Can I Go Nowhere With You?

I've been hit with an insane thirst for knowledge. Thank goodness it came during summer vacay, when I actually have time to explore outside interests, as opposed to marking another project or planning a lesson on isotopes or linear equations or whatnot.

(Aside, I ran into a friend from teachers' college today. Teachers are frustrating people. We are the worst for talking about our jobs. Even on summer vacay.)

Back to my thrist for knowledge. I guess I developed it while I read Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky, which takes place during WWII. When it comes to history, I feel pretty un-learned. I did not take a history course past grade 9 (pile on the maths and sciences, I said). In university, I took a history of science course, Darwinism to be precise, but that doesn't count. I'm pretty much like Grampa Simpson, whose knowledge of history consists of what he's pieced together from sugar packets. My sugar packets are novels, memoirs, and movies. I've found that the best way for me to learn history is to trick myself into learning it through reading fiction/memoirs or watching a movie.

Of course this can be dangerous - what if the book isn't accurate? I read a novel about Anne Boleyn that was terribly inaccurate; however at least it sparked me to do the research to find out that it was indeed inaccurate...

So anyway, back to my summer quest for knowledge. Since I can't learn everything there is to know in a summer (or can I?) I've decided that this summer's topic will be WWII. (Anyone know any good books about WWII?? One that's a little more substantial than "WWII for Dummies" but not the tome of Weinburg's "A World At Arms"... I picked up that thing in a bookstore and could barely lift the freaking thing.)

I read Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night" a couple nights ago. It's been on my to-be-read pile for a bit. It was chilling.

I bought a memoir by a woman who was a Polish schoolgirl during WWII and helped rescue Jews. I can't remember the title and it's all the way in the other room right now...

I also plan to alternate informative reading with my typical taste for contemporary fiction. And memoirs I guess. I've been reading a bunch of those. I just finished "A Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls which is a great read. Pick it up. Now I'm starting on a Canadian novel, "The Birth House" by Ami McKay.

On a different note, I saw the movie An Inconvinient Truth today. It was very well done. Go see it. Make sure that you're in the mood for something a little university-lecture style. That's basically what it is. But it's very coherently put together. I commend Al Gore for taking the initiative to: a) educate himself and b) make it his mission to educate others. I always admire a person who has done the research and presents it to me with some snazzy graphs (he had me at the first line graph).

Of course, documentaries like this make me angry. You can't help but watch it and think "Why is this man not President? He was elected after all, and he can speak well and he's very informed." (Did anyone see when he hosted SNL and they showed the parallel universe where he was president? That was hilarious!) And, of course it makes me angry that global warming is a problem being ignored by the US government. And, I'm almost even angrier that Canada has not been exactly stellar in its efforts. Although, in An Inconvienent Truth, Gore makes us look better as pointing out that we're better than the US... Personally, I would say that we're "less worse" than the US. I coined the term "less worse" back in high school when I felt that the term "better" didn't work for something since it implies some sort of good. My mother hates when I say less worse because of the inherent bad grammar but it sums up how I feel about many things in this world.

And... things are getting far more worse now that we have our new PM Stephen W. Harper who can really rival GWB for bad environmental policy.

Okay, enough of rambling... although it does make me feel better. Go see "An Inconvinient Truth" though. It's great.

And now, off to bed I go.

ps I leave in less than 2 weeks for Britain! Woot! I picked up my travel documents today!