Last Blog of the Year

The blogs I did not hate at all. I liked them actually a bit. The blogs I liked were anything I could find a fun picture for. Any blog that had to be somewhat personal and talking about myself I really enjoyed. The ones I did not enjoy were about poems. I have such a hard time understanding poems, I just get really annoyed of them. I put a lot of effort into the topics that I enjoyed and that I could really relate to and reflect upon them. I didn't put much effort into the ones that I had hard time understanding. I learned that it's actually fun doing blogs on things I enjoy. I may just start a daily journal because of the blogs. 

Advice for Miss Wolff

First I'll what I like about the class. I really enjoy the graffiti board, that must be continued. I really really like how my class is really chill, I enjoy reading stories and then we discuss the story with the graffiti board. The part of our class being chill may just be our class, we aren't extremely noisy and rebellious and disrespectful as the regular classes I have passed by and noticed. My advice would be if the honours classes aren't to noisy to try and keep it chill, because it makes the students happier and more willing to share ideas of the stories. Now the regular classes may have some very rude students, but make sure the students don't break you and stand your ground. That's all I can think of right now. Best of luck to Miss Wolff!

The Great Gatsby Playlist

1) "I Wanna Be Loved By You" by Helen Kane. Gatsby just wanted to be loved by Daisy.

2) " Nobody Lied When They Said that I Cried Over You" by Marion Harris. Gatsby became very upset when he found out Daisy had married Tom.

3)  "High Society" by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band this song would of fit the luxury theme of East Egg.

4) "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Johnny Marvin and The Leonard Joy Orchestra.  This song describes how when Gatsby felt when he had gotten Dasiy back.

Mark Twain's Wit

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
-----Mark Twain

I really like this quote. It's really funny. It means we learn a lot from trying stupid things. And the then we understand why it's so stupid. If someone carried a cat by it's tail they would remember that for life and it will always remind them that cats don't like to bed picked up by their tail. We learn things from past experiences that we would learn from nothing else. So people should try new things and experience that feeling that they couldn't get from  anything else such as sky diving.

What's Good?

I really like the Pokemon tv series. The Newer ones may seem kind of cheesy, but I still find them enjoyable. I really like Pokemon cause it's like an adventure when I play the games. Playing and watching Pokemon keeps my inner child alive. It keeps my imagination active, cause I imagine battles to myself as if they were real. And I find it fun to imagine all of this. Some will say playing the early Pokemon games was a great experience. Even though they were video games it was a journey in a box. When one started a Pokemon game they were to choose one starter Pokemon that would travel with them and fight battles alongside them. Every person that I've talked to that played Pokemon said they grew attatched to that Pokemon even though it was a game and that they would never go anywhere in the game without their friend. I have to admit this also actually. I really believe that doing something that keeps one's inner child personality alive is essential for a great life and Pokemon is what keeps it alive in me.
 

Stories of the Quest for Civil Rights

http://oralhistoryeducation.com/aparthied-stories

These just show stories of people protesting just like Bessie did for the Black Rights. This is not about Civil Rights in America, but what went on in South Africa. It's about Apartheid which is a the social and political policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by a white minority government in South Africa. I did not know Civil Rights movements was all places South Africa. People who lived in their own country still had to fight for their rights from the British who just came in and took control. 

Harlem Exploration.

I found Mr. Garvey in the second website. Mr. Garvey was in protests for black rights and this is like how Bessie was involved in protests for black rights. Mr. Garvey and Bessie were different that Mr. Garvey was born in Jamaica and Bessie was born here. I learned that Mr. Garvey wanted to take Africa out of European control and and build a free United Black Africa.

Having Your Say

I have to say honestly I have a big problem with bullying. It kind of makes me angry that kids who get bullied don't do anything. They go and get pushed around only to tell an adult or post some weird video on YouTube. When I believe they should stand up for themselves and not get pushed around by the bullies. The bullies live off the fact that these kids are crying and not doing anything about it. I feel very strongly that one should not cower away and tell someone else, but that they should stay and stand their ground and push the bully back.

Expressions in Art

This picture shows what slaves went through when they were taken away from their homeland. It was crowded and it probably smelled terrible. In this Picture it looks like the conditions were terrible for them. It  also shows the slaves to be getting whipped by a white man probably just cause he felt like it. I feel really bad for what these people had to live through.

Connections from Whitman

As soon as I read the first stanzas I can relate to them. It talks about whatever the child saw he used his imagination to imagine what it was like to become that. When I was a child I did this all time. When I saw a super cool eagle I pretended I could fly. Mostly though when on watching tv, I would imagine myself as a Jedi or a Pokemon Trainer. To be a Pokemon Trainer would be the coolest thing in the world. Whitman was talking about how much power the mind of a child had.

Emily Dickinson's Garden of Poetry

THE BEE.

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!

I think Dickinson finds bees to be enchanting. The is on a single cycle just go out get pollen return to the hive and retrieve more pollen. "His labor is a chant" This means all the bee does is work and does the same thing over and over again. 

Affirmations of Life

I guess something good that is happening today is that I get to drive my dad's car. My dad owns a Convertible 2004 Audi TT. My dad is in Oklahoma for a business trip. It is a lot of fun to drive the Audi. I got to drive it today and until my dad gets back from his trip. It is just the funniest thing when I drive that car to school and people give me the dirtiest look or the "What the crap!" look. When I drive the Audi I just feel a lot more confident in myself and I get this feeling that I can take on whatever happens that day. 

The Truth about Nature

I have had several connections to nature, mostly when i was very young. When I lived in Wheeling, IL there were baby birds on the ground and we could not find a nest nearby. My mom raised the birds in our house for a while so other animals could not eat them. I thought the little birds were really cool. After time the birds began to jump around a lot in the house. My mom then fastened a basket to a high branch in our tree. The birds would actually sleep in the basket and hangout in the tree. And my mom every now and then would come by and feed the birds.  We actually fed the bids dog food soaked in milk. The birds really had a connection to my mom. As the birds greww older they didn't hang around the basket that often and started to sleep somewhere else. The coolest thing was that the birds would come back to the tree for their meal. They would eat it out of my mom's hand. My mom always has an amazing way with animals. Another animal experiance for happened last summer. I was biking and saw a rabbit in the ally just sitting there. I came up to it and it tried to hop, but couldn't. I picked the rabbit up and it's left part of the head had a bandaid on it and under the bandaid the head was covered in fly eggs and larva and was all bloody and it had a broken left leg. I'm pretty sure the my neighbors kid shot it with a bb gun. I took the rabbit home took cleaned up the maggots and used hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound. And My mom and I made a cast for the leg. I kept the rabbit in a box and just watched it. After a while it started moving more as if it wasn't stunned anymore. the rabbit jumped high into a window and banged it's head. It was laying on the ground the cast came off and he broke his leg even more a bone was sticking out. The worst part was brain matter was coming out of his head. I took the rabbit outside and held the rabbit and then the rabbit turned stiff. The rabbit i tried really hard to save died in my hands. That experiance made the next three days pretty upsetting. I've always felt like i'm really connected to nature, but mostly animals.

Team Edgar or Team Nathaniel?

I did not enjoy the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. To me all his puritan writings were all repetitve and more annoying than 100 nine-year olds. Hawthorne's writings didn't have enough exciting fun in them. Edgar's writings were pretty cool. They all had a dark void in them that was enjoyable though. I remember seeing plays on Edgar's writings and they were really fun to watch! And also the Simpsons did a spoof on Edgar's The Raven which i liked.