Pomes Fav and Least

Dulce et Decorum Est by Owen was my favorite because it was written like a story and every other line had a rhyme scheme to it, it was very interesting and detailed. My least favorite poem was Death be not proud because it was talking about death sickness and killing. It also was hard to understand and talks about the afterlife.

umm.

I have no idea what to blog about . . . so ill just go with the flow. I'm sitting in Sweeneys class listening to him talk about us doing a screen play, something about seven and crash, idk. I'm listening though, it sounds kind of exciting, but out #3 essay rough drafts are due today, so we are about to do peer reviews and he wants us to count to 4 with these numbers again in order to get into groups. . . we hate it. We just want to get into our own groups! But Oh Well.

Poems

In the four poems we had to read for class on Monday one was short and rhymed, one was long and didnt rhyme, others were short and didnt rhyme, but i think that was Sweeneys way of showing us a various amount of poems. The poets are all African American, and you cant tell in a few of the poems. They are really unique great poems. I sometimes enjoy reading poems, but I enjoy them more if they rhyme, cause it makes reading them fun.

Hollywood Comes To RBC

So, for one of my beyond class assignments I decided to go listen to the speaker that we had on last weel TyRuben Ellingson. He makes various sound effects and drawings for many of movies. As he told us he has basically always been involved with drawing and artistic type things as he was younger. He has a masters degree in fine arts from St.Cloud State University. He has also taught at colleges, one in mind is VCU which I believe he is currently teaching at. In some parts of him showing us a slide show I had temporarily fallen asleep a couple of times, but I cant say that this guy was boring,I was just sleepy, but overall I really did enjoy his presentation to us.

Beyond Class. VMFA

On last night I attended the College Night out at the VMFA museum in Richmond, as I did on last year. I really enjoyed once again. I just loved walking around after eating, and the games and events to look at the painting and art work. It all looks so nice, and some even realistic. Although the games and thing were fun, looking at the art work is however my favorite part. The food was another one of my favorite parts. It was a lot of more colleges there also like VCU, John Tyler, and VSU, I even saw some VUU students that I've saw before there on last year. Overall I enjoyed it, and it is an event that I would like to attend quite often.

The Glass Menagerie

So in Sweeney's class we are currently reading and watching the movie "The Glass Menagerie". This movie I believe is quite interesting. It's very intense, and there is a lot of arguing and conflict in it. Most of the conflicts takes place between the mother and son. In a sense this movie definitely reminds me of a story that we've have already read in this class called "Everything That Rises Must Converge". They are very similar in the sense that the mother and son don't quite see eye to eye on a lot of subjects. The movie is quite funny and exciting to me in a way. I'm definitely enjoying watching it.

nothing much

so this class period and last we have not been doing much except for the revising of our first draft papers. Our papers our from a first person point of view, describing how some of out real life experiences might relate to another characters in one of the stories that we have previously read, while in class. At first in my mind I was just like "Out of these few stories that we've read, who and it what story could I ever relate to?" Because honestly I have thought all the stories to be kind of weird in a way! One story that I did really enjoy was the one about what rises must converge. However that is not the story that I have written my essay on. My essay reverts back to the unnamed woman in the story the yellow wallpaper and how she felt trapped in her own self, mostly because of the orders of her husband. In that essay I have written about a couple of times that I have felt cornered as she did. That was he ONLY story I felt that I could actually relate to, and it took me a while to figure it out, but nothing much has been going on just trying to finish up this essay and make it great! Talk to you guys later!

Everything That Rises Must Converge

I really enjoyed this story, this is one of the few! In the beginning of this story a lady has a son that she is very supportive of, but he hasn't did too much of anything with his life, he has to yet graduate college, but his mother supports him to the fullest. The son "Julian" is very miserable most of the story, he has this place in his mind that he goes to escape reality, especially when he feels that his mother is getting on his nerves. To start the story off the mother wants to go take exercise classes at the YMCA, because of the fact that she has health problems, and Julian is the one that has to get her there by the bus. Before they leave the house the mother is constantly talking about this purple hat that she believes she has paid to much for which was 7.50. To fast forward they get to the bus stop, get on the bus and the lady is pleases that there are no black people on the bus at the time saying something like "We have the bus to ourselves today". Then eventually black a couple of black people begin to board the bus at different times. Her son, Julian thinks that he needs to teach his mother a lesson about the way that segregation has evolved. He tries to get back at her by sitting by, and engaging in conversation with black people, it works at first but soon begins to fade off. Long story short, a black lady gets on the bus with the same hat as her & also with a child, the mother has a thing for black children so she takes a liking to him. They are finally at there stop and the black lady and her child also get off her, but they got off first. The mother is reaching in her purse as she is getting off the bus searching for a nickel to give the young black child, she finds out that she doesn't have one, and seems to come across a shinny penny. The black lady and the boy are speedily making there way down the street, the mother practically running after them hands the little boy the shinny penny, then his mother says something like " My child doesn't need your pennies". The mother is still trying to give it to him, the lady turns around and smacks Julian s mother in the face with her purse. After all Julian did tell his mother not to give the child any coins, but she insisted, and that was the result of her not listening. At first Julian is a little a peace because he believes that his mother has learned her lesson, but he begins to see her looking faint. She talks about how she want to begin to walk home at that very moment. She is in a world of shock and begins to fall out, Julian then cries for help and that is how the story ends.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

So, I enjoyed this story a lot, even though I couldn't completely grasp the subject. One subject was  his girlfriend and how they would argue and he would run off in his car riding around to let off steam, he once go stopped by police doing so because he didn't quite fit the description of the people in the neighborhood. They also had broken up. His ex girlfriend contacted him near the end of the story, and he still misses her. He used to work at this 7-11, but not exactly at the one he is buying this cream sickle out of. He goes on to stereotype the cashiers that work at 7-11, in reference to the one he has came into contact with. In his mind he thinks that the cashier thinks that he may be a robber, I'm guessing because he has long black hair. So there is a lot of stereotyping going on in the story. In the end and towards the middle he talks about himself as being an Indian, which kind of start making sense because at first he kept calling people white, but no one yet knew his race. It was also times during the story where he would be in the setting of one place, but the next minute he would be somewhere else, as if he was repeatedly going into flashback. Overall I think it was a pretty good story, I just wish it would've been organized much better.

My Impression On: How To Become A Better Writer

What I interpreted from this story was that maybe the girl couldn't quite find her niche, or what she wanted to pursue in life. I think she tried many ways to find out what she wanted to do then towards the end she finally found something that she was fond of. She kept coming u with a bunch of scenarios in order to solve her problem. I guess the scenarios were ways of telling us what could g wrong with that particular decision. When I began to read the story even til the end I didn't quite fully understand it, and I still don't fully, but in a wired way I do. In class when we discussed the story we touched basis on the fact that her writing this story How To Become A Writer was not much helpful but ironic because throughout the story, they criticized her work multiple times even though she was following everyone's thoughts on how to write in a great way. I did however find interesting the part in the book when the girl talked about cutting off an octopus' leg and calling it seventh heaven. That's one part of the book that really stuck out to me, and was funny.

The War On Drugs

War On Drugs

The war on drugs has not ever really been about drugs. Every time any situation comes up involving drugs the court system just wants to put that person away. By doing so the person gets torn away from their children, and all of their other family members. It makes life a lot harder for the child who has to go without their parent. The war on drugs seems to target African Americans the most. When people get locked up for selling drugs or having drugs on them, do you think when they get out that they are actually able to find a good job to support their family and/or kids? NO! When you get out for something like that your more liable to go back to doing it because of the fact that their options have already been taken from me, so what else is it for them to do. Having things like this on your record, or felonies is defiantly a set back not only for that person convicted, but also for their families that they have to provide for.I honesty think if your a first time offender of drugs, instead of the system locking you up for months or years they should at least give you the option to get help, and join a program. In that sense you could possibly fixing the problem, but by just locking them up the system is making the problem worse, and the person is more than likely going to continue what they're doing. Overall I defiantly think that there are many other ways to deal with this situations, but they system chooses the easiest way which is throw em' away and lock away the key!

Who vs Whom

Most people as I did, don't really grasp the whole concept of the usage of the words who and whom. The way I used whom was only if it sounded right, and I would use who for everything else. Just Recently I had to do a "Grammar Schmammar" presentation on who vs whom. If I would have never chose the who vs who concept, today I probably still wouldn't know the right usage of who and who. Once you learn it, it is very easy, well to me it is.I pulled up a video for the class to watch on the subject, and I think it helped out a lot. The video is what helped me to learn it. There is a trick used in the video to determine when you use who and who. If you can replace the sentence with he or she, then more than likely you should use who. If you can replace the sentence with the word him or her, than more than likely you can replace the sentence with whom.Here is an example of both of them: Who/Whom did you go to the store with? You would answer this question by saying "I went to the store with him" therefore you would use the word Whom. Another example is: Who/Whom is a lawyer? You would answer this question by saying "He is a lawyer" therefore you would use the word who. As you can see with the he,she/him,her concept this can be quite easy.

On yesterday our class reading was "The Butter Battle Book". The book was basically about two types of people. The first type are the ones that eat their toast butter side up and the other type of people eat their toast butter side down. They began to draw so much hate from each other all because of that silly little disagreement. They made machines to hurt each other, and went back and forth to keep making better machines. In the end they never came to a compromise. The way the story came in to play in my English class discussion today was that it somehow incorporated in with war, racism, politics, and all the other opponents that we argue and disagree over daily. At the end of the day we either are going to disagree, or compromise. The main way America goes about things is to disagree and fight. That is definitely not the right way to go about things, but that is what the world has come to.









- By : Chelsea

The Meeting

The play that I attended was for the remembering of Black History Month, I didn't get to make it to the first part of the play, but I did get to see the last of. It was very short, only about 30 minutes, but it had much significant meaning in it. The play was about how Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had finally came to an agreement at the end to see that they both had the same type of morals. There were only about 3 characters in the play and  they did a great job. I think the play wasn't quite geared at the history part of it but more amended to fit what is happening today.There could have been more details in the play that could back up the arguments that occurred. Overall the play was very knowledgeable and good.

Aunt Jenny

The story that I read on last week "Aunt Jenny" is really an interesting and inspiration story. I really like the moral of the story. The story talks about how Jenny, which is this little girls auntie, was diagnosed with down syndrome when she was only 5 years old. Jenny's sister has been taking good care of her for years. Jenny is very short and is in her 40's.  In the beginning of the story I even thought that she was a child, being that they talked about her loving to color. The young girl and her sisters loved their Aunt Jenny when they were young, but when the girl grew older she started seeing things that Aunt Jenny did to be annoying and embarrassing. She got to the point where she didn't want to be seen with her Aunt. The girls mother, also Jenny's sister, was of the total opposite from her daughter. Jenny's sister showed her as much love as she can since they were both younger. In the story you can definitely tell that she loved her sister Jenny unconditionally. Being that the mother cared so much and showed her sister so much love, it eventually began to rub off on the child once again. So in a way i guess you can say that her mother re-inspired her to love her Aunt Jenny even better than she did before. The story was very touching and heart warming in my opinion, and I'm glad the conclusion of the story was the way it was.

Extended Families ? . . .

Extended Families

Hi, I'm Chelsea and I am apart of an extended family. As everyone should know or see from watching movies or shows, extended families don't always work out. To some people extended families are just extra, or unwanted people in your life. For me, I was unaware of my extended family. I actually did not find out about them until years later in my life. All the while I'm thinking it's me my mother, my father and my brothers, its really my mothers side of the family and then its my dads side. Come to find out my father had a family of his own, a wife and two kids. It definitely was a surprise to me, and was very hard to cope with. I still have some void spaces in my heart today from it. I have some unanswered questions, that only keep leading to my own made up philosophies. 

In the beginning I did not like my "step mother" at all, I cant say much has changed currently, but in a way it has gotten a bit better. It's like I have all the love in the world for my father but none for her, only because she isn't my biological mother. When I think about that it seems as if I should not be mad at her and that all the blame should go to my father. All in all she was very unaware of this other family too, no one knew about anyone. My father was the one who cheated not her, so really WHO'S TO BLAME. 

Anyways, That's just a little history for you, an example of Extended Families, well the one that I am in.

Does Pop Culture Influence Us That Much?!

I don't know why but people sure do tend to blame the way society today is on Pop Culture. Everybody is their on person, we cant blame one persons actions on another person. Everyone has their own philosophy for doing things. So the person that does the action should take fully responsibility, and the society should understand that also. When were the ones who get caught doing senseless crimes we are the ones who get incarceration or consequences not the celebrity, because we were the ones who committed the crime. They say that the celebrities that are in the public eye influences us to do certain things, and also things that are somewhat illegal or not pleasing to society. If we were to put ourselves in the shoes of a celebrity that was in the public eye constantly we wouldn't want to have to worry about every little single thing we did, and if it would be up to standard. You would basically be living to please others. That is something that us as regular people or celebrities wouldn't and don't like to have to do. So therefore it is very ignorant, in my opinion to say that Pop Culture and celebrities are the reason why society is so corrupt, and why we do the things we do, because that is not necessarily true.The only thing that we can gather from the celebrities is that we observe them doing the things they do and think that we can go out and do the same nonsense. 

Crime & Punishment ?!

Crime and Punishment has a pretty wide range, and varieties of topics. When I think of Crime and Punishment I think of court trials, sentencing, cops, and devastating situations, but that's only because certain things under the topic of Crime and Punishment have hit home with me and affected me in many ways. I often begin to think about "Bad Cops", the cops that can get away with anything, and have other people suffering for their actions and lies. Yea, that's the first thing that pops in my head. Once you get into situations where its your story again a polices, unless you have a solid foundation of evidence you have already lost. Police offices get away with the most stuff, its really ridiculous. A police could have murdered someone and he'll still be on the streets as if he or she never did anything. Police will have innocent people behind bars because of the lies that they will tell to keep themselves safe. If your the victim in this situation your life could possibly been ruined. I personally have a huge problem with that because of the fact that it has affected me in my life before, and it basically changed my situation. That then gave me a whole different outlook on police, and what their so called "job" is. I promise you that they all don't "serve and protect"! What a shame.

Everyone Is Entitled To Their Own Opinion ...

OK, so we've all heard the phrase "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion" way too many times before, but exactly what does this really mean? Well some people take it way out of context. People sometimes tend to think that it means you can say whatever the first thing is that pops into their heads and whenever, not thinking about how it may sound, or how it may offend and have an effect on other people. Another way to say that is they often "put their foot in their mouths". Sometimes you have to just simply think before you say things. People will get offended easily,and the person will not even know they did a thing. There are particular things that most people are offensive about like their religion, race, sexuality, and many other aspects. That is why we as people have to watch what we say, by not letting everything that comes to our minds come out our mouths. 

What About Writing . . .

Writing affects us in many ways, ways we could never even think of. Writing encourages ideas and thoughts that we can't say out loud, or may be just too scared to say. You begin to see a different you when you begin to write for the first time. You say things on your mind that you never knew you had in you. In other words you get DEEP ! [ if you know what I mean ] Writing influences us to learn more, just as well as reading does. Writing is a way of expressing ourselves in ways that we don't know how.Have you ever been mad or upset at someone, and just begin to write it all down . . . before you know it you'll have a whole book in front of you that started with why you were mad and that ends with why you think people assume you have anger issues (lol). The point is you never know how your really feeling until you write it down. It's just like how artist begin to write a love song or any song, most of the time it expresses exactly how they feel, and or how they want to feel.Writing is not only a way of life it is a hobby. You can not get away from writing, not even if you wanted to. It's an everyday thing! You read writing. You write things. The world is consumed with writing, if you haven't noticed. Just like when I looked at this blank page of a blog, I had NO CLUE whatsoever of what i was going to write about to fill this space up. I then got a topic, came up with a title, and then all of these sentences just came flowing from my brain like water pouring out of a glass. It has been plenty of times when we have a paper or essay to do and don't have any clue about what we could possibly want to write about, but once we start writing the ideas just keep flowing. ( I mean that's how it is for me). Then again after the ideas flow, a little sense of Writers Block comes along to put a halt on all the good progress I had been making, but eventually I get another bright idea in my head and the ideas start back flowing again.Well that's all the "flowage" I have for today, so Goodbye and have a Blessed Night.

-- Chelsea <3