Reading List! Books, Videos, and Websites to re/visit accumulated during my travels....

Whew! I just poured through three notebooks and ten books of crazy annotations (some more slapdash than others...) to compile my re/visit literature/videos/website list! While this will definitely serve as a meaningful reminder of materials I personally need to spend some time with, hopefully some of you can benefit from this compilation as well... whether you are a teacher, student, or merely an avid reader, I think there is some amazing material here (in no particular order... sorry!):

BOOKS/SHORT STORIES/PLAYS I NEED TO RE/VISIT:

Steinbeck's Reading (Robert DeMott)
Steinbeck's Typewriter (Robert DeMott)
Moby Dick (Herman Melville) 
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe) 
The Tortilla Curtain (TC Boyle) 
My Antonia (Cather)
China Men (Kingston)
Yonnonido: From the Thirties (Olsen)
America is in the Heart (Carlos Buloson)
Nightland (Louis Owens)
The Cariboo Cafe (Helena Viramontes)
Under the Feet of Jesus (Helena Viramontes)
Y No Se Trago La Tierra (Tomas Rivera)
Monstress (Lysley Tenorio)
The Spiritual Life of Children (Robert Coles)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone (August Wilson)
A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
People of Plenty (David Potter)
The Organization Man (William Whyte)
The Suburban Myth (Bennett Berger)
The Feminine Mystique (Betty Frieden)
The American Dream (Jim Cullen)
Between Pacific Tides (E.F. Ricketts)
Titus Tidewater (Children's Book - Suzy Verrier)
The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes)
Robinson Crusoe (Daniel DeFoe)
Treasure Island (Stevenson)
Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind (Michael Preston)
A Sand County Almanac (Aldo Leopold)
On the Sale of my Farm (poem - Robert Frost)
Little Scarlet (Walter Mosely)
Shanghai Girls (Lisa See)
Big Sur (Kerouac)
Sonny's Blues (Baldwin)
The Big Sleep (Chandler)
A Lesson Before Dying (Ernest J. Gaines)
Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)
A Slow Walk of Trees: As Grandmother Would Say (NY Times: Toni Morrison)
Hidden Persuaders (Vance Packard)
Status Seekers (Vance Packard)
Waste Makers (Vance Packard)
Studs Lonigan (Farrell)
Harvest Gypsies (Steinbeck Center Publication)
Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)
We Are Not Ourselves (Colum McCann) - not yet released? Damn it, Bill. 
Peter Kuper's Graphic Novel rendition of Kafka's The Metamorphosis
Perma Red (Debra Magpie Earling)
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)
The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)
How to Write About Series (Harold Bloom)
Incident (poem) by Countee Cullen
The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Mark Haddon)

MUSIC TO RE/VISIT

Dvorak's #9
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
Bach's Art of the Fugue
Monteverde
Scarlatti
Buxtehude
Collected work of Mozart 
Bill Frisell
Joe Hill (The Preacher and the Slave, The Tramp, There is Power in a Union, The Rebel Girl, Casey Jones--Union Scab)
Woody Guthrie
Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Sleep Now in the Fire - Rage Against the Machine
The Ghost of Tom Joad - Springsteen / RATM
Dave Matthews Band - The Murder (need to verify the title on this one...)

VIDEOS TO RE/VISIT

The Plow that Broke the Plains (Pare Lorenz)
The River (Pare Lorenz)
Charles Kuralt's Steinbeck Video
Cesar Chavez: The Fight in the Fields (PBS)
The Bling Ring
Little Miss Sunshine & Crash (paired with Grapes of Wrath)
McDonalds ad (manipulation of ads - YouTube)
Cheerios interracial ad (YouTube)
Dave Chappele and Maya Angelou: Iconoclasts (YouTube)
Race is the Place (YouTube)
Kung Fooled (YouTube)
The Greatest Speech Ever Made (YouTube)
Keep Race Out of It (YouTube)

WEBSITES TO RE/VISIT

dbacon.igc.org (immigration photography)
calitexperience.com (P. Barraza's California Lit class materials)
apstation.com (P. Barraza's AP class website)
WeeGee

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I will continue to update this as I find more items! If any other participants have good stuff to add here, please email me and I will add it on!

For your viewing pleasure: the discovery of a Sea Hare during our intertidal zone exploration:

 I should have my lesson plan materials and a few more videos (song links!) up on the blog in the next week or so... stay tuned!

The NEH needs your help! Links to pictures, too...

Monterey at night as seen from Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station

Now safely back home (my wife and daughter flew to Monterey after the institute wrapped up on  August 2nd and spent a week in Central and Northern California with me before we jointly headed home) in Virginia and anxiously anticipating the kickoff of yet another year, I'm compiling notes, and starting the inevitable process of sharing stories, songs, and photos from the 2013 Steinbeck Institute with parents, friends, and colleagues.

Returning for a moment to what initially brought me to the program (beyond my amazing wife's support and motivational tactics...), I really am indebted to a good friend who spotted the program posting on the NEH summer scholar program boards... without the "heads up," I most certainly would have never applied to the program, simply because I did not know it existed (so thanks, Sarah!). For those of you who are high school teachers or college professors, the NEH has fabulous summer educational programs available for those who apply and are selected. Click HERE to visit the NEH's website with a listing of this past year's programs.

Sadly, the NEH, for those of you who do not know, is now being threatened by a massive 49% funding cutback by the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee ($71 million dollars) which would surely devastate funding for these valuable programs... the reduction was up for vote in early August and the cut was debated but ultimately the committee adjourned for recess until the September session for a final determination. A pittance (approx 3%) of the fiscal budget is allocated to education as is...

I implore all of you to visit this site (National Humanities Alliance) and write your local representatives (the website extrapolates your location and representative data and even drafts a generic "don't cut" email to be sent... although you do have the option of revising the content and tailoring it to your liking): CLICK HERE TO HELP THE NEH!!!

....

The Steinbeck Institute was a game-changer for me in many ways... this was an excerpt from the letter I sent to Senators Warner and Kaine in support of maintaining the NEH funding:

As a high school teacher in a small Northern Virginia city system, I am faced daily with students from extremely diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds who challenge me to make English literature both meaningful and relevant to their 21st century lives as Americans. While I have had great success teaching Steinbeck's shorter works (Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, The Pearl) in the past, I have long grappled with the notion of teaching Steinbeck's more challenging (and ultimately more meaningful) books to my diverse student body in a general education context. Throughout the course of the NEH-funded institute I attended, I was equipped with the pedagogical skills needed to approach Steinbeck's greater and more complex works (The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, the Sea of Cortez, and Cannery Row) with confidence, clarity, and meaningfulness as a teacher. The opportunity to have round table brainstorming, activities, and trips to locations throughout "Steinbeck country" with the penultimate Steinbeck scholars in the literary scene today was beyond inspiring. I have been absolutely galvanized by this experience and I am ready, willing, and able to tackle these powerful and life altering works of great American literature with my students in the upcoming school year. I am ready to change lives with the help of Steinbeck...

How many of you have been inspired or challenged to become a better person by a teacher? The NEH's programs are designed to keep churning out THAT sort of pedagogue... show your support and write to your representative!!!

FINALLY, I have uploaded the pictures from our trip to a photobucket site... you should be able to view these as a slide show or download any/all of them for your classes, lectures, or personal use. Enjoy! Stay tuned for a few videos and my "book list" accumulated from discussions with other scholars and professors... 

Click Here: Dan's Steinbeck Institute Photobucket Site

Deep thoughts at the Hopkins Marine Station Fisher Building...

Big Sur... another moment of sublimity...

Our last day (after lecture) in the Steinbeck Institute took us south to (through) Big Sur for a fabulously photogenic tour of the southern coast accessible from the scenic CA Rt. 1. The photo above depicts a bridge apparently utilized in many automotive advertisements (think fast cars whipping around hairpin turns at 80mph with the surf, sand, and trees blowing incessantly and majestically in the background) and it is immediately obvious why the admen/adwomen would choose such a locale... it is simply hard to believe a place this beautiful exists, much less in the continental United States.

While the drive south to the town of Big Sur and our final destination of Pheiffer Beach was absolutely beautiful, it is hard (even for a moment) to not feel like you are on the verge of teetering over the edge of these curvy roads to oblivion... mere millimeters, it seems, from absolute obliteration on the rocks. As we hurried south, this imminent sense of natural power and dormant violence became more apparent... From the sheer elevation of the cliffs to the powerful wind and waves, it was easy to feel insignificant in the presence of such natural beauty.

The state of California has done an amazing job maintaining the natural authenticity of this coastline... very few homes and "McMansions" mar the coastal vistas you see below:

After taking several "pull out for photo" stops along the way, we stopped to grab snacks in the little township of Big Sur... quite an idyllic scene... in an effort to combat my infamous "low blood sugar blues", I consumed what must have been about 3,000 calories of yogurt covered pretzels... mmmm....

Our final destination in the Big Sur region was Pheiffer Beach... which was, in the words of one of our counterparts, tantamount to visiting "one of the wonders of the world...." The wind on this particular day was extremely intense... so much so that I feared for my camera's lens... so the pictures I took are primarily from the sides of the cliff faces as opposed to out in the open. The purple-hued sands can pack a punch when mother nature wants to smack you in the face! In spite of the winds, this was a wonderful natural experience (I thought) to "go out" on... bringing one final and interesting fusion of the land and sea elements so closely examined in our Steinbeck country endeavor. Big Sur was something special... something with a hint of secrecy and power that I don't think I'll ever forget... but don't take it from me--check it out for yourself...

Tomorrow, I plan to start my final retrospective on my experience in the 2013 NEH Steinbeck Institute... clearly, this was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life... and one I am beyond proud to have been affiliated with. I'll miss all of my Steinbeck buddies!