Fruit and Shakespeare: Things I Learned in Bundanoon

Bundanoon Makers' Markets

Bundanoon is a nice little town in the Southern Highlands. They made headlines in 2008 and 2009 for becoming the first place in the world to ban the sale of bottled water, and it's a township that is also well-known for hosting Brigadoon, the 'largest highlander gathering in the southern hemisphere' (not an actual quote, but this is the sort of thing said about it. It basically means lots of people put kilts on and strut about on the heath). 

My wife and I have a special place in our hearts for the Southern Highlands. It's only an hour and a half south of Sydney yet still feels like a whole world away. It's also where we got married, and we travel back down there several times a year. 

Gosh, that makes me feel so old. I used to spend my weekends going to pubs and watching punk bands, now I go on bush walks and visit craft shops in Moss Vale. 

This was one of three lyrebirds we saw in the highlands; the other two were feathered and moving but, alas, this was the only one I managed to photograph.

Anyway, the point of this post is that while gadding about in the highlands last weekend, the Duck and I happened across the Bundanoon Makers' Market and met one Rachel Russell, a maker and purveyor of home-harvested jams, preserves and spreads. Here she is, pictured below after I awkwardly asked if I could take a photo of her stand:

Rachel Russell and her home made wares

Ms. Russell introduced me to the wonders of the medlar, a fruit the likes of which I have never heard. As it turns out, this humble-looking fruit has a certain historical and literary significance. The medlar is an ancient winter fruit referenced in many Shakespeare plays (and throughout the Jacobean and Elizabethan eras in general), and its quirky look lends it a variety of euphemistic nicknames that allude to 'open bottoms' and the like. 

Note this quote from Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, in which he bawdily references the medlar in relation to Romeo wanting to 'get some':

Now he will sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a pop'rin pear!

I also learned from Ms. Russell about something called bletting, whereby fruit is softened beyond ripening through a process (in this case frostbite) and the toxins are broken down to allow it to become more edible. 

Bletting lends itself to the idiom, "Time and straw make the medlars ripe" (referenced in Don Quixote), and there are a whole host of other allusions related to the innocuous looking little fruit. Elizabethan playwright Thomas Dekker bleakly says in reference to the poor medlar (and bletting), "Women are like medlars - no sooner ripe but rotten".

What a charmer.

Meanwhile, the Edwardian novelist D. H. Lawrence said medlars were "wineskins of brown morbidity", proving that he too had a fatalistic view of innocuous foodstuffs.

Yum!

Anyway, the Duck purchased some chardemedlar from Ms. Russell; an Elizabethan-styled medlar paste for use with cheese or crackers. I tasted some this afternoon on a teaspoon. It tasted like a deep, dark apple stew that had been squeezed out of a dusty medieval Christmas dessert feast. I liked it. 

Reading Roll: July-December 2016

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

I read the first of Rothfuss' fantasy novels The Name of the Wind last year and found myself moderately happy with it. The Wise Man's Fear continues the story of Kvothe, a redheaded medieval wunderkind equally adept at music and magic, and sees Rothfuss develop his fantasy realm with layer upon layer of further world-building. Kvothe straddles the line between flawed anti-hero and the more traditional heroes of legend seen in Tolkein, and his story operates more like an episodic bildungsroman than an intricately plotted epic. There are many elements of these novels that I like, but I'm reserving full judgement until after the series has been finished.

DMZ Volumes 1-4 by Brian Wood and Ricardo Burchielli

This 12 volume series tells the high concept story of an American civil war that has reduced Manhattan to a modern-day hell-on-Earth. Matty Roth is a journalism intern who finds himself stranded in this demilitarised zone between the United States of America and the Free States of America. At the time of writing, I've read the first four volumes, which deal with Roth's increasing disillusionment and assimilation into the DMZ, and the political pointscoring that often leaves the inhabitants of Manhattan exponentially worse off.

Othello by William Shakespeare

Othello is arguably one of the Top 5 Shakespeare plays, and I say arguably because, well, when it comes to Shakespeare pretty much everything is arguable. Reading this again was a great pleasure for me... whenever I read Shakespeare I seem to get more and more out of it, and this time (while I was programming a Close Study unit for my Preliminary Advanced English class) was no exception. The mystery of Iago continues to fascinate, the alleged culpability of Othello is as divisive as ever, and the tragic sexual politics surrounding the female characters ensure a certain relevancy some 400 years later.

This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The Tamaki cousins had quite an impressive debut with the bewitching coming-of-age tale Skim, and here they take things to another level altogether. This One Summer explores the same genre with more depth, playing out parallel stories of a summer holiday as experienced by adolescents on the cusp of teenage-hood, older teens clumsily crashing their way into adulthood, and adults struggling with the weight of their own secrets. I really enjoyed this graphic novel, it's beautifully drawn and made a strong emotional connection with me.

Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

I've just started reading this series from Image comics. The artistic style is really cool; super-detailed and reminiscent of watercolour paintings, and the narrative takes a few risks by launching straight into the action and letting the world-building emerge after the fact. It's a science fiction opus in the vein of Image's Saga, with elements that call to mind the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I'll be continuing to read this one. 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel's memoir of growing up in a funeral home features in many graphic novel best-of lists, and Bechdel herself occupies a special place in popular culture and literary criticism for the concept of the Bechdel Test (does your novel, TV show, or film have more than one female character? Do they speak to each other about something other than their relationship status? Congratulations, your text just passed the Bechdel Test... and many texts don't!) Fun Home is an erudite, brave, finely-observed and raw look back on Bechdel's life with her deeply troubled father. At several points in this book I had to stop and fully digest what I had just read; such was its depth and intimacy. This graphic novel certainly deserves it's place in the canon.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahira

A few people recommended this novel to me, and it accumulated quite a few awards, as well as high praise from many reviewers and literary critics. But, alas, I just didn't like it. For a start, it feels unevenly structured, and took several hundred pages to get to a point where I could fully appreciate what the book was about and what was going on. Also, for a novel that takes place across several decades, it has this odd quality of seeming perpetually set in the same year - one without historical or social event; a place without time. It's not an unambitious novel. I just found it tedious and unnecessarily drawn-out in its self-flagellating masochism (as opposed to harrowing, which I assume is what Yanagihara was going after). I got to the end and felt like I had just wasted a whole bunch of time.

The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day

Marele Day's late '80s Sydney-side detective novel has found itself back in the limelight on the 2015-2020 HSC Standard English Prescriptions List so I brushed up on it in order to contribute a sample essay to an upcoming Cambridge Checkpoints textbook. As far as HSC texts go, there's a lot in Day's crime novel for students to sink their teeth into - Harry Lavender explores the encroaching influence of technology, the way that people present themselves to others and the public world, and the masculine nature of the crime genre. I really enjoy Day's writing, she has an arresting way with words and really knows her way around an extended metaphor. Harry Lavender stands the test of time.

Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama

I listened to this memoir as an audiobook, which was great because it was read by the man 'imself, swearing and all... there's something therapeutic about listening to Barack Obama casually say the word 'motherfucker' and recount his rebellious youth. Surprising cusswords aside, Dreams of My Father goes beyond your usual making-of-the-man memoir. Obama has a lot to say about notions of race as he muses on his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, about his journey to Kenya in search of the father he never really knew, and about his early political career in Chicago. In his writing of this book, Barack Obama reveals himself to be that rare thing - a politician with real intelligence and talent.

Red Rosa by Kate Evans

Keeping on the theme of great political figures, Kate Evans' graphic novel biography of Rosa Luxemburg shines a bright light on the tragic and inspiring story of the early 20th century Marxist who dared to stand against the Great War. Luxemburg was a socialist who stood in stark opposition to the European communists who were all too willing to dilute the philosophy of Karl Marx in order to get ahead (mostly men who showed little interest in the inclusion of women in the socialist dream). Luxemburg's story is both courageous and sad, and it's a shame that her political legacy as a groundbreaking feminist isn't more widely recognised. Evans does a great job of translating Red Rosa's life (and her political theories) into an exciting and fast-moving narrative.  

The Bone Readers by Claudio Tuniz, Richard Gillespie and Cheryl Jones

I've had this sitting on my shelf since it first came out back in 2009, and I decided to finally pick it up in response to the recent and continuing discoveries of prehistoric remains that are rewriting the story of humanity's origins. The Bone Readers is more science than history, but in the frame of Big History it occupies the point of intersection between the area of our past claimed in equal measure by historians and scientists. Tuniz, Gillespie and Jones have a lot to say about the often volatile debates that surround who 'owns' this part of the human story, and even the outright contradictory gets a look-in when it comes to the various theories of how humans first got to Australia. This book also outlines several new and mindbending technologies that are being utilised to trace the timelines of 'prehistoric' humanity (begging the question as to whether or not we can continue to consider 40 000 BC as 'pre'-history anymore). Highly recommended reading for any historians or history teachers out there.

Boys' Club by Matt Furie

Matt Furie's scatterbrained comic strips are collected together here in all their bizarre and fatuous glory. I'm not sure why I picked this up, or what I expected, but I laughed a few times nonetheless. Furie has this tendency to build an anti-narrative in the space of just four panels, using non sequiturs and graphical asides that focus on the grotesque, all in the name of capturing an atmosphere of senseless small-scale hedonism reminiscent of the Young Ones. The anthropomorphised characters are sometimes hard to tell apart, but it doesn't really matter all that much.

The Divine by Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka and Boaz Lavie

This stand-alone graphic novel mixes a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now scenario with South-East Asian folklore to create a very cinematic war/fantasy adventure. The illustrations are magnificent; beautifully detailed and somewhat terrifying in their unexpected brutality. The panels are no doubt drawn this way to reflect the traumatic history of Indochina, a theme that fuels much of this story's exploration of the fictional nation of Quanlom (inspired by the colonialist and postcolonialist histories of Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia). I won't say much more, but I think this would make a great text for a Year 10 or Year 11 English class. 

Virgil by Steve Orlando

Speaking of cinematic, this one-shot graphic novel pioneers the 'queersploitation' genre through the blending of blaxploitation film conventions with the medium of comics. Virgil tells the action-thriller story of a closeted gay cop in homophobic Jamaica who, after being brutally outed by his colleagues, embarks on an ultra-violent revenge quest (with all the requisite blood detailed in a particularly lurid pink). Orlando uses his archetypal action hero and numerous B-movie tropes to effectively explore pertinent civil rights issues in rather entertaining fashion.

The Son by Jo Nesbo
Earlier this year I read Nesbo's popular crime-thriller Headhunters, and enjoyed it immensely. I immediately sought out another of Nesbo's stand-alone thrillers, The Son, and found it equally as gripping. The Son weaves together fast-paced, densely-plotted interconnected stories of police corruption, addiction, and organised crime. There are more than a few unexpected twists along the way and Nesbo expertly controls what the reader does and doesn't need to know to build to an incredibly tense and satisfying denouement.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I first read this when I was about 20 years old and, whilst I could appreciate how significant it was, I didn't really appreciate it as a novel. Now at 36 years old, and as I gear up to teach 1984 to my Advanced English class early next year, I find myself appreciating Orwell's novel a whole lot more. It's almost universally acknowledged that Orwell's novel earns its masterpiece status via its satirical deconstruction of governance, however, some critics out there have noted that the narrative lacks in plotting and characterisation. Upon re-reading 1984 just recently, I would say that these elements of the novel are undeserving of such criticism. Winston Smith is a weary and downtrodden protagonist entirely worthy of canonisation, and O'Brien's dualistic nature could not reflect the novel's central themes more effectively. And surely if it was plotted more intricately then this would just detract from the quintessentially dystopian setting?

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

My friend Kira read this classic dystopian science fiction novel recently and recommended it to me, and it did not disappoint. Knowing that Wyndham is responsible for the Midwich Cuckoos, I have always associated him with those creepy blonde children in the film version of said novel, so I've actually sort of gone out of my way not to really read any of his stuff. The Chrysalids turned out to be in complete antithesis to my prejudices, telling a post-apocalyptic parable that sets the ideologies of evolution and religion in brutal, implicit opposition of one another. Wyndham has an elegiac and gentle storytelling-style, reflecting a distant future through the familiar prism of childhood innocence. A book that definitely deserves its classic status.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Speaking of classics, I finally got around to reading this philosophical and fairytale-like children's classic. De Saint-Exupery uses his Little Prince to explore his own ideas of adulthood and all its ridiculous self-built fallacies. It took me a while to adjust to this tale's collision of science fiction and fable, but in the end I found myself very taken by the allegorical elements in each of the Prince's stories to the marooned WWII pilot. Beautiful in its simplicity, and something that I think will stand up to many re-readings.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

This is another book that I've had sitting on my shelf since it first came out. Eggers tells the true story of Adbulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American small business owner living in New Orleans during the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Zeitoun opts to stay in his city while his family evacuates and spends his time after the hurricane paddling around in a canoe, feeding abandoned dogs and giving lifts to stranded people. Things go horrendously awry for Zeitoun when he gets arrested as a 'looter' and is incarcerated without a phonecall in terrifyingly bleak conditions. Eggers tells his story very closely from the dual perspectives of Zeitoun and his wife, and creates a gripping Capote-esque non-fiction narrative of a city reduced to shockingly apocalyptic conditions. My enjoyment of the book was marred, however, by recent real life developments surrounding the Zeitoun family that have seen Abdulrahman imprisoned for physically attacking his now ex-wife... upon finding this out I almost stopped reading the book as it was a bit hard to stomach Eggers' depiction of Zeitoun as humble everyday hero. I'm glad that I persevered though as the book has much more to say about American corruption in New Orleans than it has to say about the protagonist.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness developed this children's novel out of an idea by the now-deceased Irish novelist Siobhan Dowd, and has created something really special and perfectly pitched. I read it in a day while travelling to the city and the back on the train, and I must have looked quite strange towards the end when I started crying in my train seat while I read the last few pages. All I'll say is that the novel deals with a 13 year old boy who finds himself visited by a huge tree-monster while his mother battles terminal cancer. A little under two months ago my own Mum passed away from cancer, so this book hit me really hard. Context is everything, hey? My own context combined with Siobhan Dowd's (she developed this idea while she herself was dying from the same insidious illness) to make this a really difficult but rewarding read. I recommend it regardless of your context.

English Studies - What it Was, and Where it's Going.

This weekend I trekked up the countryside to the Hunter Region to attend #EnglishStudiesDay2016; a wonderful collegial experience driven by passionate English Studies advocate Sam Schroder; one of the architects of the English Studies course during its piloting stage.

One thing that set the tone of the day was the welcome to country provided by a local student, a young Worimi man, who conducted it in his people's language. I don't think I've ever seen a welcome or acknowledgement of country given so beautifully. It really struck a chord with me.   

Anyway, aside from getting the opportunity to network with other teachers, teachers who have such positive opinions of the English Studies course as a forum for authentic engagement with English, the day provided a real moment of clarity in which Sam Schroder provided an overview of what the English Studies course is. Where it came from. Where it's going.

If you're a new teacher you may very well find yourself allocated to the English Studies course, and knowing where it is has come from and how it's continuing to develop is something that will be pertinent to you. And if you're not teaching English Studies, well, it might still be of interest to you anyway because maybe you're awesome like that.

The Birth of English Studies

Prior to English Studies, there was the 2 Unit Contemporary English course. From 1997-1999, the Contemporary English course was phased out to usher in the increasingly complexity of the Standard and Advanced courses. Many teachers were happy to see Contemporary English go as it was widely perceived as a 'dumbing down' of the English course and did not benefit those preparing for university study. Standard English grew out a response to this as a course for students who weren't suited to the Advanced course but would still be going to university and needed to be able to engage at an academic level when they got there.

Two more things then also led the way to the development of the English Studies course:

• In a national content, the Melbourne Declaration of 2008 acknowledged that a set of standards should and would be applied to all Australian students, with two specific goals:

• Goal 1 dealt with equity and excellence, the idea that opportunities should be provided to every child, not just those who wanted to become doctors, lawyers, etc.
• Goal 2 was the idea that all young Australians should become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
  
• The other influential factor was that, on a state level, 2010 saw NSW increase the leaving age from 15 to 17.

This means that even those who aren't equipped for Standard or Advanced English should be able to have a scope for success in English, and that's where English Studies comes in. English Studies should be a forum for students to be taught how to be critical thinkers; active citizens who question what they see and are able to communicate their opinions.

How it Happened

In 2009, BOSTES invited submissions for the creation of the English Studies course. 76 schools were selected to pilot the course in 2010, and students at some of these schools had to apply for the class and were considered 'lucky' to get in. This was followed by extensive evaluation, and the Department of Education then invested in the writing of units to support the course. In 2011, the course was rolled out across the state.

After this, things become a little hazy... there is some feeling that the course hasn't been given the support it needs. Non-government sectors have expressed no interest in developing resources, and some schools opt not to run the course in the belief that a non-ATAR version of English has no validity to their communities. The RAP data, however, shows that English Studies is, essentially, doing the job it was designed to do - students who would have gotten Band 1 and Band 2 marks in Standard are instead catered for in the English Studies course.

How it Works Now

There are two mandatory modules. In the Preliminary course this is Achieving Through English, which focuses on the worlds of education, careers and community, and in the HSC course it is We Are Australians, which takes the form of studies on citizenship, community and cultural identity. There is a possibility of crossover with the subject of Work Studies in terms of resume writing (which forms a crucial part of Achieving Through English), however, Sam Schroder suggests that this is a perfect opportunity to engineer cross-curricular study between English Studies and Work Studies, which allows for team teaching and the avoidance of unnecessary repetition across subject areas.

The other modules are elective, with scope for 1 self-developed module in the Preliminary year, preferably something that is appropriate for your school's context. Examples given by some of the teachers in attendance at #EnglishStudiesDay2016:

• Surfing (a coastal school)
• Pig-shooting (a school way out west)
• Indigenous studies (a school with a large indigenous community)

Where it's Heading

The proposed syllabus is currently slated to begin in 2018 with an exam option that allows English Studies to achieve an ATAR, something that (judging from anecdotal and empirical evidence) is unlikely to change before it rolls out. Working in tandem with this is the introduction of a common module across English Studies, Standard English and Advanced English, which is the element of the course that will enable this ATAR option.

Your mileage may vary as far as whether this is a good idea or not. I'm not against it, but I'm also not particularly passionate about it. In fact, I tend to feel this way about most things before they happen - I reserve judgement for when I see things in action. We'll see what happens. What I will say though is that students often change their minds, change their goals, and anything could happen in a student's life between the commencement of Year 11 and the time in which they finish up their high school education - so, therefore, it follows that we shouldn't be locking students out of opportunities just because they've committed to English Studies at the end of Year 10. The allowance of an ATAR option means that students can, right up until the day of the HSC examination, choose if they want to do this or not.

I'm looking forward to seeing how everything goes in 2018.