My 'secret strings' game to unlock 'texts' (stories, poems, plays, non-fiction etc)

 You tell the children/students that they are going to be poem or story 'detectives' and their job is find the 'secret strings' in a poem or story - or play or any 'text'.

Secret strings run within texts linking words, phrases, sentences and pictures or 'images'. The students' job is to find them. 

Sometimes the link is to do with sound - eg alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, long phrases, short phrases. 

Sometimes the links is to do with images - similar, contrasting. 

Sometimes the links are to do with repeated actions or 'motifs' or themes. 

Sometimes it's different words with a similar theme - 'lexical field', as it's called. 

Anything links to anything else if you can prove it.

Authors quite often don't know the secret strings that they themselves have created.

The longer you play the game, the more you find out about how a text is put together.

The longer you play the game, the more you start to come up with thoughts about what the text means and why it's been put together in a particular way. 

One example of 'motif': in 'Where the Wild Things Are' - Max says he'll eat his mother up. His mother sends him to bed with having anything to eat. The Wild Things say they'll eat him up. When Max gets home, there's something for him to eat. Secret strings. If we ask what is the symbolic meaning of 'eating', we might say, 'gratification'? 'Pleasure'? Then the secret strings tell us a little story about forbidden, withheld and granted pleasure...

Then there are the secret strings between texts - called 'intertextuality. You can apply the same method - echoes, allusions, shared themes, shared imagery, shared archetypes, shared plot lines, share genres...these are all the play of secret strings between texts. Looking for them, finding them, talking about them is a great way to discover how texts are structured and helping us to find out how themes and ideas are given to us. 

You can play these games by actually drawing on texts (if that's allowed!). I've seen children sitting on the floor with a poem copied in large format on to a sheet of sugar paper with huge margins all round. The children had different coloured felt-tips and drew loops round the items they were linking and lines for the 'secret strings'. Different colours for different reasons for the link is fun.

What did we know on March 16 2020 about Covid? What was the advice from the WHO?

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 16 March 2020
16 March 2020



Good afternoon everyone.


In the past week, we have seen a rapid escalation of cases of COVID-19.


More cases and deaths have now been reported in the rest of the world than in China.


We have also seen a rapid escalation in social distancing measures, like closing schools and cancelling sporting events and other gatherings.


But we have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing – which is the backbone of the response.


Social distancing measures can help to reduce transmission and enable health systems to cope.


Handwashing and coughing into your elbow can reduce the risk for yourself and others.


But on their own, they are not enough to extinguish this pandemic. It’s the combination that makes the difference.


As I keep saying, all countries must take a comprehensive approach.


But the most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate.


You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected.


We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.


Test every suspected case.


If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to 2 days before they developed symptoms, and test those people too. [NOTE: WHO recommends testing contacts of confirmed cases only if they show symptoms of COVID-19]


Every day, more tests are being produced to meet the global demand.


WHO has shipped almost 1.5 million tests to 120 countries. We’re working with companies to increase the availability of tests for those most in need.


WHO advises that all confirmed cases, even mild cases, should be isolated in health facilities, to prevent transmission and provide adequate care.


But we recognize that many countries have already exceeded their capacity to care for mild cases in dedicated health facilities.


In that situation, countries should prioritize older patients and those with underlying conditions.


Some countries have expanded their capacity by using stadiums and gyms to care for mild cases, with severe and critical cases cared for in hospitals.


Another option is for patients with mild disease to be isolated and cared for at home.


Caring for infected people at home may put others in the same household at risk, so it’s critical that care-givers follow WHO’s guidance on how to provide care as safely as possible.


For example, both the patient and their care-giver should wear a medical mask when they are together in the same room.


The patient should sleep in a separate bedroom to others and use a different bathroom.


Assign one person to care for the patient, ideally someone who is in good health and has no underlying conditions.


The care-giver should wash their hands after any contact with the patient or their immediate environment.


People infected with COVID-19 can still infect others after they stop feeling sick, so these measures should continue for at least two weeks after symptoms disappear.


Visitors should not be allowed until the end of this period.


There are more details in WHO’s guidance.


===


Once again, our key message is: test, test, test.


This is a serious disease. Although the evidence we have suggests that those over 60 are at highest risk, young people, including children, have died.


WHO has issued new clinical guidance, with specific details on how to care for children, older people and pregnant women.


So far, we have seen epidemics in countries with advanced health systems. But even they have struggled to cope.


As the virus moves to low-income countries, we're deeply concerned about the impact it could have among populations with high HIV prevalence, or among malnourished children.


That’s why we’re calling on every country and every individual to do everything they can to stop transmission.


Washing your hands will help to reduce your risk of infection. But it’s also an act of solidarity because it reduces the risk you will infect others in your community and around the world. Do it for yourself, do it for others.


We also ask people to express their solidarity by refraining from hoarding essential items, including medicines.


Hoarding can create shortages of medicines and other essential products, which can exacerbate suffering.


We’re grateful to everyone who has contributed to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.


Since we launched it on Friday, more than 110,000 people have contributed almost 19 million U.S. dollars.


These funds will help to buy diagnostic tests, supplies for health workers and support research and development.


If you would like to contribute, please go to who.int and click on the orange “Donate” button at the top of the page.


We’re also grateful for the way different sectors of society are coming together.


This started with the SafeHands Challenge, which has attracted celebrities, world leaders and people everywhere demonstrating how to wash their hands.


This afternoon WHO and the International Chamber of Commerce issued a joint call to action to the global business community. The ICC will send regular advice to its network of more than 45 million businesses, to protect their workers, customers and local communities, and to support the production and distribution of essential supplies.


I’d like to thank Paul Polman, Ajay Banga and John Denton for their support and collaboration.


WHO is also working with Global Citizen to launch the Solidarity Sessions, a series of virtual concerts with leading musicians from around the world.


===


This is the defining global health crisis of our time.


The days, weeks and months ahead will be a test of our resolve, a test of our trust in science, and a test of solidarity.


Crises like this tend to bring out the best and worst in humanity.


Like me, I’m sure you have been touched by the videos of people applauding health workers from their balconies, or the stories of people offering to do grocery shopping for older people in their community.


This amazing spirit of human solidarity must become even more infectious than the virus itself. Although we may have to be physically apart from each other for a while, we can come together in ways we never have before.


We’re all in this together. And we can only succeed together.


So the rule of the game is: together.

Thank you.

Phoney localism in the Super League debate

I am seeing some phoney 'analysis' of power within football. Local fans aren't the 'workers' in football. We are the consumers. We buy a product either at the gate, or through merchandise, or indirectly buying the televised product from a retailer, the media, who is in effect the distributor of the product. The owners of clubs are the capitalists, the players (and ground staff) are the workers as supervised/overseen/managed by football coaches.

It's very interesting therefore to see that the football workers have been excluded from a debate (and the government intervention) as to how the owners operate their leagues (trading cartels, if you like). Are oil workers represented when OPEC meet? (I don't know, but I would doubt it. Prove me wrong!)

In Feb 2020, Johnson said that he was against 'market segregation' in his approach to Covid. Why now is he in favour of government intervention in football? And if he believes now in bringing all parties together, why aren't players represented at the meeting?

As I've said, I distrust the phoney localism going on defending something that doesn't exist in the top flight anymore: the local link between players and fans. Premier League teams are made up of an international cadre of 'workers'. The great heroes of the team I support have had no more than a tiny handful of north London players over the last 20 years.

As someone has pointed out to me, if the issue is really 'let's support localism', then why isn't the government rushing in to support local libraries, post offices, pubs, high streets? So neither in the publicly owned sphere or the small business sphere is the government really in favour of 'the local'. 

This is window-dressing.

Naming names - how the Holocaust happened right the way down to a small village in western France

 How my father's Uncle was killed:

Hitler was the Leader of the Third Reich.

Under his command was Heinrich Himmler.

Under his command was Adolf Eichmann.

Under his command was Carl Oberg

Higher SS and Police Leader

in Paris

Working with Carl Oberg was René Bousquet

Secretary-General responsible for the French Police

Under the command of Carl Oberg

was Hermann Herold

the regional Commander of the Security Police.

Under his command was the regional Prefect

Louis Bourgain.

Under his command was Gaston Jammet

the local sub-prefect.

Under his command was a local brigade

of gendarmes:

Eugène Cabanetos

Arnand Mazouin

Georges Salomon

who were under the command of their officer

Pierre Le Papu.

The four gendarmes knocked on

the door of one Madame Bobières

at 2.30 in the morning on Jan 31, 1944

and arrested Martin Rozen

who was staying there.

They handed him over to the local Nazis,

who deported him to Poitiers

then to Drancy

then to Paris Bobigny

then to Auschwitz on Convoy 68.

What did we know by March 14 2020?

Over the next few months we should expect people in prominent places to tell us things like 'we did all we could', 'nothing else could have been done'. There will be people in non-prominent places supporting this view by agreeing and shrugging: che sera sera and all that. 

I've been looking back at my twitter feed day by day through March. 

As I've posted before, on March 12 2020,  Robert Peston told us that 'herd immunity' would be 'vital' for defeating Covid. On March 13 2020, three government scientists told us that 'herd immunity' was the only way in which the virus could be defeated and journalists seemed incapable of interrogating them with knowledge available to anyone who had done A-level biology.

Here is an assembly of my tweets on this day, March 14, 2020 a year ago today:

TWEETS
MARCH 14 2020

The chances are that no health system in the world will be able to cope without emergency measures. So the question is not 'if' but 'what' ones should our govt have put in place?


The issue wasn't 'prevent spread from China'. The issue always was, 'what should we do when cases start happening here?’

The spread of flu each year is known. We could all see a) the outbreak in China and b) what measures were being taken and c) the inevitability of when it would reach the UK. The 'now' decisions could have been made in Jan.

Any attempt to control the distribution of human types across a population is eugenicist. If, e.g. a regime decided that everyone over 60 should be killed, that would be in order to benefit the productivity and reproductive powers of the rest of the population.

Just remember that it only took weeks to assemble a huge military force and to invade and occupy Iraq with all the logistics, supply lines, and vast info-tech required to keep it all going. And there are people saying, 'Oh but it would be difficult to....' etc etc.

1/ Part of herd immunity and survival in the wild is produced when enough breeding individuals produce antibodies which destroy the virus or bacterium. Vaccines are artificial ways to produce that immunity. "Herds' can't mass produce antibodies and inject them.

2/ Another way that 'herds' get immunity is when a mutation in individual members' DNA provides immunity genetically and so the members without that mutation might die and the ones with it will live and reproduce. To use such terms in this instance horrify me.

So, they've had two months to prepare. Nothing about the potency and lethality of the virus was unknown by the beginning of January. It was predictable that what happened in China would happen here.

Just remember that it only took weeks to assemble a huge military force and to invade and occupy Iraq with all the logistics, supply lines, and vast info-tech required to keep it all going. And there are people saying, 'Oh but it would be difficult to....' etc etc.

Don't want to cause alarm, but I am coughing.

What is stylistics? How can it help us interpret a text?

Stylistics is a broad term to cover the 'how' texts are put together. Into this 'bag' we can put any of the following and others you might think of:

how is the text 'told' or 'narrated'. There are of course many different ways to narrate a text, some of which pretend that it's not narrated at all, some where the narration seems to have a clear narrator, the 'I' of the narrative (or poem) (sometimes called the 'persona') or the 'I' of the third person narration as with some of Roald Dahl's books. Sometimes the narrator can 'see' everything going on, sometimes the narrator can 'see' into people's minds, sometimes into just one person's mind. This matter of point of view (pov) is very important in stories because we as readers accompany the pov. It's what we as readers 'see'. This is part of what is called 'focalisation' is created. Texts at a given moment usually have a 'focaliser', the point of view of the significant protagonist at a given point. In some texts, inanimate objects or settings can be focalisers of sorts. We see the main character say, through the eyes of the landscape rather than vice versa. Thomas Hardy writes like this sometimes. (Debatable point!)

how a story is narrated also matters when it comes to time. Stories ca be 'now', can loop back in time, loop forwards and do other things with time - talk about things habitually in a certain way (ie continuous time), even adjectives about a character - a 'morose' person, is continuous time, she reacted angrily is present time. Stories and poems are made 'thicker' or 'deeper' by creating different time-frames. 

how thought is depicted varies enormously: she thought, she said to herself, or writers can dispense with these tags altogether and just go from dialogue into a narration as with 'What should he do next?' 

how texts sound ('prosody') is part of the 'how' of a text. Sentences, paragraphs, chapters and whole books set up rhythms, repetitions, patterns.

how texts 'evoke' is important - this is what we might call the 'being there' trick of writing. Broadly speaking, writers can use the senses of narrators, characters of even objects to 'get us there', ie using  what can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched. We can chart these seeing what kind of text it is- a mostly seeing text? Or a mostly hearing text? And so on.

all texts use previously used words, phrases, scenes, 'motifs', archetypes, plot lines, rhetorical forms (eg 'bathos', 'hyperbole' etc), allusions to other texts...all this comes under the heading of 'intertextuality'. 

most texts use the method of 'reveal-conceal'- there are many parts to this ie how a text appears to be 'telling' but as it does so, it invokes the possibility that not all has been told, that there is more to come, that what's coming might be mysterious, dangerous, funny, etc. The first pages of stories, plays, the first lines of poems are very interesting for this. See also the last lines of chapters. Writers are constantly filling texts up with 'hooks' that invite us to speculate what's going on, what's going to happen next, what this really means etc. Reveal-conceal is one of the most powerful 'motors' of writing and yet it is one of the least talked about. 

some texts draw attention to themselves. This has been called 'writerliness'. If the text says, 'I am telling you this...' or even a phrase like 'Later he would come to regret...' it signals that this text is a text. 

all texts involve choices to do with the 'register' of the language. In daily life we refer to these registers all the time: being eg 'slangy', or 'posh', or sounding like a lawyer, or though the use of words like 'jargon' or 'in-group lingo' and so on. We are all aware of people's different 'voices' but also how we ourselves each choose to speak one way in one situation and another way in another. These all involve 'switching'. Texts are full of these voices. We might want to categorise these 'voices' and see how texts change. Dickens is famous for one moment being 'highfaluting' and the next very down to earth. He used the highfaluting tone sometimes to mock the protagonist. 

many texts 'do' dialogue. These are stylised forms of conversation. The study of conversation is called 'pragmatics'. We can apply pragmatics to the dialogue of texts. This enables us to see for example speakers' tactics in negotiating with each other in ways that writers deliberately leave us to figure out. There is a scale for how much writers interpret the dialogue for us - a lot, a bit, not at all. This is also all part of the 'how' of a text.

another way texts 'tell' is that they create 'lexical fields'. They do this by a) usual a word (!) b) by repeating that word (repetition is a crucial part of the feel of a text, especially poetry) c) through using similar words or phrases with similar meanings. If we list these rather like Roget's Thesaurus does, we start to get a feel of what is this text's 'preoccupation'. What is it most interested in? What is it focusing on? The lexical field method also helps us summarise eg what is the lexical field for that character or that setting. It helps us 'typify' what the writer is doing to create the text. We can think of these as 'key words' or as important 'signifiers' in a text. How the lexical field is created is also important and when in the text. Are the words returned to again and again?etc. 

texts are 'stuck together' through 'cohesion'. There are many ways in which one word, one phrase, one sentence, one paragraph links to another eg through use of pronouns, through the use of 'the' (!) as opposed to 'a', use of 'this', 'that', 'there', 'here', 'his', 'her'' through repetition of sounds, images, feelings, through the contrast of images and feelings, through the juxtaposition of images, through the repeated but changed use of motifs, symbols, descriptions. These are the cohesive patterns of a text. We can find these by using my 'secret strings' method. Draw actual or imaginary lines between any part of a text that links to any other part of a text whether that be by sound, feeling, image, language, grammar, prosody - any reason at all.  This will 'unpack' the stylistics of a text. It will show how a text has been patterned in order to pass on meaning in other ways other than the fact that language 'refers' to things/feelings/ideas etc. This is the how! 

text is of course language in use. Language has thousands of different ways of referring, describing, intervening and so on. Language-users are making choices all the time about how to do this. I've referred to quite a few above, but there are other criteria or 'parameters' at work too. For example, how about looking at 'referring'. A writer's narration can refer very specifically, very plainly, very metaphorically, very vaguely..and so on. Consider for a moment the continuum of being very specific...through to very vague. In the picture book 'Where the Wild Things' are we find this operating very clearly. 

Try this experiment: go through the book, noting down 'very specific'  (vs) words or phrases, and 'very vague' (vv) ones. So from the beginning we get: 'The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of...' is vs, but then we read 'of one kind and another' which is vv. 'Wild' is vs but 'thing' is vv. 'sent to bed' is vs so is 'without eating'  but 'anything' is vv. 'That very night' is vs and so is the next passage. Then we get to some strange disjuncts with time and space: 'sailed through night and day and in and out of weeks' (how do you sail 'out of a week?!) and then 'to where the wild things are'. (where is that? pretty vague!) . Then we come to the repeat of the word 'terrible' which at first is very specific but somehow the more it is repeated the less specific it becomes! 

Following this we have quite a lot specific writing about taming the wild things and Max being made king and then we come to one of the most curious passages of all:

'And Max the king of all wild things [we know that is by now] was lonely (sufficiently vs for a story that's like fairy story] 'and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.'

Where is this? 

This invites us to wonder or interpret where this might be. We have two resources to help us - at least! One is the story so far. The other is ourselves. We can ask, where would I go to find someone who loved me best of all?' And we can ask, do I know of any other stories, songs, poems, films TV programmes ('texts') where people who were lonely went to find someone who  loved them? So there are the resources of the text, the resources of life, and the resources of other texts to help us interpret the very vague! It's a great example of reveal-conceal. 

Some might say it's obvious who the text means. Is it? Do we 'see' that person? No other human is visible in the pictures and the carer in the books 'the mother' acts in an angry way and the only thing we see her doing (so far) is to 'detach' from Max - send him to his room, and withdrawing affection from him by not giving him anything to eat. Hmmm, we might wonder, Max may well want to be where someone loved him best of all, but does he really think his mother does love him best of all? Does Max think he's getting that love? The vagueness of the text gives us room to wonder about this. (There's no definitive answer and people can argue forever about it. The interesting thing here is that it brings up issues for people of any age about 'detachment-attachment in how we bring up (or are being brought up, or were brought up) when children are perceived to be 'naughty'.) The vagueness gets right to the heart of this.

Following this crux to the story, the story goes into reverse mode, heads back home, repeating the patterns of language, till Max gets home 'where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot'. 

I've heard people explain how this is redemption. Max has resolves his anger issues (as it were) and so he is forgiven, happily ever after. Full  stop. 

But really?

'Supper' is specific but the structure of the sentence doesn't tell us who made the summer, it 'is waiting' and 'is..hot' so these are characteristics it possesses. There is no 'agent' putting it there. And no agent, giving Max a cuddle. No one visible. The supper may well be a symbol of affection but there is a gap or a vagueness for us to wonder about who brought it, why it's still hot and, why this person isn't there. Is this more 'detachment'? Is this at the heart of what this book is about?

So with this reading, the surface text is, yes, all about a boy resolving his anger and being forgiven for being beastly but that there is a sub-text about a boy not getting the attachment he wants whether he's angry or whether he's resolved his anger. And if we want to zoom out even further from this reading, we might find that in a way this 'explains' his anger. After all, what else explains his anger? The clue from the text is indeed that he doesn't see or touch his mother and the only act we are sure that she does is send him to bed without anything to eat, though,  yes, she may well have made sure he had something to eat in the end.

One reading 'shows' that 'time-out' and 'detachment' works in bringing a child to his senses (!), but another says that actually nothing has been really solves by this, because the underlying situation still prevails.

Our route to this is to look at the 'how' of the telling anyhow it veers between being very specific and very vague, giving us huge leeway with which to interpret the story. Hurrah for that. 

How to think about the structure of stories?

Stories have structures. 

We are used to talking about stories having settings, characters, plots and themes. Slightly to one side of these or incorporating these are structures. How should we describe these or study them so that young people can get hold of them easily?

One way that is ok (not perfect) is to use a metaphor: 'cogs'. Cogs as we know are the wheel-like things in gears that 'engage' and then 'disengage'. When they engage, they affect other cogs. When they're disengaged they're sitting there not being used for the time being. 

Let's apply this to stories. We might think of a character, a setting, a group of characters, a couple, as cogs. Perhaps others aspects of a story. If we take a seemingly simple story like 'Little Red Riding Hood', there first two cogs are LRR and her mother. The mother invokes two other cogs - granny and the wolf and perhaps we might  say, the cog of the forest.  LRR disengages from her mother and engages with the setting of the forest. Depending on what telling of the story, the forest either prefigures the cog of the wolf through LRR looking out for it, or the wolf cog actually engages for some threatening dialogue. Then at granny's house the wolf engages with granny and eliminates that cog and it's where we think LRR engages with the granny cog (already mentioned), she is in fact engaging with the wolf cog. Then depending on how the story is told, either a brand new cog turns up to save the say, the woodcutter, or LRR herself deals with it all, (elimination of wolf cog), LRR is reunited with granny cog and then all three reunite when mother cog turns up.

So we can see how these cogs engage, disengage, disappear or re-engage. 

Because it's a fairy story, there aren't complex cogs from before the story starts (flasbacks), or sub-plots where we go off to another gear box, as it were. 

Cogs are inanimate objects but they are moved by eg a driver. So this gives us an idea of authorship: someone who moves cogs. And when the driver moves one cog, it moves another. It's also possible for more than two cogs to be engage with each other. 

The snag with the cog metaphor is that it's not very good for describing characters' minds, ('interiority' so called). And most stories have some sense of that. Many stories are more about that than anything else. The cog metaphor is not very good for describing that.

People who write film scripts and make movies are very sensitive to something else going on: how you structure feeling through a story. They have various formulae and graphs to do with building emotion, building jeopardy, causing false alarms, creating expectations, disappointing those expectations, prefiguring the end point with mini-versions of that end point, creating sub-plots that invoke parallels with the main plot, creating 'depth' or 'thickness' to character through flashbacks, using the settings as 'harbingers' or as 'pathetic fallacy' by way of commentary on the emotion of the scene(s) and so on. 

A more useful metaphor for a lot of this are graphs. The horizontal axis is the time of the story. The vertical axis is 'amplitude' or 'volume' or 'amount'. A line on the graph might be 'sadness'. Another might be 'tension'. Another might be 'conflict'. You decide. As the story unfolds and the amount of that emotion that is 'going on' either in the story or in  yourself as the audience can be charted on the graph. It's amazing to follow the peaks and troughs. Even more amazing to see how these lines cross over: tension goes up as sadness recedes. Humour suddenly appears and then goes. And so on.

This is how 'drivers' (authors) try to structure feelings through a story. Hollywood does this by formula too. That's why we sometimes groan when we feel a good tense story is spoiled with too much sentimentality in the last ten minutes. The drivers have injected what they think is the right amount of that feeling into the feelings structure. 

Using the word 'injection' makes me think of another engine metaphor...or perhaps it's a print machine, Printing machines use colour. Depending on how they've been programmed, colour comes out of them at the moment of printing to give the printed sheet the 'right' colours. 

Perhaps we can use this for our feelings graph. The printer (driver/author) injects emotion/feeling colours into the text, as the story unfolds. 

Once we've identified that this is what's going on, we can ask how? This is less to do with structure and more to do with content and style. It's a matter of how the cogs engage. The cog metaphor is stuck with fast, medium and slow.  As we know, the driver has many more methods at their disposal than speed. Broadly speaking they have the tools of stylistics, motifs, symbolism etc. 

More on that next time.