Last Blog of the Year

Blogging was interesting. I was first a bit worried about blogging since it was worth a small chunk of my grade and I have no clue how hard it was going to grade it. Once I figured out that it was pretty easily graded I did scale back on the seriousness and the effort in some of the blogs. The blogs that required me to do additional research was not my finest blogs. Those are the ones I probably did the very bare minimum on. My favorite blog was the rewriting of the Pit and the Pendulum. I like to think I have a very fascinating and unique mind that builds really interesting situations and changing the ending to the story was an absolute piece of cake. I put a lot of effort into that blog. I do enjoy the blogs that just allow me to freely say what I want without a whole lot of extra work.
It was a fairly good experience. It gave me a good grade cushion so that was very nice, but I was also able to write something that are moderately fascinating. I guess what I learned most was that I am kind of a terrible writer and speller and I can do quite a bit when motivated. A little disappointed that this is the last blog of the year, but it was a good experience over all.

My top three stories are in this order (if it includes books)
The Great Gatsby
Pit and the Pendulum
All Quiet in the Western Front

My three favorite short stories are
Pit and The Pendulum
The Incredible Jumping Frog (from that one county) by Mark Twain
Yellow Wall Paper

Miss Wolff

Well, she is certainly in a tough position. The first thing I would probably say is that there are going to be kids that just won't cooperate with her and there will be kids who will say that they hate her. She has to accept it, but stay strong. People will always want to criticize her, since she is in front of everyone. If she can understand and accept that she will be better prepared. I have had the "pleasure" of dealing with two new English teacher extremes. The first one was in eight grade when I had Mrs. Pitman her first year of teaching. I am incredibly lazy so it is mainly my fault, but she loaded up on work. I was doing absolutely tons of work for that class which wasn't so awesome. In the end I was sent to regular English for my less then stellar performance. Then that is when I had Mr. Marchione as my teacher for freshman regular English second semester. He had no real clue what he was doing. We would start off everyday of class just talking and not doing anything. I passed with flying colors. I guess I would prefer more of a Mrs. Pitman again just because I learned more, but don't put the students through hell and back.

The Great Gatsby

I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire by The Ink Spots- The chorus is what mainly pertains to Gatsby. In the song they talk about how he doesn't want to ruin everything, he just wants to be the one [his love] will love. This is kind of like Gatsby as he wants to be the one that Daisy loves. His intentions aren't to ruin everything, but just to love her.

Crazy He Calls Me by Billie Holly- This song is relatively the same as the previous song. In this song the singer sings about her love and how [her love] thinks she is crazy, and she says that she is crazy in love. It also talks about how she will do whatever he says because of how much she loves him. Gatsby was in the same fever pitch attitude for Daisy. 

Mark Twain's Whit

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_twain.html#iKDLXB1oTJ01YLd4.99
I really enjoy this quote. It really states what I think when I am facing confidence issues. I am never comfortable with what I can do until I have approved that I can do it. Whenever I do new things I am uncomfortable until I have done them and I understand what happens and that I can do it. Then the next time I will know to do it or to miss it. This quote is brilliant and happened to be the first one I read.

Stories of the Quest for Civil Rights

http://oralhistoryeducation.com/civil-rights-stories-2
This link goes to a small article on events and almost a summary of Civil Rights movements. It mainly talks about different events and peaceful movements that people picked up to fight against these problems. One of the things that was talked about was sit-ins and I know there are many stories that we read that brought up this. I know that Martin Luther King was all for non-violence. This talks about how they collected everything from oral histories. It is a very interesting article, though I already know most of what was said.

Harlem

Harlem was a very interesting place. It was a place where a lot of black culture stayed and many people still went down for some entertainment, but will leave right afterwords. People never quite realized the tough times in Harlem. The entertainment might be good, but the reality was never really realized. This reality was being preached by many black rights activists on different corners of Harlem. One corner that was at West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue was inhabited by the popular Marcus Garvey. He was a member of the NAACP and created an organization called Universal Negro Improvement Association. This organization was heavy into the black rights activists and held speeches and parades that were huge. Since Harlem had such a flourishing atmosphere for speeches and it rounded up groups of people easily.

Expressions in Art

In the past many people would express their feelings and events by paintings. During the 1950's, I seam to find that most things were being expressed through photographs since that could be taken on scene. I did not read Having Our Say, closely. So this might be a little off, but this is one picture I was able to find.

I believe this is a political picture that is about the Jim Crows laws. I did pick up that one major event that changed the Delani sisters' lives was the passing of the Jim Crow laws. I believe this picture shows that this man is now free, but he is forced to live in rags and shambles of fancy clothes. In the background you can see a fancy and wealthy couple walking a lot better off then this man. I believe it kind of shows how things really wasn't too good even after being set free.