SENIORS--Tuesday Test

You will be tested on Tuesday on The Cask of Amontillado, The Portable Phonograph, The Stone Boy, and The Shawl (we will discuss this in class on Monday).

The test will include the notes that you were given on setting (types and uses of) and description (concrete details, connotative words, figures of speech, sensory images). You will be asked to demonstrate (through story examples) and apply your understanding of these elements of fiction and tools of the writer to the four above-mentioned stories. When citing story examples, it is always best to cite a MINIMUM of THREE EXAMPLES in order to prove your point. This is a minimum recommendation. Read through the notes posted on Studywiz to help you gather information. You're responsible for information on authors contained in these Studywiz notes.

More detailed questions will be asked on The Shawl in which I ask you to apply your knowledge of setting and description to writing about theme. With these questions you will be asked to think and make inferences based on evidence from the story. They will not be simple comprehension questions with simple answers.

On Studywiz I have posted a pdf. file of The Shawl that you may print out and use during the test. I have posted notes on The Shawl that you may study, but not use during the test.

Test format

1. Fill ins
2. true-false
3. short answers (many options, with some mandatory questions on The Shawl) Hint: know how setting is used in each of the four stories (irony, symbol, verisimilitude, atmosphere, shape character, organization??) and know how setting is created (concrete details, figures of speech, word connotations, sensory images).

Seniors #2 journal--In a Good Place

Online posting due BEFORE THANKSGIVING DAY. As with all journals, this should be printed and handed in at the end of the quarter in its BEST form.

I'm not always up to date on the most novel vernacular, teen or otherwise. By the time I start using some "new" expression, it's bottomed out to the level of drab cliche. So if you get a "you go, girl" or an "atta boy" from me, try not to gawk in amazement at me like I'm some ancient mariner.

Within the last year, people my age and in my small circle of very cool friends have begun to use the phrase "in a good place," as in "his boss gave him a raise today, so he's in a good place," or "her Yankees won the World Series, so she's in a good place."

Where's your "good place?"

You should answer very literally and specifically, sparing no expense. If so, then take me to some sunny exotic island in the Bahamas, send me schussing down the Rockies, or lead me to traverse your favorite hiking spot on the Appalachian Trail. Place me in the front row of a Taylor Swift or a Phish concert. I promise not to wear ear plugs.

Maybe you're the more "stay at home" type, who like Henry David Thoreau, could make a full day out of bird watching, sitting in his cabin doorway. Then stay closer to home. Take me on an easy five mile jog with your eyes ( and other senses) wide open. Walk me along your favorite local wooded trail.

I want you to be descriptive, to use the elements of setting that you recently studied and analyzed in The Portable Phonograph.

For review, what are these "elements of setting" used by authors of fiction?

They are (with examples from The Portable Phonograph that follow):

1. vivid, concrete, "real" details (in The Portable Phonograph, the "dead matted grass," the "smoldering peat," the "gnarled cheekbones" of the men---these are "real" descriptive details)
2. figures of speech ("black cloud strips like threats" "mute darkness" "scars of gigantic bombs" in TPP)
3. richly connotative words, especially ones that are mimetic (the sound of the word suggests its meaning or whether the word is negative or positive in meaning, as in "blithe," which sounds positive and "droll," which sounds negative) or onomatopoetic (the word is created from a sound---"bang"). Words in TPP like "rakish" and "wuthering" and "doddering" and "plaintive" add another layer of meaning within their contexts in the story.
4. sensory images that appeal to taste, touch, smell, sight, feel, hearing ("smoke smarting eyes" "wet blue-green notes" "moisture in his nostrils stiffened" in TPP)

This journal entry is somewhat similar to a creative writing assignment that you MAY be given soon (I say MAY because I don't know how much reading I'm going to be able to do in the near future). If I do assign a creative description, then you can use this assignment to develop your "descriptive" writing muscles before writing the real paper. If not, then at least you've practiced the art of being descriptive.

One requirement of your post at Schoolsville is that your "good place" MUST be a "good place." Please, I want no glimpses into any personal mansions of doom and gloom. As I might have said once or twice in the 70s, "Don't be such a downer, man."

For the men in The Portable Phonograph, DeBussy's music provided a soothing balm for their hurt. If you've seen The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne listened to the operatic singing of the "two Italian ladies" to take his soul to heights that not even two weeks of solitary lockup could destroy.

Can our "good places" do the same?

Today at Schoolsville

Two Schoolsville assignments

First,
Read the Journal #2 post entitled In a Good Place. You may, of course, begin to complete the assignment. You must post before the weekend is over in order to get point credit.

Make sure that you NAME your document immediately if you work in Word and that you save whatever work you do so that you can retrieve it later.


Second,
Read over some of your classmates' postings for the blog Every Picture Tells a Story, especially ones that include links to the pictures or paintings that were analyzed.

Blue Class Vocab--The Devil and Tom Walker

"Egad, Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it." So notes the observant Tom Walker after he finds cloven footprints and shocks of the Devil's hair underneath the tree in which he finds the heart and liver of his wife wrapped in the checked apron from the Walker household.

Tom is not the least bit upset about his wife's undoing. In fact, he almost feels as if he owes the Devil a bit of gratitude for the "kindness" he has done for him, the "kindness" of killing his wife. Tom may not be free from the Devil's bargain, but now he IS free from his wife's incessant nagging.

Oh well.

Post your five vocab sentences here.

Green Class Vocab--The Devil and Tom Walker

"Egad, Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it." So notes the observant Tom Walker after he finds cloven footprints and shocks of the Devil's hair underneath the tree in which he finds the heart and liver of his wife wrapped in the checked apron from the Walker household.

Tom is not the least bit upset about his wife's undoing. In fact, he almost feels as if he owes the Devil a bit of gratitude for the "kindness" he has done for him, the "kindness" of killing his wife. Tom may not be free from the Devil's bargain, but now he IS free from his wife's incessant nagging.

Oh well.

Post your five vocab sentences here.

Sophs--For "Help" With Friday's Class Assignment (see Soph Journal #1 for the writing prompt)

First listen to the video (linked here) with the sound muted. As each character appears, try to identify the teenage movie stock character. This won't be too difficult, despite the somewhat laughable fashions of the 80s. The sad truth is that everyday we will also stereotype so quickly, often just based on the way someone dresses, walks, or talks.

The Breakfast Club, a 1985 John Hughes written and directed film, first builds up its characters' stereotypes, only to shatter them to pieces. We, and the characters within the movie, see how all of these contrasting "types" are really more similar than they are different. Who would've thunk it (this expression is a cliche, the bad grammar completely necessary)? And it only took two hours of being locked into a room for a Saturday morning detention. Could life be so easy?

My capsule review of the movie? The critic in me, no longer a teen or even a young hip teacher, says that much of the movie dialogue today sounds so unreal, so exaggerated, so silly. And yes, the repeated use of the F word bothers me (I'll never get used to hearing teenagers curse). However, I have to admit that it (the dialogue) and the rest of the movie are never boring. Even in the preachy long monologues (and there are many), Hughes' characters make us care about them.

The lesson is this. Stock characters are OK in literature and film, but stereotyping in real life is dead wrong, and probably responsible for creating every hateful -ism known to mankind. Watch the film to learn that a man (or woman) shouldn't be judged by his clothes or the company that he keeps.

Sophs #1 journal and Friday's class -Your Favorite Stock Character

A stock character is a character type, often a stereotyped character, used repeatedly in genre fiction (like horror, sci-fi, moral tales) and of course, movies and television shows that like to use these character types. Examples include the mad scientist, the blond airhead, the femme fatale (sure, look it up), the rags-to-riches hero, and the conniving villain.

In The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom Walker exemplified the stock character known as The Miser, one who would value money over everything. You should know the Greek tale of King Midas, a miser who learned, as many do, that wealth isn't everything. Go to this link to read the Midas tale. Tom Walker's wife was the stock Shrew, the nagging wife who browbeats her husband.

You've read enough (and seen enough tv and movies) to recognize stock characters, so tell me ...who is your favorite "stock" character?

Define the stock character type you choose and then give me some details about your specific character that proves that he or she is, indeed, stock. Of course, tell me why you enjoy your character. Choose a character from books, movies, short stories, and television shows.

I've provided an example for you, namely Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly misanthrope (he's a miser--all about money--and he's a misanthrope--a "hater of mankind") in the Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol. His love of money and disdain for Christmas characterizes the original Scrooge. Note that the word "scrooge" to denote characters like him is now regularly used in our vernacular. Scrooge overworks and underpays his loyal employee, Mr. Bob Cratchit. Cratchit, a good and holy family man, has bills to pay and a crippled son (Tiny Tim) to take care of, and he faces his trying responsibilities with Christian fortitude. He even refuses to admit to his poor family that Mr. Scrooge is a bad man. You might say that Cratchit is a stock character himself, the "poor but happy" fatherly figure whose diligence and Christian piety keep his family in food and clothes.

Back to Mr. Scrooge, who grudgingly allows poor Bob to stay home on Christmas Day, but orders him to arrive earlier the next. He greets holiday well wishers, like his kind nephew, with a "Bah, humbug" that of course, is now universally recognized as the reply of the Christmas Scrooge. Suddenly, however, his world is turned inside-out when he is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley, his former business partner and a scrooge like himself. The forlorn ghost, who now does penance by walking the earth in heavy chains, money boxes, and keys, warns Scrooge to mend his ways, lest he suffer the same fate.

Scrooge is shaken, but falls asleep. During the rest of the well -known story, he is visited by three Christmas ghosts. He then undergoes a miraculous change. The new Christmas loving Scrooge sends a huge turkey to the Cratchit home, raises Bob's salary, and becomes a surrogate grandfather to Tiny Tim.

This Christmas tale is a story of faith, faith in humanity and the goodness that lies within us all. These qualities were once buried in Ebenezer Scrooge, but were unearthed in the joyful end of the novel.

If you need some more help, see the Schoolsville post entitled, Sophs--Breakfast, Anyone? More Stock Characters!

Seniors #1 journal--Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It?

This is your first journal assignment of the second quarter. Read the assignment in class today (Tuesday, Nov. 10), do a little web browsing, start writing, name and save your document, and then finish and post before the weekend is over. Of course, you'll have to print out your response and turn it in with your journal at the end of the quarter. That's nothing new.

Rockin' Rod Stewart borrowed the old cliche that "every picture tells a story" for an uptempo rocker of a song (is there any other kind?) of the early 70s. Treat yourself to an itunes download or a free play at your favorite download site like Rhapsody (just don't do it now in class). Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Woods, formerly with Stewart's band called The Faces, plays a searing lead guitar in the song. Yes, I did see Rod Stewart and The Faces in concert at the soon to be defunct Spectrum in Philly.

This info (or even the quick listen) won't help you with your assignment, but it will add to your limited knowledge of 70s rockers. No, the 70s weren't completely disco, though even Rockin' Rod would sadly succumb to the strings and strobe lights, too.

Your assignment?

Analyze a painting or photograph

Step I: Look at the painting/photograph and describe what you see objectively without editorial comments. Note figures, colors, objects, etc.

Step II: Begin to analyze the painting/photograph, with attention to lines (specifically, where is your eye drawn?), shapes, balance, emphasis, contrast, proportion, unity, harmony, colors, etc. Here is an excellent link to a web site that will help novices like us to know WHAT and HOW to analyze. You don't have to analyze EVERYTHING, just enough of what you see and understand.

Step III: Now, based on WHAT you've seen, reflect on how the painting/photograph makes you feel and/or what story (or message) it tells. Look for symbols, especially, in doing this.

I suspect that we're all rank amateurs here (if there IS a artist in the class, please speak up and teach us the art), so don't feel intimidated or fear that you'll be wrong in whatever choice you make.

Here's a photograph by award-winning photographer Annie Liebowitz that I'll use as an example.

Pictured below are actress Gweneth Paltrow and her mother, actress Blythe Danner.

The photograph tells a very human and real story.

It was taken a short time after Paltrow's father and Danner's husband, Bruce Paltrow, passed away.

In the photo, Danner, in a mourning black turtleneck, has ironically assumed the role of her deceased spoused, that of the comforting father figure. Danner looks a trifle sad, but more brave. She peers directly into the camera lens. Nestled closely to her daughter, she provides physical and emotional support, embracing her around the waist, her left shoulder buttressing Paltrow's forlorn figure.

Paltrow, in a white dress that falls off her left shoulder, is Danner's little girl who submissively accepts her mother's warm embrace. Her eyes closed, she also looks sad, but peaceful. Note that Paltrow's hands are locked with her mothers. Paltrow's white fallen dress reinforces her need for comfort, to be clothed, warmed, healed, by her mother's touch.

This posed, staged, photograph, is a work of art. It was not snapped by some digital camera carrying fan and downloaded hastily on the internet. It begs for analysis, as it is more than just a "pretty picture."

Of course, so does Jamie Wyeth's painting Patriot's Barn, a print of which hangs in my family room. Headed north on DE 82, the barn can be found on the left hand side of the road about a half a mile before entering Centreville or about a mile after you pass the entrance to Winterthur.
Wyeth painted this soon after the tragedy of 9-11. I'm not entirely sure if the flag was ever really on the barn (it isn't on there now), or if Wyeth added the image for his painting.


Regardless, it is the flag that makes the barn, and the painting, so patriotic. It's emblazoned on the whitewashed barn, and its reflection (emphasizing and symbolizing both Wyeth and the barn painter's patriotism) is cast in the pond that lies at the base of the painting. The somewhat subdued blue sky symbolizes perhaps, the uneasy atmosphere that enveloped our world after the bombings. The red and blue colors of the flag, and the green of the rolling landscape are more alive. Alive with hope and patriotism, because of the patriot painters--the owner of the land and Wyeth. Their shared message is as loud and clear as the sight of the star spangled banner (and that the national anthem that it inspired) that flew over Ft. McHenry during the bombing of Baltimore during the War of 1812. American patriotism cannot be defeated.

To me, this painting is a patriotic equivalent to the Marines who raised Old Glory after the Battle of Iwa Jima during WW II (see link to this famous Life magazine photograph). I especially enjoy this painting because the barn sits about five miles from where I live, and when I pass it, I think of Wyeth's painting.

So, this is your assignment. Find a photograph or a painting that also begs closer study and analysis, and do so, as I have done. Refer back to the beginning of this post for specific directions.

Here are some other examples of photos and paintings (that you may write about) that I might have talked about in class had I been in school (in order, Nighthawks, Edward Hopper; Willie Nelson, Annie Liebowitz; Elvis Presley's Phonograph; Annie Liebowitz; The Singing Butler, Jack Vettriano.



IMPORTANT NOTICE: AS SOON AS YOU BEGIN WORK IN A WORD DOCUMENT, SAVE IT AND NAME IT, IN CASE YOUR WORD CRASHES. IF THE DOCUMENT IS NAMED, IT CAN USUALLY BE RETRIEVED.



P lease print me a copy of your photograph or painting to include with your written analysis when you turn in your journal at the end of the quarter.

Green Class Kennedy's Inaugural Address

Post your answers to the handout questions here at Schoolsville.

And remember:

"Ask not what St. Mark's can do for you, ask what you can do for St. Mark's"

Blue Class Kennedy's Inaugural Address

Post your answers to the handout questions here at Schoolsville.

And remember:

"Ask not what St. Mark's can do for you, ask what you can do for St. Mark's"

Seniors-- Friday lab exercise on The Portable Phonograph

I'll send along some notes on The Cask of Amontillado and The Portable Phonograph next week. You'll read two more stories that use setting in a special way sometime next week (bring your copy of your Points of View paperback to class next week, too). Unfortunately, both stories will likely submerge you into the sad depths of the human soul even deeper than these first two. But cheer up. There's today's lesson and, hopefully, I'll be back to show you a movie that should bring a smile to everyone's face.

Consider today's exercise a curious mixture of themes presented in the somber short story, The Portable Phonograph, and a movie called The Bucket List, a recent film in which two older men make a list of things they want to do before they die or "kick the bucket."

I'd like to know what you consider important, so here's the exercise.

Before you meet your maker, you will be granted all of these last wishes.
Make your choices, and briefly explain in a sentence or two.

Think. Have some fun. Without the threat of a thermonuclear war or even a test hanging over your head. Post before the end of the weekend if you don't finish in class today.

1. final thing to read (OK, so even if you don't like to read, this is your final reading of anything, so with that in mind, seriously consider your decision)
2. final song that you'll hear played
3. movie or tv show that you'll watch one last time
4. final website you'll visit (www.schoolsville.blogspot.com, of course)
5. final meal (some Duck a l'Orange, perhaps?)
6. place you'd like to visit (The Masters Golf Tournament)
7. you get instant knowledge on any one of life's great serious mysteries
8. you get instant knowledge on any one of life's great head-scratchers (make this humorous, like why do people think The Office is funny?)
9. other than any of the above, one last activity you'd like to do
10. now this isn't a wish, but tell me a prized possession that you would literally guard with your life

Seniors SAT vocab words 4: All Sections!

All seniors, regardless of section, should post their vocab sentences here. From your list of vocab words provided at Studywiz, use any five of them correctly in context.

You will be tested on these vocab words on Monday. I'll choose thirteen sentences from those that are posted here. I'll try to select some of the first sentences posted.

"Never fool with the eyes"

In a strange case of life imitating art (remember, seniors, The Lucid Eye in Silver Town?), my right eye, like the left one four years ago, succumbed to a potent combination of old age, myopia, and some bad genes, I think.

I'll spare you with the details, but I'll leave you with a link that explains the science of a retinal tear, interesting reading, I think, unless you happen to be the victim of a frightening phenomenon that effects roughly fifteen per cent of the population.

My doctor has prescribed two weeks of solid reclining rest. This means about ninety per cent of my day consists of "down time," no walking around, no looking down, no activity that would compromise the laser welds that now keep my retina properly attached to the back of my eye so that I can see. A retina that detaches from the eye literary floats in the eye ball, and unless reattached, blindness ensues.

Right now I can see fairly well, sharp enough to read the next to the final line on the eye chart (wearing my glasses, of course), but my field of vision is obstructed by items called "floaters," black strands and specks of blood that literary float in the liquid vitreous of my eye. If nothing else worsened with my eye, I could live a functioning life dealing with these nuisances.

However, the health danger that I might still have to face is the prospect of developing more retinal tears. For how long? Well, until the shrinking vitreous completely pulls away from the retina. Again, see this link if you really want to understand the process.

Four years ago my doctor lasered five retinal tears in my left eye. The retinal didn't detach, and my corrected vision is great. He took a digital internal picture of that eye's retina that I'll try to find to show you some day. You can see the circles of laser welds that surround the retinal tears. Very cool, but a bit unsettling if it's "your" eyes.

I'm in no physical pain, but I'm not very comfortable, either. I'm asking for your patience with the work I've assigned, work that's not very creative, I'm sure. But please bear with it, and with me, while I convalesce.

Please complete your assignments and do what you're asked. I'm so fortunate that Mrs. Eanes, Mr. Frankum, Ms. O'Keefe, Mr. DeGennaro, and Mrs. Reilly have pitched in to help out. You are fortunate, too.

For all of you who have sent their best wishes and prayers, I thank you. Hope to "see" you soon.