CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2012!

I'd like to  take this opportunity to thank all of you who made my time at MHSHS memorable. I will list you in alphabetical order, according to height.


Yeah, RIGHT!


Seriously, there are 29 of you who have maintained 90% or above throughout the entire year. Those scholars are:


Mohammad Farhan 
Svitlana Makoviy
Mohammed Hussain
Rebekah Goberdhan
Naurin Khondoker 
Aziza Arafat 
Arelis Medrano 
Haewon Kim  
Sanum Afridi

Ernesto Malaluan

Regina Hembrador
Kristine Buckheit  
Robert Bronchard 

Laura Kabadi 

Rinchen Dolma

Brenda Morales 

Asha Hendrington
Ricky Dundi
Natalia Sanpablo
Renee Drummond
Hana Lee
Mandy Qiong
Mike Shankun
Abby Sceusa
Khalid Haynes
Emily Chen 
Eliza Ferrer
Samantha Sun
Rosemarie Reyes 


I know how difficult my class was this year and how difficult is was to maintain such high levels.


Four more held their grades in the high 80s:
Sabrina Fletcher, Sutata Katari, Yomiuri Ortiz and Leonela Contreras

Even more maintained high 80-85s overall GPA


I'd also like to congratulate many of you who improved a great deal since the beginning of the year.


I have enjoyed working with you all. I will miss you more than you can imagine. Be good to yourselves, and GET SOME SLEEP!


Peace,
Love,
Laughs,


Mr. Carson


See you in New Zealand 2013 - 2021!








“Love without power is mere sentimentality. Power without love is dangerous. Love plus power equals justice.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

PREPARING FOR YOUR TOMORROWS - PASS ON TO YOUNGER SIBS, COUSINS and FRIENDS

PLANS FOR THE LIVING

DREAM- begin to state your dreams and future goals to parents, WRITE THEM DOWN; BELIEVE in them.

PLAN- What do you need to learn, do, understand in order to have those dreams become

realities?

Who can you talk to that is already LIVING that dream job? Go online and

RESEARCH the pros and cons of that profession. What did they need BEFORE they became that person?

            Interview people. Ask questions. Visit their job sites.

            What are the bad/good aspects of their job?

Believe it or not, someone you KNOW knows a person in the field you dream of living. Call them up and state your interests and build a relationship with them.

STUDY-

            Whatever you plan to be, you must study. Whether it’s in HS, College, a Trade or Technical school, there are years, months or weeks of study necessary.

            Begin to set a study schedule to maximize your time, allowing for all your research and extra-curricular activities (Football, Martial Arts, Singing/Dancing Lessons, a JOB, baby-sitting, hanging with your friends)

WORK HARD-

            To get from Dreams to Living them, you must commit to working harder and harder everyday.

PLAY HARDER

            Once you’ve dedicated yourself to these plans and outlines for studying and working, it’s time to really enjoy your free time.

ENJOY THE LIFE YOU’VE ALWAYS DREAMED!!!

Getting Started:

Make 5-Year, 10-Year, 15-Year and 20-Year Plans

            Use proactive language:

I will go to NYU/Stanford/Penn State working towards a degree in_____________________

            I will play the drums in the band or play on the ____________ team

            I will talk to my councilor/advisor at least once every month, becoming aware of any forms, tests I must take or scholarship applications and study abroad available to me.

            I will volunteer at The Boys’ and Girls’ Club four days a month and/or WORK three days a week.

            I will save $80 per month toward college/senior trip/Summer travel-study program.

             Remember, when you complete three years of a foreign language AND pass the Regents in that language, you will NOT have to take any more language courses in university (potentially up to $6,000 SAVED)* For NY scholars where Regents Exams = College credit once passed           

Be specific—

1. Why do I want to be a____________?

2. How long must I study certain subjects before getting to this goal?

3. Who can I talk to in order to better understand this job?

4. Who offers PAYING summer internships in this field?

              Further Questions during or after studies

5. Where will I live?

6. How can I

RECOMMENDATIONS For College and Scholarships

3-months prior to applications are due, ask teachers and coaches, etc for recs.

USE YOUR Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens**, by Sean Covey book to remind and revise your plans.

** Now FREE PDF downloads of entire book.

                                                “Keep the End in Mind”

FINANCES

Teaching young adults how to plan their monthly, weekly and daily finances.

Too many young teens have no clue how to build credit, or how to plan for the future, financially.

                                                            Savings:

Invest Money in Educational Funds, EE Series Savings Bonds or MONEY MARKET ACCOUNTS.

Many of these you must be 18 years old to start or have a parent or adult as guardian of the account.

                        Educational Funds such as Coverdales offered through CityGroup’s Primerica, are those that you put away money with your SS #. As long as you use this money for a university or trade school or other educational services, THERE ARE NO TAXES. If you happen to withdraw money for other reasons, there’s a 10% tax taken out. You cannot withdraw money until you are 18, and NO ONE else-except guardian SO BE SURE ADULT/GUARDIAN IS TRUSTWORTHY.

                       

EE Series Bonds-

                                    Lower returns, but SAFER than other investments.

            MONEY MARKET ACCOUNTS-

                                    No risk, often works exactly like a savings account. You can take out anytime,

WITHOUT any hidden fees or costs.

                                    When I started my Money Market (MM) eight years ago it was dollar for dollar.

Today, with interest rates at 2%, my money earns 2% every year. Compare this to a regular bank

saving’s accounts:

            BNY                                                                                                MM Account

            $1,000                                                                                                $1,000

Monthly fees= $5 x 12= -$60                                                                        no monthly fees

accounts that go below $2,000 = -$50                                                no charges for withdrawals

Total Annual fees =  -$110 + withdrawals fees                                    1K  x .02

                        _________                                                                        ____________

Totals             $890                                                                                    $1,020

Required BUSINESS majors must read Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded. My nephew, Troy, just graduated from Morehouse College with a Business Degree, where this first book was mandatory reading his sophomore year. He interned at three different financial institutions, landing a job (contract signed Sept. 2010) from his last, best offer.

Download or view portions of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert T. Kiyosaki, to learn more about the best ways to make your money MAKE even more money. His videos can probably be accessed through PBS.org as well.***

Poli-Sci and History Majors should read both Obama’s books: Dreams From my Father and Audacity of Hope; The History of the World: 1492 to Present, by Howard Zinn and Ronald T. Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History  of a Multicultural America

While Obama’s first book is more an autobiographical look at RACE, his second deals with his rise through bureaucratic systems as a community organizer in Chicago as well as his political climb toward the US Senate. 

Also John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage are great analytical accounts of four trailblazing senators who went against their party, constituency or society’s standard beliefs to vote logically and ethically for what turned out to be the correct call.

Anything by Studs Terkel - (Pulitzer Price Author, Historian) American Dreams: Lost and Found (1983) Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (2003) The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988); Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992); Hard Times (1970) and Working (1974).

Anything by Noam Chomsky - (150 + books, considered one of the “Fathers of Modern Linguistics” and Analytical Philosophy)

The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

***Recently, I've been reading debunkers to Kiyosaki's ethics or methods. While's I've NEVER actually read this book, I've watched a couple of his presentations on PBS over the last decade. Much of what he says is sound, and I've used a few of his overall ideas to end debt and "Pay Myself First"! 

“But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.” ~ Studs Terkel


“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” ~ Noam Chomsky

Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/noam_chomsky.html#ixzz1OspSsv6F.Lloyd Alexander

CRASH, CHARACTERS - written & directed by Paul Haggis

Detective Graham Waters

Mother Waters – druggie

Officer Ria - PR-El Salvadorian Officer—Graham’s partner and lover

Ludacris—intellectual Thug

Peter Waters - Larenz Tate (Graham's brother – Thug  with Ludacris)

Officer Ryan – sick father 

Officer Hanson—blonde newbie cop—Ryan Phillipe

ADA Rick Cabot—Brendan Fraser

Jean Cabot –Sandra Bullock—DA’s wife

Cameron—director—Terence Howard

Christine – Director’s wife—Thandie Newton

Daniel Ruiz-Latino locksmith—Michael Pena

Elizabeth Ruiz, daughter with cape

Farhad—the Persian shop owner

Wife of shop owner

Dorri – daughter—Bahar Soomekh

Detective Conklin—white “crooked, racist” cop

Detective Lewis – dead drug-dealing cop

“Nothing is what it seems" ~ 

PORTFOLIO REVISIONS - DUE WED. June 8 or Monday, June 13 - REMOVE ALL PORTFOLIOS by JUNE 14

You can see by the amount of quality work within your portfolios how much you have achieved in only NINE months! Most of you recognize your improvements in one-five skills by these awesome PowerPoints, debate videos, poetry, write-ups, quizzes, essays, reflections and other digital work.

Now....


TAKE THEM HOME!


Keep them safe.

Try not to burn them before your next interview, seminar or semester of courses. Remember at least 70% of what we've taught you so you don't embarrass ME. [lol]

Good luck and get some rest!

You don't look so good.... : )


“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

RECOMMENDATIONS

As many of you may know, I’m moving to New Zealand in a few months. However, many of you may not have heeded advice to get recommendations, as you’re still....Juniors.

Keeping the End in Mind: 

For all intents and purposes, most of you are SENIORS. 

To avoid extra hassles from long distance correspondence and to get general scholarship and college recommendations from teachers, coaches, religious leaders, supervisors et cetera,

1. Send teacher/coach/supervisors Resume with Overall and English GPAs.    

   Be sure to let receiver know:

    A  - to whom are we writing this recommendation

        - deadlines

        - what are colleges, internships or scholarships specifically looking for?

    B - years of volunteering, sports, organizations, clubs 
              briefly describe what your roles and responsibilities              were within organizations or volunteering

                   and

    C - write four [4] adjectives which describe you best.

2. For those who have not created a Resume yet, 

e-mail Overall GPA and individual English from 9th and 11th grades

Be sure to let receiver know:

    A  - to whom are we writing this recommendation

        - deadlines

        - what are colleges, internships or scholarships specifically looking for?

    B - years of volunteering, sports, organizations, clubs and

    C - 4 adjectives which describe you best.

Give teachers, advisors et cetera 2-3 months advance notice for these recommendations. Respect their time. Realize putting off asking people will result in poorly written, incomplete recommendations.

_____________________________________________

Even if you feel like your lower grades from 9th or 10th grade are NOT suitable for a recommendation, keep in mind:

Scholarship and Entrance Boards love to see: 

1. IMPROVEMENT - 

therefore, that 65 in 9th which has gradually improved to an 80 by 11th shows them you have not only matured, you have managed to improve while materials have become more rigorous.

2. Well-Rounded Individuals -

lower grades [75 - 85] may be a result of a scholar who has consistently been active within their community, on successful sports or clubs, creatively active or otherwise stressed with family obligations.

This is why all those extras are important, especially those you have done for two or more years.


“It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another, without helping himself,”                                                                          ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

STRANGE NON-WEEK P2 and P7 Alexie's "Part-Time Indian" page 60 by Monday, June 6

With my extended weekend and a field trip to Storm King Art Center, in Mountainville, NY***, I was not there for any of P7 nor most of P2.

Therefore, be aware that  you all should be on page 60 of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by this Monday, 6-6-11.

For those who have already purchased the novel yet have failed to stop by to get your copy, you are still responsible for having the first 60 pages read by Monday. Others must borrow the book from the 40 or so who have already received theirs or get it from the library or one of the many books stores available.


*** I highly recommend taking a few friends to experience the 500 acres of sculptures and contemporary modern pieces displayed outside at least once.



http://michaelricketson.blogspot.com/2011/04/storm-king-art-center.html




http://bethemmott.com/2010/07/09/storm-king-art-center/

 "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,"

                                                                    ~ Eleanor Roosevelt 

"Resentment is like you taking poison and waiting for the other person to die,"

                                                                      ~ Source unknown

ALEXIE THEMES - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

As we read Sherman Alexie's novel, focus upon


Who are our true friends? How do we recognize them?


What makes us lie?

Native American living
Suburban white middle class life
Friendship
Coping
Addictions
Multiculturalism
Lies
Identity
Othering
Self-Loathing
Cultural Pride

Quotes to focus upon:


"I used to think the world was broken by tribes...black and white. By Indian and white. But now I know it isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not," (Alexie 176)



"Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint," (Alexie 119)

CRASH - P2 and P7 start from beginning - P6 begins at scene on White Board

CRASH

As you view the 2004 movie, “Crash”, written and directed by Paul Haggis

Beware about scene 10 stalls and you have to fast forward with white remote to next scene.

Aim: What does it mean to be American? 

Take notes on this soon-to-be Classic movie scholars are to discern themes, questions and facts about current problems and issues concerning most Americans today. 

1. Who has achieved their American Dream? 

2. Who's corrupted theirs [American Dream]? 

3. What does title - CRASH - symbolize or represent? 

4. Who is the protagonist? 

HW: For those who still must Conference with me to Defend Portfolios:

 - Partially fill out the pink sheet with Defense Questions -

Others be prepared to discuss some of your themes and what title symbolizes.

DEFENDING PORTFOLIOS - START Monday, May 23 - June 3 - 44 have signed up -

Remaining contestants waiting to meet with me:

Please briefly fill out this PINK sheet BEFORE conferences

Defense of Portfolio: (May 26 - June 8) -         One-on-one conferences

Why have you chosen these particular pieces for this project?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What have you learned while working through _____________________________ [essay, research paper, debate]?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What was your favorite novel/text and why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Your least favorite or most dreaded and why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What specific skills do you believe are ones you still must work on improving? Why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are some of your strengths?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

How do you plan on improving them?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is your best way of learning?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Which Reading Strategy works best for you? Will you use it and others in coming years?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are some things about my teaching that you found confusing, unhelpful or useless?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Recommendations for Summer Reading and Writing

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

With the addition of the LGTs and blog which did you find most helpful?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Was there too much redundancy or were the re-enforcements helpful, confusing, distracting?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thurs 5-26-11 DURING CLASS
P3


P6
Muyiwa, Sukamol, Samantha, Natalia [Debbie] time allowing

P8 Jennifer, Priyanka, Gloria, Sabrina, Sutapa, Amy, Kayla [overflow on Wed. June 1]

Wed - June 1, 2011
P7  Alexus, Regina, Mandy, Hana



______       ______         ______
After school
Open for those showing make-up work, begging for points, or otherwise trying one last-ditch chance to be semi-responsible. Please, to expedite matters, arrive prepared with Printouts of mygradebook- CATEGORIES, with highlighted items to be discussed and all scored work.

_______________________________________________


P3 Paola and possibly Rokeya




______       ______         ______

L&L

Delorian, Shakif, Elfrin, Debbie ????


COMPLETED5-23-11 - awaiting edits
Asha, Renee, Robert, Ernesto and Crystal S., Jamie, Kristine, Brenda, Jadzia, Riyesh,

COMPLETED5-24-11 - awaiting edits
Mohammed H., Mohammad F., Emily, Maya, Aziza, Sheniece, Svitlana

Abby, Ricky
Sanum, Shyrin, Ana,

______       ______         ______

After school

Open for those showing assignments I have scored incorrectly/missed, make-up work, begging for points, or otherwise trying one last-ditch chance to be semi-responsible since there's more Summer School and there never should've been any unless it entailed an 8-week program. To expedite matters, please arrive prepared with Printouts of mygradebook- CATEGORIES, with highlighted items to be discussed and all scored work. 






No conferences on Thursdays during L&L, Friday after school, Tues, May 31 [all day], so the remaining 45 to Defend Portfolios, plan accordingly. Additionally after P2 on Thursday, June 2, no conferences, as I'll be on the Storm King Art Field Trip - whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

“It is said, The early bird catches the worm. Those arriving later, eat dirt, gag and rapidly wither away. Such tragic endings for those who procrastinate, sleep late and fail to relate.  ~ 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie - 0316013692 -

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 0316013692, by Sherman Alexie











So far 50 scholars sign up for wanting me to buy this very LAST novel for your Junior year.
Several others were out Friday, so I will order about 55 copies unless MORE e-mail me before Sunday noon with the Subject: Please order 1 "Part-Time Indian" for _________________your name


For those you do not wish to keep this hilarious semi-Graphic Novel, this may be given to Rising Juniors as it's on their Summer Reading List this year.

Be aware, those locating this novel on their own, we won't officially be starting this book till Wednesday, June 1 -June 10, so there's still 10 days to finish IRBs and even begin another for extra credit complete with:

1. Windows or Post-Its or Annotations

2. Goodreads write-ups = even more points

http://bigwords.com/

http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=book&WRD=Q%20&%20A

http://www.borders.com/online/store/Home


“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

NO MORE LATE WORK - May 27, 2011

Be aware, after June 1, no more late work will be accepted.
Additionally, those with discrepancies with grades must all be discussed and cleared up by May 27.

Be advised, the Cultural Celebration takes place immediately after school next Friday, so DO NOT EXPECT to see me at all after L&L 5-27-11

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

RAPF ESSAY FOCUS QUESTIONS P3 & P8

Looking again at the essay, "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtime as Novel and Film", by Joanna E. Rapf, answer these following questions for Tuesday's discussion
 

1. What is Raft's Thesis?

2. According to author, how does this theme or thesis relate to recent field trips to Tenement Museum, Harlem or other aspects concerning Ms. Moore's History classes?

3. What other texts recently read, correlate to Raft's ideas of "transformation"? Or other themes?

4. According to Raft, whom is the Voice of Reason (VoR) within the novel?

5. Describe three of the fundamental differences between novel and the movie. 

6. At one point, Raft alludes to another person we've studied recently. Explain who this person is and how his/her philosophies differ or coincide with the movie and novel.

_______________________________________________


Rapf, Joanna E. "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtime as Novel and Film." Literature/Film Quarterly 26.1 (1998): 16-22. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 214. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2011.


Father kept himself under control by writing in his journal. This was a system too, the system of language and conceptualization. It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.--E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime1

E. L. Doctorow's novel, Ragtime,is certainly about "making witness." Its serpentine structure, drifting from one subject and one point-of-view to another, with its allusive narrator who seems by the end to be a little boy reflecting on the past of his youth, is about the creation and re-creation of history, a discipline, Doctorow seems to suggest, that is itself about making order out of disorder, about "control." While he is in the Arctic, Father "kept himself under control by writing in his journal." This process of ordering, of fixing, is crucial in Doctorow's work. Ragtime is all about things going out of control as the nineteenth century marches into the twentieth: race riots (Coalhouse), the automobile (Ford), Communist agitation and women's rights (Emma Goldman), labor strikes, and world war. The tranquility of the opening chapter--with Father's house, patriotism as "a reliable sentiment in the early 1900s," vaudeville, and "no Negroes" and "no immigrants," when Winslow Homer was still painting, capturing the fleeting image of a certain kind of light--is all shattered in the few short years chronicled by the novel. By the end of Part II, "Father wondered at this moment if their lives might no longer be under their control" (240), and by the end of Part IV, Winslow Homer is dead, along with Father, Grandfather, and Younger Brother. Emma Goldman has been deported, Evelyn Nesbit has lost her looks, and the era of Ragtime had run out, with the heavy breath of the machine, "as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano" (369). And indeed, this is Doctorow's vision of history, being composed and re-composed, so that the human sense of order might be liberating and creative rather than oppressive, restrictive, and stifling of spirit. He has said:

Since history can be composed, you see, then you want to have as many people active in the composition as possible. A kind of democracy of perception ... a multiplicity of witnesses. If you don't constantly recompose and re-interpret history, then it begins to tighten its grip on your throat as myth and you find yourself in some kind of totalitarian society, either secular or religious.("A Multiplicity of Witness"184)

The whole subtext of Ragtime is about telling, making witness and narrating history. The little boy, as a grown man looking back, seems to narrate the novel we read. Anthony B. Dawson has called him "the privileged consciousness of the novel" (208). He tells its history, but within that novel, Father keeps a journal to tell his history, and so does Younger Brother:

Our knowledge of this clandestine history comes to us by Younger Brother's own hand. He kept a diary from the day of his arrival in Harlem to the day of his death in Mexico a little more than a year later.(282)

And Grandfather narrates stories of transformation, people who become animals or trees, just as Ragtime itself is a narration of transformation, about people who become something they were not at the beginning of the book. The immigrant silhouette artist, Tateh, becomes a moviemaker; the meek Younger Brother becomes a lover and a revolutionary; the musician, Coalhouse Walker, Jr., becomes an angry symbol of the struggle for dignity and human rights. The patchwork of these stories suggests, as the boy narrates, that "forms of life were volatile and that everything in the world could as easily become something else" (132-33). He found, he says, "proof in his own experience of the instability of both things and people." The recurring figure in the novel of the magician/escape artist Harry Houdini is a running metaphor of this experience, a man who does not even use his own name--"He was a Jew. His real name was Erich Weiss" (39)--and whose only source of order in a volatile world is his mother. Even in death she continues to order his life: "Every feat enacted Houdini's desire for his dead mother. He was buried and reborn, buried and reborn" (234): the theme of reincarnation so crucial to J. P. Morgan's failed quest in the novel. The pattern always is one of an attempt to fix the volatility of life, to order, to "re-compose."

Two other metaphors in the book that seem to usurp nineteenth-century orderings and renew them in twentieth-century forms are baseball and the movies. Father's instinct at the time of losing control, when "it was clear the crisis was driving the spirit from their lives," is to take his son to a baseball game. A baseball game presents excitement within an order, a structure, that repeats itself again and again. Doctorow writes:

            Father sank into his chair. As the afternoon wore on he entertained the illusion that what he saw             was not baseball but an elaborate representation of his own problems accounted, for his secret          understanding, in the coded clarity of numbers that could be seen from a distance.(266, bold             mine)

Baseball encompasses a "re-presentation," the problems of his life "accounted," with its metaphor of the ordering of numbers, the tidy summation of a ledger making sense of disorder while creating an understanding. When Father asks the boy what he likes about the game, the boy replies, "The same thing happens over and over," just as he had said in an earlier chapter that he liked to listen to the same record over and over again on the Victrola "as if to test the endurance of a duplicated event," and that he liked to look at himself in the mirror "not from vanity but because he discovered the mirror as a means of self-duplication" (133-34). The fragility of this ordering, its illusory nature, is reiterated by Doctorow at the end of the baseball chapter when the outcast player, Charles Victor Faust, actually gets a chance to pitch one inning for the Giants, but then is sent on his way. Out of the ordering of baseball, he ends up in an insane asylum and dies.

But as long as we can maintain an illusion, and thereby our sanity, "understanding" is possible. Doctorow's second metaphor for this understanding is the movies. When the little boy in Chapter 15 is worrying about the volatility of things we have what seems like two sentences put together that have no clear connection with each other:

If he raised the window in his room it might shut itself at the moment he thought the room was getting cold. He liked to go to the moving picture shows downtown at the New Rochelle Theatre on Main Street.(133)

In a style typical of Doctorow, he leaves the reader to make the crucial connection between the two sentences, which are skillfully linked together like a form cut in a movie. There is the visual image of the frame, the window frame and the movie frame, and the mental image of a problem--discontinuity--and its solution--finding continuity at the movies.

It is in the transformation of Tateh (Hebrew for Father, so by name he represents a kind of reincarnation into the twentieth century of the first, nineteenth-century father of the book, who literally blows up and sinks with the Lusitania) from immigrant silhouette artist to successful immigrant moviemaker. Chapter 18 begins with this description: "Thus did the artist point his life along the lines of flow of American energy," and goes on to report that "The value of the duplicable event was everywhere perceived" (153), not just in the movies, but in factories and soda fountains. But it is the movies that offer the possibility of understanding, like Father's accounting illusion of baseball. The reincarnated Tateh, as Baron Ashkenazy, frames life with his rectangular glass, giving it shape and form. "In the movie films, he said, we only look at what is there already. Life shines on the shadow screen, as from the darkness of one's mind," a sentence that brings together the physical screen and also what Bruce Kawin has called the "mindscreen" involved in the perception of movies. The new Baron Ashkenazy goes on,

People want to know what is happening to them. For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting and, forgive me, embracing one another. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. There is such a need to understand.(297)

Both in terms of its style and content, Ragtime looks to the twentieth-century art form of the movies for understanding, for its structuring of history. Doctorow once said that The Book of Daniel "was constructed like Laugh-In" (qtd. in McCaffery 41). This is because in an age where visual media have replaced print as primary agents of mass communication, Doctorow recognizes that we no longer read with the same expectations of continuity that characterize nineteenth century essays and fiction. "I don't know how anyone can write today without accommodating eighty or ninety years of film technology" (qtd. in McCaffery 40). Consequently, the effects of that technology are manifest not just referentially but also structurally in his work. From film, he says, "we've learned that we don't have to explain things." The audience or the reader can fill in gaps and will accept jumps in time and space. "My writing," he tells us, "is powered by discontinuity, switches in scene, tense, voice, the mystery of who's talking. ... Anyone who's ever watched a news broadcast on television knows all about discontinuity" (qtd. in McCaffery 41).

It is commonplace to call Ragtime a "cinematic" novel. Its style is itself an attempt to find a "literary equivalent for the cinematic process," while its content suggests that "only the motion picture offers an artistic solution for historical volatility." For example, the jumps in time, place, and subject between chapters are often tied together by visual images, as they would be if one were editing a movie. Chapter 12 ends with Tateh and his daughter on an electric railway, "humming along dirt roads" on their way to Boston. Chapter 13 begins, "Tracks! Tracks! It seemed to the visionaries who wrote for the popular magazines that the future lay at the end of parallel rails" (109), a description that returns us to New York and Houdini, and for the time being we have dropped the subject of Tateh and his daughter. The technique goes back to Locke and his "association of ideas." It's a form of stream-of-consciousness montage where it is not necessary to explain connections to the reader. And not only are chapters linked this way, but so are sentences within Doctorow's extended paragraphs. In Chapter 1, when Evelyn Nesbit is introduced, we actually get very little visual description of her. The long first paragraph of the novel ends this way:

            Evelyn fainted. She had been a well-known artist's model at the age of fifteen. Her under-clothes             were white. Her husband habitually whipped her. She happened once to meet Emma Goldman, the             revolutionary. Goldman lashed her with her tongue. Apparently there were Negroes. There were             immigrants. And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman k            knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.(5-6)

Much of the book is encapsulated in these cryptic, imaginatively connected sentences. They seem to work this way: being an artist's model suggests undressing, hence the underclothes; her husband, we will find out, does not approve of her being a model, so this idea brings him into the picture, along with whipping her, both for punishment and sexual gratification; the connection with Goldman is made through the image of whipping, for Goldman "lashed her with her tongue"; lashings bring to mind the images of blacks being lashed, which in turn suggest minorities, those outside the main stream, and hence "immigrants"; the final sentence pulls us out of these shots which have started with intimate close-ups of underclothes and gradually broadened their scope from the particular, Nesbit, then Goldman, to larger groups, Negroes, then immigrants, dollying back to a kind of establishing shot that reminds us of the small time period of the novel, only about ten years out of the one hundred of the twentieth century.

These short, factual sentences, working by means of association of ideas, pull together many of the strands of the novel: upper class life, middle class life, immigrant life, blacks, revolutionaries, and, most significantly, crimes, which we will see in various forms throughout the book. It focuses essentially on three family groups: Father/Mother and their family (middle class), Tateh and his daughter (immigrant life), and Coalhouse Walker, Jr., Sarah, and their child (black life), all of whom, during the course of the roughly ten-year span, interact with upper class life. In conclusion, as John Parks has noted, these strands are remarkably tied together as the three families become one with the marriage of Tateh and Mother who have adopted the child of Coalhouse and Sarah (63).

Doctorow's verbal style maintains a distance from his fictions. Indeed, the novel at times seems to be spoken rather than written.2For example, chapters will begin with questions, as if the narrator suddenly realizes that the reader may have been wondering if some characters in the story have simply been forgotten. Chapter 12: "And what of Tateh and his little girl?" Chapter 32: "And what of Younger Brother?" Doctorow's technique here is similar to Lord Byron's, who uses this rhetorical device for transition between digressions in works such as Childe Harold--"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, / The being who upheld it through the past?" (Canto IV, 1477-1478)--or Don Juan. The ironic, conversational narrator who pretends to lose control of his story, who apologizes for digression when in fact digression is the heart of his "story," is central to both Byron and Doctorow as social satirists. Both write pseudo-history, putting their fictional characters into a world populated by "real" historical people such as Catherine the Great (Byron) or Booker T. Washington (Doctorow), and play with our notions of truth and fiction. This delightful ironic voice depends on the narrator having a distance from the material being narrated. Charles Eidsvik writes, "It may be that Doctorow's commitment to social satire demands the inscrutable, impersonal detached voice, the almost mythic artist" (309).

For Eidsvik there are three techniques, all media related (although, of course, Byron was using these techniques for his social satire long before movies and television) that structure Doctorow's fiction: 1) an ironic use of real, historical, public figures; 2) a carnivalesque attitude toward these figures by putting together people who, in reality, would not be joined; and 3) wildly digressive shifts in plot. It is, then, the tension between the seriousness of Doctorow's materials and vision, and the playfulness of his structures that make him "an important voice in contemporary fiction" (309).

Because the structure of Ragtimeis so cinematic and because, in many ways, it is about volatile forms and the function of cinema to order those forms and create "history," it would seem at first to be a promising subject for adaptation to the screen. And indeed, the adaptation by Michael Weller and Milos Forman is successful in a number of respects. Gerhard Bach and Leonard and Barbara Quart are too hard on it. The Quarts suggest that the film lacks a governing vision and purpose (72). They see the cross-cutting of the film as "conventional," and like Bach, they argue that it fails to pick up Doctorow's playful spirit of discontinuity, volatility, even surreality. In other words, that crucial tension between the medium and the message, to quote McCluhan, is missing in the film adaptation.

Although this may be true, it is not for the reasons that the Quarts and Bach suggest. The film does make a real effort to evoke the feeling of discontinuity so crucial to the novel. Especially in what might be considered the film's first act, its introduction, we find scenes or sequences edited together in an abrupt manner. For example, after Sarah's baby has been found and Mother and Father are arguing what to do about him (which is changed from the novel where Father is away when the baby is found), we have a pause, during which time Mother says, "Excuse us, for a moment, won't you," and she and Father exit the room to talk, but the camera does not follow them and we are left "to fill in the gap" about their conversation. Instead, there is a CUT on the sound of the door closing to Henry Thaw, in what seems to be a complete non-sequitur, exclaiming to his lawyers that he wants the nude statue of his wife, Evelyn, taken down off Madison Square Garden. And this short scene also ends on incomplete action as Thaw threatens his lawyers by saying, "'cause if you don't, ..." and we abruptly CUT to an exterior street scene with a horse and wagon moving right to left, the same direction Thaw was looking and pointing.

Then there are a number of playful transitions, such as the freeze frame of the black-and-white face of Harry Houdini's mother from a newsreel dissolving into color live action of the same face, or the head that abruptly rises from the bottom of the frame, marking a transition from Coalhouse Walker, Jr. at Mother and Father's house saying. "Tell her I'll be back," to Harry K. Thaw's trial. However, as the characters in the film begin to come together there is less and less of this disjunctive editing.

The film's narrative eliminates many of the patterns in Doctorow's quilt--Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini and his mother. Freud and Jung, Morgan and Ford--and concentrates with dramatic intensity on the Coalhouse Walker, Jr. story. But by exploiting our knowledge of film history, Forman and Weller attempt something like Doctorow's mixing of fact and fiction by casting Jimmy Cagney as Rheinlander Waldo (a character invented for the movie--in the novel he's District Attorney Whitman), Cagney's longtime buddy, off-screen and on, Pat O'Brien as the lawyer, Delmas, dancing legend Donald O'Connor as Nesbit's dancing instructor, and literary legend Norman Mailer as Stanford White. Such reflexivity does allow the film to do "what the novel does in some ways."3These cross-textual references also reflect what Eidsvik describes as the first two of Doctorow's media techniques, while the disjunctive editing is an example of the third. But what is still missing in the film is 1) the sense of ironic distance created by Doctorow's narrative voice and 2) the idea about the importance of creating history, of giving form to the disjunctive, chaotic experiences of life.

Narrating history, making witness, composing and re-composing are certainly suggested by the newsreel sequences in the film of Ragtime.Not only do these sequences allow Forman and Weller to bring in characters and the panorama of historical events from the novel that they do not specifically treat in the film--Houdini, Freud, Ford, Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt--but they suggest the "making of history," not through writing but through filming, which of course has become increasingly important as the century in which Ragtime begins has passed through Emma Goldman's "ninety-four years to go." The changing form and increasing importance of this kind of "making witness" is subtly suggested in a contrast between the two Harry Houdini newsreel scenes that are given to us in the film. This is a framing device that is used in the novel, and the film makes skillful, albeit subtle, use of it. One of the concluding visions of the novel is an image that composes itself in Houdini's mind as he is hanging upside down from a twelfth-floor window before escaping from a strait jacket. "The image was of a small boy looking at himself in the shiny brass headlamp of an automobile," an echo of the image that concludes the first chapter of the novel where Houdini sees the boy "gazing at the distorted macrocephalic image of himself in the shiny brass fitting of the headlight," a form of self-duplication for which the little boy in the novel is constantly questing. The camera, of course, can give us just this sort of enlarged image, and both the novel and film suggest that in the twentieth century the movies may be the way we deal with the volatility, and create our sense of history. Consequently, many of the characters of Ragtime are presented to us in Forman's film by means of newsreels. The Houdini feat of escaping from a strait jacket while hanging from a skyscraper we see in the second newsreel sequence in the film. Then, as if no time has passed, we see the scene again at the end of Ragtime,but this time it seems to be part of the actual diegesis of the film, because it is in color, and it gives us two important pieces of information: 1) WAR IS DECLARED, so we have moved from 1906 to 1914, and 2) we see one of the spectators taking a picture of Houdini with a camera. This is a subtly brilliant touch, a gentle, ironic moment that perfectly reflects Doctorow's vision about the recording of history. But it passes so fast it is almost unnoticeable.

The second missing ingredient in Ragtime the film, ironic distance, is harder to reproduce on screen just because a novel has at least three tenses--past, present, and future--that allow for hindsight, foresight, and distance from "the present," while a film seems to unroll in a continuous present, and without a voice-over narrator it is very hard to create the distance necessary for ironic commentary on the unfolding action. Comedy, in particular black comedy, can be successful in doing this--Dr. Strangelove, for example, or a film like Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr., which like Ragtime comments on its own form and parodies human melodrama by naming its characters Father, the Boy, the Girl, and so on, so that these are "types" rather than individuals. Ragtime's characters, with the exception of those who have a historical or literary basis, are also identified as types, and both the film and the novel are structured as comedies, that is, their forms are circular and they end with a sense of renewal or the ongoing process of life. But for the irony to come through on screen, the action itself within the comic frame or structure has to be caricatured--the exaggerations of Strangelove, the gags of Sherlock, Jr. The diegetic action of Ragtime the film, however, with the exception of the casting and film techniques mentioned above, is presented in a fairly straight-forward, dramatic manner, concentrating its intensity on the powerful story of injustice embodied in the person and experience of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., with whom we are allowed to sympathize. The camera does not keep us at a distance, like the narrator of the novel. For example, near the end of the book we are simply told, "Coalhouse never once went to the window to look at it [the Model T Ford]. He sat at Pierpont Morgan's desk in the West Room and composed his will" (342). In the film, on the other hand, we move in to a close-up of Walker as he sits at the desk, hands on the handle of a detonator, and prays: "Lord, I'd hoped I'd have the courage to know what I should do now." He cries, and we cry with him. This is a powerfully emotional moment, unlike anything in the novel, and there is no satire here, no ironic voice. We are, however, saved the pain of his death. His shooting takes place in silence from the perspective of a high angle long shot, and as he falls on the steps on the Library, the camera holds in that shot; we do not come in any closer. Steam rises in front of the frame and we hear the ragtime music that segues into the closing shots of Father, Fire Chief Conklin, and, as we saw at the beginning of the film, Evelyn dancing in a swirling red skirt. The music and the repetition of this dancing sequence suggest that life goes on, like Harry K. Thaw marching "annually at Newport in the Armistice Day parade," the closing line of the novel.

Unlike the Burt Kennedy film of Welcome to Hard Times, this adaptation of a Doctorow novel keeps the dominant metaphors: the ragtime music that carries us through the film and the duplicating images, in particular, the motion picture. Both novels deal with a present telling about the past, and so both are about the importance of telling, of recording, of making history. Like the windmill in Hard Times[Welcome to Hard Times], the dancing figure of Evelyn, going round and round, suggests the cyclical nature of history, that it represents a moral process not progress. But that dancing figure of Evelyn gives a playful look at the camera as the film comes to a close, suggesting an awareness of the artificiality of all constructions of experience. Forman's film is filled with little moments like this, maybe not enough to embody fully a successful translation of novel to screen, but enough to share in that "democracy of perception." It becomes yet another voice in the "multiplicity of witnesses" that keep history from becoming myth.

Notes

1. See Dawson 209 and Parks 61.

2. See Gerhard Bach, "Novel as History and Film as Fiction," in Friedl and Schulz 167.

3. See Michael Shiels, "Look! It's James Cagney," Friedl and Schulz 155.

Works Cited

Dawson, Anthony B. "Ragtimeand the Movies: The Aura of the Duplicable." MosaicXVI, 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1983), 205-14.

Doctorow, E. L., Ragtime.New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Eidsvik, Charles. "Playful Perceptions: E. L. Doctorow's Use of Media Structures and Conventions in Ragtime." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch Im Auftrage der Görres-Gesellschaeft30 (1989), 301-309.

McCaffery, Larry. "A Spirit of Transgression." E. L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations.Ed. Richard Trenner. Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1983.

"A Multiplicity of Witness: E. L. Doctorow at Heidelberg." E. L. Doctorow: A Democracy of Perception.Ed. Herwig Friedl and Dieter Schulz. Essen: Blau Eule, 1988.

Parks, John G. E. L. Doctorow.New York: Frederick Ungar Books, Continuum, 1991.

Quart, Leonard and Barbara Quart. "RagtimeWithout a Melody." Literature/Film Quarterly10.2 (1982), 71-74.

Trenner, Richard, ed. E. L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations.Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1983.
Source Citation Rapf, Joanna E. "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtimeas Novel and Film." Literature/Film Quarterly 26.1 (1998): 16-22. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 214. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2011.Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?

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