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.

What's Good?

One thing that I believe is good a movie called Fight Club. Most guys would go to this movie because it is a very "bro manly dude" movie, and I would agree. It has jokes that are questionable, and other things that I find a little different. But what I find that is the best about this movie is that philosophy all woven into the story. IT is incredible the amount of ideas that are in this movie. In one scene one character, Tyler Durdin, is holding the hand of the narrator and Tyler puts some water on the narrators hand. The narrator is confused for a second and then Tyler pours a chemical on the water which creates a chemical burn. The narrator tries to move his hand in agony, but Tyler hold on to it explaining that in order for the narrator to achieve happiness he must accept the lowest of the low. He must accept that nothing good will happen and the nothing will ever be right. He must accept that no one likes him, so when something good actually happens, the feeling of happiness is exemplified with the surprise of something going right. There are plenty of other examples, but that one is possibly the most well known.

Having Your Say

What do I feel strongly about? That is a tough question in a way. That requires me to think on what I really have a passion for. At first I would say that I am extremely passionate about soccer, but I don't quite know what I can talk about with soccer. It is more in passion of playing soccer instead of talking about it. Yes I watch soccer when I can along with playing it, but not as avidly as I want to. A big problem with soccer is that the better leagues are played in Europe so the playing times are weird and don't receive the same coverage of other sports in the U.S. My favorite team is Liverpool, who are currently in a horrible slump. I am pretty upset with the performance they are putting out. Someday I will go to see them play in a stadium.

Connections from Whitman

Well what I think I connect in this poem is what I think is its meaning. I feel that this poem talks about how children absorb absolutely everything. Once they absorbed actions, ideas, and other things, they use it. I, for own, do this or have done this. I absorb the sayings and actions of my friends and other people I am around and start using them with out realizing it. It is like people are built by the things and people around them and that is what Whitman is trying to convey. I figure that is the meaning and that is what essentially connected with me.

Emily Dickinson's Garden of Poetry

WITHIN A FLOWER.

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too --
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

I believe what she is saying in this poem is that she is being shy towards one person or more people. She is always right in front of this person, but she kind of holds back and never really makes herself known. This person sees her and acknowledge her, but that person only feels that she is alone. She doesn't really reflect sadness, but more of an observation on someone else. It is like she is trying to get notice by being discrete and almost hidden.

Affirmations of Life

I have this funny saying that I read on some sight not to long ago. I that it was a very great saying and a very interesting way at thinking about bad things. The saying was, "Be more positive. If you fall down a flight of stairs, instead of being negative, think, 'Wow! I got down those stairs fast!'". It is a simple witty saying, but I like it a lot. It really isn't as practical as most other saying are, but it just kind of drives home the point of looking at negative things in a different way to get more out of life. Sometimes things can be made into a joke, but I know personally that everything happens for a reason. In my oldest sister's senior year, she was a goalie for Jefferson High School. Jefferson has never been a good team, but they still had to play against Boylan which was considered a state bound team. My sister successfully shut Boylan out in the first half of a soccer game. She was an excellent keeper. She has three different full rides to different colleges to be a keeper at the college. In this game a player came from behind her and slide talked her for no reason. No foul was called. This tackle snapped my sister's ACL and took all full rides away from her. Normally this would be terrible, but the story continues as sh went to school with her boyfriend and they are now happily married with a wonderful son. If she would have taken one of the full rides she probably wouldn't be married. So I think of everything happens for a reason.

The Truth about Nature

I really don't know if I have had any spiritual connections with nature. I guess I had one connection with my tree in my "back yard". It was an apple tree that was the only real tree that I could climb at my house. Though I couldn't really climb it because I quickly got tired after the first few times climbing back up. I always kind of liked the tree though it was very low and I always had to mow around it and all of its crab apples that had fallen. This last year my parents had decided to cut it down without me knowing. So I was a little upset when they started cutting it down, but I realized that I could let go. I kind of realized that it was kind of pointless to hold on to it and it would be better if I just let it go. SO I guess it helped me to realize that somethings really aren't that important to me.

Team Edgar or Team Nathaniel?

Well, I really wish I could stay neutral in this question. I really dislike both of the authors, though I have a great respect for them too. I dislike Edgar due to his ability to lose the reader at times. Unless a person has read the story before, there will be a time where the that person will need to reread the section due to confusion or lack of understanding. I do a pretty good job with reading Edgar's stories though. He has a unique way of keeping the story to just drag on and on and on until the suspense is snapped and something happens. Nathaniel on the other hand can just drag a story along for no reason. His works are considered timely classics, though I do have a hard time of staying awake while reading his stories. One thing I do like about Hawthorne is that he symbolizes everthing in his stories. There are multiple stories and lessons just in one of his stories. Despite all of this I will have to side with Edgar. My reasoning is that Edgar can actually keep a reader reading his book. Yes the anticipation and the drawing out of normal instances can be quite annoying, but it forces the reader to wonder what will happen. Hawthorne just takes pages and pages to talk about random things. Just pure rambling.