Posts Tagged ‘houston’

All the Stuff I Forgot to Do in College

Graduating Rice in three years is hard. It’s hard, specifically, to fit in all the cool/dumb stuff college students in Houston are supposed to do. I only got 75% of the shenaniganery, 75% of the bad ideas for Fourth Meals, 75% of the totally unnecessary personal drama. Also, I graduated before turning 21.

This past weekend, my old roommate Rory and I created a Houston Bucket List of Stuff We Really Should Have Done By Now, and then we did them all. Here’s that list, plus a few other Essential Rice Experiences I finally got around to in the years after graduating. They’re mixed together randomly. Also, they’re graded.

Going to Beer Bike. Freshman Year: old friend from elementary school arrived in Houston during Beer Bike. Missed it. Sophomore Year: lived off-campus, slept until 11 a.m. Final Year: it rained.

Two years after graduation, my chance finally came. The Rice alumni tent was the best part, anyway, because it had free St. Arnold beer. It doesn’t anymore. You have to pay for it.

The bike race was kinda fun, and some of the old alumni were fun to catch up with. Some of the other ones were more of the “ugh, I was hoping not to see you” category. Probably not worth it now that the drinks aren’t free. Grade: B-

The sculpture in front of Rothko Chapel is dedicated to Martin Luther King. Let's ask Patricia's dad what it means!

The sculpture in front of Rothko Chapel is dedicated to Martin Luther King. Let’s ask Patricia’s dad what it means!

The Rothko Chapel. Houston’s modern architecture sanctuary for meditation, with all-black paintings by Mark Rothko. This is one of the few times where Rothko paintings have worked for me, because they’re explicitly placed in a setting meant for quiet contemplation. Also, the chapel has copies of all the sacred books, including Baha’i, which is cool.

“This would be a good place to think about a major life decision,” I told Rory.

“This is a great place to dress like a Goth and stare disapprovingly at everybody,” two girls told us inside. Only they didn’t tell us. They just dressed like Goths and stared disapprovingly at us. Grade: A- Read the rest of this entry »

Humble Fail

We all know how much I love Humble. It’s Houston’s first line of defense from any invading army, who will have a pretty hard time getting by all those strip malls and car dealerships. Aside from being made of concrete and the childhood home of Steven Wiggins, Humble is lately home to the Humble Teen Lit Festival at Atascocita High School. January of 2011’s main headliner: New York Times bestselling author, Ellen Hopkins! Until a middle school librarian riled up some parents, who thought that Hopkins’ books would be Harmful To the Children and effectively got her Uninvited. Classy, Humble.

Hearing about this, other authors lined up to appear started dropping out in protest, including Pete Hautman, Matt de la Pena, Tera Lynn Childs, and Melissa de la Cruz. Other authors like Chris Crutcher and Jane Yolen have said that they WISH they had been invited, so they too could drop out. The Internet is freaking out about it, but I’m surprised there’s been no mention of it in any newspapers (that I can find). I guess the H-Chron is only interested in stories about animals, and everyone else is pretty used to this sort of thing happening to Ellen Hopkins.

Which is really a shame because her books are awesome. They’re written in verse, and usually about subjects affect teens like sex, drugs, religious intolerance, and abuse. It’s obvious why parents would want to protect their delicate teenage flowers from this, right? IT MENTIONS DRUGS which clearly teens have never heard of until reading one of these books. But Hopkins’ books go nowhere near glamorizing drug use; if anything, they present a stark, real message of the consequences–but without the After School Special tone that so often makes teens dismiss such works. After reading many of her books, I feel slightly queasy and drained, just at the thought of being in the same situations as her characters. I think if I were five years younger, the effect would be even more dramatic. Ellen Hopkins gets letters all the time from teens saying her books made them realize they needed to change their lives for the better.

I really feel bad for the teens of the “few” (the reports never say how many) parents pushed to have Hopkins uninvited. It’s likely that just going to public school has made them more knowledgeable about the subjects in Hopkins’ books than their parents realize, but I hate for anyone to have to make life decisions (whether to have sex, whether to take drugs, how to deal with abusive relationships) with only vague ideas about details and consequences. It drives me crazy when people try to shield their kids from the outside world to the point of incompetence and an inability to function in the real world, but, as parents, that’s they’re choice. What’s NOT their choice is to do the job of other parents who might take a more pragmatic, open view. I’m glad when I was younger, my parents trusted me enough to make my own decisions about what to read, and I think I’m a stronger person for it.

To read more about this issue, here is the School Library Journal article and the Houston Press article. The comments are pretty entertaining on both. Also, Ellen Hopkins discusses it on her blog.

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