Welcome to Musing Interruptus, thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. Pull up a seat next to me. I’ve been wanting to go off on a rant for some time, I have been dancing around the topic of resilience. According to Diane Coutu (2018, p.11), a super expert… most theories on resilience enunciate three characteristics shared by people who are resilient: an obstinate acceptance of reality, the profound conviction that life has meaning (a belief that is based on deeply rooted values) and an awesome capacity to improvise. I am not an expert, I am merely a resilience enthusiast. Life, love, the universe, whatever, has knocked me down a couple times. It’s actually a lot more than that. I always get back up. I admire that capacity in people, almost as much as I admire intelligence and curiosity and funniness. All part of the package I guess.
Before we start, this Musing Interrptus was inspired by a class I had with my student Fernando who contributed to the conversation by bringing up the woodcarver in question, Daniel for telling me the uncensored version of Pinocchio. Thank to both. AND a challenge launched by my sister Andrée. So, if this is toilet, we can just say it is all on them.
A lot of Disney’s animations are very sad. For the life of me I can’t get through a second viewing of Dumbo, Bambi or Pinocchio. These are a special kind of mental torture that I would prefer to sit out. I’ve had Geppetto on my mind, especially since Fernando decided to talk about the cruelty of a wooden boy being kicked out of school. He was particularly miffed with the school teacher. In all honesty, I think I would have done the same thing. How do you explain a walking, talking wooden puppet who thinks he can learn, and arrives at my school. Call me mean hearted but I too would kick out the wooden fiend, hailing from hell. Come on, I mean, any responsible schoolteacher would keep a demon away from their students. Seen from another perspective. If you, as the teacher, realize you are starting to have hallucinations, and I bet there are a lot of teachers who would agree with me, you have to put a lot of things in order, like get your lesson plans, materials, and notes, and find a suitable sub (available sub), before you deign take care of yourself. In any case,  I think the teacher was in the right to protect the classroom from demons. Maybe, considering the times, the teacher’s actions would be considered above and beyond had he called the exorcists from the local catholic church… according to my calculations, if the story happened in a Tuscan town, the approximate distance from the Prisoner in the Vatican was about a day’s worth of horse riding. Taking a whole two days off from teaching is unthinkiable for a teacher covering a syllabus. Let’s face it, it could have been longer, considering the newly unified Italy had a ways to go in terms of nation building. The teacher would have found obstacles on the road. Their best bet would have been to alert the local church or burn the possessed puppet in a bonfire or nearest witch burning. That aside, let’s look at the root of the story. Geppetto, the woodcarver. Continue Reading

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