COA Novel final response

          After finishing the COA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie, I can now see that growing up is hard. Kids go through many hardships such as depression, parental divorce, and death. In my COA book Junior goes through many hardships.
           When Arnold "Junior" Spirit Left his school on the rez to go to the all white school in Rearden his "tribe" wasn't happy. They shunned him when he came home from his school which was 22 miles away from home. The only ones who accepted him were his family. This put Junior through a lot of depression. The only thing he looked forward to was his semi girlfriend Penelope. It didn't help the poblem when his grandmother died from a drunk driver. Death and depression are problems lots of teenagers have gone through. There isn't a specific way to deal with them other than to just not worry about it.
          I don't usually think about the concept of COA to mch but as I do I realize that I don't really have too many problems. My parents are divorced but I don't mind it, and I'm not depressed. The thing that gets to me is death. When anybody close to me dies it just sucks. I don't cry about it but the fact that I'll no longer see that person again bugs me. Junior doesn't get a break from death either, but I guess it's only the fact that everyone dies and we'll all jus gonna have to learn how to deal with it.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

          There are times in life when you feel like you have nobody to talk to. You feel all alone without someone you can really open your true feelings to. Sometimes it's because of you wanting to be your true self or because of some weird physical issue you have. Well in the coming of age novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie really illustrates these feelings with young Arnold "Junior" Spirit. Junior is a teenage boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation with his parents. He was born with too much "Brain Grease" in his skull, and has suffered from some brain damage from the surgical procedures taken place to flush it all out. He draws MANY cartoons as basically an escape from his bad life on the reservation His sister left the "Rez" because she didn't want to deal with it anymore. Junior has one friend, Rowdy. He is the toughest kid on the Rez and has tons of anger issues. He loves comic books so that's why Junior and Rowdy interact so well together. When Junior left the reservation school to go to Reardan High (an all white school that is 20 miles away from his house) he loses his only friend because he is a "traitor".

          The important themes that I found in this book are love and isolation. When Junior did move there he did befriend a nice attractive girl named Penelope. She is a popular, pretty, smart girl. She basically shocked the entire school when she befriended Junior. I found this to be very sweet and noble of Penelope to not care what others thought of her hanging out with Junior. Her father is also a racist which adds to the amount of bravery she has on the matter of her new friend. Even with these new perks Junior is still feeling depressed. Half Indian at home, half white at school. It seems kind of lonely for him to have to travel 40 miles a day and still not be able to interact with people. He gets bullied everywhere he goes because he looks like the perfect target for oncoming attackers.

          I find Junior to be one of my favorite book characters. He wants to pursue art as his career and have a successful life. His parents used to have dreams when they were Juniors age too. His dad wanted to be a professional musician. But he didn't take the chance to pursue it. That's why I admire the way Junior is so bent on trying to get something he really wants to do, and that is to become a professional artist. I believe that is another reason he left a school. One of my favorite things that Junior says is that "If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percent of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everyone will get it." (page 5). I like the way he is setting up his future and I cannot wait to see what happens next.  

 

Extended Response (Spring Break HW #3)

 The sinking of the Titanic was caused by an optical illusion that hid the iceberg that sunk the ship. In the article "Did the Titanic Sink Because of an Optical Illusion?"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Did-the-Titanic-Sink-Because-of-an-Optical-Illusion.html, it gives scientific evidence that the iceberg that sunk the titanic may have been hidden by an optical illusion.
  

  In the article it states that there was an optical illusion that hid the iceberg from the view of the captain. You see what happened was during the first night the ship went sailing there were "Atmospheric conditions in the area that night that were ripe for super refraction." What this means is that there was an extraordinary bending of light that caused miraging. British Historian Tim Maltin discovered that multiple ships in the area were also experiencing these issues with the environment. Because of this the light hid the iceberg in a fake horizon. 

Now because of this issue it was also the reason that ship didn't get any rescue from any nearby ships. When the Titanic set off the flares the light that hid the iceberg in the fake horizon hid the flares in one too. Because of this happening no ships were even aware of the ship sinking or even being in any trouble. Maltin got this evidence by asking survivors of the tragedy and checking weather logs of the night of the sinking.

  After reading the article "Did the Titanic Sink Because of an Optical Illusion?" I now have new found information on the sinking of the famous ship. I find this to be very interesting because you would think that sip Captains would be trained with the skills to avoid this problem. But since it was 100 years ago I guess Captains were different back then. This puts a lot of untold mysteries and questions that I had about the sinking of the Titanic to rest and the fact that it was also the environment that lead to the sinking of this ship.  

Plagiarizing (Spring Break HW #2)

  1) What the student did wrong was he copied the writing of another person without giving them credit. They could have cited the source to give the author credit.

  2) "There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church,reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion.To the left of the painting there is a massive dark structure that develops an even greater sense of size and isolation." As it is stated in the article A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings. http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html

  3) There are some ways you can avoid plagiarizing is to A) Cite your source      B) Quote it       Or      C) Rewrite it in your own words.

Student Blog Responses (Spring Break HW #1)

Student blogs


  Two students who I thought did a particularly good job on their blogs were Joyce's post on comparing Peeta and Gale in The Hunger Games, and Ruby's on It's Kind of a Funny Story. Both of their posts were particularly well written and made very good points that I could relate to.
  I really liked Joyce's post on the comparison of Peeta and Gale from The Hunger Games because it was very well written and it did have some points that i can agree with. For one I am not on any particular "team" in the concept of liking Gale or Peeta, I do think they do have their own differences where there are beneficial traits and not so beneficial traits. I agree with Joyce's points on Peeta. He is very caring and usually puts others before himself, and I think Joyce did a very good job on implying these traits he has. The bad part about these traits is that in his selfless way of life he could put others lives before his and this could lead to his death. On the other hand I did think her points on Gale were true. I always thought of him as a noble and strong person who wanted to be free from the Capitol, she then included how this urge to be free created an act of recklessness that lead to some deaths.
  Ruby's post on It's Kind of a Funny Story was well thought out and greatly written with excellent grammar and vocabulary. She started out by connecting her life experiences to the characters life and choices. She wrote about how she would like to just drop all of her homework and just not do it, accept the zero and move on. She then goes into how that after reading the book that this is what the main character has done and that he didn't turn out to great. He just kept on letting the work build up to the point where it was unfix able. She learned that she will inevitably have to complete the assignments and will continue to have to do them again and again and again. The reason I liked her post was because this is exactly how I feel when I'm doing my work and it can get stressful and repetitive. I for one would just love to drop everything and just have freedom but I know that since I'm going into high school grades are going to start to be very important and I'm going to have to start to take them very seriously.
  After reading these two posts I will start to incorporate the techniques they used more into my blogs. From Ruby's I learned to start talking more about my life in my future posts and to start giving more of my thoughts. From Joyce's I should split up the paragraphs differently in sort of an essay style and to probably to some more comparing of characters and their choices. 

Romeo and Juliet

Dear person,

After watching act 1 being performed 1 observation I've made is that there is a great hatred between the Montague's and the Capulets. This is obviously part of the reason why Romeo and Juliet kill themselves. What was really stupid in my opinion was that it took two family members of both sides to die for them to realize their flaws and to stop fighting. As for the writing, it is very difficult to understand. He alters words that we use daily that keep the same meaning but feel very awkward to say. I for one am pretty excited to perform this play. It seems like you don't really know about theatre and that junk until you perform this play.

Sonnet Response

          In one of the sonnets we read Another sonnet for Stephan it is sort of like the author is reciting on little parts of the lifeline of a friend or family member. The sonnet starts off with a little boy, four or five years old, and saying how they'd play together and have a fun time. The next line is about how the boy is aging into a college student, who is handsome smart and very gifted and becoming a mature adult. The sonnet the goes on to explaining how the boy is an adult who is very successful but seems to be "fighting back attackers of his health". Now when you think of someone fighting an illness you would think of cancer. The next line is basically saying that the boy is now dead, but his memory lives on.

          For me it seems that the poem is told from the point of view of Stephan's father. It gives the feeling that the author is watching this person grow and guiding him through life. I particularly liked this sonnet because this young boy grew up into a successful business man with great wealth. The author seemed to be very proud of the achievements that the man accomplished in his life. The sonnet also gives a hint that the mans life was short. In the second line it says that he was creating business plans and paths to wealth. This gives me the hint that he was sort of fresh outta college and putting together his plans for his career.  

            

I really liked this sonnet, it stood out to me compared to the other ones. I really liked that Stephan was successful even in a time of health problems. It seemed that his life was a looked upon from the fathers point of view as a very proud and nice example. I especially liked that even when Stephan died his memory and life was lived on in the heart of his father. That was why I really liked this sonnet

Sonnet

I love to watch the evening sun go down

Big red ball of fire miles away from earth

Go down into the evening sunday ground

Goes down into the evening sunday ground

Goes down into the cold dark city dirt

Brings darkness to the world for a few hours

City creepers come out and walk about

Where the moon comes out and overpowers

Parties break out in loud echoing shouts

Kids sleep through the night in their comfy beds

Then the sun rises up out of the dark

People wake up after resting their heads

Adults get up and get ready for work

And when the day is done and there's no more sound

I love to watch the evening sun go down

Poem hw

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it sit there and rot?
Is it shunned and forgotten?
Is it put away 'til later?
Or just thrown away?

What is success? We have all succeeded in something. To some people it's special, to others it's nothing. You get a feeling of accomplishment, for others it just came and went. This can be the best feeling that you will never wanna give up, when you're about to get it don't mess things up :P

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is a Slovakian artist born in Pittsburg. He got interested in the life of an artist early on in his life. As a kid he always dreamt of being around interesting famous people. When he got into art, he was instantly famous for his paintings of celebrities, sometimes even more famous than the celebrities themselves.

He is well known for his painting the Lavender Marilyn, painted in 1962. He created it to capture the natural beauty of Marilyn Monroe, and to show the fine details about her. It was a silkscreen on canvas private collection. It was usually an honor to get a self portrait done by Warhol and the paintings usually become infamous.

What I like about this painting is the fine details he puts in his art to give it more of an emphasis. The big red lips, the blues eye shadow, the buttery yellow hair, the more I look at it the more I come to appreciate the piece. There aren't as many artists in our time as there were in the 20th century and I think that we're lucky to have art programs in our school to keep those dreams "alive."




Shaboopie.

20th century kids

From reading more and more of the Basketball Diaries by Jim Carrol it seems like the kids living in the 20th century seem more active than the kids of the 21st. I'm close to the end of the book so there isn't really much to say about it. I really like this book because it doesn't seem like there is a main conflict. By that.I mean the book is basically a journal from the point of view of a 15 year old on a basketball team in New York. I really like this about the book, because it seems to often that I read a book where the plot is easy to guess what will happen. But its different in this book like something new always happens in every chapter. I recommend that everyone reads it.

Basketball diaries

          The kids from basketball diaries are both the same and different from the modern day adolescents in today's society. The kids like to get into trouble and disobey adults and all the normal teenager crap. But what I've started to enjoy more about the kids of 1963 is that their lives seem more dangerous and exciting. Running from the cops and jumping off rocks into lakes from 80 feet in the air.
          In the basketball diaries the kids seem to be living their lives at the age of 13. They're out drinking in the woods and partying. It sounds like a pretty decent life. What I'm waiting for is for them to finally get caught by someone. That is sort of my thesis on what is going to happen in the next part of the book. They've almost been caught for smokin pot or drinking so I dont think they can lay low forever.
          As I said I'm really enjoying this book. The kids are both the same and different from the modern day adolescents in today's society. The kids like to get into trouble and disobey adults and all the normal teenager crap. But what I've started to enjoy more about the kids of 1963 is that their lives seem more dangerous and exciting. Running from the cops and jumping off rocks into lakes from 80 feet in the air.

The Basketball Diaries Response

The book takes place in 1973 New York City and follows a group of 13 year olds in a basketball team. They have the life that I envy. The book is journal entries from the point of view of one of the players on the team. The kids have a pretty lucky life. It seems like the kids back in the 1900s seem to have more freedom then kids do in the 21st century. It doesn't seem like their parents give a crap where their kids end up going. They can leave the house without anyone objecting or asking where they're going.
The good part about their freedom is that they can stay in touch and not lose their friendship. Their group started on a basketball team that happens to be very good. The main character just moved to another neighborhood and the basketball team is one of their last forms of contact with each other. That's where their freedom comes in, in stead of just losing all communication with each other they jump on the back of a moving bus and take it where ever they go. It's funny that these kids are kinda living their lives at the age of 13.
The issue about their freedom is that they sort of get a sense that they can do what ever they want and not really get busted for it. They'd vandalize houses and when the cops come they run and don't really get why they were in trouble. One example was when they were on the ferry they started sniffing glue. When they were high I guess they couldn't handle it or something but they started to vomit over the edge. But their vomit went in the face of a big guy. They hauled ass and got as far away from the guy as they could.
So as you can see their lives are definitely filled with excitement and that's how I'd like to live mine. What I especially liked about the book is that their basketball is what's keeping them together. I also like the style of writing, that it's journal entries instead of just what's happening every second and what the character is thinking at that moment, I like that style of writing.

2 Voice Poem American child and Iraqi child.

          People lied to me:
They said my dad wasn't dead
They said my father would send a gift.


          I'm so sad:
My family got killed in front of my house.
I didn't get the new Call of Duty.


          I got beaten:
Because I stood up to the soldiers.
By the other team in basketball.


          I have a dream:
To leave this place and go live in the US.
To play for the New York Jets.


          I am just a boy: 
I fight for my life everyday.
I go to school everyday.


          

The Catcher In The Rye

          I am close to finishing the book The Catcher In The Rye and it is a great classic. Holden is one of my favorite book characters. He's really grown on me and I'm starting to get who he is. I like how he handles other people even though he gets his ass kicked in between most of the chapters. He mouths off to pretty much everyone he knows. He doesn't deal with "morons. Even though he's dropped out of three colleges he seems to have more knowledge about the world then anyone else. He knows who's a phony and who's real and who's a moron and who's a genius, so I guess you could say he knows what  he's talking about when he mouths off to you. But he's a pacifist so if he starts to fight with someone he doesn't fight back. They usually punch him once and he goes down. But he has dreams of putting everything down and just moving away and living in the mountains or someplace away from society. I'm too used to living in the city so if I were to move away and live in solitude I'd probably go insane. 

2 articles response

          The articles I found really made me start to think "how did we get to this point?" I found two articles that made me think "that's unbelievable!"
          The first one was an article about cheating husbands in Hong Kong. A new law was passed saying that if a husband cheats on his spouse, she is legally allowed to kill her cheating husband but MUST use her bare hands. She can also send the cheating husband to a work camp for up to two years, and the original spouse is allowed to take half the possessions of the secret women, regardless of the original owner. This law is crazy and in my opinion unnecessary. If you make the bad decision and cheat on someone it shouldn't be the business of others. The two should work it out amongst themselves without murder.
          The second article I found was a law passed in the US. Apparently pizza is now considered a vegetable. This is due to the percentage of tomato sauce the product contains. It was a new law passed by congress when it was brought up to vote. This is how fat America has gotten. We have to resort to saying that pizza is now part of a required part of a 3-5 servings a day. The Obama administration tried to lower the amount of pizza children consume by declassifying it as a vegetable but their proposition was declined. 

The Holden of My Life

          In the book The Catcher In The Rye Holden is a very peculiar character that I've grown quite fond of. He's a very depressed college dropout that finds no value in people. He has very little friends  and none of his friendships ever last long. There's one thing that bugs me about him though, it's that just about everything depresses him. Sometimes things as little as people having crappy suitcases. I do like that he isn't afraid to speak his mind though. Like when he has an opinion he doesn't choke up and let people push him around he'll try to stick up for himself and be his own person. The good thing about that is he always has new ideas. He was talking to this girl that was an old friend of his who is a phony sophisticated person. He was talking about them putting everything down and just going up to the mountains and living in a log cabin. She kept telling him he was being unreasonable and that they couldn't do this, but he just kept pouring out ideas on why they must do this. The problem with this is that his nature of being a mouth off usually gets him in lots of fights through his life. He's a pacifist so when he mouths off to people he's basically pouring gasoline in the fire, rousing the other guy up until he snaps. The guy will throw a punch and Holden won't defend himself, or fight back. I know this kid who is like Holden, he would talk back to anything you'd say. He wasn't a necessarily a pacifist but a bad fighter. He threw punches like he was knocking on a door. Me and my friends would always say that on e day someone was gonna teach him a lesson. Now I'm not gonna lie this kid was one of my good friends that I've known for a while and he was just being really annoying to be around with. He'd always say obnoxious things and just all around piss you off. So one day in 6th grade on the playground in the park this kid started picking on this one of my friends who was like ten times smaller than him. He started pushing him and shoving him down the slide and I guess I thought it was my duty to take action. so I told him to knock it off. We started pushing each other around and then I started punching, He'd pull my hair and I guess he didn't realize what was going on. Then it just stopped, I stopped punching and just walked away, adrenaline pumping through my body made me walk kinda funny. So yeah that was the day I taught one of my good friends a "lesson", we are still friends today and I guess you could say he cleaned up his act. But It's different with Holden. He's been beat up countless times and the lesson just won't stick. From all the stuff that has happened to him I hope he learns it soon. But I also don't. I like the character who Holden is. He has become my favorite book character. If he were to change so would the entire book. If he started acting like everyone else he'd become another phony. That's why i like Holden, he's different.

Social Awareness

          Some social issues in my book, The Catcher In The Rye, is that Holden is very depressed. He finds no real great qualities in people or anything for that matter. He doesn't really have friendships that stick. Friends come and go and it doesn't seem to bother him. But that doesn't exclude the fact that he is longing for some type of companionship. He's only had some sort of relationship as a kid with his neighbor, her name was Jane. They would hang out all the time and not give a care in the world. But when he went to college he lost contact with her. Since then he has gotten the "axe" from three separate colleges.

          Some people who change the world everyday are high profile criminals. All the crimes they commit have a huge impact on the media. They feed them money by committing these outrageous crimes. Like the man who shot the congresswoman, that story is still being talked about on the news almost one year later. That's how a lot of the media makes money. Newspapers, online news, news television channels all thrive on these stories.

          Looking around my school I can identify multiple groups of people. From the loners to the popular crowd. They all sort of stick together. Some are part of multiple groups. Often most people as the years progress lose some friends and are no longer apart of that group. I have friends that hang out in multiple groups. There are more groups the people who play basketball everyday, the "gamers", and the kids who hang out in the lunchroom everyday. 

          

The Catcher In The Rye

In the book The Catcher In The Rye the main character Holden has been one of my favorite book characters in a while. Holden is more of a laid back i don't really care about it guy. He has dropped out of three or four colleges now and most likely won't be going to a fifth. His parents don't know that he recently failed Pencey college so before they got the news he decided to got to New York to get away from everyone. He was supposed to be sent home on Wednesday to go home but decided that he   didn't want to wait until Wednesday so he left. But as he's leaving the only thing that has been on his mind is one person, a girl named Jane Gallagher. She's one of his childhood friends who was very close. They would hang out daily and play games, go to movies and were basically best friends. But now he's sorta in a rut so to speak. He's going around New York to the local bars trying to fix his depression. He's trying to find people to dance or hang out with, but also seeing these "morons" from his past. He's paying for prostitutes to talk to him instead of having sex with him. Holden is a very cool and peculiar character. I can't wait to read the rest of this book.

Nice blogs

After reading my groups blog posts on the books to reading the two best posts would have to be Roy's and Nawreen's. I especially liked Roy's because he had a lot to say about the characters in his book. He gave loads of examples about them. I specifically liked how he gave multiple examples about how his characters are changing through the book. You can tell he's getting a lot out of it.


I liked Nawreen's post because she used a poem she wrote by herself. I like to see different things instead of the original paragraph blog post and that's why Nawreen's stood out to me. For starters I really liked the writing she used in it. And I really enjoyed reading it because I could relate to it. 


Nice job you two :)