Hey WR 121 ...

I edited a new web comedy series for a fellow Emersonian. We're making the big push to get this thing watched and out there! Do you part and help us out by checking it out on YouTube and heading over to the website!

www.youtube.com...

www.stonebroketv.com

Writing Drill #1

"Shooting Day"

You, place the camera there. You, wrap this wire here, there, around there, behind that, over there. Don't you know that you can't carry that like THAT? If you want to learn anything, you're going to want to move the camera there. I just put it back there—

Alright, listen UP, time is tight if you haven't noticed. Load the film, but don't let it expose; don't let the light get into the can; don't let the can slip from your grasp; don't let—GET A NEW CAN OF 16mm! Ready? Frame the shot, give the actors some head room. Don't direct too much, let it flow. Float the actors down their stream of their performance—your performance. Ready? Have you noticed time is of the essence? ACTION.

Writing Drill #2

"Things Will Get Better"

  I can't remember when it started, but it ended on June 18th, 2006—Sunday. It started before I could realize what was going on. Cindy was my mother's best friend, my father's best friend's wife, and the mother of a daughter. Her daughter was the sibling that I never had—not the first thing she gave me. She gave me the love of a second mother. She gave me someone else to look forward to seeing every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. She belonged to me before she belonged to Emily, her daughter.

     By time I was eight, I had grown accustomed to hearing words like "ovarian" and "breast," "lymph node" and "cancer." Cindy was getting sick, getting frail, and I knew it. Throughout my elementary years, I heard a dozen times over that "things will get better

     They did. They always did.

  I understood what was going on around me despite the fact that my parents never included me in the conversation. The back ends of sentences that I would hear while walking from the living room to the kitchen would fill me in on the latest treatments and prognoses. Surgeries fought back tumors, chemo held its spread at bay, and supplements kept her strong and propped up an illusion of health.

  It was after my graduation from the eighth grade when my parents', without their knowing it, began to lie to me. Their blanket solution of "things will get better" began to crumble. Every time I saw Cindy, she was frailer and thinner. After school, I went with my parents to visit her in the hospital.

  "Tell Cindy about your day."

  "Oh, I almost forgot! Today was Takeover Day. Students get to teach the classes!" I lit up.

  Cindy's face lit up... as much as it good at least. "Sounds fun." I knew she wanted to say more. A week later we stopped by her house once she got out of the hospital. Getting up to leave, I gave her a hug.

     "Bye."

     "I'll see ya around, Matthew." She didn't.

     The night before final exams she was put back in the hospital. Around ten P.M. my parents decided to go to the hospital to see her.

     "Do you want to come see Cindy?"

     "It's already kinda late and I have big exams early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night?"

     "There isn't a tomorrow night."

     Things will get better. They lied. I should have known better.

Writing Drill #3

Original:

One afternoon, when everyone else was at the beach, I stayed at the house with Cindy. With all of the chemo, she couldn’t stay in the sun for hours at a time. Needless to say, I was willing to keep her company under the shade of our house. The two of us were in her and Mark’s bedroom—one of the smallest bedrooms intended for two grown adults I had ever seen. Her eyes met with their reflections. A gentle, regretful smirk broke her glance. She reached up and wrapped a lock of the hair atop her around her index finger and held it in front of her. She glanced at it, examined it.

It was said that some of the phrasing of this paragraph is slightly awkward. The end of the paragraph loses some of its meaning through clunky wording. Such diction detracts from the overall re-vivification of the story. Following is the revised version:

Revised:

One afternoon, when everyone else was at the beach, I stayed back at the house with Cindy. With all of the chemo, she couldn’t stay in the sun for hours at a time. Needless to say, I was willing to keep her company. The two of us were in her and Mark’s bedroom—one of the smallest bedrooms I had ever seen. She stood in front of the dresser-top mirror. Her eyes met with their reflections. A gentle, regretful smirk broke her glance. She reached up and wrapped a lock of the hair atop her head around her index finger and held it in front of her. She glanced at it, examined it.

Writing Drill #4

Topic Sentence 1: By slowly characterizing Mary Ann through Rat’s telling of the story, O’Brien uses her as an archetypal and extreme example of the transformation all of O'Brien's soldiers go through. (p 110)

Topic Sentence 2: In the chapter "Stockings," O'Brien articulates how the horrifyingly mature realities of war can return some of the soldiers to a more whimsical, childlike state. (p 117)

"Good Teaching" Summary

The first concept that interested me was "Hearing Students Into Speech". The most interesting part of the passage was where Palmer explored why students are sometimes quiet and distant in class. He said that it wasn't just "laziness or stupidity" but actually the "result of disempowerment". I found it intriguing that Palmer broadened the issue of uninvolved students so far out of the classroom to comment as to how the fact that young students not being active, contributing members of society may lead them to believe that they don't have a useful, constructive opinion on lessons.

Secondly, "The Nemesis of Evaluation" raised my eyebrow. Personally, I don't agree with this passage in the slightest. The idea that Palmer proposes that somehow graded assessment should be tweaked to how the student sees their strengths is ludicrous. The lack of powerful and strict evaluation is what has lead to students not responding positively to criticism. Our youth and students of this country have become far too soft to classroom discipline and evaluation. Palmer suggests that teachers should guide their students through stages of evaluation before handing in the final product. This is essentially holding a student's hand throughout the entire creative and learning process—crippling their ability to think and create independently. 

Writing Drill #5

"Lieutenant Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha" (1). In Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," Cross needs to make it through the Vietnam War alive and needs a source of strength to do so. In the short story, the specific source from where Cross draws his strength is somewhat unclear. O'Brien makes Cross' first impression on readers an emotional one with his attachment to the photograph of Martha. On the other hand, not even a page later, Cross and his company is re-characterized in physical, quantitative terms as carriers of weapons, equipment, and gear. Strength is conferred onto the soldiers from their apparent military armaments as well as from their ability to "hump" (4) photographs of loved ones. O'Brien contradicts and contrasts what it means to be strong by demonstrating the physical and emotional crutches, and sources, both quantitatively and subjectively, used by his characters, specifically by Lieutenant Cross. 

The diction, syntax, and tone O'Brien uses when illustrating Jimmy Cross' love for Martha indirectly through the photograph undeniably solidifies emotion as Cross' bread-and-butter source of strength. Cross is characterized most thoroughly through his connections to his home and his past rather his actions in Vietnam. He shows his sense of attachment through the excruciating detail given about Martha. After Ted Lavender died, "Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry" (16). It's from his emotional, almost spiritual, involvement with Martha's letters and his obsession with her signing of the letters with "Love" that readers understand what makes Cross tick.

Writing Drill #6

(1) V for Vendetta - V is a feature film directed by the makers of The Matrix trilogy. The film adapts a famous graphic novel. The film takes on a very Bush-era approach that the graphic novel didn't. The film consists a heavy usage of color, language, religious, and literary symbology to create the futuristic, dystopian world. A poster with the tagline, "People should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their people" hangs in my dorm room right near the DVD copy of the film.

(2) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology - This textbook is for my Environmental Ethics class. It discusses (and questions) how/if we need a new ethic to encompass new environmental issues. The text contains many theories on different ideologies to adopt. 

(3) 2009 Coronian - My high school yearbook, that I was the Editor-in-Chief of sits right next to my Environmental Ethics textbook. The purpose of the yearbook is clear-cut. The yearbook lacks the amount of literary and artistic finesse that the previous two texts contained.