Another kid's comment

Some time after I'd been leaning over a group of students, helping them, a girl came up to me and said: "You smell just like my dad ... He works at IKEA."
The IKEA statement seemed to be an afterthought, a crumb of extra info. to identify her dad. I'm getting used to the seemingly tenuous logical links between kids' statements; in fact, I think they're delightful, a bit like little puzzles.
As for her first statement -- comfort plus, I say! I'll take a 'manly-smell' description any day.

A new job

"Mr Walker, would you come out to recess with us, as some people are not well and you need to tell them that they're well," six-year-old M said to me.

I pondered what M might have meant, and somehow -- I'm not sure what exact words I used -- managed to make it to the staffroom for a cup of tea in preference to well-wishing students in the playground.

About one-and-a-half hours later; M again: "Mr Walker, would you come to lunch with us. At recess we saw a caterpillar. It was furry and Grendel* touched it."

"That sounds great," I replied, with a fair dose of sincerity, "but Mr Walker has to get home to look after Mrs Walker, who is sick in bed."

M is one of about twenty students in the Year One class I have recently started working in four mornings a week. My job is to help a boy with Autism (not M): to keep him 'on task', and, just as importantly, to prevent him disrupting the other children. Thus far, the work has been testing yet rewarding.

* Not his real name.

Wittgenstein's Talking Lion

If a lion could talk, we could not understand it.

The above quote has been rattling around in my brain for the last month or so. I'm interested in how language works, but, alas, can't claim any formal training or deep understanding in fields such as linguistics, the philosophy of language, semantics and the like. This being the case, I thought it safer to use someone else's brief explanation:

... the aphorism can be read as a condensation of Wittgenstein's thoughts on how 'forms of life', the shared social and cultural context, determine meaning and allow (or disallow) communication between speaking subjects (Michael Brennan, "Colloquy with a cat", ABR, April 2008).

So: when, where, how and with whom we live shapes how effective our communication with them and others is. Make sense?

I'd welcome comments, corrections or book / article suggestions in these areas of thought; I feel as though I'm a floaties-wearing toddler in rather deep waters. Any would-be swimming instructors out there?

The Cake

When it comes to music, films, TV -- all right, popular
culture -- I'm usually late on to the scene. Typically, the "scene"
you'll find me discovering and getting excited about is last decade's.

You want some examples?

I'm yet to watch The Princess Bride, Napolean Dynamite or Happy Feet (though I can quote and recognise lines from each of them). West Wing is the show I've heard others rave about, and Gray's Anatomy is about doctors, isn't it? It was last year when I got my first taste of Beck and Radiohead; Daft Punk are just entering my orbit -- an adamant seventeen-year-old burnt me a couple of their CDs -- and the most recent U2 CD I own is All that You Can't Leave Behind.

All this is a long-winded, roundabout way of announcing my re-discovery of the Aussie band My Friend the Chocolate Cake. The bio on their website describes them thus:

Somewhere within the unlikely union of kitchen sink piano tales, vivid chamber orchestration [the cello and violin are a knock-out] and hell-raising instrumental shenanigans, the Melbourne band has carved out a 15 year, five album history that culminates ... so far in the 19 track retrospective, Parade.

It was through Parade that I got back into The Cake. Check them out at My Friend the Chocolate Cake. Any band who calls the sales section of their website the "Cake Stall" must be good.

... things I've recently read or thought

An oxymoron:
blogworthy.

A sign on a classroom wall:
An empty room doesn't need light.

Ludwig Wittgenstein on language:
'If a lion could talk, we could not understand it.'
For an explanation, watch this space.

Front-cover teaser for an article:

'What we need the assistance of the historian to understand
is why Departments of English ...
were ever called on to act as an
accrediting agency for entry into the middle class.'

J. M. Coetzee, Australian Book Review, May 2008.

Welcome to my world

This semester I've been taking a course to become a Teacher's Assistant. Above is a sample of the sort of stuff we make -- I think the technical term for them is felt story-boards. It's quite a change from editing theses!