Leaves, pumpkins and a little breeze

Fall is upon us. This is my favorite time of year, hands down. I love the crispness in the air and the box of sweaters that I can finally take out from under my bed. I love the pumpkins that fill the market and I dream of carving one each time I pass by them. Last year, I carved Jack from Nightmare before Christmas, and it was a masterpiece. I don't know that I can top it this year, but I am sure going to try. I love Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday of all and fills me with warmth. Finally, in a true mark of my simple heart, I love the crunch of leaves and acorns under my feet. I know that this is maybe a little silly, but that little crunch under my feet when I walk is one of my favorite sounds in all the world. I will often go out of my way when walking, just so I can step on fallen leaves and acorns. It simply makes me happy. Everything about this season makes me glow a little. I wish that I had a fireplace so that I could curl up beside it with a good book, a good friend, or both.

It's a little chilly in my house now as I write, but I have my fan on anyway as an excuse to keep wearing my warm scarf and wool socks. It's going to be a very long night of grading, so I am wrapping myself in comfort. This is the time of year when grading also never ends. My students (those who want to pass at least) have just submitted their term projects and I am immersed in the task of grading them all. It is a good thing that I love what I do!! Still, the workload kind of makes me dream of escaping. I am itching for travel, even if it is just a few states away. I long to go back to Germany and to Nicaragua, and I am dreaming of mountains. It is fitting that I feel this way as I begin to teach my students about American Romanticism.

I love the look on some of their faces when they come into the room and they see the word ROMANTICISM glaring at them in 4-inch letters on the projector screen. To amplify the reaction, I always couple it with some tasteful Fabio-esque picture and wait for their excitement to take root. The girls always glow a little imagining Zane novels and chick flick scenarios and the boys usually grown imagining the same. It isn't long, however, before I comfort the boys with the knowledge that I have better things to do than to build unrealistic Hollywood expectations in the minds of impressionable teenage girls. The girls are disappointed, the boys are relieved, and the dialogue begins. I LOVE the American Romantics. I think that I understand them in a way that I have never understood the Realists and the Modernists with their invading pessimism. The Romantics and the Transcendentalists that follow them speak to me in a way that I just get.

As our fledgling nation moved toward the great progress of the Industrial Revolution, Americans realized that a transition from pastoral living to city living would be less than smooth. The new cities spawned by the mechanization and promise of the Industrial Revolution were hardly the metropolises of today. In New York, overcrowded tenements encouraged the spread of diseases such as cholera, an outbreak of which killed up to 100 people a day. Considering that Cholera could strike a man down so quickly that he would be healthy in the morning and dead at night, these numbers aren't surprising. The streets of New York were littered with trash, dead animals, and improperly treated sewage. They were ripe for disease. Add to that the rising crime rates both at the hands of organized criminals and the nearly 20,000 orphans living in the streets, and it is no wonder that people wanted escape. Cities that had promised a better future were often suffocating machines. Out of this sprung a new breed of writers - the American Romantics. The early Romantics fitted neatly into two camps - those who wrote about a return to the wilderness and great American heroes of the wild like James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumpo and the real life Davy Crockett; and those who wrote about the darkness of the human heart like Edgar Allan Poe. Both of these camps of writers was directly impacted by what they saw in the burgeoning cities. They were both dreaming of escaping, one through embracing the wild frontier and the other through wandering deeply into the human psyche and exploring the darkness there. In the end, I get that.

While I am not so much a fan of the horror movie genre that sprung forth from the likes of Poe, I do appreciate his writing and the darkness he captured so beautifully. Still, I have to believe that he is wrong. We are not all evil at heart. There is still much goodness in the world and many people who know how to withstand pressure with grace. Yet, beyond Poe who is undoubtedly the most famous of the Romantics, I do hold in my heart a soft spot for the idea of a Romantic hero who lives off the land, honorable and young at heart. There is something cloying about the idea of being swept away into that life and out of the rush and push of society. I am sure it is not always practical, but it is always appealing. I love teaching my "urbanite" students about these heroes. They enjoy learning Poe more, perhaps, but I will never stop trying to feed them little bits of my wilderness dream. Maybe they'll catch the bug one day!

FOR MY STUDENTS: Extra Credit - After reading the blog and revisiting your American Romanticism notes, write an acrostic poem in which the first letters of your lines (when viewed down the left margin) spell out the word R-O-M-A-N-T-I-C-I-S-M. The poem needs to show a clear understanding of the Romantic movement and may include any information in your notes or this blog. Make them good. Up to 40 points EC. Due Thursday, October 27th. See me if you have any questions.