Tuck these caves away in natural left over spaces, under stairs, under kitchen counters. Keep the ceiling heights low, 2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet, and the entrance tiny.

I don’t think I need to provide a lot of proof or defense for pattern 203: who among us has not thrilled at the receipt of a refrigerator box? I remember that one reason I looked forward to school being out each summer was that I could prevail upon my father to go to Maxwell-Prince Furniture (“Drive a little and save a lot,” a slogan necessitated by the fact that they were not on the Court Square but, gasp!, nearly a whole mile away out on Hwy 27, at the Hospital Road intersection) and get me a box. It would become my Fortress of Solitude for weeks.

So, in my panic and desperation at having not scheduled a single reader for the school, I boldly announced a new initiative: Newnan Crossing Reading Caves!

That first year was more than a little desperate. I pulled the thing together literally overnight, bringing in sheets and swaths of fabric; lamps; pillows. I turned over tables and enveloped them in bulletin board paper. I turned the book aisles into long, narrow enclaves. I borrowed the parachute from the gym and draped it over tables and the couch. I borrowed materials from teachers. The whole thing was quite lame.

And it was a huge hit. The kids didn’t see the tape and bulletin board paper, nor did they see how desperately cheesy it was: they saw CHILD CAVES, and they were ecstatic.

At that point, Newnan Crossing was pushing 1,000 students, and it was clear to me that Reading Caves was a much more practicable solution to Read Across America Day than the nightmare that scheduling volunteers had turned into. We went with it.

Reading Caves in Practice

Since that first year, I have invited teachers to join in the fun. Those who choose can volunteer to put up a Reading Cave, and they choose their theme. On the afternoon beforehand, they come into the media center and transform it. For the next two days, media center traffic comes to a standstill: it’s silent reading time in here, and besides, most of the shelves are covered by the caves.

After the teachers have set up theirs, I’ll go around and do the table thing to fill in the gaps. (I also have my own major Cave to put up.)

We run Reading Caves for two days so that most classes have a chance to come in and spend a while reading. After each class comes in, I give them four minutes to explore, and after a one-minute warning, they have to sit and read. (This year, I created two sound files, one with an introduction, and the one-minute warning, followed by a “sit and read”; and a 20-minute loop that had nothing in it but a chime to end the session about three minutes before the end. During the entire day, I play quiet music, this year all space music. Drove me nuts.)

The four minutes are insane: we usually have two classes at a time, and they go nuts as they explore one cave after another. And then when the one-minute warning sounds, it becomes bedlam. Now they have to choose which cave to sit in, and the friend/clique factor kicks in, and lo! there is much squealing and running.

And then it’s quiet for about ten minutes as they settle in and start reading. For the little kids, that’s enough time. For the older ones, I need to find a way to have longer sessions, because they’re just getting into it when the chime instructs them to close their books and “return to real life.”

They leave on a high, chattering about how much fun they’ve had. It’s pretty neat: a really big response for not a lot of work.

The caves can be elaborate, or they can be simple as pie. Here are some from this year and the past:

Charlotte’s Web, complete with bales of hay, the web, troughs, and a fence of yarn (that no one could see and which we finally had to take down for safety’s sake). If you look in the trough on the right, you can see a little brown Templeton. Kids climbed up on the tables inside, somehow managing to not knock off all the chairs that were perched up there with them, holding up the roof.

The fifth grade’s Iditarod cave. Simplicity itself, but because you entered from one aisle and had to crawl all the way down and around (in a U-shape), it was very popular. Also popular, and pictured up at the top of the post, was a Twilight cave. How do kids this young even know about that accursed phenomenon? That cave was actually two: a cave and a den (for the werewolves.)

My 100 Book Club cave. Not very flashy, but it was comfortable. More than a few kids found it cozy:

I have these large pieces of cardboard that were donated several years ago by Multec, a local company that makes packaging. I’ve saved them and use them every year, so my cave has actual walls. I’m thinking of ways to make it more complex and interesting next year. And I hold them together with Mr. McGroovy’s Box Rivets, a wonderful, wonderful invention.

One year, I did a Hogwarts. Here’s the Slytherin common room from that cave:

Above that was the Gryffindor common room. You entered the cave by crawling under a table; that table had the Great Hall on top. I had house banners hanging, and great portraits all over the walls.

Here’s a glance at the exterior, beyond the Three Little Pigs houses:

The houses of the Little Pigs were made of PVC pipe, covered in fabric. Each would hold one child.

My all-time favorite was the year 5th grade did Narnia. You entered through the Wardrobe, of course:

There was a stretch of Narnia in winter:

Then you turned the corner, and there you were in Mr. Tumnus’s house:

Pretty spectacular.

Some practical considerations: since we turn out the lights, you will need to consider how the children will see to read. There are outlets nearly everywhere in the media center, so power is not really a problem. I made that mistake with the “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way” cave two years ago: the all-black and black-light lit space was very cool, but no one could see to read.

You have to consider supervision. Make sure there’s a way an adult can see into the space and check on things. We had to cut a flap in the Iditarod cave this year for that reason. Otherwise, the more closed in, the better. One reason the 100 Book Club cave was not as popular as it might have been was that it was largely open.

Seating is an issue. This year’s Magic School Bus looked great, but was not very popular because there were no cushions. The same went for the secondary parachute cave. There was just bare carpet, and not many kids found it appealing.

Like A Pattern Language suggests, room for more than one student is good, but more than five is just not cozy. Still, most of the one-kid caves were occupied, because there are some students who are serious about the reading part and don’t want the distraction of other kids.

The cave does not have to be elaborate:

This one, just a table on its side draped with paper, was occupied more than half the sessions. If I had gone a little more origami on it and closed the front a bit, it would have been even more popular.

I’m already planning next year’s Reading Caves. Let me know if you’d like to join in.

Winter break: Day 5

Posted on by Dale

I’m posting this a day late because I was out of town during the evening.

Spent the morning finishing up the herb garden. After the Revolution, I will always buy exactly the correct number of bags of mulch. I will not have to return to the store to buy more, and neither will I have two bags left over after I have done so.

Notice the two bags of leftover mulch.

Survivors from last year: rosemary, dill, parsley, chives, and two or three cilantros. New plants: oregano, sage, thyme; arugula, Romaine, Bibb, and red leaf lettuces. Still to come: basil, tarragon, maybe some mint, and lemon verbena.

I made the mistake last year of not mulching, which meant that I spent four hours tilling the place up and then laboriously pulling the grass out by the roots. Two huge piles of detritus to the curb.

Since it rained the night before, the soil in the labyrinth was soft enough to rake through and scatter seed.

I’m a terrible lawn maintainer. When I say “reseeding,” I mean, “scatter some seed onto the raked, slightly disturbed soil and hope for the best.” I do water it, but you’re supposed to till the soil to a depth of 1 to 2 inches, then scatter the seed and rake it under 1/4 inch. Hello?

At this point, I’m hoping the oxalis takes over. It grows like the weed it is, it’s pretty, and it’s soft underfoot.

I had formed the impression that it was going to rain all day on Friday, so I put off all serious work on the cello sonata until then. Oops.

I have at least formed some opinions. I talked about using the chromatic motive as a building block, but I am also considering a cello solo for the second movement; give the pianist a moment to rest the weary fingers before that third movement. And I think I’ve reached a major decision about the third movement, after doing the obsessive listening thing in the van while running errands this week. Currently, there’s this gorgeous rush of sound that kind of blooms forth, then finally calms down to a halt and a calmer midsection.

It has made sense structurally, in that the first 1:20 there’s no place for the audience to breathe. It seemed to be exhausting, and my instincts were to bring all that rush to a close and to provide a more static interlude before picking up the quintuplets in the piano again.

However, what if I didn’t do that? What if, at the 1:20 mark, I gave the spheres another spin and kept us going through yet another rushing passage, building and building until the whole thing just explodes in ecstasy? I can keep that interlude material for another piece. (Yes, I already have notes on a second cello sonata, including the AFO sketch Labyrinth in Snow.)

Comments?

Winter break: Day 4

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t blog yesterday, because by the time I got inside, showered, cooked dinner, etc., the intertubes were clogged. They were still clogged this morning. This is the first chance I’ve gotten to catch up.

Yesterday, I rooted out the old grass in the herb garden. That took all morning and half the afternoon, but it’s now beautiful: stripped back and tilled, ready for new stuff. I was ruthless in pulling out old plants that were puny. Circle of life, etc., etc.

In the later afternoon, I moved back to the labyrinth, meaning to till the bare patches and reseed the whole thing. We found some grass seed that swears it’s for “deep shade.” I’m going to mix that with some fast-growing stuff, and hopefully by the Equinox we’ll have green lushness again.

However, the bare patches of soil were rock hard. This is part of the problem, that the topsoil I used had little organic matter in it, and had enough clay to turn to brick if left to its own devices. You would think that six different plantings of grass would have provided plenty of dead organic material, not to mention all the mulch-mowed leaves over the three years, but you would be mistaken.

I finally had to take a hoe and just chop little dents in the thing. I gave up about halfway, resolving to wait until it rains tonight and try again on Friday or Saturday when the rain has softened the earth a bit. If not, I’ll water the whole thing and proceed from there.

No work on the cello sonata, although I have decided to go download the slow movements to Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites and study them a bit. It wouldn’t be bad to have a solo slow movement.

Today, I ran a gazillion errands: mulch, hardy herbs and lettuces, a VGA adapter for the iPads at school (so students can project their work onto the smartboard), etc. While waiting for the Apple store to open, I ducked into Barnes & Noble and browsed the art books.

Andy Goldsworthy. (Also here.)

First, some images of his stuff, in case you’re too lazy to explore his website.

You get the idea. Gorgeous stuff, and he works only with the natural materials to hand: no nails, no glue, no high tech monkey business.

Anyway, I came across this book:

Ooh. Also Ah. Some gorgeous (and massive) stuff, newer than in the books of his works that I already own. (That was a hint.)

It triggered some thinking about the northpoint of the labyrinth. The element of north is earth, and I’ve done a small work there in the bank:

It’s vaguely yonic, with the bare earth opening in it. Not very defined, and the problem is that you can’t see it really from anywhere but standing right over it in the outer circuit.

You see the problem. The other points are clearly visible from anywhere in the labyrinth, and especially from the center.

So I’m thinking I need to pull an Andy Goldsworthy on the northpoint. I could construct something past the yonic pile against the fence, or put something there right at the border, something that stands. This requires some meditation.

I do have this stone:

It’s in the upper lot, next to where the “dance patio” is planned. It’s actually the first bit of “mythic landscaping” I did in the yard, years and years ago. I’m now thinking it needs to move to a place of importance, and stand there at the northpoint like the standing stone it is.

Any comments?

In other news, I have played with the southpoint in recent days:

It’s more impressive than it looks.

Winter break: Day 2

Posted on by Dale

After running some errands, I settled down after lunch for some meditation and composing in the labyrinth. The sun once again has cooperated.

Today, I sketched out what I thought would be a pretty woeful theme, only to have it turn out to be a theme already on the books. I think it’s a Schumann symphony. Its exact identity is eluding me, but I know it’s not mine.

I revisited what I sketched out yesterday, and I developed a plan, if not a theme. Yesterday’s work included a tiny chromatic bit, inching upwards through the scale. Very short, and it labored, petering out al niente.

My thought was to use that as a building block, starting from silence and having the cello struggle with it, over and over, back into silence. The piano joins, layered and canonic, and we get a thick texture of these little tortured wormlets, crawling up, dying off.

When that’s satisfactory, I want to have the cello reverse course, sliding inexorably down through the wormlets, until we reach the ending I’ve already written, a crushed morass of chords at the bottom of the piano.

Sounds lovely, eh wot?

Last night at Masterworks practice, Viva Voce went over “Make Our Garden Grow,” from Bernstein’s Candide. I love this piece. For those who don’t know the show, it’s the finale, when Candide and his ladylove Cunegonde end up outside Constantinople (I think; versions differ) and he finally puts his foot down on any more “best of possible worlds” thinking. We will eschew the entanglements of philosophy, he says, and till the good earth. We’ll make our garden grow.

The piece is gorgeous, a full-throated paean to minding your own business and taking care of life. “We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; we’ll do the best we know. We’ll build our house and chop our wood, and make our garden grow.” The suspensions and resolutions at “garden grow” alone are worth the price of admission.

That concert, by the way, is Sunday, March 13, 3:00 pm, at the Centre for Performing and Visual Arts.

The role of Pangloss is one I’d love to play before my voice gets much older, and it seems to be getting older by the minute. (Tautology, I know.)

Winter break: Day 1

Posted on by Dale

I think I’m going to force myself to write every day this week.

Today was the first day of the school system’s winter break. Weather was pleasant, most pleasant in the afternoon, and I took advantage of that, as I will describe in a moment.

This break kind of sneaked up on me. We had the week off in January because of the ice, and there’s been all the excitement of getting the iPads in and getting them up and running, plus other distractions, and I mostly forgot that I was about to have a whole week off with no real responsibilities. At the eleventh hour last week, so to speak, I decided on a couple of tasks I might work on.

One of course is the cello sonata. I have avoided working on it, because I have no real ideas for the second movement. So this week will be dedicated to straining out stuff that’s awful. Like horrific. Like you will never hear it.

Of course there are things to do around the house, so I made a list. On Saturday I raked out the labyrinth and tidied it up for a Lichtenbergian gathering. I need to write about that over on the Lichtenbergian site.

Today I raked the front yard and did some maintenance on the landscaping across the front, clearing out the dead stems and stuff so that the green can burst forth, which it is already beginning to do. I put off truly revamping the herb garden, but I also cut back all the dead stuff and pulled up plants past their prime. And trimmed that rosemary bush! Why is it that the herbs you rarely use grow like weeds?

I finished reading Wolf Hall, which is an amazing, amazing book. It’s a novelization of the career of Thomas Cromwell under Henry VIII, and it’s a dazzler. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It does not cover his entire life, stopping at a significant moment, so perhaps there will be a sequel. I’d be delighted.

I’m also determined this week to meditate more seriously. I went to the labyrinth and sat in the sun and meditated for ten minutes. I was not very successful, too much brainbuzz going on, but it’s a start.

I also decided I would use the labyrinth as a place to focus my thoughts on the cello sonata. I retrieved my music moleskine and walked the labyrinth for about an hour, forcing myself to imagine music and to transcribe it. This is not my usual working method of course. Normally I must have the keyboard and computer in front of me, or I get nothing done.

Today I forced myself to pull the music from inside. I was relatively successful, filling a page in the tiny notebook with sketches that might actually work.

The problem is that I have planned the second movement to be very, very static, without the cantabile of the singing cello, and how do you sing that to yourself as you pace the labyrinth? If your melodic line, such as it is, is merely half-steps or repeated notes, then you have to start thinking about texture, about pauses/silence, about other structural assets you might deploy.

So that was useful. Weather permitting, I shall attempt this strategy all week. I shall try not to input it into the computer until Friday. Let’s see how this works.

And now, off to Masterworks Chorale.

Bragging

Posted on by Dale

I have to brag about a lesson I started today with a fourth grade class. The teacher has been bringing them in almost weekly for writing lessons: persuasive, response to literature, etc. This week’s lesson was to be about figurative language.

Last week, we had ended one project and I was caught a little off-guard, so I just tap danced. Playing off their dread of poetry, I suggested Shakespeare instead, and I filled them in on the basics. The thing that always gets their attention is the fact that at every moment of every day, this man’s words are being spoken aloud, 400 years after he wrote them. That impresses the children.

So today, when they came in, I announced, “Poetry!” and let them groan, and then announced, “…by Shakespeare!” and they groaned even more.

But I handed out Sonnet 18 and we read it out loud. I explained the structure to them, then they brainstormed all the good things about summer that they might compare their True Love™ to.

Then we dove into the poem and discovered that he’s actually comparing his love to the downsides of summer, that he/she (which we didn’t get into) is better than a summer’s day.

Then I explained what we would be doing next week: we’d use our new iPads to create a Keynote presentation which illustrates the figurative language in another sonnet, #73.

We practiced with #18. I pulled up Google and asked for search terms. At first, they were giving me language straight from the poem, and I was trying to explain why that wouldn’t work. And then, I was inspired. When a kid suggested we search for “eye of heaven,” I said, OK, let’s do that.

Up came this image, which on the not-very-clear projector, looked quite gross, like a slimy bug or something.

“Here’s the point,” I said. “Computers are stupid. They’re literal. You tell them ‘eye of heaven,’ and they look up ‘eye of heaven.’ Humans have brains. You tell them ‘eye of heaven,’ and they think, ‘Oh, the sun!’ See the difference between literal and figurative?”

Light bulbs all over the room.

Can’t wait for next week’s lesson, in which they have to find three images to put into a Keynote presentation. Week after next, actually, we’re on break next week.

By the way, this is what a 21st century media center looks like:

Cello sonata, second mvt., take 1

Posted on by Dale

This is pretty sad: six measures of music, and it sounds nothing like I want the final piece to sound like.

For one thing, the computer cannot duplicate all the myriad voices the cello is capable of. This movement is marked as “dry, coarse,” and I want a kind of raspy, gross quality to the bowing. So you will have to imagine that.

You will also have to imagine that the piece is played almost without a time signature, belabored, halting, grinding. I can’t replicate that either.

With that in mind, here is the current end of the second movement.

I wrote the ending because it has to lead into the stream of the third movement.

In which I declare my support for a certain part-time Alaskan governor

Posted on by Dale

I posted this on Facebook, but I think I need to record it for posterity here. Plus you never know how many out of my thousands of readers are not on Facebook.

It appears that John McCain‘s running mate has applied to register her name as a trademark. I am not making this up, because I don’t have to.

I wish to declare for all the world to see that I support her in this, and in fact, I am going to don my Trademark Police uniform and make sure that any time I see her name in print, I will correct anyone who does not print it correctly, i.e., Sarah Palin®.

Of course, as soon as the news broke, the application was refused, but I blame this on the lamestream media and the leftist establishment. I see no reason not to give Sarah Palin® what she wants on this one.

This way, no one in America will be unclear in the least about Sarah Palin® and her goals, not to mention her intent to rake in all the cash that’s out there in this great land of ours. And I think we should be clear about that.

So, Sarah Palin®, here’s to you! May you forever remain as secure a brand as Aunt Jemima®, Betty Crocker®, and Mr. Peanut®!

update: Sarah Palin®, speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network, criticized the media, saying, “I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism.” I don’t think I could have said it better for her.

Cello sonata. Again.

Posted on by Dale

I’ve been not composing. At first it was the backwash of the first movement, that ‘turning of the tide’ I’ve written about before. Then it was the hectic time we call ‘GHP interviews.’ Now it’s ‘being sick doesn’t help and I can’t remember the great music I dreamed under the influence of medication.’

Still, I’ve marked it on my calendar to get back to work tomorrow night on the second movement, and today I decided that the eftest thing to do is to write the last eight measures, since I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to say there. Then I can work my way backward to the beginning.

Also, since I have about four minutes in the first movement, and the last movement is likely to be that long, I can plan for the middle movement to be about three. Since it’s going to be an adagio, something slow, that eight measures could be a pretty good chunk to be going on with.

Yep, that’s my plan, all right.