Your four blog/journal writings this marking period were:
1. Favorite Work of Art
2. The American Dream
3. God's Providence
4. Honor Code
Your will turn in a printed copy of these four blogs on Tuesday, October 27 to count as a 40 point journal grade. So to get a good grade, make sure that each of your blogs is double-spaced, a minimum of 200 words (I will count words if the entry looks incomplete), titled (as titled above), and written clearly and grammatically. Of course, your response should effectively respond to the blog prompt. You may, and you are ENCOURAGED to, edit your original comments that you posted for content and written expression. You will lose points for turning in this assignment late.
This will be your final major grade for the marking period, so try to do your best work.
Seniors Creative Writing Blog #4: Understanding Your "Poetry Out Loud" (response due Wednesday, Oct. 28)
To perform a proper oral interpretation of your poem you must fully understand it: the poet's choices of structure, genre (narrative or lyric, on a simple level; on a more specific--sonnet, ode, ballad, villanelle, etc. ), rhyme scheme, meter, sounds, images, poetic figures of speech, symbols,tones, etc.
Write a (200 word or more) paragraph on why you chose your poem, what it means (to you?), and just as importantly, "how" it means. The "how" refers to the poet's artistic choices that developed and complimented the meaning of the poem. Post your paragraph here at the blog.
Read the archives from November 2014 to read what poems some students in the class of 2015 chose to write about and recite for Poetry Out Loud.
Seniors Creative Writing Blog # 3: Cheesy Movie Dialogue (due Friday 10-23)
Complete before Friday's (10-23) class:
I'll proudly pronounce that no melted real cheese tastes better than Velveeta, the processed food substitute that to me, out cheeses the real thing. You could slop on that velvety yellow goo on anything, even broccoli, and you'll get my taste buds standing at attention. Put it on a Geno's cheese steak in South Philly, and well, my buds are marching while my jaws are munching.
My plebeian, if not bad, taste, does not begin and end with food. Quote Shakespeare if you want to impress the OTHER English teachers 'round here; I'm a sucker for a cheesy movie line. The cheesy movie line, like its Velveeta counterpart, isn't so REAL, but boy is it so GOOOOOOD.
Come on. Admit it. When you're watching a movie for the umpteeth time, you patiently wait for your favorite cheesy bits of dialogue as you smile, or roll on the floor in hysterics, or maybe even grow sad for a moment, or pump your fist with emotion. It doesn't matter that the lines seem so unrealistic, so contrived, so "cheesy." They're infinitely satisfying.
So you say you need some examples? Well, from my era, I've got ...
"No one puts Baby in the corner!" (Patrick Swayze says this to Baby's dad in Dirty Dancing) Swayze continues to heap on the sauce: "I do the last dance every year, and I'm going to do it again this year. Except I'm going to do it my way." Swayze has fallen in love with the young city rich girl and now wants to protect her.
"I'm the King of the World." (Leonardo DiCaprio in The Titanic) This is Leo's cry to show his love Rose that even a poor cabin boy can dream big dreams.
Even so-called "real" mobster movies aren't exempt. In The Godfather, for example, a chubby hit man by the name of Clemenza blows out someone's brains and then instructs his gang, "Leave the gun, take the cannolis" (an Italian dessert pictured above).The line shows the mobster's callousness and lack of compassion. Who could eat after killing someone? Clemenza could.
Dialogue in movies, drama, and prose, for that matter, isn't always very realistic. That's the great illusion. No one WE know would ever talk as they do in the movies, or even as they do in novels, but given the boring alternative, we also know that we want our characters to talk EXACTLY as they do.
Good dialogue may sometimes get a little cheesy, but at least it is NOT ordinary. To me, the trick is to write extraordinary, fascinating, or at least, interesting dialogue, and make it SEEM entirely natural for the situation. The pros, in any profession, make the difficult look easy: Steph Curry hits a three pointer as Luciano Pavorotti used to hit the high notes--with ease.
So when you read a novel or story, watch drama, film, or TV, listen carefully to the dialogue and then think about its purpose within its scene. Dialogue can create character, conflict, dramatic tension, move the plot along, or make us laugh, cry, and get angry. It sounds real although we know it's completed fabricated.
Assignment: Write about your favorite movie lines, their cinematic origins, their speakers, and then explain why you love them so much in 200 words or more. Focus on how each movie line "works" effectively within the movie. I would think that if you came up with a list of your TEN favorite lines complete with 20-30 word explanations, then you would have completed the assignment.
SOPHOMORES Journal #4: Puritan Public Censure and Today's Honor Codes (due Oct. 22)
"Resolved, never to speak evil of anyone, so that it shall tend to his dishonor, more or less, upon no account except for some real good." Jonathan Edwards
Puritans believed in public censure, publicly and formally naming, condemning, and sometimes banishing sinners and criminals from their communities. So it was perfectly fine "to speak evil of someone" if "some real good" would come from it--like "calling someone out" for being a cattle thief, a cheater, or even a witch. The community would be better off with the sinner identified, punished, and hopefully, rehabilitated. Even today, some schools, mostly religious universities and service academies (like Brigham Young University and West Point), have honor codes, where the entire school community is in charge of policing virtues like honesty and chastity. What you might call "snitching" might be considered a moral duty to keeping the school community "clean." Success is only valued when it is achieved in an honest way.
Respond to one of these three prompts:
1. Research honor codes to find where they are still present today. Even better might be to find recent news articles where these legacies of Puritanism have been tested (hint: try Google News). Write a synopsis of your research and/or then discuss the pros and cons of honor codes that you have found through research.
2. If you're a man or woman more interested in providing solutions than in researching problems, then, as an alternative assignment, tell me how you think an honor code (one that promotes academic and personal integrity) might (or might not) work at Saint Mark's. Integrity is supposedly one of our core values, so shouldn't we actively promote and foster its presence?
3. Again, like #2, you want to be proactive. Brainstorm and then write your ideas to foster a climate of integrity at Saint Mark's, going beyond the Honor Code idea. Tell the readers at Schoolsville (especially those in the Ukraine) how we can foster integrity in everything that we do--in our clubs, classrooms, sports, performing arts, etc.
#3 Soph Journal 9-11 Blog : Post comments by October 13
Listen carefully to this video of Mr. Jerry Falwell (it appears below), a minister and founder of Liberty University; and Pat Robertson, a former minister and televangelist, speaking two days after the 9-11 catastrophe (the text of the video appears below).
Both men had (Falwell is deceased now) strong, conservative, religious opinions. For instance, both men decried the fact that prayer could not be said in public schools. The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union, the group to which the men refer] fought to keep prayer out of public schools, so they were seen as religious enemies by Robertson and Falwell. This is just a brief summary to explain the political and historical context of the two men's words.
Robertson and Falwell are firm believers in God's providence--God as the provider and God as the punisher, too. They are not unlike the early Puritans in this way.
Here is a transcript of the video (with some additional words before the video begins):
JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters - the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the leaders of ISIS--what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact--if, in fact--God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.
JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
1. Do you agree with or disagree with Falwell and Robertson? Explain your answer in a thoughtful response. Specifically agree with or refute specific ideas that they expressed in this video.
2. Relate a personal story in which you believed God played an important role in answering a prayer. 3. Discuss an incident that occurred in American history where someone, or some group of people, were persecuted for their religious beliefs OR for not having any religious beliefs. Explain your feelings on this incident. As always, write a minimum 200 word response.
