Swimming Lessons II

Textbooks for Fall 2012: English 93, English 1B, and English 1A, left to right.

From The Toolshed: Dan Duane's "Caught Inside"

You can tell I've been using this book for a while.

I think Caught Inside is an excellent choice for English 1A, especially if you want to work the local angle and model an encyclopedic approach to a subject. Also, Duane attempts to convey his passions here--passions for the sport or pursuit of surfing, yes, but also the Santa Cruz coast, for nature in general, for knowledge, for history, for story-telling, for awareness and engagement--and all such should always deserve respect.

Why wouldn't we want to model "passionate scholarship" (his phrase) to our students, to ourselves?

By the way, I've quoted my favorite Duane bit before here. Since I've been teaching his book for some years now, I should interview the author; some time back, he was willing, but circumstances got in my way. I should try his number again.

Annotations: Dan Duane's Caught Inside

Note: As a sabbatical project back in Fall 2008, I produced an annotated bibliography of 129 non-fiction texts treating water and water-related topics, usually emphasizing marine biology or adventure. Dan Duane's Caught Inside is one of my favorites.

Touchstones: Duane, Robbins

I tend to gather quotations. I harvest the words and phrases in books or in conversation that arrest, jar, sear, soothe, explicate, or edify something somewhere somehow for me. There may be a sense of recognition, a glimpse of the past or of a possible future. Or, there may be a revolution, a shift in perspective, that sudden awareness where before there had been something only now grasped as false, facile, unearned, unreliable. Once or twice, I have felt caught, gripped, even gutted. When I've been lucky, there's been growth, an enlargement in my sense of the world, or in myself.

Here are two that I return to again and again. I'll let you imagine how each strikes me. How does each strike you?

The first voice is Dan Duane's, from his Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast:

"If there's a relief in discovering the life you most desperately dream of living, there's also a fear in discovering your soul's needs--after all, how then deny them?"

The second voice is Tom Robbins', from the narrator of his Jitterbug Perfume:

"Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer."

Feeling a bit thirsty, a bit in need of comfort. Cactus, here I come.