Yet ANOTHER Summer Book Report

The Twilight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Our English teacher had us read this as a short story back in 7th grade. I've always felt that it had a powerful message about human nature and paranoia. I suspect since Rod Serling wrote it in 1959/60 it probably is a thinly veiled commentary on the "Red Scare" of cold war McArthyism not unlike the Arthur Miller's 1953 play "The Crucible" about the Salem witch trials of the 1600's. I'm convinced that 50's and 60's horror movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the original zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead were too- conformity, political pressure, anxiety, mistrust- you name it. So... I feel like 'Monsters on Maple Street' is as meaningful for our times today, as it was 50 years ago (hyper-partisanship, terrorism, jingoism, xenophobia...)the more things change, the more they stay the same. At any rate, I thought it would be a good addition to my classroom library for Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) time (Which I happen to have with 7th graders). And to my 7th and 8th Grade English Teachers, Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Harmon- Thanks for turning me on to the likes of Rod Serling, Gene Rodenberry, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. What a legacy!

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Summer Book Report

Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wooden


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Just amazing. It's organized by themes, not chronologically- and it is not a memoir, yet when I got to the part when he told his team he had decided to retire, I cried. I've been using his Pyramid of Success for almost 10 years now as a coach, but I still found new insights and different ways of understanding what he teaches in it. Excellent book, up there with '7 Habits' by Covey, 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' by Fulghum, and POSSIBLY even 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Frankl as one of the most inspiring reads outside of Scripture.

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Summer Book Report

School Days by Robert B. Parker


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A little slow starting, no Susan or Hawk this time- but as usual once he got going, Parker's Spenser is smart, sarcastic, and unstoppable. Once again he's the toughest tough guy with the big heart and tenacity second to none. Complete with "ripped from the headlines" issues, a loyal German short-haired Pointer names Pearl and a Steve McQueen-cool Mustang!

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Watch This Space

I know, I know, it looks like I've pretty much abandoned blogging here, doesn't it? I guess I've gotten too used to sharing pictures on facebook, so I hardly use this as a photo-blog anymore. I haven't written my column for almost 2 years now. And when I do write, it ends up being in my religious blog, "Prophet, Priest, and Pirate."

But I think that the old flagship here may be seeing a lot more action later on this summer when I attend the Iowa Writing Project at Morningside University. It's 3 week course in July, partly to help teachers integrate writing across their curriculum, and partly to practice the lost art. For years I've done okay with opinion and humor essays, but I think I need to learn some more about fiction. We'll see how it goes. At any rate, I imagine that I will post some of what I work on here.

Meanwhile I have been working on getting all of my blogs to link to one another and compliment one another. I figured out a way to have the posts from most of them automatically show up on facebook, and after much consideration and some consternation, I'm even giving Twitter a try. Much of these developments are due to the conference my wife Bethany and I recently attended at Buena Vista University on technology integration and instruction for 21st century learners (TICL).

As usual, I also plan on cleaning, rearranging, streamlining and updating all of my blogs a little bit this summer. It seems to me that this one in particular could stand a little sprucing up.
Please feel free to explore them all and leave comments on any posts you like. Notice that they all have a similar navigation bar of buttons on the right side to help you explore.

If you'd like a brief explanation of each site, you could visit the "Internet Empire" links page on my new wiki, Mr. Mallory's Art Dog Wiki, which is still under construction, but promises to be a useful way to provide resources for and communicate with students.

If you're interested in reading any of my new writing next month- make sure you look for the link over on the right, toward the bottom that will let you become a "follower" of this blog. I promise that most posts will be a lot more entertaining than this one.

In the meantime, have a great summer and come back soon.

New graphics for the new Web site

Here are the new graphics for my new wiki- http://dogart.wikispaces.com 

Like 'em? I used a Bulldog for Boyer Valley, but I used a French bulldog instead of an English bulldog because I am zee Art teacher, viva la Paris, no? Oui, oui!

In case you hadn't heard, I attended a tech conference for teachers this week.They recommend that teachers use wiki-pages for their classes. So, I thought I'd better at least try to learn how to do it, whether I end up using it for school or not. Please look around and be sure to come back again later, as it's obviously still under construction for now.

They also suggested Twitter. Now, I don't want to be a twit, and I'm still not sure how much I'll tweet, but if you want to follow me or want me to follow you, this is me there- "@tedmallory" or http://twitter.com/tedmallory, I'm still not really clear on how it works.