7 - 3.11-3.17 - 1

6 - 3.4-3.10 - 2

6 - 3.4-3.10 - 1

5 - 2.26-3.3 - 2

5 - 2.26-3.3 - 1

4 - 2.19-2.25 - 2

4 - 2.19-2.25 - 1

3 - 2.12-2.18 - 2

“The Fault in Our Stars” and “There Is No Dog”: Not kids’ stuff

The idea that just because a literary work is published and placed in one section of the bookstore versus another and therefore isn't as good as something else is absolute garbage. Simply because a title is named as a 'Young Adult' genre of fiction and not an Adult novel can't mean that it's not to be taken seriously or appreciated for the content of the story and meaning of the words on each page. The value of a piece of writing comes not from the design of the hardcover book jacket, the length, or what section you find it placed within in a bookstore-- at least, it shouldn't. It SHOULD come from what the book has to say, and the effect it has on its reader. These may be my own opinions, but hey: it seems like Laura Miller agrees pretty well with me.

Her argument isn't exactly clear cut, as it appears under the 'What to Read' header of Salon.com's online articles. But as she explains details on the story of two specific novels-- John Green's "The Fault In Our Stars" and Meg Rosoff's "There Is No Dog" -- deal with, Miller concludes that their subjects are far more emotionally complex and posing more life altering questions than other acclaimed best-selling adult novels on the NY Times lists.

I've heard only good things about John Greene and his writing. But, I'm not in a place where I can currently spend time reading leisure books. Maybe I'll pick them up and get around to it April vacation-- but I am now more so swayed to read them than I was before. If you've got the time, pick up a copy of either book and read up-- just be sure to let me know what you think, if it's all it's cracked up to be or not.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/13/the_fault_in_our_stars_and_there_is_no_dog_not_kids_stuff/

Published 12 Feb. 2012

Term Three, Week Three (Feb. 12-Feb. 18, 2012) Post One.

2 - 2.5-2.11 - 2

2 - 2.5-2.11 - 1

1 - 1.29-2.4 - 2

1 - 1.29-2.4 - 1

"Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide" by Linda Grey Sexton - Writings & Rantings #1

So this second memoir choice of mine comes from the recommendation of it given by none other than the incomparable Fayzo. Even if it's another memoir about writers and suicide, I think I'll have a lot more room for comparisons and contrasts with this than I would anything else.

Dear God. I have never been more captivated by a story in the first twenty pages of book in my life. Or if I have, it hasn't hit nearly as close to home as this. Walking into this story, we the readers get a nice little, "Hi how are you this is who I am" from the author, Linda Grey Sexton. She explains why she writes this book with the topic and themes of suicide, and why it's important to read. By page 7, we're reliving her first attempt at suicide and my stomach is churning and I'm crying as I listen to Linda scold herself, reliving those moments, and how successful she almost was. Somewhere along the lines, Linda essentially gives kudos to her mother for having the guts to actually kill herself without ever using a blade on her skin. (I've yet to discover how Anne Sexton took her life, but I'm avoiding Wikipedia and Google like the plague-- I'm too interested in this story to allow outside opinions to affect my reading this story.)

And from that horrific memory that she has the guts to share, we're brought to a time when Linda was in her twenties, and how life continues moving forward even with her mothers' death. It's just in the likeness of one rant I've gone on multiple times-- how time moves forward, whether we wish it to be faster or want for it to slow, maybe even stop altogether. UnFortunately for us, time stops for neither Man nor Animal nor Gods or any other being; but with time also comes change. And the thing is, change is hard-- but it makes it worth it. It makes life... real.

Sexton recalls how her mother had said to her on multiple occasions to "Never be a writer", but not once had she said "Never be a suicide". Honestly, I haven't gotten exactly to the point where I'd say being a writer is a terrible thing to wish upon someone-- but it is hard. Just like a sport, writing is a skill, and when you may be the only one staring a piece of work down and reading it over twenty times, you are your worst critic. Linda calls the legacy her mother left her "the compulsion to create with words". I find truth in that description. It's often how I don't finish school work, or why I quit studying for an examination-- I've got too many thoughts running in crazed patterns through my mind to find a way to pen them all down before they escape into nothingness. I'm so concerned that the one thought I can't get out will turn into a 'would have been my best' or something like that. Revision after revision after revision and then some more-- I'll always want to change something. It'll never be good enough for me, or when it is, I won't know what to do next. It may seem odd, but truthfully, it's what I love about writing the most.

11 - 1.22-1.28 - 2

11 - 1.22-1.28 - 1

Apple Unveils E-Textbook Strategy for K-12

To me, it was only a matter of time before this step into the future of education was taken. Finally, textbooks will be available for purchase through the App Store for Apple Products. 


Okay, maybe I'm the only one excited about this, but I'm used to having to buy ALL of my own textbooks. For those lovely, heavy, hardcover books, I spent over $700 freshman year alone to purchase my books, due to the extreme cost of shipping a package weighing in at sixty-two pounds. And sure, maybe there are PDFs of texts that have been scanned into someone's computer for illegal sharing through the internet; however, I'd more than like to be able to have such useful resources readily available wherever I go, and not have to worry about weather or not I can carry four books home each night to study.


I feel as if Apple has taken an important step. As author Jason Tomassini reports, Apple Inc. has signed their deal with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, all publishers whom I believe that the High School uses books from. Schools and districts are going to be able to buy licenses for a set amount of copies of the texts which would normally sell for $14.99 or less in the iBooks store, or so Apple has said. Both companies will get a share of the profits, and Apple is working to turn the eTextbooks from simple PDFs or pictures of the pages into inter-active books, with supplementary materials, videos, and other features you really can't get from a bounded stack of papers.


This time around in the technological advancements, Apple isn't really hurting this market; rather, it's believed that through this advancement, the education market will benefit. 


Whether it does or doesn't, I do know that my desire to purchase an iPad has now increased greatly.


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/01/20/18apple.html

Published 20 Jan. 2012

Term Two, Week Ten. (Jan. 15-Jan. 21, 2012) Post Two.

Dear Papa,

Dear Papa,

Truly, I wish I could have known you. 

You were named as the most influential writer of your time. They even say that you were the greatest writer of the entire twentieth century. Would you agree to that? Your friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald was wildly jealous of your success, and it seemed to even tear the two of you apart. But the pressure mounted. Writing became not something you enjoyed, something you had a passion for, but a job. It was no longer what it had been when you were a young man in your twenties and thirties.

Who are 'they' anyways? Whoever they are, who are 'they' to say you had to take up that burden? It's strange, isn't it; usually it's after someone has died that critics and the public and anyone important proclaims a work to be ingenious, a must read, or a complete classic. 

My friend told me when I started reading this memoir that you are (were?) a terrible person. "He was just a womanizing drunk!" she shouted in explaining her hatred. "I have no respect for the man. Never have. Never will." 

But you see, your friend is proving otherwise. 

A.E. Hotchner. Someone you only met because of an assignment he thought was doomed to failure from the start, an article full of questions you'd never answer. Or so he thought. But he thought wrong, because you answered those questions, that humble note left on your front door in your Cuba house, your little finca. He spins a tale for us about a man with a presence greater than any other, a legend in the flesh, someone who didn't hardly seem human upon meeting him.

I sympathize with Hotchner, who, forty, maybe almost fifty years after you pulled the trigger, traveled his way to your finca and reminisced on the old times, the fourteen year friendship you two shared, and how he still feels like dropping you a line and writing you letters. I do the same, though people think I'm strange. When I address a letter to a dead relative, one I never even got to meet, I simply say it's to a friend. 

I want to travel, more than anything in the world. I don't have the money nor the means to do so for now, but I'm getting there. You clearly did your fair share of voyaging around the world, as Hotchner tells me with how the memoir is pieced together. Til I get rich on my own writing, I'll be living vicariously through you and your travels. I know that neither your, nor Hotchner, will disappoint. 

Until next,

-Catherine Andersen

18 January 2012

10 - 1.15-1.21 - 1

9 - 1.8-1.14 - 2

9 - 1.8-1.14 - 1

Ultima 17-End

8 - 1.1-1.7 - 2

9 - 1.1-1.7 - 1

Ultima 13-16

7 - 12.25-12.31 - 2

7 - 12.25-12.31 - 1

Ultima 8-12

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6 - 12.18-12.24 - 1

Ultima 1-7

5 - 12.11-12.17 2

5 - 12.11-12.17 1

4 - 12.3-12.10 - 2

4 - 12.4-12.10 - 1

3 - 11.27-12.3 2

Play Responsibly: Guitar Makers Seek Sustainable Sound

With the environment and saving its future a great topic of controversy in recent years, everyone is trying to find the best ways to recycle, reduce waste, and reuse anything and everything they can. Everything is being cut back and changed for the better of our planet-- or at least, it's trying to be.

You wouldn't exactly think of guitars as causing forests to fall all across the globe, would you?

Having a guitar player in my family (my father), I know my fair share of info about the whole make and model and all that of certain electric guitars. My dad has what he calls his 'Holy Trinity' of guitars: a Fender Stratocaster, a Fender Telecaster, and a Gibson Les Paul with a sun burst design. The body and neck of his instruments come from the wood of a mix of mahogany, rosewood, and ebony. But the trees whose trunks and branches are sacrificed for the art of music and a beautiful guitar are becoming few and far between; even though it's been known for years now that these precious woods won't be available for use forever, 'purists' who demand the best quality wood for their instruments snub even the idea of synthetic materials being used.

The  current CEO of Gibson Guitar Company, Henry Juszkiewicz, is trying to make this a possibility. He and his colleagues know that they have the available technology to make a guitar that plays just as well-- if not better than-- the solid wood guitars. This seems blasphemous to others, but it may be a response by the company to the controversies caused by the company allegedly violating wildfire protection acts in the past two years.

In my honest opinion, albeit being the music lover I am, I agree with Juszkiewicz: We, as a species, have decimated the natural gifts the planet has given us. There isn't much left, and humans should be looking for alternative ways to continue making things. It's like that "what if" documentary I watched once on the Discovery Channel about what will happen when we run out of oil, and if electricity fails: we're humans. We may be flawed, but we built this world from the ground up-- the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. We created all of it. And if we could make this, we sure as hell better be able to save it. We're survivors, even if the way the average American lives their life doesn't pay homage to that title. We'll figure it out-- some day.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/play-responsibly-guitar-makers-seek-sustainable-sound/248970/

Published 29 Nov. 2011

Term Two, Week Three. (Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2011) Post One.

Dictator Pledges to Step Down, but Yemen's Crisis Is Not Over

It's a transfer of power, one that has been in the works for months (if not years) now, and dodged three times before this day. Yemen's President and leader of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has succumbed to the subject of protests lasting ten months: he has signed a formal agreement to step down from power and yield his title to current Vice President Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi, which will lead its way into an election process. 


There's a catch, of course, because it couldn't be perfect or seamless: Saleh is guaranteed a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card, otherwise known as immunity from prosecution following the change in power. This doesn't seem to settle well with the public, and as author J. Dana Stuster notes the Yemeni Revolution is far from its ending chapter. In fact, this is only the beginning towards a supposed better future for the country. 


Stuster, without being patronizing and pushy to her readers, is informative and catches the audience up to speed on the conflicts that have been building in the Middle Eastern country so as to give the events covered in the article a good context. This strategy was especially helpful to me while reading, as I had followed Libya and Egypt as they went through their revolts and transitions, but I haven't been following many news stories lately due to a lack of time management. 


The whole world watched as Egypt overthrew their government, and as Libya became a battleground plagued with death and riots-- and for the most part, regions of the two countries still are. While war between the countries isn't going to break out, the events remind me of the 'powder keg' idea behind what sparked World War I. The Black Hand has Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand assassinated and the next thing you know, all of Europe is in an all-out war. In this case, however, it seems as if countries in the Middle East and surrounding areas are starting to revolt one by one, inspired by the progress other nations have made in hopes to better their country for future generations. While I'm definately not an expert on the subject, I can still say that it's a bloody road these nations are choosing to follow. However, change is never easy; no one ever said it was peaceful. 


They (or rather, Jimi Hendrix) say that when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. Too many souls on this Earth, it seems, are hell bent on gaining power and control for this ideal to be realized. Some people may say that the rebels are barbaric in their ways following revolts. But take a step back, and realize the situation these people are being faced with. Also, remember this, America: We're a first world nation that has it far better off than these countries. Who are we to judge those who are merely fighting for what we believe in? Wind the clock back a bit. While the scenery and situations are parallel, we were wearing a similar pair of shoes two hundred years ago ourselves.




http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/dictator-pledges-to-step-down-but-yemens-crisis-is-not-over/249052/

Published 24 Nov. 2011.

Term Two, Week Two. (Nov. 20-26, 2011) Post Two.

The Director of 'The Artist' on How to Make a Modern Silent Film

The idea of silence in a movie theatre is virtually unrealistic. Many people can attest to the fact that often when enjoying a film at the movies today, you can hear another action or adventure flick playing in the theatre next to yours-- and, you can hear the cacophony of crashes and explosions that are common in just about every movie these days. But for Michel Hazanavicius, this idea isn't so much a pipe dream, as he's made it a reality.

Save for the responses and reaction of laughter and the like from audiences, Hazanavicius's The Artist is a contemporary black and white film. It tells the story of a director who blossoms the career of an actress in silent films, and when sound comes into the picture, she advances in her fame and popularity-- all while the director is stuck in the past, unable to forget the ways of soundless cinema. The actress, however, still knows she owes her career to the director for giving her her big break. Oh, and the entire film in silent.

You've probably heard of it, or maybe not. Depending on how often you watch the news, you may or may not have seen a report on it. I know I have, as that's why this article appealed to me. I'm personally interested in directing, because although I wish to be a writer, I often envision what a film version of my stories would look like so I can accurately describe everything essential to a scene, without going overboard and overloading my readers.

Most of the article comprises of an interview with Hazanavicius, who admits to author Robert Levine that a foreign director making a foreign movie could never dream of being a buzz for a foreign awards show. But still, The Artist is an American movie, having its premier in both New York and Los Angeles theaters. And it's true-- the modern day silent film has been granted quite the deal of Oscar buzz for its unique characteristics, compared to the newest addition to the family of never-ending movies made from toys and games *coughcoughTransformersandBattleshipcoughcough* Sorry, frog in my throat...

But what do movies have anything to do with the study of rhetoric and language for an AP English course? In my opinion, any media of storytelling relates to English. This particular piece is void of language, whether it would have been english, french, italian, or otherwise-- making the work have a seamless transition between cultures and audiences across the globe. While I've yet to be able to see the film myself, I look forward to when I can. The silent film, in my opinion, is much like the opposite of a book. In a book, we are given the words, but not the pictures or sounds to go with it. In the silent film, the audiences has the picture-- but no color or sounds or words. If you actively watch a movie such as this, your creativity comes alive. Only you can decide how their voice is, if they say a certain word funny, what word the character is saying. It's an idea I find highly attractive; if only more directors saw the world of cinema through at least the glasses Hazanavicius wears.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/the-director-of-the-artist-on-how-to-make-a-modern-silent-film/248878/

Published 22 Nov. 2011.


Term Two, Week Two. (Nov. 20-26, 2011) Post One.