some video distraction

I haven't done much with sharing non-homework work on the blog, but want to get started. So, here's a beautiful night run through Bangkok. Parkour is a contemporary ballet, and I could watch hours of how these athlete/artists carve through the cityscape.

Light Emitting Dudes - LED Freerunning from Frank Sauer on Vimeo.

 

TKAM part II exam review

Here is a link to our Socratic notes from today:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iiooxplhigzwm53/tkam%20socratic%20end%20of%20book.doc

ROAR Term II: Book into Film

For this term, select a book from the list below. Read the book, and compose 2 set of ROAR notes. Then, read the film adaptation of your book. Compose 1 post that makes use of film terms and analyzes how it adapts the book.

Do select a book that interests you, but also one that you will be allowed to watch the film version (check to see what the film is rated). Also, check the ROAR selections website that is listed on the right-hand column.

You are required to prove you legally watched the film, so no downloading or illegal streaming.





Fresh Films!


Life of Pi by Yann Martel 
The novel follows young Pi Patel, a 16-year-old whose family moves from India to North America on board a Japanese cargo ship, along with a number of his father's zoo animals. When the ship sinks, Pi is left alone in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
The novel is set on Long Island during the roaring 1920s. Nick, just returned from the war, rents a house in West Egg where he is invited to the extravagant parties hosted by his guarded and mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Nick eventually learns Gatsby's story – the tale of a young man who corrupts himself in seeking to attain the American Dream and gain the love of the idealized, and unattainable woman, Daisy.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky  
This is a coming-of-age story about a high school freshman who deals with the challenges of most high school kids – making friends, having a crush, going on a first date, dealing with emerging sexuality, experimenting with drugs – but must also face the suicide of his best friend. He is helped through his first year by two senior friends and a teacher.


The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 
The prequel to the "Lord of the Rings," "The Hobbit" is set in the time "Between the Dawn and the Dominion of Men." It follows Bilbo Baggins's quest to secure a piece of the treasure guarded by Samaug, a dragon, as he travels through Middle Earth.

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On Video/Netflix

Playing the Enemy by John Carlin
Invictus is the true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team, Francois Pienaar, to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa's underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

A Scanner Darkly Philip K. Dick
America in the near future has lost the war against drugs. Though the government tries to protect the upper class, the system is infested with undercover cops like Fred, who regularly ingest the popular Substance D as part of their work. In a bizarre twist, the drug has caused Fred to develop a split personality, of which he is not aware.

The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri
What’s in a name? A MIT professor and his wife face this question, when hospital authorities won’t allow them to leave with their baby until it is given a name. The staff is ignorant of the cultural difference that allow for Bengali families to spend a good deal of time and deliberation before deciding their child’s name. Thus, Ashima and Ashoke are forced to enter a “pet” name for their son- Gogol.

Slumdog Millionaire Vikas Swarup (Q&A)
Jamal Malik is an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved.

A Civil Action Jonathan Harr
This is the true story of a town’s fight against deadly environmental toxins in the town of Woburn, MA. With a class action lawsuit to file, lawyers represent families impacted by the pollution. However, the case that could ruin the law firm firm.

Antwone Fisher Antwone Fisher (Finding Fish)
This autobiography tells how Fisher was born in prison to an incarcerated mother and a father who had been shot. After being placed in foster care, Fisher was treated brutally and blamed for his own misfortunes. Through these experiences, he eventually found his way into a stable job in the Navy.

Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer
With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, and a dog named Sammy Davis, Jonathan is led on an amazing journey into an unexpected past.

Fever Pitch Nick Hornby
Love sports? This book tells the story of the author's unhealthy relationship with soccer. As a fan of Arsenal, a London soccer team, Hornby describes his life as it relates to the successes and failures of his favorite team.

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Bride & Prejudice

The five Bennet sisters, including strong-willed Elizabeth and young Lydia, have been raised by their mother with one purpose in life: finding a husband. When a wealthy bachelor takes up residence in a nearby mansion, the Bennets are abuzz. But when Elizabeth meets up with the handsome and snobbish Mr. Darcy, a battle of the sexes ensues.

Cold Mountain Charles Frazier
A wounded Confederate soldier walks away from the horrors of the war and back home to his pre-war sweetheart, Ada. This love story connects Inman's odyssey through the devastated South with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm.

Girl With a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier
When Griet becomes a maid in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, she thinks she knows her role: housework, laundry, and the care of his six children. What no one expects is that Griet's quiet manner, quick perceptions, and fascination with her master's paintings will draw her inexorably into his world. Their growing intimacy sparks whispers; and when Vermeer paints her wearing his wife's pearl earrings, the gossip escalates into a huge scandal.

Secret Window Steven King (Four Past Midnight)
Mort Rainey is a successful writer going through a rather unfriendly divorce from his wife of ten years. Alone and bitter in his cabin, he continues to work on his writing when a stranger named John Shooter shows up on his doorstep, claiming Rainey stole his story. Mort says he can prove the story belongs to him and not Shooter, but while Mort digs around for the magazine that published the story, people begin to die.



Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution

Creation



Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Green Zone 




The Juliet Club
and
Letters to Juliet: Celebrating Shakespeare's Greatest Heroine, the Magical City of Verona, and the Power of Love





Winter's Bone: A Novel




Between a Rock and a Hard Place

127 Hours




True Grit

examples for your TKAM homework

For the last week of reading To Kill a Mockingbird, you will "Shine a Light" on one paragraph from your reading. This is just like your test, so select a strong paragraph and:

1: connect the passage with one of the five thematic topics of a “Southern Novel”

2: explain the situation in the quotation by providing context from the novel

3: analyze the use of literary devices by identifying the devices and explaining why they are used

            Personification                     Dual Narrative Voice            Simile                    Hyperbole            Euphemism

            Situational Irony                  Dramatic Irony        Metaphor            Allusion                        Indirect Characterization

Here are some samples from your tests! 

Passage A

It connects with traumatic violence because after seeing Miss Maudie’s house burn down, Scout “shudders” when her father lights the stove. This shows her uneasiness with fire, and is similar to how Miss Maudie just stands and looks at the “black hole” that used to be her home. The trauma with fire is ironic since it was strangely cold and had snowed, and it also indirectly shows how Miss Maudie is affected by the fire.

Passage B

The thematic topic is decorum because it is known by everybody that girls shouldn’t be acting like boys. This takes place when Scout and her family are at Finch’s landing for Christmas, and Aunt Alexandra criticizes Scout on the way she dresses and that girls should shine in their father’s eye. Her metaphor explains the decorum of girls needing to act properly by wearing pearls and dresses, especially since Atticus’ wife had died.

Passage C

The fact that Miss Caroline, the first grade teacher, was from Winston County was a big deal. It separated her from the students, who were mostly farm kids. This class separation is shown when Miss Caroline doesn’t understand her students, especially Walter who doesn’t have a lunch. Scout and the class judge their teacher since she comes from a place filled with “liquor interests, Republicans,” and makes an allusion to North Alabama and their role in the Civil War.

Passage D

As Francis and Scout are having a conversation, the topic of ancestry comes up. Their families are celebrating Christmas at Finch’s Landing, and Francis criticizes Atticus for supporting a back man and acting like a “nigger lover.” This ruins “the family name.” Their ancestry is also ruined since Scout hangs out with kids of a lower social class, who Francis calls “stray dogs” as a metaphor for Dill. 

Passage E

This is an example of ancestry as the narrator talks about her Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Alexandra as they have a son named Henry, who leaves home to get married and gave birth to Cousin Francis. Euphemism was used as Scout describes Francis as being “produced” and that he is “deposited” at his grandparent’s home every Christmas so the parents can pursue their own “pleasure,” which shows that the family doesn’t care about him.

Boston Book Festival! Saturday Oct. 27

I can't believe that next Saturday is the BBF, and that I haven't scheduled out my game plan to see as many amazing authors as possible!

It's also the last chance to earn extra credit for term 1...

Here are my "must attend" events:

Fiction: The Short Story

11:00am Trinity Sanctuary 206 Clarendon Street

 

Junot Diaz, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is a professor, writer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is the author of Drown and The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. Diaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Nancy Allen professor at MIT.

 

Stories on Stage

12:15pm Old South Church: Mary Norton Hall

Have you ever wanted to see your favorite picture books and fairy tales come to life? Here's your chance, thanks to the creative and enthusiastic teens who make up Hyde Square Task Force's Youth Literacy Theatre. They'll perform a series of short and funny plays based on children's books. Then it's your turn to get in on the act, with acting games and craft projects that you can take home!

Serious Satire

12:45pm Trinity Sanctuary 206 Clarendon Street

Baratunde Thurston is a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future. He co-founded the black political blog, Jack and Jill Politics, and served as Director of Digital for The Onion before launching the comedy/technology startup Cultivated Wit. He resides in Brooklyn, lives on Twitter, and has over thirty years experience being black. He writes the monthly backpage column for Fast Company, and his first book, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller.

Graphic Novels: Drawing the Story

2:30pm Old South Sanctuary 645 Boylston Street

The brilliant Chris Ware will present Building Stories, described by Publishers Weekly as "the graphic novel of the season or perhaps the year...Ware takes visual storytelling to a new level of both beauty and despair." Charles Burns will show The Hive, volume two of the highly acclaimed X'd Out comic book. Legendary designer and writer Chip Kidd will present Batman: Death by Design, his architecture-themed Batman comic. And one of the brightest young stars of the genre, Gabrielle Bell, will show The Voyeurs as an opening act for the session. Hosted by writer and critic Eugenia Williamson.

Fiction: Time and Place

4:15pm Old South Sanctuary 645 Boylston Street

Tayari Jones is the author of Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow. Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, won the Huston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction, "Novel of the Year" by Atlanta Magazine, and the "Best Southern Novel of the Year" by Creative Loafing Atlanta. Her most recent novel, Silver Sparrow, was selected as among the best novels of 2011 by Library Journal, Slate, and Salon. Currently, she is an assistant professor in Rutgers-Newark University's MFA program.

"Everyday Use" articles for Monday's HW

Here are 4 selections from critical readings of "Everyday Use." This is high level reading, a good introduction to the level of conversation expected at college when looking at literature.

1) read the passages
2) select one passage to work with
3) type and upload to Turnitin.com by 10/15 @7pm
-one sentence summary of the passage
-three sentence paraphrase of the passage
-one sentence direct quote (your intro+direct quotation)

1) Mama's comparisons between animals and Maggie often seem insensitive. Without a doubt, the most shocking example of this occurs early in "Everyday Use" when Mama ponders, "Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone ignorant enough to be kind him? That is the way my Maggie walks." Near the end of the story, Mama describes Maggie in similar terms: "I looked at her hard. She had filled up her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and it gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look." It is at this moment in the story that Mama has her epiphany, realizing that her thin, scarred, daughter, deserves the quilts more than her shapely, favored, educated daughter Dee, who only wants the quilts because they are now fashionable. Acting on this flash of insight, Mama does two things that she has never done before: she hugs Maggie and she says "no" to Dee. Afterward, in the final paragraph, Maggie's face lights up with a smile that is "real […] not scared." Moreover, Mama asks her for "a dip of snuff,” and together the enlightened mother and the faithful daughter sit, enjoying their snuff and each other's company, oblivious to the "dopey, hangdog look" they presumably present to the world.

Gruesser, John. "Walker's Everyday Use." The Explicator 61.3 (2003): 183+. General Reference Center GOLD. Web. 30 Sep. 2011.

2) Before "rifling" through the "trunk at the foot of [Mama's] bed" and getting out the quilts, Dee has already removed all the items of everyday use that she will lay her hands on. The quilts she gets out of Mama's trunk are quite clearly in a trunk, which is to say not in everyday use. These quilts, which had been pieced by Mama's mother, and then quilted by her and her sister, had been tucked away, put in reserve, and not because they were being temporarily stored for the summer. When a horrified Dee claims that, if the quilts are given to Maggie, she would use and consequently ruin them, Mama responds," 'I reckon she would…God knows I been saving 'em for long enough with nobody using 'em'." As Patricia Mainardi notes, "'The women who made quilts knew and valued what they were doing: frequently quilts were signed and dated by the maker, listed in her will with specific instructions as to who should inherit them, and treated with all the care that a fine piece of art deserves'" (quoted in Showalter 2001). The quilts in Mama's house had been placed in reserve because they held a certain value. That Mama had promised them to Maggie "for when she marries,” as a kind of wedding present or dowry, attests to their recognized value, and this value is being protected precisely in their not being put to everyday use.

Whitsitt, Sam. "In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'." African American Review 34.3 (2000): 443. Expanded Academic. Web. 30 Sep. 2011.

3) Dee announces that she is no longer Dee, but "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo." She has newly adopted an African name since, as she explains: "I couldn't bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me." Many readers point to Dee's proclamation of her new name as the turning point in the story, the point at which Dee pushes her mother too far. They point out that Dee is rejecting her family heritage and identity in this scene. Yet it seems to me that Dee and Mama are both right here. Mama's recounting of the family history of the name is accurate, but what the critics fail to point out is that Dee's assertion that the name comes from "the people who oppress" her is also accurate. While most readers see Mama and Maggie as having a "true" sense of heritage as opposed to Dee's false or shallow understanding of the past, both Mama and Dee are blind to particular aspects of heritage. Dee has much to learn about honoring her particular and individual family history, but Mama has much to learn about the history of African Americans in general, and about fighting oppression. Although each is stubborn, both Dee and Mama do make a concession to the other here. Dee tells Mama that she needn't use the new name if she doesn't want to, while Mama shows her willingness to learn and to use the name.

Farrell, Susan. "Fight vs. Flight: a re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'." Studies in Short Fiction 35.2 (1998): 179+. Expanded Academic. 30 Sep. 2011.

4) Wangero despises her sister, her mother, and the church that helped to educate her. Her quest is ultimately selfish, and Walker focuses the reader's growing dislike for the heroine in her indifference to Maggie. Maggie represents the multitude of black women who must suffer while the occasional lucky "sister" escapes the ghetto. Walker symbolizes this by the burning of the original home and Maggie who lives with the scars of this fire, a conflagration Wangero had welcomed. While Wangero did not set the fire, she delighted in its obliteration of the house that represented everything she sought to escape. This burned house represents a history of violence from slavery to the pervasive inner-city violence of subsequent decades. The fire, that is, is the African American past, is a conflagration from which assorted survivors stumble forward, and covers like Maggie with scars of the body or like Wangero with scars of the soul.

Cowart, David. "Heritage and deracination in Walker's 'Everyday Use.' (Alice Walker)." Studies in Short Fiction 33.2 (1996): 171+. Expanded Academic.. 30 Sep. 2011.

Culture Vulture Weekend!

Museum of Fine Arts 

Celebrations around the World

The Museum opens its doors for a day of celebration with free general admission for all. Enjoy family art-making activities, performances, and tours. Visit and enjoy!
10 am–4:45 pm
Free admission for all

Boston Conservatory of Music presents MuzikoMonda, 11 am and 2 pm, Remis Auditorium
Anikai Dance Theater, 11:30 am and 2:30 pm, Edward H. Linde Gallery 168
DJ Berbere, 2–4 pm, Calderwood Courtyard

2012 Roxbury Open Studios

October 4-7,  2012
MAP: ONLINE | DOWNLOAD

All eyes on Roxbury Open Studios! This annual event is an opportunity for Roxbury's visual artists to welcome the public to view and purchase paintings, drawings, sculptures, textiles, jewelry and other studio crafts. The event also provides a means for individual creativity to play its part in the cultural and economic development of Roxbury.

All events are free and open to the public. 

http://discoverroxbury.org/files/pdf/2012%20ROS%20map.pdf

From garden builders and growers to services that fight food waste or turn scraps into compost, exhibitors on Oct. 7 at the third annual Boston Local Food Festival will bring to life the so-called virtuous circle of local, sustainable food. For some fun, vendors will fill that circle with goodies, including 3 Scoops ice cream of Brighton, WholeSweets of Londonderry, N.H., offering cookies, Sprouted Raw Foods of Lexington, bringing fruit-and-nut clusters, and New World Hot Sauce of Grafton, offering Sailor’s Swagger, a pineapple hot sauce. The festival this year takes place on the Rose Kennedy Greenway and runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.