fire songs

i had a great weekend, having went to a friend's house and camped and made fires. i played frisbee some, ate some good food cooked over a fire, went to a hot air balloon nightglow (where they set them up and make them glow in the dark - my first experience of the kind, and it was cool) and saw a bunch of friends (and only one enemy). it was a great weekend, with time to relax sitting in a hammock, read some of my student's papers, and talk about a great number of things. the highlight was seeing kenny for the last time before he heads to costa rica (although seeing andy and birgitte was great too).

if i can, i'll recommend a few books (what i'd use to start my own "great books" program at a university rather than aristotle and shelley). let's start with the perks of being a wallflower by stephen chbosky - it's the first that comes to mind for a reason, go read it. if you like it, check out a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers. others include the little prince by antoine de saint-exupery, and over the weekend i read that the author has another book called wind, sand, and stars. i haven't read that one, nor his others listed as his bibliography. if you're interested in language, thinking, cognitive science, philosophy, or other things of that nature, i recommend george lakoff and mark johnson's metaphors we live by. if you're interested in music, read music, the brain, and ecstasy by robert jourdain. read ishmael by daniel quinn for an interesting look at human history. try a song of ice and fire by george r.r. martin if you're a fan of robert jordan's wheel of time series or tolkien's books (and you're not afraid to let main characters die). desert solitaire (or monkey wrench gang) are good books by edward abbey about the desert southwest, and the poisonwood bible by barbara kingsolver is a fantastic book. perhaps my favorite book of all time is hermann hesse's siddhartha although jack zipes' collection of hesse's fairy tales contains some awesome stories that i can read many times. i'll continue to give updates on good reading, but if you start with these, you're sure to find something you haven't read and should read. maybe i'll also try to give a better introduction to each, but i wanted there to be a place where they would all be mentioned together.

i'm going to get back to working on my cv/vitae/resume for a little bit, then grade some papers, but i might post again tonight to fill in a few good stories of some kind. for now i'll leave you with this.

when i was young (3-4 years old), i had a number of head injuries, mostly due to my stupidity and my older brothers undying care and awareness of my well-being. the first was when my oldest brother through a rock and hit my head. a while later, i stupidly walked behind them when they were playing "miners" with croquet mallets in the sandbox. the third came when i was standing on a rocking easy chair and my oldest brother threw a big pillow and knocked me into a coffee table corner. so those are my head injuries (i stayed relatively safe for a while then until high school and college soccer when i had a few concussion experiences, but nothing too serious - my brain should be okay).