George Clooney on Sudan Civil War

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48030118/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

Blog #13

Animal Abuse Crime Database Statistics -
U.S. Abuse Classifications

The graph above from http://www.petabuse.com/ demonstrates the percentages of the types of abuse crimes listed in the database. The graph is automatically generated by the database, so it provides real-time statistical data.  You can read the above chart more clearly and find information for individual states by going to: http://www.pet-abuse.com/pages/cruelty_database/statistics/classifications.php

In his book Making a Killing Bob Torres argues that just as slavery involved some humans being the property of others and hence treated just as means to the end of the owners, so animals are under the power of humans. They are bought and sold, kept and killed in appalling conditions, experimented on, and used to provide milk, meat and eggs. This is speciesism, he says, integrated into society as much as racism once was. Torres contends, the advocacy of animal rights needs to become part of a wider movement that challenges all hierarchy, domination and exploitation, whether of other humans, animals or nature. We do not need to eat meat or animal products in order to live, therefore we should not do so. Vegetarianism is not sufficient, since the production of both milk and eggs involves cruelty (e.g. cows must constantly be kept pregnant in order to provide milk). Veganism, which involves making no use of animal products at all, "must be not only the foundation and baseline of any movement to end the domination of animals, but also the daily practice of anyone who seeks to live their life free of all domination and hierarchy". But it’s all very well to talk about opposing all hierarchy, including that of humans over animals, but if it came to the crunch almost everyone would regard the life of a fellow human as more important than that of a non-human animal. So there can be no real equality of treatment between humans and animals.

Excerpt is from: Socialism or Your Money Back     http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/05/animal-rights.html

                                Your Assignment

1.) Read and Interpret the Chart on Animal Abuse.  Then read the short excerpt about the book, Making a Killing.

2.) Highlight something you learned from the chart that you found surprising and discuss why.  Please note, it can be something that is not included within the chart, in other words, you might be wondering why a certain type of abuse is not noted.

3.) Then highlight something you learned from the excerpt about Making a Killing.

Because the post is simple and because I posted it on Wednesday, you do not need to comment back to other students unless of course you have something you would like to say to them.

Bear in mind that you may use the chart and the excerpt as a resource for your next writing assignment.

Due Date:  Next Wednesday, November 23rd.

 

Blog #12

1.)Read the article below and discuss your thoughts about the issue. 

2.)Your discussion must have two specific cited references from the article.  In other words, a response with just general information will not receive credit.  You must use the facts from the article to guide your response on the issue.  Refer to paragraph numbers for citations.

3.) Comment back to two classmates regarding their responses.

Response to me is due by Saturday, November 12th  = 5 Points

Responses to two classmates is due by Monday, November 14th.  = 5 Points

Total Points=10 pts.  Remember, the blog assignments are worth 20% of your grade.  Please refer to your syllabus and/or Engrade.

Can Animal Rights Go Too Far?

By Adam Cohen

Par. 1Starting in 2015, every egg sold in California will have to comply with strict hen-rights rules. Cages will have to be large enough for the birds to stand up, lie down and spread their wings without touching each other or the sides of the cage. California voters adopted these rules for in-state egg producers two years ago. Last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that extended the rules to out-of-state producers who want to sell their eggs in California.

Par. 2The move was just the latest example of how animal rights are on the march — in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world. Even as human rights seems to have taken a few hits of late — with the U.S. government endorsing harsh interrogation techniques, also known as torture, and the Supreme Court whittling away at race-discrimination laws, defendants' rights and the Voting Rights Act — animal rights has moved further into the mainstream. (See the top 10 outrageous PETA stunts.)

Par. 3This enthusiasm for animal rights is also fueling a national movement to rein in the chaining of dogs, a practice animal-rights advocates regard as cruel and dangerous for the dog. Thirteen states now have laws that limit the chaining or tethering of dogs outside, such as to a metal pole or a tree. Several more states are considering such laws, which impose restrictions like requiring that chains be of a minimum length. Animal-rights activists have also been targeting foie gras in recent years because it is made by force-feeding ducks and geese in a way that many consider to be cruel. California has banned force-feeding to create foie gras, and Hawaii is currently considering banning the sale of the delicacy.

Par. 4Animal-law courses are now taught at many of the nation's leading law schools. Harvard Law School recently hosted a "Future of Animal Law" conference sponsored by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. A prime financial backer of the rise of animal law is Bob Barker, the longtime host of the game show The Price Is Right and a prominent animal-rights advocate. He has given $1 million gifts to the University of Virginia Law School, Columbia Law School and Duke Law School — among others — to endow animal-law programs. (Barker is also funding a $1 million campaign to stop live-pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania.) (See the top 10 animal stories of 2009.)

Par. 5It was not long ago that animal rights was all but an oxymoron. With few exceptions, you could do what you wanted to an animal — and it seemed bizarre to argue otherwise. Then, in the 1970s, animal-liberation activists followed in the footsteps of the civil-rights movement, the women's liberation movement and the gay-rights movement, and argued that "species-ism" was wrong and had to be defeated.

Par. 6If Barker is one of the financial leaders of the animal-rights movement, its intellectual leader is Peter Singer, a Princeton professor of bioethics, whose 1975 book Animal Liberation is often credited with giving birth to the modern movement. Singer and others have laid out the philosophical groundwork for regarding animals as deserving of greater respect and legal protection. (Singer, however, is not an absolutist: on a FAQ on his Princeton website, he allows that if a fire was threatening a human and a mouse and he could only save one, he would save the human.) Animal-rights supporters have even dug deep and discovered a little-known history of anticruelty laws, dating back to a 1635 Irish statute prohibiting pulling wool off of sheep (rather than shearing it) and pulling horses by their tails. (See where animal rights fits in among 2008's top 10 ballot measures.)

Par. 7Important as these intellectual underpinnings are, what is driving the animal-rights movement today is simple: a surprisingly strong level of popular support. When California's egg referendum was on the ballot in 2008, it won in a landslide, taking more than 63% of the vote.

Par. 8Europe is still far ahead of the U.S. in recognizing animal rights. Spain's parliament caused a stir two years ago when it passed a resolution calling for legal rights to be extended to nonhuman primates — a law that Singer declared to be of "world historical significance." The resolution urged that chimpanzees, gorillas and other primates have the right not to be used in medical experiments or circuses.

Par. 9Yet even Europe has its limits. Switzerland has a 160-page animal-rights law with some of the world's stiffest rules for the treatment of nonhumans, including the minimum amount of space that Mongolian gerbils must be given (1,500 sq cm) and a ban on keeping social animals, like goldfish, alone. In March, however, Swiss voters soundly defeated a referendum that would have created a state-funded system of lawyers to represent animals in court. Animals in Zurich remain in luck, however, since that canton has its own law giving animals legal representation.

Par. 10In the U.S., the animal-rights movement remains on the upswing, and it is not only on the East and West Coasts. This month, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio — a major farm state — brokered a deal between the Farm Bureau and the Humane Society. In exchange for the farm group's commitment to work toward a list of tough new animal-rights laws — including phasing out a particularly harsh kind of crate for pregnant sows and banning the strangulation of pigs and cows — the Humane Society is holding back on its plans to put an anticruelty referendum on the ballot this November.

Par. 11If animal rights can make it in Ohio, it can probably make it anywhere — and that is a good thing. Like any worthy cause, animal rights can be taken too far, and sometimes it is. (In a world full of woe, it is hard to get too worked up about the solitary goldfish.) But requiring animals, including animals that produce or become food, to be treated decently while they are alive ennobles not only the animals but us as well.

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board

Blog #11

Rives: Performance poet, multimedia artist

Storyteller and poet Rives is the star of the new special "Ironic Iconic America." A regular on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, he's the co-host of the upcoming TEDActive simulcast event in Palm Springs. Offstage, Rives designs and writes pop-up books.

Watch the three performances by Rives and discuss which one you liked the best and why.  Hopefully you are making more of a distinction between language and the art of language, and as such, appreciate what modern writers are now doing with poetry and essays.

Respond to me by Friday, Nov. 4th.
Respond to two other classmates by Monday, Nov. 7th

1.) Slam Poem Link: "Mockingbirds"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_remixes_ted2006.html

2.) Slam Poem Link: "If I Controlled the Internet"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_controls_the_internet.html

3.) Definition Essay/Poem (?) Link: "4 in the Morning"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

While viewing these videos is far more enjoyable than reading them, if for some reason you cannot access these videos on your computer or if you want to read the printed copy, then all three are posted below.


1.) Slam Poem:

"Mockingbirds" by Rives

Mockingbirds are badass.

They are. Mockingbirds -- that's Mimus polyglottos -- are the emcees of the animal kingdom.

They listen and mimic and remix what they like. They rock the mic outside my window every morning. I can hear them sing the sounds of the car alarms like they were songs of spring. I mean, if you can talk it, a mockingbird can squawk it. So check it, I'm going to catch mockingbirds. I'm going to trap mockingbirds all across the nation and put them gently into mason jars like mockingbird Molotov cocktails.

Yeah. And as I drive through a neighborhood, say, where people got-a-lotta, I'll take a mockingbird I caught in a neighborhood where folks ain't got nada and just let it go, you know. Up goes the bird, out come the words, "Juanito, Juanito, viente a comer mi hijo!" Oh, I'm going to be the Johnny Appleseed of sound.

Cruising random city streets, rocking a drop-top Cadillac with a big backseat, packing like 13 brown paper Walmart bags full of loaded mockingbirds, and I'll get everybody.

I'll get the nitwit on the network news saying, "We'll be back in a moment with more on the crisis." I'll get some asshole at a watering hole asking what brand the ice is. I'll get that lady at the laundromat who always seems to know what being nice is. I'll get your postman making dinner plans. I'll get the last time you lied. I'll get, "Baby, just give me the frickin' TV guide." I'll get a lonely, little sentence with real error in it, "Yeah, I guess I could come inside, but only for a minute."

I'll get an ESL class in Chinatown learning, "It's Raining, It's Pouring." I'll put a mockingbird on a late-night train just to get an old man snoring. I'll get your ex-lover telling someone else, "Good morning." I'll get everyone's good mornings. I don't care how you make them. Aloha. Konichiwa. Shalom. Ah-Salam Alaikum. Everybody means everybody, means everybody here. And so maybe I'll build a gilded cage. I'll line the bottom with old notebook pages. Inside it, I will place a mockingbird for -- short explanation, hippie parents.

What does a violin have to do with technology? Where in the world is this world heading? On one end, gold bars -- on the other, an entire planet. We are 12 billion light years from the edge. That's a guess. Space is length and breadth continued indefinitely, but you cannot buy a ticket to travel commercially to space in America because countries are beginning to eat like us, live like us and die like us. You might want to avert your gaze, because that is a newt about to regenerate its limb, and shaking hands spreads more germs than kissing. There's about 10 million phage per job. It's a very strange world inside a nanotube. Women can talk, black men ski, white men build strong buildings, we build strong suns. The surface of the Earth is absolutely riddled with holes, and here we are, right in the middle.

It is the voice of life that calls us to come and learn. When all the little mockingbirds fly away, they're going to sound like the last four days. I will get uptown gurus, downtown teachers, broke-ass artists and dealers, and Filipino preachers, leaf blowers, bartenders, boob-job doctors, hooligans, garbage men, your local Congressmen in the spotlight, guys in the overhead helicopters. Everybody gets heard. Everybody gets this one, honest mockingbird as a witness. And I'm on this. I'm on this until the whole thing spreads, with chat rooms and copycats and moms maybe tucking kids into bed singing, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, wait for the man with the mockingbird."

Yeah. And then come the news crews, and the man-in-the-street interviews, letters to the editor. Everybody asking, just who is responsible for this citywide, nationwide mockingbird cacophony and somebody finally is going to tip the City Council of Monterey, California off to me, and they'll offer me a key to the city. A gold-plated, oversized key to the city and that is all I need, because if I get that, I can unlock the air. I'll listen for what's missing, and I'll put it there.

Thank you, TED.

2.) Slam Poem

“If I Controlled the Internet” by Rives

I wrote this poem after hearing a pretty well-known actress tell a very well-known interviewer on television, "I'm really getting into the Internet lately. I just wish it were more organized." So -- (Laughter) if I controlled the Internet, you could auction your broken heart on eBay, take the money, go to Amazon, buy a phonebook for a country you've never been to, call folks at random until you find someone who flirts really well in a foreign language.

If I were in charge of the Internet, you could Mapquest your lover's mood swings. Hang a left at cranky, right at preoccupied, U-turn on silent treatment, all the way back to tongue kissing and good love, and you could navigate and understand every emotional intersection. Some days, I'm as shallow as a baking pan, but I still stretch miles in all directions. If I owned the Internet, Napster, Monster and Friendster.com would be one big website. That way you could listen to cool music while you pretend to look for a job and you're really just chatting with your pals.

Heck, if I ran the web, you could email dead people.

They would not email you back -- (Laughter) but you'd get an automated reply.

Their name in your inbox -- (Laughter) it's all you wanted anyway. And a message saying, "Hey, it's me. I miss you.

Listen, you'll see being dead is dandy. Now you go back to raising kids and waging peace and craving candy." If I designed the Internet, childhood.com would be a loop of a boy in an orchard, with a ski pole for a sword, trashcan lid for a shield, shouting, "I am the emperor of oranges. I am the emperor of oranges. I am the emperor of oranges." Now follow me, OK?

Grandma.com would be a recipe for biscuits and spit-bath instructions. One, two, three. That links with hotdiggitydog.com. That is my grandfather. They take you to gruff-ex-cop-on-his-fourth-marriage.dad. He forms an attachment to kind-of-ditzy-but-still-sends-ginger-snaps-for-Christmas.mom, who downloads the boy in the orchard, the emperor of oranges, who grows up to be me -- the guy who usually goes too far. So if I were emperor of the Internet, I guess I'd still be mortal, huh? But at that point, I would probably already have the lowest possible mortgage and the most enlarged possible penis -- (Laughter) so I would outlaw spam on my first day in office. I wouldn't need it. I'd be like some kind of Internet genius, and me, I'd like to upgrade to deity and maybe just like that -- pop -- I'd go wireless.

Huh? Maybe Google would hire this. I could zip through your servers and firewalls like a virus until the World Wide Web is as wise, as wild and as organized as I think a modern-day miracle/oracle can get, but, ooh-eee, you want to bet just how whack and un-PC your Mac or PC is going to be when I'm rocking hot shit, hot shot god.net? I guess it's just like life. It is not a question of if you can. It's, do ya? We can interfere with the interface. We can make "You've got Hallelujah" the national anthem of cyberspace every lucky time we log on. You don't say a prayer. You don't write a psalm. You don't chant an om. You send one blessed email to whoever you're thinking of at dah da la dat da dah da la dat dot com.

Thank you, TED.

3.) Definition Essay/Poem (?) (even I'm not sure what to call this)

“4 In the Morning” by Rives

This is a recent comic strip from the Los Angeles Times. The punch line? "On the other hand, I don't have to get up at four every single morning to milk my Labrador." This is a recent cover of New York Magazine. Best hospitals where doctors say they would go for cancer treatment, births, strokes, heart disease, hip replacements, 4 a.m. emergencies. And this is a song medley I put together --

Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become some sort of meme or shorthand? It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour.

A time for inconveniences, mishaps, yearnings. A time for plotting to whack the chief of police, like in this classic scene from "The Godfather." Coppola's script describes these guys as "exhausted in shirt sleeves. It is four in the morning."

A time for even grimmer stuff than that, like autopsies and embalmings in Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits." After the breathtaking green-haired Rosa is murdered, the doctors preserve her with unguents and morticians' paste. They worked until four o'clock

A time for even grimmer stuff than that, like in last April's New Yorker magazine, this short fiction piece by Martin Amis starts out, "On September 11, 2001, he opened his eyes at 4 a.m. in Portland, Maine, and Mohamed Atta's last day began." For a time that I find to be the most placid and uneventful hour of the day, four in the morning sure gets an awful lot of bad press -- across a lot of different media from a lot of big names. And it made me suspicious. I figured, surely some of the most creative artistic minds in the world, really, aren't all defaulting back to this one easy trope like they invented it, right? Could it be there is something more going on here? Something deliberate, something secret, and who got the four in the morning bad rap ball rolling anyway? I say, this guy -- Alberto Giacometti, shown here with some of his sculptures on the Swiss 100 franc note. He did it with this famous piece from the New York Museum of Modern Art. Its title -- "The Palace at Four in the Morning -- 1932. Not just the earliest cryptic reference to four in the morning I can find. I believe that this so-called first surrealist sculpture may provide an incredible key to virtually every artistic depiction of four in the morning to follow it. I call this The Giacometti Code, a TED exclusive. No, feel free to follow along on your Blackberries or your iPhones if you've got them.

It works a little something like -- this is a recent Google search for four in the morning. Results vary, of course. This is pretty typical. The top 10 results yield you four hits for Faron Young's song, "It's Four in the Morning," three hits for Judi Dench's film, "Four in the Morning," one hit for Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Four in the Morning." But what, you may ask, do a Polish poet, a British Dame, a country music hall of famer all have in common besides this totally excellent Google ranking?

Well, let's start with Faron Young -- who was born, incidentally, in 1932.

In 1996, he shot himself in the head on December ninth -- which incidentally is Judi Dench's birthday.

But he didn't die on Dench's birthday. He languished until the following afternoon when he finally succumbed to a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 64 -- which, incidentally, is how old Alberto Giacometti was when he died.

Where was Wislawa Szymborska during all this? She has the world's most absolutely watertight alibi. On that very day, December 10, 1996 while Mr. Four in the Morning, Faron Young, was giving up the ghost in Nashville, Tennessee, Ms. Four in the Morning -- or one of them anyway -- Wislawa Szymborska was in Stockholm, Sweden, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. 100 years to the day after the death of Alfred Nobel himself. Coincidence? No, it's creepy.

Coincidence to me has a much simpler magic. That's like me telling you, "Hey, you know the Nobel Prize was established in 1901, which coincidentally is the same year Alberto Giacometti was born?" No, not everything fits so tidily into the paradigm, but that does not mean there's not something going on at the highest possible levels. In fact there are people in this room who may not want me to show you this clip we're about to see.

Video: We have a tennis court, a swimming pool, a screening room -- You mean if I want pork chops, even in the middle of the night, your guy'll fry them up?

Sure, that's what he's paid for. Now do you need towels, laundry, maids?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- let me see if I got this straight. It is Christmas Day, 4 a.m. There's a rumble in my stomach.

Homer, please.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me see if I got this straight, Matt.

When Homer Simpson needs to imagine the most remote possible moment of not just the clock, but the whole freaking calendar, he comes up with 0400 on the birthday of the Baby Jesus. And no, I don't know how it works into the whole puzzling scheme of things, but obviously, I know a coded message when I see one.

I said, I know a coded message when I see one. And folks, you can buy a copy of Bill Clinton's "My Life" from the bookstore here at TED. Parse it cover to cover for whatever hidden references you want. Or you can go to the Random House website where there is this excerpt. And how far down into it you figure we'll have to scroll to get to the golden ticket? Would you believe, about a dozen paragraphs? This is page 474 on your paperbacks, if you're following along: "Though it was getting better, I still wasn't satisfied with the inaugural address. My speechwriters must have been tearing their hair out because as we worked between one and four in the morning on Inauguration Day, I was still changing it."

Sure you were, because you've prepared your entire life for this historic quadrennial event that just sort of sneaks up on you. And then -- three paragraphs later we get this little beauty: "We went back to Blair House to look at the speech for the last time. It had gotten a lot better since 4 a.m." Well, how could it have? By his own writing, this man was either asleep, at a prayer meeting with Al and Tipper or learning how to launch a nuclear missile out of a suitcase. What happens to American presidents at 0400 on inauguration day? What happened to William Jefferson Clinton? We might not ever know. And I noticed, he's not exactly around here today to face any tough questions.

It could get awkward, right? I mean, after all, this whole business happened on his watch. But if he were here -- he might remind us, as he does in the wrap-up to his fine autobiography, that on this day, Bill Clinton began a journey -- a journey that saw him go on to become the first Democrat president elected to two consecutive terms in decades. In generations. The first since this man, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began his own unprecedented journey way back at his own first election, way back in a simpler time, way back in 1932 -- the year Alberto Giacometti made "The Palace at Four in the Morning." The year, let's remember, that this voice, now departed, first came a-cryin' into this big old crazy world of ours.

Blog #10

Last week's blog was a little depressing so I wanted to share some poetry by Billy Collins, who enjoys poking fun at people and life.

Billy Collins (born William James Collins March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.^[1] He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the New York Times.
Over the years, the U.S. magazine Poetry has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (Wikipedia).

 

Please read or watch the following poem, "Litany" by Billy Collins.  But if you can, I recommend watching Billy Collins perform his poem on the YouTube Video.  Before he reads the poem, he shares with the viewers some of information about the poem.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY

Litany 

                    by Billy Collins

  You are the bread and the knife,

The crystal goblet and the wine...

-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker,

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman's tea cup.

But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife,

not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

Billy Collins is making fun of something.  What do you think it is?  You might want to Google the reference within the poem "-Jacques Crickillon" in order to make sense of the rest of the poem.

Use some of the phrases from the poem to explain what you think the poem is about.  Hint:  It might help to watch the video if you cannot answer this question.

No need to comment back to another person's comment this week.  I hope that you just enjoy the poem(s).  But please comment back to me by Sunday, October, 23rd.

Want to read more of Billy Collins' poems.  Then click on the link below and it will take you to a website that has a recording of the poem "Workshop."  This poem makes fun of student writers who are peer editing each other's poem.  Very funny stuff.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19755

Workshop    

by Billy Collins 

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.

It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now

so immediately the poem has my attention,

like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,

the way they establish this mode of self-pointing

that runs through the whole poem

and tells us that words are food thrown down

on the ground for other words to eat.

I can almost taste the tail of the snake

in its own mouth,

if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,

which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,

but other times seems standoffish,

professorial in the worst sense of the word

like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.

But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,

especially the fourth one.

I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges

which gives me a very clear picture.

And I really like how this drawbridge operator

just appears out of the blue

with his feet up on the iron railing

and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—

a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

Maybe it’s just me,

but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.

I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?

And what’s an obbligato of snow?

Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,

and maybe this is just me,

is the way the scene keeps shifting around.

First, we’re in this big aerodrome

and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,

which makes me think this could be a dream.

Then he takes us into his garden,

the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,

though that’s nice, the coiling hose,

but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.

The rain and the mint green light,

that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?

Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?

There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here

is really two poems, or three, or four,

or possibly none.

But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.

This is where the poem wins me back,

especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.

I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,

but I still love the details he uses

when he’s describing where he lives.

The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,

the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,

the spool of thread for a table.

I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work

night after night collecting all these things

while the people in the house were fast asleep,

and that gives me a very strong feeling,

a very powerful sense of something.

But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.

Maybe that was just me.

Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

Blog #9

The Lost Generation

By Kiersten W., Mason, OH

Oh why have we settled in the unquiet darkness,
where the noise of the silence overwhelms our hearts?
And we fall apart –
the sun sets and it rises –
we make shapes of ourselves no one can see.
Oh why are we lost in these tears
if we’ve forgotten how to cry?
If absence makes the heart grow fonder
can we hold on much longer?
We are burning in a drought of faith,
unnoticing as the stars are earnestly shining,
desperately bleeding light.
Oh how ironically hopeless
is every star’s forgotten fight,
for we are just uselessly drowning
under the weight,
under the honesty of the unspoken.
Oh the noise of the silence overwhelms our hearts.
I believe we are skillfully crafted
inexplicable accidents,
and our hero– the potter –
is too late.

http://teenink.com/poetry/all/article/25352/The-Lost-Generation/ on 7/28/2011.

Sometimes poetry is not about whether we understand it, but how it makes us feel.  Discuss briefly your feelings about the poem by answering the three questions below.  Your Response is Due Friday, October 14th.  Then respond to what two other students said by Monday, October, 17th.
1.) When you read this poem, how did it make you feel?  What words or phrases did the speaker say that triggered those emotions?
2.) Did you see any logic or reasoning behind why the poet feels that the "potter is too late?"  And what connection might the poet be trying to make by using the title "The Lost Generation?"
3.)  And for your own knowledge, the poet is a teen writer and I found the poem posted on an online teen journal.  So, now that you know that the poem reflects someone from your generation, does the speaker of the poem give you more of a reason to reflect on their writing?  If so, why?  If not, then why not?

By answering and reflecting on the above questions, you are utilizing Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle.  Extra Credit: What do you think that Ethos, Logos, and Pathos means?  You may Google the terms or just guess.

Blog #8

   

Prepositions: What are They?

Here Are Enough Prepositions to Drive You Crazy!

Now Click on the link below and read a selection of student authored poems that begin each line of poetry using a preposition.  Because this last week's grammar lesson is about prepositions, your assignment is to write a Preposition Poem and then post it by Friday, September 30th and Respond to two other classmates about their poems by Sunday, October 2nd.

Preposition Poems to Read
http://home.earthlink.net/~jesmith/Prep.poems.html

List of Common Prepostions and an Explanation About Prepositions
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/preposition.htm

Assignment:  Worth 10 Points
Write a poem using a preposition as the first word that begins each line of your poem.  The poem must tell a story or has some kind of theme.  Length of poem is to your discretion.  As a rule of thumb, write until the poem feels complete.

5 Points EXTRA CREDIT to those students who post their poem with a picture or video.

Hint:  Google tinypic website and use this site in order to create a link to a personal photo.  Make sure that you copy/paste the link intended for blogs.

Or find a photo directly online and copy/paste the link associated with the photo.  You may have to select "Full Size Image" in order to copy/paste directly from the web.
Poem is due by Friday, September 30th.
Response to two of your classmates in which you discuss their poem is due by October 2nd.  No credit given if all you say is, "I really like your poem."  So highlight something about the poem's theme or imagery or rhyme scheme if it has one.

Have Fun!!