Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

When I took the leap in 1977 and "asked Jesus into my heart" strange things happened. Some of them good and right, some of them weird and ugly. I remember that day, the day after and the two ensuing years vividly. That day was euphoric. Not everyone feels something when they make a commitment to change their lives. I did. It felt good -- like gears that I didn't know were there had clicked into place and my soul was in motion. The day after is when my faith journey started. On that day, I walked home from school with Dale. After, fifteen minutes, I was frustrated that I couldn't get him to see the light, so I told him that he was going to hell if he didn't accept the truth. He was not impressed. The following two years were filled with beauty and doubt; maturity and immaturity; and falling and growing. I met people who later fell hard from the faith and others who went on to be pastors and missionaries. I went to Catholic church, Lutheran church, house church and

Can books change people? Well, it's a silly question, really. It's inanimate; it has no innate abilities. I think more accurate would be the question, Can people change through reading great (or really good) books? I think that a great (or really good) book is an invitation to change. According to Robert P. Waxler , co-founder of the CLTL (Change Lives through Literature program) and English Professor of the University of Massachusetts , “Deep [reading allows us to] break free from our single lives…from the linear and local perspective of ordinary existence.” My current great and really good books are One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez and the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling respectively. ............................. I started this post months ago and didn't finish. So now, I'm asking myself, Have I changed through reading the above mentioned books. How do I measure such a thing? What I remember about 100 Years, is the destructive power of isolat

I know that this post is about 10 years behind the times -- which in web terms is about a century -- but I don't care. I'm going to blog about Harry Potter. Over 10 years ago, after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out, I remember hearing all the scuttlebutt among religious folk about how the book and the author were evil (into witchcraft and stuff). I remember walking into a "conversation" between a young second year teacher and a student. The student was telling the teacher that Harry Potter was evil because it had witches and spells in it and, as a Christian, he thought that that was bad -- especially since it was a book for kids. The teacher was explaining that you can't be so black and white about things and that you shouldn't judge. Truth be told, I was keeping my head low, hoping to make like Harry with his invisible cloak and not be seen. No such luck. I was stopped and asked, "Hey Rocco, you're religious. What do you think o

The ease of getting information has made us lazy, I think. Maybe we don't retain it as well; it has become disposable. I mean, years ago if we wanted to find out how to fix a leaky faucet or if we wanted to know who Narcissus was, we'd have to go to the library, look through the card catalogue, maybe ask the librarian where to look, find the book, and read up on it. You'd think that if we wanted to know something that badly -- and went through all that trouble to learn it -- that we'd probably retain it. Or we wouldn't bother finding out at all because it wasn't worth the effort. Let me give an example: I ran across a word in a Steve Martini novel that I was reading. Cool word, I thought. I looked it up. I do that often at http://www.dictionary.com/ . The word meant a person having a homegrown, nontraditional kind of education. I didn't write the word down anywhere; now I can't remember the word and it's driving me crazy. Maybe if I had to go grab

I was caught in the middle of a friendly debate regarding Outliers a while ago; it went something like this: EM: Outliers is a great book! ST: Ya, but what practical good is it? EM: Well it explains how... ST: Okay, what's its thesis in a nutshell? EM: (gives articulate answer) but it's not that kind of book. ST: I don't get it... EM: read the book... Anyhow, I'd been wanting to read the book, so I borrowed it from EM. I told him I'd tell him what I thought, so here it goes: What jumps out at me -- in direct response to the question "what good is it?" -- is the notion that there are no rags-to-riches, self-made success stories. Behind every huge success (like Bill Gates) there is opportunity, hard-work, community and legacy (cultural background). Most of those things don't answer the question above because they're out of the individual's control. The one thing that is not is "Community". As a teacher/parent/fellow human being, tha

Summer time for a teacher is a time when you realize that if you don't seize the day that -- bam -- 60 of them are gone before you know it and it's September. This year, I'm making plans to avoid that; in my journal, I've listed things that I want to do: join my brother's gym write (songs and stuff) do some wine tours play squash with my daughter squeeze in a 2 day camping trip read about 10 books and so on Gotta commit these things to paper -- it takes you one step closer to actually doing them. That's it; super short blog. I'm going to write a song now -- gonna call it "Summertime"

You don't realize how good pulp fiction writers are until you try your hand at writing. It's not until then that you realize how difficult it is just to plot an engaging story -- let alone create characters that your readers are going to react to, throw in theme, setting, mood... Holy crap, it ain't easy. When I was at university studying English, I didn't even know who was on the best seller's list. Who cared? They had nothing important to say to the human soul; they were totally forgettable ; they were pulp fiction writers. We were reading Auden and Steinbeck and Pound and Shakespeare and Austen -- writers that mattered. Well, 20 years later, I'm not so sure that Grisham and Crichton and King and Archer don't matter and/or won't have contributed something to culture when literary history judges them. Back to my original reflection. It's not until you try writing a novel or even a short story that you realize how impressive someone like Steve Ma

Creative Procrastination Right now I have 60 exams to mark. After that, 80+ report cards. So what am I doing now? Blogging: working title -- "Creative Procrastination". Would that be ironic X 2 or is there an other word for it? Yes, when I have something pressing to accomplish, my mind supplies me with all kinds of other wonderful possibilities; under normal circumstances, I couldn't think of such sundry speculatives: writing a daily devotional based on the genealogies, trying to find and buy a Montreal Maroons hockey sweater online, inventing/patenting a binder for foolscap-size paper (maybe I shouldn't go public with that one...) reading! reading is always good. James Joyce's Ulysses sits on my bookshelf taunting me; it whispers, you're no student of English until you've read me ; then it says, above a whisper, wuss! look for the verse in Proverbs where it encourage drinking beer & wine if your life sucks And the proverbial list goes on. Speaking of

To My 2009 semester 2 EWCs: You're Great! In my second year of teaching I was observed by my then vice-principal and once former high school English teacher, Bob Majers . He observed a grade 9 class -- I have no recollection of what we were doing. Cue for Treason maybe? What I do remember is a conversation that went something like this: BOB: Wow, this is a great class. ME: Yeah, they're super kids -- smart and a lot of fun. BOB: Have you told them that? ME: No... BOB: Well, I think you should. ME: Good idea. That conversation has stuck with me. I often forget that the young people I get the honour to be with for 5 months are 14-18 yrs-olds -- kids in adult bodies. I don't mean that disrespectfully ; I just mean that they might look like they're adults but really they're only a very short few years past being 12-yrs old ... kids. So what's my point: high school students need to know that you're proud of them and that you think they're great. Specifically

Larry Sirranni, aka, Super Mario Yesterday I was at a retirement party for a man who is wholly human, doubtlessly flawed and yet -- dare I use the word? --great in what he has accomplished in his vocation as an educator. The point of this blog is not to honour the man, Larry Sirianni , although he is quite worthy of being honoured (as was he in the many speeches given on June 4 at the Thundering Waters Golf Course in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada). The point of this blog is to look at the concept of greatness. What makes Larry great -- what makes anyone great -- is that in his vocation he did not settle for the ordinary. He approached every minute, every day, every student, every colleague with the conviction that everyone, himself included, could be better after the encounter. As I watched Larry being so rightly honoured I found myself having many divergent thoughts. Is it then what a person does that makes him great? Does the greatness ( largeness , scope) lie in the magnit

The Death of Poetry... I read an interesting article today that said serious poetry was dead or at best irrelevant -- kind of like a priest in a town full of agnostics. Which isn't to say that some people somewhere still don't write poetry, read it and discuss it. They're just an elite few -- putting it nicely -- or an anachronistic few -- putting it not so nicely. As a teacher, I've gotta wonder if a lot of traditional forms have seen their day. I mean, this year, we were given -- that's right, "given", and that doesn't happen too often, I can tell you -- probably $1000-1500 worth of graphic novels. Why? Because it improves literacy particularly with adolescent boys. Now if I were to ask for $500 extra to purchase some Hamlet texts... well, I'm not so sure I'd get it. And here I am blogging about it. I guess that's what we'd call irony? I'm bemoaning the death of a traditional form using a 21st century mode of communication. Perh

Here are some things I've learned after 22 years of teaching: It's a vocation, a calling, not a job. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work, commitment and a sense of humour to do it well. If you want to find excuses as to why you can't do better there are a lot to choose from. It's not in the budget, my admin doesn't support me, they're always changing things and on and on. If you want to find reasons to do better there are lots of those to choose from too. Right now I have 78 -- Tracey, Joel, Brooke, Rachel, Brandon, Julie, Jeff, Luke, Jordan, Cassie, Kasey, Kyle, and Joshua but to mention a few... I think you get the picture. No student wants to do badly, neither does any teacher or principal. If any of the above do do badly there's usually a reason. Unpack that reason and you can fix the problem; focus on the reason and you compound the problem. Or, like the Japanese proverb reads: It's better to fix a problem than to fix blame. People don't c

So why the Western fixation with professional sports by a certain demographic (namely, 40 - 72-yr-old males) to which I belong? Let's state the obvious; that being that since we're in a first world country, we have the means -- the money and the leisure time to indulge ourselves. That would explain a lot of other things too: addictions, consumerism, dysfunction and obesity. But back to the fixation with pro sports: in my case, NHL hockey. I've never played ice hockey. I've played all other sorts of hockey: Cosom hockey, floor hockey, ball hockey, table hockey, EA Sports hockey, arcade hockey, sock hockey, basement hockey, and even once barn hockey! So I'm guessing part of the fixation would be involvement with the sport. But I'm guessing it has to go a lot deeper than that. Does it play into some sort of hero fantasy? Is it a vicarious thing? Is it the grown up equivalent to why adolescent boys are fascinated with super heroes? Does it compensate for u

I and my grade 10's are watching Pacino's Merchant of Venice . Wow, what a tough film to do well (as a comedy?!). The court scene is so riveting/emotional and then you have to follow that up with this light comic banter about the rings. But the bard knew what he was up to, I guess. Jessica is conspicuously silent during Act 5. I'd love to know how Shakespeare would have directed his actor to play the Jessica character during Act 5... A Stratford production I saw once had Antonio and Jessica left alone on opposite sides of the stage with their letters. They look up from their reading, glare at each other and exit. .. In the Pacino version... I forget... but I'm watching it now... Okay, here it comes: very brief few seconds with Jessica and Lancelot looking at each other uncomfortably/almost guiltily. And -- tellingly -- the last 2 scenes are (1) Shylock being literally shut out of his synagogue and (2) Jessica fingering her turquoise which, rumour had it, she had traded

Yesterday I went to an educational workship hosted by the DSBN. The speaker was Will Richardson from New Jersey. He said that the current education system is failing our children because we're not learnin' 'em about wiki's and twitter and netiquette and stuff. He said they're using it all, but they're using it badly and we're clueless. He made a strong case that our future (our present, really) will look very different than our not too distant past. He kept using the word "transparency" w.r.t. privacy. Ie. our concept of privacy will be radically different than what it once was. My head is still spinning as to why I should use twitter and delicious.com and wiki's and ustream.tv and on and on...

I've never seen the same movie twice at the theatre because I'm too cheap. But two nights ago I watched Star Trek for the second time in one week (the first time was last week at an IMAX). Okay, maybe I'm not objective because I grew up watching Star Trek TOS in reruns on channel 29 out of Buffalo (rotary antenna reception, Zenith TV, 1972). Everyday from 4 - 5 pm. I've seen all the movies and all the shows. And I've read a lot of the books. Apart from the fact that I've never been to a convention and I don't speak Klingon, I'm pretty much a ST geek. Anyhow, this movie was great. J.J. Abraams took some risks (I'm guessing he had the cannon people over a barrel... I'm thinking it was J.J.'s way or no way) and man did they pay off. The casting was great, special effects were spectacular, script was good, and it's got sequels written all over it. Go watch it; you won't be disappointed.