Greetings:
Below you will find two major items:
1. Out of class essay assignment #2
2. Packet #4 (due to be read by Wednesday)
A couple of reminders too:
1. If you missed class today (or if you miss ANY day) be sure to get notes from a fellow student. Today I gave a lot of information that is NOT on the essay prompt below.
2. Against my better judgment, I have been a bit lenient for a few students who have not kept current with the course outline and due dates. There will be no more of this. You are ultimately responsible for reading the course outline and the blog. If you stay focused and current, you will have no major problems passing the course. That is true for any college course. It is an issue of fairness AND an issue of learning repercussions. :-)
English 1A, Sections 1, 4 and 84
Fall, 2011
Course Theme: The Significance of Home
Instructor: C. Fraga
Out of Class Essay Assignment #2 (worth 200 points total)
Assigned: Friday, Sept. 30
ROUGH DRAFT: If you wish to have me review a rough draft of this assignment, please submit it to me NO LATER Monday, Oct. 24.
Due: Friday, Oct. 28
(YOU HAVE FOUR WEEKS TO CONDUCT RESEARCH AND WRITE YOUR ESSAY…PLAN YOUR TIME ACCORDINGLY)
• Essay must follow MLA format exactly.
• Essay must be typed and double spaced.
• Thesis statement must be underlined.
• Do not write a formulaic five paragraph essay.
• Essay must have a minimum of five sources on the Works Cited page. You are welcome to use the Internet for sources, but at least one of your sources cannot be found on the Internet (for example, use a book, watch a film, conduct an interview, etc.)
• You may certainly utilize the Wikipedia website to gain background information and to locate reference sites, but you may not use it as one of your documented sources on the Works Cited page.
• You must submit the essay as instructed in class—please record the requirements during the discussion.
Essay Prompt:
• For this essay, you will first select a group of people from another culture/country that you are genuinely interested in finding out more about.
• You will then conduct research in order to discover and then write about at least three significant ways in which someone from this culture/country must adapt to life in the United States.
• You will then begin by writing a thesis that is assertive and debatable.
For example, imagine that you selected the adaptation of the Hmong once they arrive in the US. After conducting some research, you decide to present information on male and female roles in marriage, religious practices and diet as the three areas of adjustment you feel are most significant and would make the most interesting reading.
Your thesis might read something like the following:
Hundreds of Hmong people immigrate to the United States every year and face many difficult challenges, particularly in the areas of religious practices, changes in diet and male/female roles within a marriage.
There are several ways to approach this topic and make it your OWN. The prompt can be interpreted in various different ways, as we discussed at length today in class.
(An essay that asks you to address a topic such as this one would be difficult to complete in less than five or six pages, approximately.)
************************************************************
PACKET #4
1. "War Revisited"
by Nick Miller and Kel Munger
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/war-revisited/content?oid=928683
2. "Boots to Books: The Rough Road from Combat to College" (this is a video approx. 14 minutes in length)
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8c310eacfeb08aba2e7f1e29411543e9
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Tuesday, Sept. 27th, 2011, 8 pm
Hello,
Just in case you have misplaced your Unacceptable Errors Handout, see below.
In English 1A, students should already be very proficient in word usage. We do not have time for grammar lessons. (I will, however, provide short ‘mini’ lessons when I feel they are warranted.) The following errors that are commonly made on student papers are considered unacceptable.
For out of class essays, each unacceptable error takes ten points off your final earned grade. You may correct unacceptable errors and receive the points back if you choose to revise. In class essays that have unacceptable errors CAN always be corrected to earn back the points lost.
1. there – place Put it over there.
2. their – possessive pronoun That is their car.
3. they’re – contraction of they are They’re going with us.
4. your – possessive pronoun Your dinner is ready.
5. you’re – contraction of you are You’re not ready.
6. it’s – contraction of it is It’s a sunny day.
7. its – possessive pronoun The dog wagged its tail.
8. a lot – always two words I liked it a lot.
9. to – a preposition or part of an
infinitive I like to proofread my essays carefully.
10. too – an intensifier, or also That is too much. I will go too.
11. two – a number Give me two folders.
12. In today’s society Instead use “Today” or “In America” or “Now” etc
13. right(s)/write(s)/rite(s) rights are a set of beliefs or values in which a person feels entitled: His rights were read to him before he was arrested for stalking Dave Matthews. Writes is a verb indicating action taken with a pen, pencil or computers to convey a message: Michelle writes love letters to Dave Matthews in her sleep. Rites are a series of steps or events which lead an individual from one phase in life to the next, or a series of traditions that should be followed: The initiate began his rite of passage ceremony at the age of thirteen.
14. definitely/defiantly This error USUALLY occurs when a writer relies solely on spell-check. You really must learn to become the final editor of your work. Definitely is an adverb and it means without a doubt. Mary will definitely miss the Dave Matthews Band concert. Defiantly means to show defiance. She was in a defiant mood. It is an adjective. Or it could be used as an adverb. She was defiantly rude and sullen towards the professor.
***********************************************************************
An accumulation of the following errors can affect your grade, but not one error, ten points down. The number depends on how serious the error is, and how often you make it. Some do not slow up the reader as much as others.
• Misuse of the word “you”. You must actually mean the reader when you use the word “you”.
• Avoid use of contractions in formal expository writing. (can’t, shouldn’t, didn’t, etc.)
• Agreement of subject and verb. Both must be either singular or plural.
• Fragmented sentences, comma splices and run-ons. Be sure to proofread your papers carefully before turning them in.
You will not pass English 1A if you cannot write an intelligent sentence in correct English.
Just in case you have misplaced your Unacceptable Errors Handout, see below.
In English 1A, students should already be very proficient in word usage. We do not have time for grammar lessons. (I will, however, provide short ‘mini’ lessons when I feel they are warranted.) The following errors that are commonly made on student papers are considered unacceptable.
For out of class essays, each unacceptable error takes ten points off your final earned grade. You may correct unacceptable errors and receive the points back if you choose to revise. In class essays that have unacceptable errors CAN always be corrected to earn back the points lost.
1. there – place Put it over there.
2. their – possessive pronoun That is their car.
3. they’re – contraction of they are They’re going with us.
4. your – possessive pronoun Your dinner is ready.
5. you’re – contraction of you are You’re not ready.
6. it’s – contraction of it is It’s a sunny day.
7. its – possessive pronoun The dog wagged its tail.
8. a lot – always two words I liked it a lot.
9. to – a preposition or part of an
infinitive I like to proofread my essays carefully.
10. too – an intensifier, or also That is too much. I will go too.
11. two – a number Give me two folders.
12. In today’s society Instead use “Today” or “In America” or “Now” etc
13. right(s)/write(s)/rite(s) rights are a set of beliefs or values in which a person feels entitled: His rights were read to him before he was arrested for stalking Dave Matthews. Writes is a verb indicating action taken with a pen, pencil or computers to convey a message: Michelle writes love letters to Dave Matthews in her sleep. Rites are a series of steps or events which lead an individual from one phase in life to the next, or a series of traditions that should be followed: The initiate began his rite of passage ceremony at the age of thirteen.
14. definitely/defiantly This error USUALLY occurs when a writer relies solely on spell-check. You really must learn to become the final editor of your work. Definitely is an adverb and it means without a doubt. Mary will definitely miss the Dave Matthews Band concert. Defiantly means to show defiance. She was in a defiant mood. It is an adjective. Or it could be used as an adverb. She was defiantly rude and sullen towards the professor.
***********************************************************************
An accumulation of the following errors can affect your grade, but not one error, ten points down. The number depends on how serious the error is, and how often you make it. Some do not slow up the reader as much as others.
• Misuse of the word “you”. You must actually mean the reader when you use the word “you”.
• Avoid use of contractions in formal expository writing. (can’t, shouldn’t, didn’t, etc.)
• Agreement of subject and verb. Both must be either singular or plural.
• Fragmented sentences, comma splices and run-ons. Be sure to proofread your papers carefully before turning them in.
You will not pass English 1A if you cannot write an intelligent sentence in correct English.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday evening, September 26, 10 pm
Hello,
for those of you who submitted a rough draft for me to review...
please attach that rough draft with my comments to your final draft when you submit it on Wednesday. Thanks!
Also, I plan to have the in class essays you wrote today graded by Friday...that is my goal anyway! :-)
See you Wednesday.
for those of you who submitted a rough draft for me to review...
please attach that rough draft with my comments to your final draft when you submit it on Wednesday. Thanks!
Also, I plan to have the in class essays you wrote today graded by Friday...that is my goal anyway! :-)
See you Wednesday.
Friday, September 23, 2011
5 pm Friday, Sept. 23, 2011
Good afternoon,
I apologize for the trouble you are having reading the sample student essay I posted on the blog. I will make copies for you and distribute them on Monday. (It is a PDF file and I cannot seem to transfer it to a file you can read....at least not past the first page!)
I am attaching the list of study questions to consider when you are preparing for your in class writing #1 on Monday.
I am also attaching the sample introduction and supportive paragraph.
Both of these handouts were distributed in class today, along with the student sample essay.
See you Monday with blue (or green) book in hand. :-)
Happy weekend.
SAMPLE INTRODUCTION AND SUPPORT PARAGRAPH
Much has been written about the importance of reading to young children beginning from the moment they are born. In fact, many parents insist that starting the pattern of reading aloud to one’s child should begin while the child is still in the womb. Besides for the need to expose young people to books and the joys of reading in their early years, the subject matter of these books should also be considered as significant. Exposing children to a wide variety of topics certainly aids in feeding their imaginations. For example, the theme of home is found in hundreds of children’s picture books and it is a compelling theme that invites a wide variety of approaches and sensibilities.
Beloved children’s author, Beatrix Potter, wrote Peter Rabbit, a story about a little rabbit who ventures away from home, gets into mischief, and when he arrives back home, is exhausted and ill and falls directly to sleep. Certainly young listeners learn about right and wrong and what happens when a parent’s words are not heeded. Yet, even though Peter knows his mother will be disappointed in his behavior, he still wants to go home. Potter suggests that home is a safe place, away from Mr. McGregor. Potter writes, “Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir tree. He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole and shut his eyes” (27). David Jorgensen’s pastel and watercolor illustrations depict Peter as content and rather relieved as he sleeps on the floor, and later in his bed. Peter is out of harm’s way at home and he is obviously loved by his mother, who feeds him chamomile tea to soothe his upset stomach and tucks him into bed. Potter’s message about home is very clear and very comforting for children to learn: home should be a safe and forgiving place of solace and love.
THIS IS A SAMPLE ESSAY: INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH AND FIRST SUPPORTIVE PARAGRAPH ONLY.
********************************************
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG--DISCUSSION QUESTIONS---THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
1. One reviewer describes the film as a “gut-wrenching examination of the way cultural differences and emotional expectations collide.” Would you agree this is an accurate description? Why or why not? Explain specifically.
2. Were there parts of the film that made you feel uncomfortable? If so, what were those parts and can you articulate why they made you feel uncomfortable?
3. Heidi acutely feels that she has been rejected by two mothers: her birth mother who gave her up and her Tennessee mother, whose cold, untouching demeanor drove a wedge between them. How does this fact impact Heidi and what she ultimately experiences when she returns to Vietnam?
4. The film is considered a very powerful one by many other small filmmakers as well as many reviewers. In your opinion, what makes this an effective or ineffective film?
5. What preconceived ideas about home are proven inaccurate after viewing the film?
6. In an interview with the filmmakers, they admit that when they decided to film Heidi’s return to Vietnam, they assumed that the reunion would be a healing story, a kind of full circle coming home. The war in Vietnam was long over and they felt they could create a film that would ease the collective pain that is still connected to the war. Instead, what they did discover?
7. Some viewers have condemned Heidi for representing an aspect of American culture that they believe is selfish and individualized. What do you think and feel about Heidi’s reaction for the family’s request for money?
I apologize for the trouble you are having reading the sample student essay I posted on the blog. I will make copies for you and distribute them on Monday. (It is a PDF file and I cannot seem to transfer it to a file you can read....at least not past the first page!)
I am attaching the list of study questions to consider when you are preparing for your in class writing #1 on Monday.
I am also attaching the sample introduction and supportive paragraph.
Both of these handouts were distributed in class today, along with the student sample essay.
See you Monday with blue (or green) book in hand. :-)
Happy weekend.
SAMPLE INTRODUCTION AND SUPPORT PARAGRAPH
Much has been written about the importance of reading to young children beginning from the moment they are born. In fact, many parents insist that starting the pattern of reading aloud to one’s child should begin while the child is still in the womb. Besides for the need to expose young people to books and the joys of reading in their early years, the subject matter of these books should also be considered as significant. Exposing children to a wide variety of topics certainly aids in feeding their imaginations. For example, the theme of home is found in hundreds of children’s picture books and it is a compelling theme that invites a wide variety of approaches and sensibilities.
Beloved children’s author, Beatrix Potter, wrote Peter Rabbit, a story about a little rabbit who ventures away from home, gets into mischief, and when he arrives back home, is exhausted and ill and falls directly to sleep. Certainly young listeners learn about right and wrong and what happens when a parent’s words are not heeded. Yet, even though Peter knows his mother will be disappointed in his behavior, he still wants to go home. Potter suggests that home is a safe place, away from Mr. McGregor. Potter writes, “Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir tree. He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole and shut his eyes” (27). David Jorgensen’s pastel and watercolor illustrations depict Peter as content and rather relieved as he sleeps on the floor, and later in his bed. Peter is out of harm’s way at home and he is obviously loved by his mother, who feeds him chamomile tea to soothe his upset stomach and tucks him into bed. Potter’s message about home is very clear and very comforting for children to learn: home should be a safe and forgiving place of solace and love.
THIS IS A SAMPLE ESSAY: INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH AND FIRST SUPPORTIVE PARAGRAPH ONLY.
********************************************
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG--DISCUSSION QUESTIONS---THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
1. One reviewer describes the film as a “gut-wrenching examination of the way cultural differences and emotional expectations collide.” Would you agree this is an accurate description? Why or why not? Explain specifically.
2. Were there parts of the film that made you feel uncomfortable? If so, what were those parts and can you articulate why they made you feel uncomfortable?
3. Heidi acutely feels that she has been rejected by two mothers: her birth mother who gave her up and her Tennessee mother, whose cold, untouching demeanor drove a wedge between them. How does this fact impact Heidi and what she ultimately experiences when she returns to Vietnam?
4. The film is considered a very powerful one by many other small filmmakers as well as many reviewers. In your opinion, what makes this an effective or ineffective film?
5. What preconceived ideas about home are proven inaccurate after viewing the film?
6. In an interview with the filmmakers, they admit that when they decided to film Heidi’s return to Vietnam, they assumed that the reunion would be a healing story, a kind of full circle coming home. The war in Vietnam was long over and they felt they could create a film that would ease the collective pain that is still connected to the war. Instead, what they did discover?
7. Some viewers have condemned Heidi for representing an aspect of American culture that they believe is selfish and individualized. What do you think and feel about Heidi’s reaction for the family’s request for money?
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Hello!
Hope you are having an excellent weekend.
Remember to read the synopsis of the film you are watching next week that I posted on the blog.
I am looking forward to talking about the film with you on Friday.
About your out of class essay 1 assignment...
I hope that the two sample student essays (the one I distributed in class and the one I posted yesterday on the blog) have been helpful. I have received a few questions via email. Feel free to do that if you have any issues with the essay.
Yes, you can use the pronoun "I" if it is really YOUR experience. Just avoid using the redundant, unnecessary phrases: I think, I believe, etc.
A few students have asked if they can focus on songs that may not necessarily be about the theme of home but they are songs that remind them of home for many reasons...through their own personal experiences and history. That is absolutely fine!
Aloha.
Hope you are having an excellent weekend.
Remember to read the synopsis of the film you are watching next week that I posted on the blog.
I am looking forward to talking about the film with you on Friday.
About your out of class essay 1 assignment...
I hope that the two sample student essays (the one I distributed in class and the one I posted yesterday on the blog) have been helpful. I have received a few questions via email. Feel free to do that if you have any issues with the essay.
Yes, you can use the pronoun "I" if it is really YOUR experience. Just avoid using the redundant, unnecessary phrases: I think, I believe, etc.
A few students have asked if they can focus on songs that may not necessarily be about the theme of home but they are songs that remind them of home for many reasons...through their own personal experiences and history. That is absolutely fine!
Aloha.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
http://www.mediafire.com/?e5ofzo7gz75al21
Aloha,
above is a link that will take you to a pdf download of a sample student essay. This essay is one written on song lyrics and home. Just another sample for you to read through to see how one other student handled the prompt.
And remember, email me with any questions.
Aloha,
above is a link that will take you to a pdf download of a sample student essay. This essay is one written on song lyrics and home. Just another sample for you to read through to see how one other student handled the prompt.
And remember, email me with any questions.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Hello, greetings...
Below you will find a few items:
1. Background about the film you will be viewing next week on Monday and Wednesday.
2. Out of Class Essay assignment #1, which was assigned today in class.
Please check the blog later this evening. I am going to address a few more things about the essay assignment.
English 1A, C. Fraga----About the Film--Daughter from Danang (2002)
This documentary often upsets the viewers’ expectations of happily-ever-afters. It is a riveting emotional drama of longing for home, grappling with identity issues, and witnessing the personal legacy of war.
To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial “all-American girl”, hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. But her birth name was Mai Thi Hiep. Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968, she’s the mixed-race daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. Fearing for her daughter’s safety at the war’s end, Hiep’s mother sent her to the U.S. on “Operation Babylift”, a Ford administration plan to relocate orphans and mixed-race children to the U.S. for adoption before they fell victim to a frighteningly uncertain future in Vietnam after the Americans pulled out.
Mother and daughter would know nothing about each other for 22 years.
Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cure for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives and their definition of home forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run--even within one family.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Eng. 1A, Sections 1, 4 & 84, Fall 2011, Instructor: C. Fraga
ASSIGNMENT: OUT OF CLASS ESSAY #1
• Assigned: Wednesday, September 14
• Rough Draft due, typed & dbl. spaced (optional): no later than Friday, September 23rd
• Due: Wed. Sept. 28th
You have two weeks to work on this essay. Your final draft should reflect this fact.
Please select one of the prompts below and write an interesting, informative, well
supported analysis response.
Requirements:
• Must be typed and double-spaced and have a title.
• Must follow MLA format (I will explain what my expectations are for this paper)
Since the purpose of this course is to strengthen your exploratory, expository and analytical writing with an emphasis on utilizing research and reading skills…AND because the theme for this course is the significance of home…I offer you a selection of three different essay prompts that each require you to carefully and deeply examine the theme of home in a particular genre. It is my intention that you will be drawn to one of the three enough so that you are motivated and even excited to conduct your research and write the essay.
Prompt #1:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in children’s picture books. After perusing several picture books, you will select a minimum of six to discuss, analyze and review for their success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home, through both words and illustrations. In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
Prompt #2:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in song lyrics. After perusing and studying many song lyrics, you will select a minimum of six songs to discuss, analyze and review for their success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home.
In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
Songs/Lyrics you may NOT analyze (please)! ☺:
“Home” (Chris Daughtry)
“Sweet Home Alabama” (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
“Home” (Michael Buble)
“Can’t Take me Home” (Pink)
Prompt #3:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in three different films (OR at least three episodes from a television series). You will discuss, analyze and review each film (or episode) for its success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home. In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
************************************************************************
IN ORDER TO ADDRESS ANY OF THESE THREE PROMPTS FULLY AND ADEQUATELY, YOUR ESSAY SHOULD BE AT LEAST 5 PAGES IN LENGTH (approximately)
Phrases you may NOT use in your title or anywhere in your essay. Doing so will lower the overall grade you earn for the essay:
• There’s no place like home.
• Home sweet home.
• Home is where the heart is.
• Home means different things to different people.
Below you will find a few items:
1. Background about the film you will be viewing next week on Monday and Wednesday.
2. Out of Class Essay assignment #1, which was assigned today in class.
Please check the blog later this evening. I am going to address a few more things about the essay assignment.
English 1A, C. Fraga----About the Film--Daughter from Danang (2002)
This documentary often upsets the viewers’ expectations of happily-ever-afters. It is a riveting emotional drama of longing for home, grappling with identity issues, and witnessing the personal legacy of war.
To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial “all-American girl”, hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. But her birth name was Mai Thi Hiep. Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968, she’s the mixed-race daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. Fearing for her daughter’s safety at the war’s end, Hiep’s mother sent her to the U.S. on “Operation Babylift”, a Ford administration plan to relocate orphans and mixed-race children to the U.S. for adoption before they fell victim to a frighteningly uncertain future in Vietnam after the Americans pulled out.
Mother and daughter would know nothing about each other for 22 years.
Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cure for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives and their definition of home forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run--even within one family.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Eng. 1A, Sections 1, 4 & 84, Fall 2011, Instructor: C. Fraga
ASSIGNMENT: OUT OF CLASS ESSAY #1
• Assigned: Wednesday, September 14
• Rough Draft due, typed & dbl. spaced (optional): no later than Friday, September 23rd
• Due: Wed. Sept. 28th
You have two weeks to work on this essay. Your final draft should reflect this fact.
Please select one of the prompts below and write an interesting, informative, well
supported analysis response.
Requirements:
• Must be typed and double-spaced and have a title.
• Must follow MLA format (I will explain what my expectations are for this paper)
Since the purpose of this course is to strengthen your exploratory, expository and analytical writing with an emphasis on utilizing research and reading skills…AND because the theme for this course is the significance of home…I offer you a selection of three different essay prompts that each require you to carefully and deeply examine the theme of home in a particular genre. It is my intention that you will be drawn to one of the three enough so that you are motivated and even excited to conduct your research and write the essay.
Prompt #1:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in children’s picture books. After perusing several picture books, you will select a minimum of six to discuss, analyze and review for their success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home, through both words and illustrations. In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
Prompt #2:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in song lyrics. After perusing and studying many song lyrics, you will select a minimum of six songs to discuss, analyze and review for their success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home.
In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
Songs/Lyrics you may NOT analyze (please)! ☺:
“Home” (Chris Daughtry)
“Sweet Home Alabama” (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
“Home” (Michael Buble)
“Can’t Take me Home” (Pink)
Prompt #3:
For this essay you will research the theme of home as it is found in three different films (OR at least three episodes from a television series). You will discuss, analyze and review each film (or episode) for its success (or failure) in presenting the theme of home. In your analysis, be sure to consider the intended audience.
************************************************************************
IN ORDER TO ADDRESS ANY OF THESE THREE PROMPTS FULLY AND ADEQUATELY, YOUR ESSAY SHOULD BE AT LEAST 5 PAGES IN LENGTH (approximately)
Phrases you may NOT use in your title or anywhere in your essay. Doing so will lower the overall grade you earn for the essay:
• There’s no place like home.
• Home sweet home.
• Home is where the heart is.
• Home means different things to different people.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Hello,
Looking ahead in the course outline, Packet 3 is due to be read by Wednesday, September 28. There is a Q and C due for this Packet. The Packet consists of two articles, and you will find the links to these articles below. Be sure to print out copies and bring to class on the 28th.
"The Magic of the Family Meal"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200760,00.html
"Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco"
http://www.esquire.com/features/down-and-out-0709
Hope you are enjoying your Sunday. See you tomorrow.
Looking ahead in the course outline, Packet 3 is due to be read by Wednesday, September 28. There is a Q and C due for this Packet. The Packet consists of two articles, and you will find the links to these articles below. Be sure to print out copies and bring to class on the 28th.
"The Magic of the Family Meal"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200760,00.html
"Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco"
http://www.esquire.com/features/down-and-out-0709
Hope you are enjoying your Sunday. See you tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Wednesday evening, Sept. 7th, 9 pm
Hello,
I completely forgot that one of the two poems in Packet 2, "Flies" by Donald Hall, cannot be cut and pasted from the Internet site.
However, thanks to a student in my 10 am class (thank you Tania!!!!) here it is! She typed the entire poem and emailed it to me. (see below)
(and just a quick note...this IS a poem, even though it does not LOOK like one. It is called a prose poem. It is still short, like most poems, but more of a narrative)
See you Friday.
“Flies”
By: Donald Hall
A fly sleeps on the field of a green curtain. I sit by my grandmother’s side, and rub her head as if I could comfort her. Ninety-seven years. Her eyes stay closed, her mouth open, and she gasps in her blue nightgown—pale blue, washed a thousand times. Now her face goes white, and her breath slows until I think it has stopped; then she gasps again, and pink returns to her face.
Between the roof of her mouth and her tongue, strands of spittle waver as she breathes. Now a nurse shakes her head over my grandmother’s sore mouth, and goes to get a glass of water, a spoon, and a flyswatter. My grandmother chokes on a spoonful of water and the nurse swats a fly
In the Connecticut suburbs where I grew up, and in Ann Arbor, there were houses with small leaded panes, where Formica shone in the kitchens, and hardwood in closets under paired leather boots. Carpets lay thick underfoot in every bedroom, bright, clean with no dust or hair in them. Nothing looked used, in these houses. Forty dollars’ worth of cut flowers leaned from Waterford vases for the Saturday dinner party.
Even in houses like these, the housefly wandered and paused—and I listened for the buzz of its wings and its tiny feet, as it struggled among cut flowers and bumped into leaded panes
In the afternoon my mother takes over at my grandmother’s side in the Peabody Home, while I go back to the farm. I nap in the room my mother and my grandmother were born in.
At night we assemble beside her. Her shallow, rapid breath rasps, and her eyes jerk, and the nurse can find no pulse, as her small strength concentrated wholly on half an inch of lung space, and she coughs faintly—quick coughs like fingertips on a ledge. Her daughters stand by the bed, solemn in the slow evening, in the shallows of after-supper—Caroline, Nan, and Lucy, her eldest daughter, seventy-two, who holds her hand to help her die, as twenty years past she did the same thing for my father.
Then her breath slows again, as it has done all day. Pink vanishes from cheeks w3e have kissed so often, and her nostrils quiver. She breathes one more quick breath. Her mouth twitches sharply, as if she speaks a word we cannot hear. Her face is fixed, white, her eyes half closed, and the next breath never comes.
She lies in a casket covered with gray linen, which my mother and her sisters picked. This is Chadwick’s Funeral Parlor in New London, on the ground floor under the I.O.O.F. Her fine hair lies combed on the pillow. Her teeth in, her mouth closed, she looks the way she used to, except that her face is tinted, tanned as if she worked in the fields.
This air is so still it has bars. Because I have been thinking about flies, I realize that there are no flies in this room. I imagine a fly wandering in, through these dark-curtained windows, to land on my grandmother’s nose.
At the Andover graveyard, Astroturf covers the dirt next to the shaft dug for her. Mr. Jones says a prayer beside the open hole. He preached at the South Danbury Church when my grandmother still played the organ. He raises his narrow voice, which gives itself over to August and blue air, and tells us that Kate in heaven “will keep on growing . . . and growing . . . and growing”—and he stops abruptly, as if the sky had abandoned him, and chose to speak elsewhere through someone else.
After the burial I walk by myself in the barn where I spent summers next to my grandfather. I think of them talking in heaven. Her first word is the word her mouth was making when she died.
In this tie-up chaff of flies roiled in the leather air, as my grandfather milked his Holsteins morning and night, his bald head pressed sweating into their sides, fat female Harlequins, while their black and white tails swept back and forth, stirring the flies up. His voice spoke pieces he learned for the lyceum, and I listened crouched on a three-legged stool, as his hands kept time strp strp with alternate streams of hot milk, the sound softer as milk foamed to the pail’s top. In the tie-up the spiders feasted like emperors. Each April he broomed the webs out and whitewashed the wood, but spiders and flies came back, generation on generation—like the cattle, mothers and daughters, for a hundred and fifty years, until my grandfather’s heart flapped in his chest. One by one the slow Holsteins climbed the ramp into a cattle truck.
In the kitchen with its bare hardwood floor, my grandmother stood by the clock’s mirror to braid her hair every morning. She looked out the window toward Kearsarge, and said, “Mountain’s pretty today,” or, “Can’t see the mountain too good today.”
She fought the flies all summer. She shut the screen door quickly, but flies gathered on canisters, on the clockface, on the range when the fire was out, on set-tubs, tables, curtains, chairs. Flies buzzed on cooling lard, when my grandmother made doughnuts. Flies lit on a drip of jam before she could wipe it up. Flies whirled over simmering beans, in the steam of maple syrup.
My grandmother fretted, and took good aim with a flyswatter, and hung strips of flypaper behind the range where nobody would tangle her hair in it.
She gave me a penny for every ten I killed. All day with my mesh flyswatter I patrolled kitchen and dining room, living room, even the dead air of the parlor. Though I killed every fly in the house by bedtime, when my grandmother washed the hardwood floor, by morning their sons and cousins assembled I the kitchen, like the woodchucks my grandfather shot in the vegetable garden which doubled and returned; or like the deer that watched for a hundred and fifty years from the brush on ragged mountain, and when my grandfather died stalked down the mountainside to graze among peas and corn.
We live in their house with our books and pictures, writing poems under Ragged Mountain, gazing each morning at blue Kearsarge.
We live in the house left behind; we sleep in the bed where they whispered together at night. One morning I wake hearing a voice from sleep: “The blow of the axe resides in the acorn.”
I get out of bed and drink cold water in the dark morning from the sink’s dipper at the window under the sparse oak, and fly wakes buzzing beside me, cold, and sweeps over set-tubs and range, one of the hundred-thousandth generation.
I planned long ago I would live here, somebody’s grandfather.
I completely forgot that one of the two poems in Packet 2, "Flies" by Donald Hall, cannot be cut and pasted from the Internet site.
However, thanks to a student in my 10 am class (thank you Tania!!!!) here it is! She typed the entire poem and emailed it to me. (see below)
(and just a quick note...this IS a poem, even though it does not LOOK like one. It is called a prose poem. It is still short, like most poems, but more of a narrative)
See you Friday.
“Flies”
By: Donald Hall
A fly sleeps on the field of a green curtain. I sit by my grandmother’s side, and rub her head as if I could comfort her. Ninety-seven years. Her eyes stay closed, her mouth open, and she gasps in her blue nightgown—pale blue, washed a thousand times. Now her face goes white, and her breath slows until I think it has stopped; then she gasps again, and pink returns to her face.
Between the roof of her mouth and her tongue, strands of spittle waver as she breathes. Now a nurse shakes her head over my grandmother’s sore mouth, and goes to get a glass of water, a spoon, and a flyswatter. My grandmother chokes on a spoonful of water and the nurse swats a fly
In the Connecticut suburbs where I grew up, and in Ann Arbor, there were houses with small leaded panes, where Formica shone in the kitchens, and hardwood in closets under paired leather boots. Carpets lay thick underfoot in every bedroom, bright, clean with no dust or hair in them. Nothing looked used, in these houses. Forty dollars’ worth of cut flowers leaned from Waterford vases for the Saturday dinner party.
Even in houses like these, the housefly wandered and paused—and I listened for the buzz of its wings and its tiny feet, as it struggled among cut flowers and bumped into leaded panes
In the afternoon my mother takes over at my grandmother’s side in the Peabody Home, while I go back to the farm. I nap in the room my mother and my grandmother were born in.
At night we assemble beside her. Her shallow, rapid breath rasps, and her eyes jerk, and the nurse can find no pulse, as her small strength concentrated wholly on half an inch of lung space, and she coughs faintly—quick coughs like fingertips on a ledge. Her daughters stand by the bed, solemn in the slow evening, in the shallows of after-supper—Caroline, Nan, and Lucy, her eldest daughter, seventy-two, who holds her hand to help her die, as twenty years past she did the same thing for my father.
Then her breath slows again, as it has done all day. Pink vanishes from cheeks w3e have kissed so often, and her nostrils quiver. She breathes one more quick breath. Her mouth twitches sharply, as if she speaks a word we cannot hear. Her face is fixed, white, her eyes half closed, and the next breath never comes.
She lies in a casket covered with gray linen, which my mother and her sisters picked. This is Chadwick’s Funeral Parlor in New London, on the ground floor under the I.O.O.F. Her fine hair lies combed on the pillow. Her teeth in, her mouth closed, she looks the way she used to, except that her face is tinted, tanned as if she worked in the fields.
This air is so still it has bars. Because I have been thinking about flies, I realize that there are no flies in this room. I imagine a fly wandering in, through these dark-curtained windows, to land on my grandmother’s nose.
At the Andover graveyard, Astroturf covers the dirt next to the shaft dug for her. Mr. Jones says a prayer beside the open hole. He preached at the South Danbury Church when my grandmother still played the organ. He raises his narrow voice, which gives itself over to August and blue air, and tells us that Kate in heaven “will keep on growing . . . and growing . . . and growing”—and he stops abruptly, as if the sky had abandoned him, and chose to speak elsewhere through someone else.
After the burial I walk by myself in the barn where I spent summers next to my grandfather. I think of them talking in heaven. Her first word is the word her mouth was making when she died.
In this tie-up chaff of flies roiled in the leather air, as my grandfather milked his Holsteins morning and night, his bald head pressed sweating into their sides, fat female Harlequins, while their black and white tails swept back and forth, stirring the flies up. His voice spoke pieces he learned for the lyceum, and I listened crouched on a three-legged stool, as his hands kept time strp strp with alternate streams of hot milk, the sound softer as milk foamed to the pail’s top. In the tie-up the spiders feasted like emperors. Each April he broomed the webs out and whitewashed the wood, but spiders and flies came back, generation on generation—like the cattle, mothers and daughters, for a hundred and fifty years, until my grandfather’s heart flapped in his chest. One by one the slow Holsteins climbed the ramp into a cattle truck.
In the kitchen with its bare hardwood floor, my grandmother stood by the clock’s mirror to braid her hair every morning. She looked out the window toward Kearsarge, and said, “Mountain’s pretty today,” or, “Can’t see the mountain too good today.”
She fought the flies all summer. She shut the screen door quickly, but flies gathered on canisters, on the clockface, on the range when the fire was out, on set-tubs, tables, curtains, chairs. Flies buzzed on cooling lard, when my grandmother made doughnuts. Flies lit on a drip of jam before she could wipe it up. Flies whirled over simmering beans, in the steam of maple syrup.
My grandmother fretted, and took good aim with a flyswatter, and hung strips of flypaper behind the range where nobody would tangle her hair in it.
She gave me a penny for every ten I killed. All day with my mesh flyswatter I patrolled kitchen and dining room, living room, even the dead air of the parlor. Though I killed every fly in the house by bedtime, when my grandmother washed the hardwood floor, by morning their sons and cousins assembled I the kitchen, like the woodchucks my grandfather shot in the vegetable garden which doubled and returned; or like the deer that watched for a hundred and fifty years from the brush on ragged mountain, and when my grandfather died stalked down the mountainside to graze among peas and corn.
We live in their house with our books and pictures, writing poems under Ragged Mountain, gazing each morning at blue Kearsarge.
We live in the house left behind; we sleep in the bed where they whispered together at night. One morning I wake hearing a voice from sleep: “The blow of the axe resides in the acorn.”
I get out of bed and drink cold water in the dark morning from the sink’s dipper at the window under the sparse oak, and fly wakes buzzing beside me, cold, and sweeps over set-tubs and range, one of the hundred-thousandth generation.
I planned long ago I would live here, somebody’s grandfather.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Tuesday, September 6th, 3:15 pm
Hello,
Just a very quick reminder...
(I had a student email me about this so I thought it best to remind you again...)
As we discussed in class...
about question and comment homework...
you must write a separate question (optional) and comment (mandatory) for EACH of the readings in the packet.
For example,
for Packet 2, there are two readings, so you will have TWO separate question and comments to submit.
See you tomorrow.
Just a very quick reminder...
(I had a student email me about this so I thought it best to remind you again...)
As we discussed in class...
about question and comment homework...
you must write a separate question (optional) and comment (mandatory) for EACH of the readings in the packet.
For example,
for Packet 2, there are two readings, so you will have TWO separate question and comments to submit.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Greetings...
I hope all of you are thoroughly enjoying this Labor Day holiday weekend.
Below you will find the two poems that comprise Packet 2. Remember, your first set of Q & C's are due for this Packet on Friday, Sept. 9th. All out of class work must be typed and double spaced and in MLA format. Refer to your class notes, your course outline, and sample Q & C homework handout. And...remember to bring a print out of the poems to class on the day they are due to be read.
PACKET 2
"Flies" by Donald Hall
(note: the link below will take you to an entire collection of Hall's poems. The poem I want you to read, "Flies," is on pages 144-147.)
http://books.google.com/books?id=AiEq7VTaKK4C&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=%22Flies%22+by+Donald+Hall&source=bl&ots=8CPm1fSFa6&sig=jlxPa4GvcLfYmOPKudwXLpLIY3g&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
"Arturo" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
http://www.pccc.edu/home/cultural-affairs/poetry-center/maria-mazziotti-gillans-poems2
I hope all of you are thoroughly enjoying this Labor Day holiday weekend.
Below you will find the two poems that comprise Packet 2. Remember, your first set of Q & C's are due for this Packet on Friday, Sept. 9th. All out of class work must be typed and double spaced and in MLA format. Refer to your class notes, your course outline, and sample Q & C homework handout. And...remember to bring a print out of the poems to class on the day they are due to be read.
PACKET 2
"Flies" by Donald Hall
(note: the link below will take you to an entire collection of Hall's poems. The poem I want you to read, "Flies," is on pages 144-147.)
http://books.google.com/books?id=AiEq7VTaKK4C&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=%22Flies%22+by+Donald+Hall&source=bl&ots=8CPm1fSFa6&sig=jlxPa4GvcLfYmOPKudwXLpLIY3g&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
"Arturo" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
http://www.pccc.edu/home/cultural-affairs/poetry-center/maria-mazziotti-gillans-poems2
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