Disneyland!

And California Adventure too.

The best Christmas present I received from a student was two complimentary tickets to the Happiest Place on Earth. Last Wednesday, Jonathan and I set out to enjoy a day there. We were actually expecting to only be able to get into CA Adventure with these tickets, but were pleasantly surprised to learn that they acted as park-hoppers. We started out at CA Adventure:


Our first stop was the Tower of Terror. And this is what it makes you feel like:


After also riding Soarin' Over California, we decided to brave the crowds over at Disneyland. Here's Jonathan on Main Street:


And here we are in front of the castle:


Since there were about a million people there, and we hadn't paid to get in, we just decided to take it easy and not stress over the crowds. So, we went on some of the smaller rides, and just enjoyed being there, not wanting to spend the whole day waiting in line. Here's a picture of us enjoying the Mark Twain after dark.


We also got to see a pretty neat fireworks show after which the streets were sprinkled with "snow." A very fun day, indeed!

Oh, the perks of being a teacher.

Big News!

Harry Potter VII's title has been announced! The release date, unfortunately, has not. However, it's still exciting to hear the title. It is...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

CNN's Article

What's it mean? Hallows brings to mind All Hallows Eve, and that brings to mind death - which isn't surprising as the title's adjective (adverb masquerading as an adjective?) is deathly. Hallowed really means "revered" or "set apart as holy" according to dictionary.com, which sounds about right, though that's a verb and this is apparently a noun. I'm assuming a hallow is a place that is hallowed. Maybe I'm wrong, though. Of course, that might make deathly an adverb after all, and hallows a verb. That's kind of awkward, since you're using an article beforehand. It can be done, though. I could, say, write a story called Bob Cratchet and the Christmas Merryings, and that would make sense, no?

How can deathly alter it in a meaningful way? Might it be speaking of the location of Harry's parents' deaths? That's a location he intended to visit at the end of the last book. Will his final encounter with Voldemort occur there? Will it refer to how people treat Harry after (if) he dies? Does it refer to how people worship Voldemort now? Perhaps it's something to do with Horcruxes - are horcruxes a deathly hallow? Do they hallow Voldemort?

Deathly sounds negative to me - the connotation is dark and morbid. Voldemort seems to be the sort of person who is hallowed in a deathly way. Of course, that's become Voldemort causes death, not because he is death (though he's that, too, in a way - though he flees it interminably he hovers at the edge of it through his evil). His chosen telos is to never die, though.

Another possibility might be that death should be revered and accepeted. Voldemort shuns it, but we know that it's not the greatest possible evil that can befall someone (see Dumbledore in Pheonix).

Oh man, this is so exciting. I'm geeking out over here! It's almost like reading a page from the book.

Sundown Towns

I've never heard of these before, but they're a real tragic element of American history. Apparently there was a collection of towns during the post-reconstruction era that prohibited people of color (any non-white, sometimes including Jews) from being in a town after dark. These were called Sundown Towns. These towns also used active or passive means to dissuade people from living in certain communities, also. Many, many towns attempted a maintain a solely white populace. It's pretty surprising.

Dr. James Leowen, a sociologist from the University of Vermont, published a book about this in which he estimates that the number of towns discriminating in their choice of residents through various social pressures may have been 10,000 or more - he thinks perhaps the majority of cities in the US. Also, these towns were mostly in the North or West - not in former slave states.

He has a website set up with a list of all the towns that are possible Sundown towns listed by state.

So, I thought, I'll check and see if Santa Ana had this kind of problem in the past. Turns out Santa Ana is listed as a definite sundown town (though it's also listed as "surely not" at the moment: unsurprising). In 1906, the city council had Chinatown burnt to the ground because they found one leper living there. Hundreds of people came to watch the show. That's very sad.

La Mirada isn't on here because it's a very young city. Buena Park is listed as possible - this is determined by the lack of Black people known to be living in the city prior to the 70s (after the Federal Government mandated fair housing). Only one Black person was listed as living in the city during the 1960s. La Habra is listed as probable because they consistently had only four or six black people living in their town from the 30s through 60s.

Very sad.

Rowleys!

HMS Rowley was an actual ship during World War II. It was an American built destroyer serving with the British navy through Lend Lease. It wasn't sunk! but it was scrapped at the war's end.

Also, I had a great great aunt who served as a missionary in China. I'm not sure her last name was Rowley, but I think it must have been because here's Grace Rowley. It's not much, but it's pretty cool to see a family member displayed in a university's Chinese study collection! Too bad the exhibit was back in 2003.