Lit Bandit
  • Lit Bandit Blog
  • Literary Kitten
  • Cooks with Books
  • For Teachers!
  • About the Project
  • Contact


Go Renegade and Get Reading!


Enjoy a chewable literary vitamin to kick-start your day!

Celebrating The Day of the Dead and All Three of Our Deaths

11/3/2015

0 Comments

 

"In our tradition, people die three deaths. The first death is when our bodies cease to function . . . . The second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground, returned to mother earth, out of sight. The third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one left alive to remember us."

Quoted from: Victor Landa, from San Antonio, TX, explaining the thinking behind Mexico's Los Dias de los Muertos.
 

Picture
A decorated Sugar Skull
​Happy Day of the Dead!  In Mexico, people traditionally celebrate The Day of the Dead (Los Dias de Los Muertos) on November 1 and 2 of every year.  From what I've heard (and please, correct me if I'm wrong!), it's a festive celebration of remembering our loved ones who have died.  
PictureAn altar celebrating our dead loved ones
Unlike here in America where death isn't celebrated, the Mexicans have a bit different view of death.  They prepare festive altars of food, toys, and flowers for their loved ones, whom they believe, get to briefly return each year: On the eve of October 31, children who have died come back to visit their families; the next day, adults who have died come back for a visit; and the next and last day is when families join their friends in the grave yard to listen to music, decorate and clean the cemetery, and bond together over life and loss.  It's truly a community event, although it is celebrated slightly differently in countries all over the world.  (Read more here).  ​

The celebration is becoming more and more popular here in America, too.  Perhaps it is because, like me, people want to find ways of honoring and remembering the lives of our loved ones who have died and take comfort in the idea of them being to return, if only briefly, for one day to say hello.  
I really liked Victor Landa's quote today because he really points out to us that there is more than one way of dying, and conversely, that there is more than one way of living.  

Renegade Thought of the Day:  What scares you more:  dying a physical death or being dead and being forgotten by everyone on earth?  

Renengade Challenge:  Take a moment to remember (and perhaps reconnect with!) your loved ones and ancestors who have departed this earth.
   
0 Comments

Happy Hal-LIT-oween: Bram Stoker's Draculicious Love Story

10/26/2015

0 Comments

 

“No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.” 

Title: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker
 (1847-1912, Irish)

Picture
​Some people might say that falling in love is the scariest thing there is.  Well, let me tell you--it's even scarier when the person you love turns into a vampire!

To give you a little context for this quote, you'll need a bit of background info.  So the story starts out with the lovely Lucy hanging out with her girlfriend Mina.  Lucy apparently has guys just knocking down her door to marry her because she gets 3 marriage proposals:  one from a doctor named John Seward, one from an American named Quincey Morris, and one from a guy from a good English family named Arthur Holmwood. She ends up choosing Arthur, but unlike the real world and in high school, everyone ends up staying friends.  

Unfortunately for Lucy's fiancé, Lucy starts looking pale and mysteriously losing blood.  Not thinking much of the two little bite-sized holes on her neck, the men decide Lucy needs blood to stay alive, so Holmwood gives her some of his.  It helps for a bit, and Holmwood runs home to check on his ailing father, but then she's back to the same pale, almost dead place, so Dr. Sweard (who still loves her) infuses her with some of his blood.  That's when he says today's quote, which is really a sweet thing for him to say, since she didn't choose to marry him and all.  

Alas, Lucy still dies.  Well, kind of.  She actually turns into a vampire and starts crawling out of her tomb at night and going on the prowl until. . . well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but it ends in a gruesome blood bath!  And things don't go too well for her friend Mina, either, whom Dracula has an attraction to!  
Picture
Renegade Thought of the Day: What do you think is the scariest part of falling in love?  

If you fell desperately in love with someone who only liked you as a friend, would you donate your own blood (or plasma--see why here!) to save that person's life?  

Renegade Challenge:  Look into donating blood or plasma and truly saving a life! 

Bonus Helpful Halloween Recipe and Tip:  If a Vampire knocks on your door, never let him (or her!) inside.  They have to be invited in.  And if they do get in?  Well, try offering them some of that extra garlicky hummus dip you have sitting in your fridge!  
Creepy Bonus Video: (Teachers please preview clip--although it is rated PG, it is scary and may not be suitable for everyone!)  Watch the trailer for the movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula, made in 1992, if you dare.  The trailer focus on Dracula, who turned into a vampire after the suicide of his wife, and then falls in love with Lucy's friend Mina, who looks to Dracula like the beloved wife he lost.  (And I've been told I look a little like Winona Ryder--Yikes!)
0 Comments

Haruki Murakami Encourages Us to Grow as Thinkers

10/22/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

Title: Norwegian Wood
Author: Haruki Murakami
, (b. 1949-, Japan)

PictureMake time to read what YOU want to read.

​I'm not sure I one hundred percent agree with today's quote by Haruki Murakami, one of the best writers in the world today.  After all, I'm an English teacher and when I have the whole class read the same book, trust me, there are a lot of different opinions!  

Yet I do agree with his point:  stretch and challenge yourself as a reader.  Don't just read what your friends read and agree with what your friends think about what they read.  Dare to read what others won't.  Why?  Well, perhaps as a result, you'll have something new and unique to bring to the conversation.   

Renegade Thought of the Day:  How do you decide what to read and not read? 

If you could read whatever you wanted (even if it hasn't been invented yet), what would it be?  

Renegade Challenge:  Try to read a book th
at's different than what a lot of your friends are reading and also different from what you would normally read.  
Bonus Video:  Meet someone else who thinks for herself:  Koko the Gorilla, who's amazing at talking through sign language.  She just turned 44 and got to pick out two kittens for her gift.  I'm so jealous!!
0 Comments

Maya Angelou's Bright Reminder to Be Somebody's Rainbow

10/21/2015

0 Comments

 

"The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God -- if they call God at all.  I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think."

Speaker: African-American writer Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
Author of "Still I Rise" and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Picture
A beautiful double Seattle rainbow!
Seattle's colder months are notorious for being gray and gloomy.  But every now and then, the sun will get bored of being stuck behind the clouds and come out even during the rain and we get to see some amazing rainbows, like this double rainbow my sister captured.  

African American writer, poet (and dancer and activist, etc.) Maya Angelou knew about the importance of having a rainbow to brighten up your life.  In her life time, she overcame a lot of dark times--her parents' divorce at a young age, being raised by a grandmother, dealing with poverty and racism, being a victim of sexual assault, feeling guilty and not talking for years for a murder she didn't truly cause, and teen pregnancy.  These are all included in her life's hardships.  So she knows a thing or two about needing hope and needing other humans to help us get through life's hardships, and the words above are some wisdom she gave her good friend Oprah a few years before she died.   
Picture
It's also fun to have a rainbow of friends to keep life interesting!
Renegade Thought of the Day:  What do you think it means to "be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud"? 

Who is someone that has been a rainbow for you?  (Even a stranger can count.)

Renegade Challenge: Be a rainbow for someone who doesn't expect it--maybe someone whose life is a little cloudy. 
​
Bonus Video: I'm sorry, but I just can't help but love this video!  I admit I'm a huge Oprah fan (and I love her support of reading and education!), and if I had a lot of cars, I would give them all away to my readers!  Watch as Oprah bring a little rainbow action into her viewers' lives: 
0 Comments

Activist Cesar Chavez Encourages Us to Eat Together

10/20/2015

0 Comments

 

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with him...The people who give you their food give you their heart."

Speaker: Cesar Chavez, Mexican-American Activist & Farm Worker (1927-1993)

Picture
Who do you enjoy breaking bread with?
I just got home from having what we call Family Sunday Dinner.  It's always fun and there's always too many leftovers, but you know what the best part is?  We aren't even all related.  But it kind of reminds me of Chavez's quote today because when you start sharing dinner with people on a regular basis, they do become sort of like family to you.  When you are sharing your food and your time, you are also sharing your stories and your lives.  It's a truly bonding experience. 
PictureWho farms the food you eat?
I'd also like to take a minute and talk about Cesar Chavez.  When you're biting into a plate of food, do you ever stop and think about where your food came from before it hit the grocery store?  Well, Chavez knew first hand where it came from.  He was a Mexican-American who grew up doing migrant farm work with his family in the fields. 

PictureActivist Cesar Chavez
Migrant farming is really arduous work and the workers haven't always been treated well or paid fairly.  Chavez experienced this injustice and decided to do something to fix it.  In the 1960s, he founded the National Farm Workers Association which joined with other groups to unionize workers.  Eventually, the union helped get better pay and better working conditions for farm workers.  It wasn't easy, though.  Chavez led protests, marches, and hunger strikes--one which probably led to his death--to get better working condition for farm workers.  His work truly
​made lives better and safer for farm workers all over the country.  

Renegade Thought of the Day: Do you enjoy dining with people or alone the most? Why?

Pretend you are going to a friend's house for dinner and need to bring a food that symbolizes friendship to you.  What would you bring and why? 

Renegade Challenge:  Consider having a dinner party or at least mix it up a little with your lunch time crew.  
Bonus Video: You have to make time to watch this eye-opening 2014 ABC News video on what farm work is like for workers today.  I couldn't even believe some of the things I saw.  
Bonus Video: Watch the 2014 Cesar Chavez movie trailer below!  I'm adding it to my must-see list!
0 Comments

Dan Rather and Amanda Lindhout's Risky Rides to the Top

10/19/2015

0 Comments

 

"There's a famous old story in the journalism world about the news anchor Dan Rather.  He was a young and inexperienced television reporter working for a second-rate TV station in Houston, Texas, in the early 1960s, when a monstrous hurricane barreled through the Gulf of Mexico, headed toward the island of Galveston.  All the other reporters, it's said, scrambled for the shelter and safety of their mainland newsrooms.  But Dan Rather drove over the bridge and waited for the storm.  When it bore down on Galveston, . . . . he delivered live reports from the windiest and most dangerous heights.  

He might have failed that day.  He could have been injured or killed, in which case, he would have become a footnote, known fleetingly as the guy who inserted himself into a hurricane and died, ruined by his own ambition.  Instead, though, the gamble paid off.  He survived the storm."


                           Title: A House in the Sky

                           Authors: Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett

Picture
Today's quote comes from A House in the Sky, a true story about a young woman (Amanda) and her ex-boyfriend who were captured, tortured, and held hostage for more than a year by a radical rebel Islamic group in war-torn Somalia until their families came up with enough money to rescue them.  This book was a page-turner that I couldn't easily put down, and I was impressed by how Amanda kept finding ways to stay positive, thankful, and kind despite being chained up in a dark room for hours on end.  It's a must read for anyone considering a job in journalism.  


Picture
As a child, Amanda grew up always being curious about the world.  She loved reading National Geographic magazine and dreaming about places she'd one day love to visit.  So when she got old enough, she saved up the money she earned as a waitress and used it to spend months traveling abroad.  Each time, she went to places a little more dangerous and tried to get work as a reporter.  She worked in Pakistan, Syria, and Sudan before going to Somalia--a place where hardly any reporters were willing to risk going.  

Picture
Amanda kept the story about Dan Rather in the back of her mind.  She knew that if she wanted to earn a living as a journalist, the one way to break through the pack and get a good job was by covering the most dangerous places that most journalists wouldn't dare visit.  Unfortunately, her trip to Somolia didn't pay off, as she and her friend were captured only spending a few days in the country.  Truly, she was lucky to live and be able to tell her story to others.

PictureA one-room elementary school in Maraaga, Somalia
One thing I noticed about Amanda's captors--most of them teenage boys--is that even though some of her captors were terribly cruel, others were quite nice and had no interest in hurting her. They were just following orders so they'd get some money when her ransom was paid.  Somolia is terribly poor, and back in 2008 (the year she was captured), there weren't many schooling or career options for its male citizens--and still aren't today.  

​Most young men choose to join a gang for protection from other gangs, and capturing a Western hostage is the ultimate way to obtain the money they desperately need--for food, clothes, working phones, and even more complex things like weddings and travel.  If they had better opportunities for schooling and jobs, perhaps they wouldn't need to rely on gangs and violence to get a head.  Amanda realized Somalia's lack of educational opportunities, and after she was released, she worked with various charities that support food relief and educational opportunities in Somalia, including the 
Global Enrichment Foundation, which she founded.

Renegade Thought of the Day:  Is there any career goal that you would risk your life to accomplish?  Explain.  

Would it be worth the risk if you only ended up as a "footnote" in a newspaper article somewhere?  
  
Bonus Video: Amanda Lindhout discuss her time as a Somali hostage in many news videos on the web, and some contain graphic details that may not be suited for all ages.  The following video from her publisher, however, simply shows Amanda sharing her love of travel and discussing the inner strength that helped her survive her difficult year and a half as a hostage.  
​Bonus Video:  Check out a quick clip of Dan Rather's first ever live hurricane coverage (jump to 55 seconds to see him wade waist-deep for the story).  What do you think?  Would you wade through the thousands of snakes swimming to higher ground and risk electrocution to obtain your dream job? 
0 Comments

Writer Linda Hogan Helps Us Listen to Our Ancestors

10/16/2015

0 Comments

 

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”

Title: Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Author: Linda Hogan (b. 1947)

Picture

Happy Friday!  Today we end a week of celebrating Native American culture with Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan (but don't worry!  We'll keep posting Native American writers in the future!)  Although I have only read her poems, I love the above quote from her book Dwellings and how she ties nature in with the spiritual world in a comforting way.


Picture
I've really never thought of my existence as being "the result of the love of thousands"
and yet it's a beautiful way of thinking how
we come into the world.  Sure, there are
people who will argue that not every child
who comes into the world comes from two people being in love, but if you go back from your parents to your grandparents, to their parents and beyond--there's sure to be a
​lot of loving found.  

Renegade Thought of the Day:  Do you know who your ancestors are? 

Why do you think some cultures place a lot of value on elders and ancestors? 

If your ancestors could speak to you, what might they say? 

Renegade Challenge: The next time you're in nature, listen for your ancestors. 
Bonus Comic:  How accurate do you find the picture below??
Picture
0 Comments

Poet Nila Northsun Shows Us The Times, They Are A Changin'

10/14/2015

0 Comments

 

". . . they're losing the ways / don't know how to talk indian. . . ."

Book: Diet Pepsi & Nacho Cheese
Poem: the way & the way things are
Author: Nila NorthSun (b. 1951)

Picture
How often do you see wild rabbits?
Today's quote is from award-winning Native American writer Nila NorthSun, who is born of Shoshone, Chippewa, and Swedish descent.  Not only is her poetry down-to-earth and accessible, but it deals with real issues faced by Native Americans struggling with how to keep their cultural traditions alive and relevant in a changing world. 

One of the coolest things about her, though, is the work she's done on behalf of Native American teens.  She lived on the Fallon Paitue-Shoshone Reservation in Nevada and was the director for the Stepping Stones Program, which helps tribal youth who need a safe place to stay and medical care. The program also empowers youth to take control over their own futures. 
Picture
Keeping Traditions Alive: Dancers at the 2014 Eastern Shoshone Indian Days Powow. Wind River Indian Reservation, WY. By Gregory Nickerson.

the way & the way things are

gramma thinks about her grandchildren
they're losing the ways
don't know how to talk indian
don't understand me
when i ask for tobacco
don't know how to skin a rabbit
sad sad
they're losing the ways
but gramma
you told your daughters
marry white men  
told them they would have
nicer houses
fancy cars
pretty clothes
could live in the city
gramma your daughters did
they couldn't speak indian anymore
how could we grandchildren learn
there are no rabbits to skin in the city
we have no gramma there to
teach us the ways
you were still on the reservation
asking somebody anybody
please get me tobacco

by Nila NorthSun (1979)
Picture
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Museum helps to preserve Shoshone and Bannock traditions and languages for future generations.
Renegade Thought of the Day:  Does your family have any cultural traditions? 

Think about your potential children and grandchildren: are there any family traditions they might have a difficult time celebrating or remembering?  How would it feel to you to think about your family traditions being forgotten?


Bonus Video: Celebrate Shoshone Heritage!
0 Comments

Poet Red Hawk Gives Us a Shift In Perspective

10/14/2015

0 Comments

 

If you were asked to build a bridge, what would it look like? 

Picture

I wish I could say that today's author, Red Hawk, is Native American.  Unfortunately, I can't.  His real name is Dr. Robert Moore and he's a professor of English at the University of Arkansas.  From what I've gathered, he found the name red hawk (lower case intended) after spending some time in a sweat lodge.  He also grew up being very interested in Native Americans and feeling in close kinship with Mother Earth, both of which come across in his poems.  

This week on my blog--which was kicked off with a day we once called Columbus Day--has been all about celebrating Native Americans.  Yet on a deeper level, it's really about the shift in perspective that we can get from listening to the insights of people whose cultural values are different from our own.  Red Hawk's poem "Two Ways of Crossing a Creek" embodies this shift, as you will see.  

Today I didn't start with a quote.  Instead, I have a question I want to reflect upon for a minute:  Someone asks you to build a bridge across a creek.  What bridge do you see in your mind?
 

Picture
Imagine what kind of bridge you'd build to help people safely cross this creek.
Now, read Red Hawk's poem below, focusing on the imagery of the two different bridges and the two different cultural perspectives they represent.  

Two Ways of Crossing the Creek

Just this side of the reservation
over Big Rapids Creek,
there is a fine bridge built by
the CCC in the thirties.
You know the kind:
careful work by proud men
who were ruined by the times.
Stone and wood, it was
a pretty thing and
heavily used by the traffic.

Half-a-mile down in the woods
I come across 6 Indian men
who have felled and trimmed
a big tree and are tying ropes
around its 2 remaining limbs
which they throw to one who
stands on the other side.
Then they all walk the
half-mile to the bridge,
cross over and down to where
the man with the ropes waits.

I sit there and watch, even push
and tug at the limbs as they
strain and heave the tree
across the rapid creek, then
after 2 hours of sweat they
walk across it, big smiles
all over their bronze faces.

I ask them,
Why go to all this trouble
when there's a fine bridge near?

They look at me curiously
and hand me a beer.
They shake their heads and
laugh but do not speak,
as if a man who needs to ask
is already too far gone, as
if he is the kind of man who
would build a bridge when
a log would do.


(From The Kenyon Review New Series, 
Volume XX, No. 2, Spring 1998)
Picture
Renegade Thought of the Day:  What about you: do you sometimes do things the hard way when a simpler solution would work just as well?  

What are some benefits from having friends from cultures that are different from our own?

Renegade Challenge:  Think about other cultures that you studied or visited.  How has what you've learned shaped the way you live your life?
Bonus Links: Here's some of the world's scariest bridges to get your adrenaline flowing.  Anyone ready for a trip to Pakistan??
0 Comments

Celebrating Life and Native American Writers with Louise Erdrich and a Bucket of Apples

10/13/2015

0 Comments

 

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

Title: The Painted Drum
Author: Louise Erdrich (b. 1954)

Click here to read a summary!

Picture

​

PictureAn apple sauce making machine in full swing!
One of the things I miss the most about living in the midwest in an actual home with a yard is the apple trees I grew up with.  Nothing says autumn like a bucket full of apples you've just picked off of your very own tree, or getting sick to your stomach from eating too many bowls of homemade applesauce in one sitting (trust me on this one!)

Picture
Today's beautifully written passage is from the novel The Painted Drum , written by award-winning writer Louise Erdich, who is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In today's excerpt, Erdrich's imagery of sitting under an apple tree, the earth beneath you sweet and strewn with apples, does seem comforting.  After all, if the seasons were life, autumn would be our golden years, full of what we've produced, but also a time when we're becoming more acutely aware that things can die and even though some dreams come true, others turn to rot.  Just like there's nothing to protect an apple tree from ultimately losing its apples, life is risky for us, too:  loss is everywhere, and there's no protection from that.  

Perhaps like Erdrich helps us see, we can turn to nature for some solace.  Just as in nature we see the apple tree lose its apples and foliage in the fall, we also see the blossoms return in the spring.  Similarly, although some apples fall to the ground and turn to rot, some of their seeds manage to sprout and grow.  Life is full of losses and gains.    

PictureA painted frame drum, double membranophone. Ojibwe, Used in Akwesahne ceremony. Made by Rohahes Iain Phillips.
Renegade Thought of the Day: Think about something you've lost in your life.  Then, consider how you grew and what you gained from that experience.  

Renegade Challenge:  Eat an apple and think about what it means to risk your heart.


Bonus Video:  From the movie ​Say Anything, Lloyd Dobber shows us how to risk it all for love:
0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture

    Archives

    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015

    Categories

    All
    Activists
    African American Writers
    American Classics
    Children's Literature
    Classics
    Contemporary Writers
    Creepy
    Inventors
    Japanese Writers
    Native American Writers
    Non-fiction
    Philosophy
    Teen Literature
    Women Writers

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Lit Bandit Blog
  • Literary Kitten
  • Cooks with Books
  • For Teachers!
  • About the Project
  • Contact