Space Poetry. Literally!

                                                                        Venus
                                                                                                                             
                    Mercury                                                                                                  Earth

                            Everything                                                Revolves                                     Mars 
Pluto
                                                                   SUN                                                           Jupiter


        Neptune              Around                                                   THE                   Saturn

                                                                      Uranus

English 1080 recap

I enjoyed English 1080.  Through class discussions about poems we read, I was able to better understand how to analyze them and to find deeper meanings.  I learned that by hearing how others perceived a meaning in a poem it is easier to make sense of how I perceive it.  I also learned a lot about how to analyze short stories.  I had never really considered setting to be very important in a story, other than where the story physically takes place, until this class.  I learned that setting, and other aspects of short stories all relate to the stories deeper meaning.  I think that getting students to blog is a very good idea.  It is a way of having students informally share what they learn in the course.  A blog seems very casual and does not seem like a heavy homework activity, so it is easy to do.

Flash Fiction

He woke up. It was 11:30am. Today was the day he would conquer the Cliffside trail.  This trail was traitorous and notoriously dangerous later in the day due to high winds.  He had a late night and had over slept. This wasn’t going to stop him.  He went to the kitchen and grabbed a bite to eat and loaded his bike and gear into his old civic.  Then he hopped onto the freeway going to meet up with another fellow rider.

The adventurer pulled up to the trail head and assembled his bike.  Because he hadn’t slept the night before he decided to rest his eyes and lay down on the car hood.  An hour later he awoke but his friend had not yet arrived.  His phone was dead when he tried to call him.  So he waited another hour.

His friend was stuck in traffic due to an accident on the highway.  He was near the front of the line and could over hear the firemen’s radios crackling at the scene.  They told him he would be waiting there a while.  It was very windy even just on the highway.  He could only imagine how bad it would be on the trail.  After several attempts to reach his friend at the trail failed, he gave up. He hoped his friend wouldn’t try to pedal the trail this late in the day.

It was now 3pm.  He had been waiting for an hour and a half.  He wanted to beat the trail and assumed his friend was not coming.  He got on his bike and tore down the trail.  Dodging trees and roots while keeping in mind the huge drop-offs to his side was not easy.  Especially while tired and having the wind trying to tip you over.  His technique was off and he became easily frustrated when roots got the better of him.  He was nearing ‘The Ridge’.  A narrow path with 30 foot drops on either side.  Because he was no longer enjoying the ride he decided to get it done as fast as possible.  An overcorrection on the loose dirt was all it took.

The fireman approached the friend in the car.  He said that they were done and they just needed the tow truck to clear the road.  As the fireman was walking away, his radio crackled.  There had been an accident on the mountain.  He overheard a biker had fallen off ‘The Ridge’.  The firefighters all ran onto the truck and sped off. 

Open Letter

Dear Mr. Bonham

I can’t believe I went through 8 years of playing the drums without hearing about you!  It wasn’t until 2009 that another fellow drummer introduced me to your work.  When I listened to some Led Zeppelin tracks such as ‘Fool in the Rain’ and your variations of ‘Moby Dick’, I was amazed and in awe!  You have to be one of the most talented drummers I have ever heard.   

Your ability to keep time and play the shuffle has cost me countless hours of sweat, blood and unsuccessful attempts trying to replicate ‘Fool in the Rain’.  I have a feeling you threw that samba beat in there just so no one could replicate the drum track of this song!

I was terribly saddened when I realized you had passed away.  I was also saddened to learn you had gone long before I was even born.  You won’t be able to read this, but I would still like to say on behalf of most all drummers and myself that you have been an inspiration to all of us.

Rock On!      

Nate

Allegory

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave can be compared to the Hollywood film, The Matrix.  Both stories involve two unseen or unknown worlds.   The character in the Matrix is introduced into the actual world, not the one he had been living in.  The main character in The Cave was introduced to the world outside the cave.  Both characters learned of a new world that they had never known.  Both stories deal with ‘the real world’.  There are some differences between the two stories however.  In The Cave, the character is released into the outside world to discover how much it has changed and sees all of the fascinating new things.  His friends who have not seen any of it cannot comprehend what he is telling them about the good world outside.  In The Matrix the character is living in a world that is better than the real world.  The ‘real’ world has been destroyed and the character is hit with a hard realization of this destroyed world.  There are many lessons to be learned from these stories.  Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  Very often we ignore or disregard unseen problems until we actually see them for ourselves.  Sometimes we also don’t believe others or believe in things because we can’t understand them.  Just because we can’t comprehend certain things, does not mean they don’t exist.  I think the Matrix symbolizes a place to hide from reality if we do not lie something, kind of avoiding a problem.  I think the cave symbolizes a place of ignorance.  Outside of the cave are things that we could never have imagined, but in the cave we choose not to believe them.