“The Seventh Seal: A highly regarded film (1957) directed by the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). A vision of a medieval land ravaged by the Black Death, the film impressed and mystified audiences around the world. The title refers to a verse in the Bible:
‘And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in
heaven about the space of half an hour.’
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Saul Bellow only after Bellow had won the Nobel Prize, which must have seemed like being given a cup of warmed-over instant coffee twenty minutes after having drunk the world’s most expensive cognac.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
Tenebrists: Michelangelo de Caravaggio and the 17th-century painters influenced by him who painted interior scenes, often lighted by candles or torches, having sharp contrasts of light and shade. Georges de La Tour (French) and Jose de Ribera (Spaniard in Naples) are considered Tenebrists. The words tenebrist and tenebrism were coined by later critics. See CHIAROSCURO.
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“At whom was Alexander Pope’s poem The Dunciad (1728) aimed? Published in several versions from 1728 and 1743, the mock-epic poem satirized bad writing and attacked critics of Pope’s poetry. In the final version, the king of the dunces is Colley Cibber, England’s poet-laureate from 1730 to 1757. Other targets of Pope’s venom were dramatists Nahum Tate and Lewis Theobald.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, poetry, readings/research
Here is a lesson plan on understanding and differentiating historical dates which I have actually previously posted on Mark’s Text Terminal. While this is a social studies lesson on understanding how we use numbers to count and describe historical time, it has an ulterior literacy motive in that it seeks to help students, particularly the many English language learners I have served over the years.
We use two types of numbers when we talk about historical dates, ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal numbers are adjectives that, as their name indicates, place things in order. So, when we use terms like fourteenth century, fifteenth century, and so on, we are using ordinal numbers. Similarly, when we say, respectively, the 1300s, the 1400s, and so on, we are using cardinal numbers, which are nouns and which we use to count things. These two types of numbers are different in English just as they are different in other languages. Because I didn’t initially understand the difference between these kinds of numbers, I struggled to understand the numbering system in Russian when I studied that language.
For that reason, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the adjective ordinal and this on the noun phrase cardinal number. These worksheets aim to help students understand the difference between these two types of numbers and their use in English prose. This is knowledge that transfers across the curriculum–to foreign languages, English language arts, mathematics itself, and, yes, social studies.
Finally, here is the combined learning support and worksheet that is the gravamen of this lesson.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“The circle is divided into 360 degrees, which is an attempt to create a perfect universe out of our slightly wonky one. For 360 can be neatly divided by 4 to make 90-day seasons, or by 12 to make perfect months of 30 days, or by 18 to make 20-day units. This perfect ordering of the world—the sexagesimal system—was codified by the Babylonians and still orders the world of geometry and time-keeping with 60 seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour.
Of course, the reality of our world was never quite as neat as those Babylonian mathematicians aspired to be, for a lunar month is actually 29 days 12 hours, and 44 minutes, not a neat 30, and a solar year (the time in which it takes the earth to orbit the sun) is actually 365 days, five hours, and 48 minutes, not a neat 360. So, in the old days, we made an odd thirteenth month of five days, before opting to spread them around to make some months 30 days long, some 31. And every fourth year we need our years to be 366 days long, in order to use up an extra day acquired by four additional units of five hours and 48 minutes.
Nonetheless, the perfection of 360 has always been aspired to, with ancient stone circles formed of 360 stones and altars formed from 360 cut stones.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, readings/research
“Heuristic Device: Any procedure which involves the use of an artificial construct to assist in the exploration of social phenomena. It usually involves assumptions derived from extant empirical research. For example, ideal types have been used as a way of setting out the defining characteristics of a social phenomenon, so that its salient features might be states as clearly and explicitly as possible. A heuristic device is, then, a form of preliminary analysis. Such devices have proved especially useful in studies of social change, by defining bench-marks, around which variation and differences can then be situated. In this context, a heuristic device is usually employed for analytical clarity, although it can also have explanatory value as a model.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“Adversative: Indicating opposition or contrasting of two things, e.g., the conjunctions ‘yet.’ ‘still,’ the phrase “all the same.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Socialist Realism: By 1934 this official Soviet style had resulted in staged idealizations of the working class. Derived from figurative and narrative tendencies, these heavy-handed artworks toed the Communist party line and were meant to be accessible to all viewers. In architecture, anti-modernism resulted in a return to heavy classical motifs sometimes known as “Stalinist gothic.” (Not to be confused with Social Realism.) See FASCIST AESTHETIC.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Most anthologists…of quotations are like those who eat cherries…first picking the best ones and winding up by eating everything.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
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