Wednesday

Papers due!!!

Monday

Language quiz - prepare for that. We'll view Waking Life for much of the period. Continue working on your WLA 1.

Friday

Work on your WLA 1 and prepare for a language quiz on Monday/Tuesday.

Wednesday

See deadlines at right. Bring materials to work on your world literature assignment tomorrow.

Monday

A-day, work on your proposals and have them fully typed by Friday. Have your first draft (fully typed and formatted) on December 17.

B-day, work on your proposals and have them by Monday. Have your first draft on December 18.

Monday/Tuesday

Go yell for the Stallions! This is NOW!

Thursday IDEAS!

Post your comments here.

Tuesday

Journals for all you B-dayers. I'm serious about the list of ideas for WLA 1!
Watch for reading checks...

Monday

As today's class pointed out so clearly to me, journal entries are due tomorrow for A-day. Also, list ten great ideas for a world lit assignment.

The book should be finished tomorrow, and you should be ready for a reading check on the whole book. Consider: in the end, who wins? How do you know?

Also, consider your new project ideas for The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Powerpoint, portrait, or speech.

Wednesday (and Thursday and Friday too)

Read through Part VI: The Grand March, for Friday/Monday. For Tuesday/Wednesday, finish the book and have ten great ideas for a WL assignment. Complete three new journal entries, one from each "part":

Part IV:
1. Contrast Tereza's views on privacy to those of Sabina in Part III.
2. Remember the backdrop for this novel is a country under totalitarian communist domination. How do you think each of the novel's main characters (or choose one) illustrates an approach or
adaptation to foreign oppression of the country he or she loves? (Use details from Part III).
3. Read the final line of Chapter 6 on page 140. Using Tereza's experience as a model for thought, consider this question: Does oppressive rule relieve a person of certain ethical or moral
responsibilities? Does mandatory school relieve you of responsibility for your work?
4. Contrast IV: 25: 165-166 with Buendia's attempts to stick names to objects in 100 Years.
5. What is important (heavy, light, returning?) about the benches in the river?
6. What do you make of the scene of the shootings on Petrin Hill, presented as real though obviously only imagined, on pages 146-150? What is the meaning and purpose of this scene?
7. Structure: The novel consists of seven parts with this number of chapters in each part, respectively: 17, 29, 11, 29, 23, 29, 7. Does this series of prime numbers suggest or develop any existing theme within the novel?

Part V:
1. Compare and contrast Tereza's ideas about the soul (41), Sabina's ideas about privacy (112-113), and Tomas's experience with the secret police in Czechoslovakia (Part V). What light does his experience shed light on Tereza and Sabina's desire to find or protect their individuality?
2. See the passage on page 226-228 and focus on the imagery associated with Tereza that implies a comparison with Oedipus. Has Tereza, in some way, married her own mother? Remember Tomas's letter to the editor, guilt, and "soul and body" to develop your response.
3. Tomas, impelled to be a doctor, becomes a window washer by "an unspoken vow of fidelity." Fidelity to what? Hasn't he betrayed himself? Was it his choice?
4. Read V: Chapter 9 and then 221 from "Staring impotently…" to "Let us return to Tomas." Why is Tomas such a prolific womanizer? Why do you think the author or narrator has made sex into such a prominent metaphor in the novel? Is Tomas a kind of Faust character?
5. Read the last two paragraphs of 206-207. Compare and contrast this passage with the one on Sabina's views of beauty by mistake (bottom of 101 and top of 102) and Tereza's in the last paragraph on 78 (which is informed by the narration in 11:51-52).
6. In what ways has metaphor changed Tomas's life?
7. Compare and contrast Tomas on 200 with Tereza on 41.
8. Explain how "Love is our freedom" (236) and Tomas's affairs "enslavement" (234) when heretofore he has seemed burdened by compassion for Tereza. Is Tomas's life looking like Beethoven's development of "Es muss sein!" – moving from light to serious, from joke to metaphysical truth – or like Parmenides's development from heavy to light? (195-196)

Part VI
1. Define kitsch in three ways as derived from Kundera's novel. Are you a fan of kitsch, or do you aspire to something else in your life?
2. What is kitschy about Franz's burial? About Tomas's burial?
3. Franz, the western intellectual, has left his wife and daughter, found a true love in his student with big glasses, and gone on a political quest because of his image of Sabina's regard. Has Tomas, the Czech doctor, done the same thing? What are the key similarities between Franz and Tomas? What is the most important difference?
4. What is Franz's conception of the Grand March? How do you think Sabina would regard it?
5. What do rumblings in the stomach, the body, communism, marches,
hidden sewers, and kitsch have to do with each other?
6. Is "United We Stand," like "the barbarity of communism" and "our traditional values" and "President Carter" or "President Bush," an example of American kitsch? How would Kundera place this phrase in his system of unusual dichotomies?
7. One of Kundera's methods is to take opposing poles of existence, like lightness and weight, and toy with that oppositional relation. One way he toys with oppositions is to suggest alternative oppositions. We tend to think of two primary poles of good and evil, of God and the devil. Kundera reformulates this opposition into the sacred and the scatological. First, explain the effect of this reformulation on your understanding; then do it yourself: reformulate an accepted opposition into a new one. For instance, a common dichotomy is love and hate, but I might, based on a different understanding of the primacy of love, reformulate the opposition into love and apathy. Do it yourself with a commonly assumed set of opposites and consider the difference it makes in your understanding of one of the terms.

Friday

B-day, read through Part V: Soul and Body for Tuesday. A-day, be there by Wednesday.

Wednesday

A-day, come in with journal entries completed. Both A and B day students, read through "Part 4: Soul and Body," for Friday/Monday. No new written assignment is necessary right now.

Wednesday/Thursday

For Monday/Wednesday, read big Parts II and III. Choose one prompt from each section to respond to in a one-page, clearly written response. That means three one-page responses next class period.
Part I: Lightness and Weight:
Comment on heaviness and lightness, eternal return, what Tereza, Tomas, and Sabina have to do with any of the above, and then comment on the repetition of the floating basket image.

Part II: Body and Soul:
Complete one journal entry from among these prompts. SHOW you have read the assignment as you think about it:
1. Analyze and consider the repeated metaphor of the soul as a crew in a ship's bowels rushing up to the surface to show itself to Tomas. What has it to do with "Soul and Body"?
2. Think on paper about eternal return and individuation with regard to Tereza's view of herself in the mirror. What are Tereza's attitudes about the body? About the soul?
3. The final sentences of "Part I: Lightness and Weight" are, "Tomas felt no compassion. All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." In "Soul and Body," Chapter 2, the narrator says, "But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away." Tomas is a doctor. Does he hold that "lyrical illusion of the age of science" that the body and soul are actually one thing?

Part III: Words Misunderstood:
1. Reread page 111-114. Do you agree more with Franz’s understanding of “Strength” and “Living in Truth” or with Sabina’s interpretation of those words?
2. Comment on the irony – or whatever else you see – in this section’s ending image in which Franz closes his eyes as he listens to the gray-haired man.
3. Why does Franz think his life is light and Sabina’s heavy? Do you agree that Sabina’s experiences with oppression give her life weight? Is Czechoslovakia heavier than Switzerland?

Monday

B-day: Read "Section I: Lightness and Weight" for Wednesday. A-day, you have it read by Thursday.

Thursday

Read the first two chapters of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and consider just what the idea of eternal return means or suggests. How does it fit, or mesh, or clash -- with the ideas of lightness and weight?

Wednesday

I'm telling ya...I want all the way through the epilogue! Many A-day students need to be sure you have read the epilogue and show me that! These reading checks are good to a point, and then there is a sharp drop-off -- as if you have not finished!

Monday

OK, OK. The times have ruined me. B-day, bring in your revised papers by Wednesday. A-day, bring in your revised papers by Thursday.

Begin reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. You don't have it yet, but you will get it in Tuesday's class.

If you click on the Chilean flag, you can see Salvador Allende's final speech. It's in Spanish, of course.

Special announcement from Spanish teachers

Because of the cancellation of Junior TOK on Friday, A-day Spanish students who were not here on Wednesday need to be ready for your "Mala gente" (mah-lah hen-teh) quiz on Friday. Kyle L., Ce-Ce, and Hayley need to be ready for your presentation also on Friday.

Wednesday

Come in ready to convince and present.

Tuesday

Continue to read. Have more than one topic in mind for the project as you come to class so we will not have twenty-nine repetitions of the same idea.

Monday

New assignment for A-day; consider three possible topics for your project and nail down your request Wednesday. Read that novel! These projects are due between October 15 and 22, depending upon your choice.

Friday

Get that book read! I'm at home spending my lovely weekend with your written thoughts...

Thursday

Since your papers are complete by this time and ready to turn in Friday, and since you have read the assigned pages in The House of the Spirits, go to the game and yell until you're hoarse. Go, you Bad Horsies. Good luck Lee, Alex, and Cece.

Wednesday

The first round of big papers is due Thursday for A-day. I can't wait!

Tuesday

Read further, work harder! Papers due on Thursday/Friday.

Monday

Read and work! It's simple! Do this job well, dudes and dudettes.

Friday

All information you need is just below and to the right.

Wednesday

Continue to read in Allende to page 141 for Tuesday/Wednesday. See schedule and deadlines at right.

I am reading senior commentaries, and let me reveal a few phrases that you should avoid like the bubonic plague in your papers:

The author uses style and imagery to MAKE HIS SENTENCES FLOW. (What the heck does that mean, anyway? Use text to prove points. Flowing sentences are not demonstrable nor even, in every case, desirable. Plus, I still do not know what it means for "sentences to flow" when we speak of professional writers. It is an empty term used when you don't know what you are talking about, so it is like a big red and white flag of Siam saying "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!")

The author uses a dark tone TO MAKE AN IMPACT ON THE READER. (Who is this imagined reader? It's NOBODY! It's a black hole of a concept into which can drip all manner of foolishness. Use text to prove points, not some assumption tagged THE READER. At this stage, and until further notice, totally ban THE READER from your critical work! THE READER is another red flag!)

The author uses a DARK TONE to make an impact on the reader. (This one is already dead in space because it has a black hole in it, but what is a DARK TONE? Tone describes the attitude of the writer, narrator, or speaker toward his subject or audience. Tone can only be demonstrated through diction and phrasing that reveal attitude, preferably examples with more than one possible meaning. It helps if you define "attitude toward WHAT" -- the subject, character, or audience? The context determining the meaning, and the meaning so determined, demonstrate tone. The author or narrator's tone will not be "dark." That's way too ill-defined. It will be bitter, callous, condescending, contemplative, contemptuous, critical, cynical, defensive, defiant, desperate, detached, determined, didactic, diplomatic, disdainful, dramatic, formal, friendly, enthusiastic, humorous, indignant, informal, intimate, ironic, judgmental, lighthearted, malicious, mocking, nostalgic, objective, persuasive, reflective, reverent, sarcastic, sardonic, satirical, sincere, sympathetic, tragic, urgent, or vindictive. Those adjectives describe a very specific attitude. And then you have to take individual words, sentences, and relationships within the text and convince me that you are right about it.)

Monday

Complete your mini-research as well as your close reading and commentary on One Hundred Years. Continue reading in The House of the Spirits.

Friday

Read pages 1-24 by Monday/Tuesday. Produce the proposal that day as well. Exactly.

Thursday

See you in the auditorium. Bring your novels and some paper.

Wednesday

Work on your proposals and read your assigned passages (passages assigned to B-day only so far).

Tuesday

A-day should have proposal done by Monday, Sept. 22, and the essay completed by Tuesday, September 30.

Monday

Begin planning your essay on One Hundred Years. Find the instructions on the download page. The due date is September 19 for the proposal and September 30 for the essay.

Permission!

I had left the blog open to comments from all people with a Google ID. I have now changed the permissions to allow comments for members of this blog only. That means some of you may have to go through a sign-in step before commenting in the future. It will still allow you to comment, though.

Thursday

See yesterday's entry. Finish the book for next class.

Wednesday/Thursday

As assigned, finish the book. After Wednesday/Thursday class, choose a topic to track in the novel so that you can write a clear, coherent piece making sense of it all.

Monday/Tuesday

See the document at Downloads called "BenjaminHistory." I wrote the first page, but the second consists of extracts from Benjamin. Read and respond to it at least once on the blog. Be sure to be specific in your references to the document and mentally engaged as you write. After reading once, you might look for key words: "spiral," "line," "image." What is meant by "progress" and "homogenous, empty time"? Marquez writes of the isolated rebels, history's big losers. He is investigating how to recover the flitting image of the past. Remember -- Colonel Aureliano Buendia lost every battle and then struggled to keep either image of himself or coherent language to express himself on pages 161-168. Think hard, get dirty, grasp an idea.

Friday -- See this everyone! A-day too!

Speed up a little!

Read through page 267 for Monday/Tuesday
Read through page 332 for Wednesday/Thursday
Finish for Friday/Monday

for Friday/Monday (reversed B-A)

Read through page 159 in Cien Anos de Soledad. Using notes from class on magical realism, find one passage from one paragraph to one page in length that best exemplifies the definitions of magical realism in your notes. Be prepared to point out exactly what makes your passage a great example of magical realism by applying AT LEAST FOUR of the descriptors in your notes to the passage in a highly convincing manner.

Those running behind may find the peer review questions on my downloads page linked below right.

Thursday/Friday

Read through page 101 for Tuesday/Wednesday -- or go further! Work on one page that responds to the reading on pages 43-50 thoughtfully and clearly. Use the question below as a prompt:

How does the selection illustrate the problem of language, the problem of photography, and the problems of history, and how do you think these problems might be resolved?

Tuesday/Wednesday

All students now have books! Read through page 58, everybody, for Thursday/Friday.

Friday/Monday

Read pages 19-58. Note the following words, ideas, or images: ice, pig tails, magic, and science.

Be sure you have a good definition of narrative tone. Try to DESCRIBE it.

Wednesday/Thursday

For Friday/Monday, do the following: Look up United Fruit in Colombia to get an idea of the times and situation. Also, explore the links on my blog labeled Magical Realism, Macondo, and Oprah's 100 Years Site.

Look at the painting on the blog. If you click on it, it will enlarge.Taking everything into consideration, create a detailed, bullet-listed analysis to guide a coherent speech that points out significant details and draw tentative conclusions about the painter's method of communication.

Read from page 1-18 in the text of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of course, look for image patterns, but also look closely at the way the author uses language. How would you characterize his style? Who is the narrator?

Friday

These are the new prompts for Tuesday/Wednesday. See just below for some words on the oral presentation, and just below that if you are B-day and want the prompts that are due Monday for you.

Journal Entry 6
Part VI
1. Define kitsch in three ways as derived from Kundera’s novel. Are you a fan of kitsch, or do you aspire to something else in your life?
2. What is kitschy about Franz’s burial? About Tomas’s burial?
3. Franz, the western intellectual, has left his wife and daughter, found a true love in his student with big glasses, and gone on a political quest because of his image of Sabina’s regard. Has Tomas, the Czech doctor, done the same thing? What are the key similarities between Franz and Tomas? What is the most important difference?
4. What is Franz’s conception of the Grand March? How do you think Sabina would regard it?
5. What do rumblings in the stomach, the body, communism, marches, hidden sewers, and kitsch have to do with each other?
6. Is “United We Stand,” like “the barbarity of communism” and “our traditional values” and “President Carter” or “President Bush,” an example of American kitsch? How would Kundera place this phrase in his system of unusual dichotomies?
7. One of Kundera’s methods is to take opposing poles of existence, like lightness and weight, and toy with that oppositional relation. One way he toys with oppositions is to suggest alternative oppositions. We tend to think of two primary poles of good and evil, of God and the devil. Kundera reformulates this opposition into the sacred and the scatological. First, explain the effect of this reformulation on your understanding; then do it yourself: reformulate an accepted opposition into a new one. For instance, a common dichotomy is love and hate, but I might, based on a different understanding of the primacy of love, reformulate the opposition into love and apathy. Do it yourself with a commonly assumed set of opposites and consider the difference it makes in your understanding of one of the terms.

Thursday

See "Wednesday" for journal prompts for Part V due on Friday/Monday.

As you revise your oral presentations, hold this advice in mind (it comes from the IBO):

"Question: Can students use presentation facilities such as MS PowerPoint for their IOPs?

"Yes, though it then becomes the responsibility of the student to ensure that the facility used enhances rather than hinders the effectiveness of the presentation…It is not acceptable to base the IOP on topics and activities that do not provide adequate opportunities for students to meet the demands of the assessment criteria. For example, an oral exposé intended to provide an introduction to a writer or work, but which neither
demonstrates a clear link to, nor a substantial focus on, the actual content and form of the relevant part 4 work studied will not be appropriate. This is because the presentation will not enable students to meet the demands of the descriptors for assessment criteria A and B."

This means that you may -- not must -- have an audio-visual. This means that a thoughtful and focused interpretation of the text of the novel(s) must be the primary content of your presentation. Remember to address MEANING. Be rationally persuasive. Convince the audience that your interpretation is valid and not spacy.

Wednesday

Don't everybody choose the same one! (That looks suspicious). Here are the Part V journal prompts for Friday/Monday:
1. Compare and contrast Tereza’s ideas about the soul (41), Sabina’s ideas about privacy (112-113), and Tomas’s experience with the secret police in Czechoslovakia (Part V). What light does his experience shed on Tereza and Sabina’s desire to find or protect their individuality?
2. See the passage on page 226-228 and focus on the imagery associated with Tereza that implies a comparison with Oedipus. Has Tereza, in some way, married her own mother? Remember Tomas’s letter to the editor, guilt, and “soul and body” to develop your response.
3. Tomas, impelled to be a doctor, becomes a window washer by “an unspoken vow of fidelity.” Fidelity to what? Hasn’t he betrayed himself? Was it his choice?
4. Read V: Chapter 9 and then 221 from “Staring impotently…” to “Let us return to Tomas.” Why is Tomas such a prolific womanizer? Why do you think the author or narrator has made sex into such a prominent metaphor in the novel? Is Tomas a kind of Faust character?
5. Read the last two paragraphs of 206-207. Compare and contrast this passage with the one on Sabina’s views of beauty by mistake (bottom of 101 and top of 102) and Tereza’s in the last paragraph on 78 (which is informed by the narration in 11:51-52).
6. In what ways has metaphor changed Tomas’s life?
7. Compare and contrast Tomas on 200 with Tereza on 41.
8. Explain how “Love is our freedom” (236) and Tomas’s affairs “enslavement” (234) when heretofore he has seemed burdened by compassion for Tereza. Is Tomas’s life looking like Beethoven’s development of “Es muss sein!” – moving from light to serious, from joke to metaphysical truth – or like Parmenides’s development from heavy to light? (195-196)

Tuesday

Prepare to sign up for a definite time slot for your orals either on May 20, 21, or 22. See below for prompts for journal entry 4.

Monday

Journal prompts for Entry 4:
1. Contrast Tereza’s views on privacy to those of Sabina in Part III.
2. Remember the backdrop for this novel is a country under totalitarian communist domination. How do you think each of the novel’s main characters (or choose one) illustrates an approach or adaptation to foreign oppression of the country he or she loves? (Use details from Part III).
3. Read the final line of Chapter 6 on page 140. Using Tereza’s experience as a model for thought, consider this question: Does oppressive rule relieve a person of certain ethical or moral responsibilities? Does mandatory school relieve you of responsibility for your work?
4. Contrast IV: 25: 165-166 with Buendia’s attempts to stick names to objects in 100 Years.
5. What is important (heavy, light, returning?) about the benches in the river?
6. What do you make of the scene of the shootings on Petrin Hill, presented as real though obviously only imagined, on pages 146-150? What is the meaning and purpose of this scene?
7. Structure: The novel consists of seven parts with this number of chapters in each part, respectively: 17, 29, 11, 29, 23, 29, 7. Does this series of prime numbers suggest or develop any existing theme within the novel?

Friday

The journal entries I am reading today are simply beautiful. Keep writing this way, with your mind and soul of a piece. It's inspiring to see a soul on deck!

Look at this: "[Tereza] views the body as 'dark,' because when Tereza thinks about her mother and all the bad stuff she did like pass gas and walk around the house naked while laughing, she looks in the mirror and that's what she sees -- her mother. I believe that Tereza views the soul as 'light' because when she looks in the mirror and her soul would come forth 'spreading out over the deck, waving at the sky and singing in jubilation,' she realized that the soul was her own individuation, but the eternal return lay in her because her mother forever lived in her, and she was reminded of that every time she looked in the mirror. In the end Tereza stared in the mirror to remind herself that her body is not her soul and that in this dark there is a light that is her own."

I am beginning to live again.

Thursday

Part III: Words Misunderstood
Journal prompts for Monday/Tuesday:
1. Reread page 111-114. Do you agree more with Franz's understanding of "Strength" and "Living in Truth" or with Sabina's interpretation of those words?
2. Comment on the irony – or whatever else you see – in this section's ending image in which Franz closes his eyes as he listens to the gray-haired man.
3. Why does Franz think his life is light and Sabina's heavy? Do you agree that Sabina's experiences with oppression give her life weight? Is Czechoslovakia heavier than Switzerland?
4. What does Sabina mean by "beauty by mistake," and what do you think of it?
5. If you wish to write on an idea you are considering for WLA 1, and you see something that stimulates your thinking in this section, write about that idea instead.

Show clearly that you have read!

Wednesday

Projects due tomorrow. B-Day should locate projects on a disk for me to keep from losing a day. Look below for journal prompts and to the right for the reading schedule.

Tuesday

Stick to the reading schedule! For Thursday/Friday: Complete one journal entry from among these prompts iin about a half page to a full page. SHOW you have read the assignment as you think about it:

1. Analyze and consider the repeated metaphor of the soul as a crew in a ship's bowels rushing up to the surface to show itself to Tomas. What has it to do with "Soul and Body"?
2. Think on paper about eternal return and individuation with regard to Tereza's view of herself in the mirror. What are Tereza's attitudes about the body? About the soul?
3. The final sentences of "Part I: Lightness and Weight" are, "Tomas felt no compassion. All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." In "Soul and Body," Chapter 2, the narrator says, "But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away." Tomas is a doctor. Does he hold that "lyrical illusion of the age of science" that the body and soul are actually one thing?

Monday

See reading schedule at right. Deadline for newspaper projects is Thursday/Friday.

Friday

Go see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It's not an assignment. You'd just be crazy not to!

A good many of you -- especially B-day students -- either did not provide evidence that you had finished The House of the Spirits or were not present on the day of the check. Be ready Monday to qualify for the project.

Thursday

Everybody -- psychologists and all -- should bring one-page responses to my class on Friday. See below for details.

The deadline for the newspaper projects will be moved to May 8 and 9 to accommodate your failure to recognize the problems psychology assessments would cause.

Wednesday

Read through the end of "Lightness and Weight" on page 35 and complete the journal assignment. See April 29 post if you have forgotten it. Remember the newspaper project due on Tuesday. That is not much time to resolve problems and difficulties!

Tuesday

Read in The Unbearable Lightness of Being through at least page 23. In one brilliant page, write your thoughts on the following:
eternal return
lightness and heaviness
what Tereza, Tomas, and Sabina have to do with these ideas
what the repetition of the floating basket metaphor means

Friday

Students turned in papers today. Bring all necessary materials to work on the newspaper project.

Wednesday 2

The assignment "Chilean Times" has been updated to include the rubric.

Wednesday

We worked on the newspaper projects. At home, focus on your One Hundred Years paper, which is due on Friday.

Monday

A-day and B-day: The due date for your One Hundred Years of Solitude papers is Friday, April 25.

The newspaper projects are due May 6 and 7. See downloads for a copy of the assignment. It was updated Monday. Watch for more updates to include the scoring rubric.

Scroll and look to the right for searchable editions of The House of the Spirits and One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Marquez edition is slightly different from ours, but you can find chapter headings and the like even in the pages that are not available for preview.

Friday

A-day and B-day: The due date for your DELETE! newspaper projects I MEAN OYS PAPERS!! is Friday, April 25.

The newspaper projects are due May 6 and 7. See downloads for a copy of the assignment. It was updated Monday. Watch for more updates to include the scoring rubric.

Scroll and look to the right for searchable editions of The House of the Spirits and One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Marquez edition is slightly different from ours, but you can find chapter headings and the like even in the pages that are not available for preview.

Wednesday

Bring your laptops and materials to work seriously on your Marquez paper. We will not have a lab, so if you have a laptop and permission, please bring it. I will have eight classroom computers -- clearly not enough.

Of course, you could chisel it out with a pen.

Monday

Consider a good four-person project group. You will be building a newspaper front page with complementary articles and editorials. Make a list of five key events you would be interested in "covering" from The House of the Spirits, and prioritize them.

Wednesday

Papers are in for review. Read that book.

Tuesday

B-day turns in a paper tomorrow. A-day reads the book. See schedule to the right.

Monday

A day has a paper due tomorrow...B day on Wednesday...

Make no mistake: A day will meet with me tomorrow. That's will meet with me in A221 tomorrow. Bring your best critical minds.

Thursday

Typed, well-formatted, hard-thought paper due on Tuesday/Wednesday: print before class time. Also have it available electronically for revisions.

Wednesday

There is a language quiz tomorrow on notes from Set Three. Bring materials and attitudes to work on your paper or to read from your novel. Friday will also be a work day with the laptops in class. Due dates for very polished papers formatted MLA style are Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

Monday

Complete blog response assignment thoughtfully. Essays due, typed and formatted according to MLA style, Tuesday/Wednesday of next week.

Thursday

See below. Contribute to the blog.

Wednesday

See the document at Downloads called "BenjaminHistory." I wrote the first page, but the second consists of extracts from Benjamin. Read and respond to it at least once on the blog. Be sure to be specific in your references to the document and mentally engaged as you write. After reading once, you might look for key words: "spiral," "line," "image." What is meant by "progress" and "homogenous, empty time"? Marquez writes of the isolated rebels, history's big losers. He is investigating how to recover the flitting image of the past. Remember -- Colonel Aureliano Buendia lost every battle and then struggled to keep either image of himself or coherent language to express himself on pages 161-168. Think hard, get dirty, grasp an idea.

Tuesday

I hope not many of you seized on a Winthrop trip as an opportunity to ditch your proposal. See you Thursday! You must convince me you have finished the book!

Monday

Tuesday students who have proven they have read One Hundred Years SHOULD bring assignments by my room tomorrow as soon as you return from your trip to Winthrop.

Friday

Work on the proposal. Get the format and details right!

Thursday

A-day stragglers should finish the book and be able to prove it so that they can turn in the proposal to the paper without paying the 20-point late fee. B-day should look just below at the Wednesday post for the Friday assignment.

Reading the book is the first thing, not the last thing.

Wednesday's second post

If anyone wants to know what a blog thread about ideas and books should look like, read the prompt and comments under "Thursday."

For tomorrow, A-day: Bring in your three-four passages clearly marked and easily found that you can use to support or investigate your project idea. Search for the richest selections you can, if possible from the beginning, middle, and end of the novel. Those who have started The House of the Spirits, watch for harmonies and overlaps.

Wednesday

I have one more day of oral commentaries. You will view a little magical realism on film and receive an assignment tomorrow: bring your books and all work you have done so far on the "project," which is becoming an essay. You can download the assignment with a template and scoring guide at "downloads." The assignment is due on March 17/18 AT THE BEGINNING of the block. That does not mean print it as you walk in. No, it does not mean that.

Monday

No new posts necessary. Think about things.

Friday

A-day, bring in your big project idea for finalizing next week. Expect more quizzes that will compound difficulties if you do not get that book read!

B-day, remember to bring in three ideas.

Thursday

See yesterday's post: the assignment is the same for B-day.

For some real consequences to our discussion about words, photographs, and history, consider this: If a Supreme Court justice says he bases interpretations on the founders' intentions, how can he know what they were?

Wednesday

Remember to hit the blog twice. Do not be a slave to the initial question: read the entire thread and move with it. Just keep a piece of text or a specific reference close. For Friday, think of three aspects or ideas from One Hundred Years of Solitude that you think would make for a good project on it.

Friday

Do not let a missed class confuse you! Do the assignment below, both A and B day classes.

Second block, a class of CP seniors, published their first podcast! You can subscribe at the bottom of the downloads page. If you can do better, get on it!

Thursday

Both A and B days may comment under this post. Post at least twice. Avoid lamely posting twice in a row.

One student wrote in her response to One Hundred Years of Solitude and magical realism: "All of the uses of magical realism cause us to create either a stonger or weaker bond to the book. It also causes us to remember that this is a piece of fictional writing. It only causes me to keep thinking that it is not real and that it could never happen." What advantages and effects does this constant reminder of the book's fictionality provide? Review the overview of magical realism by Lindsey Moore linked as "Magical Realism" at right. What does Moore mean by "irony regarding author's perspective"? Discuss these and other questions from class: written history and pictures in the novel, for instance, if the irony question dries up.

We will discuss your interpretive questions next class period.

Wednesday

Keep up with your discussion questions and keep reading. You are through page 313 and are therefore ready for a little quiz. Get finished with the first reading of the novel by Monday/Tuesday.

Creative or Personal

If you need to communicate with classmates for any reason of your own, comment here. If this flies, I will link a specific blog for that purpose. Remember that this is not a private page. It could be, but you would have to log in just to see it. You will continue to find a link to it to the right and down, even as it ages. Does anyone have art you would like posted here so I don't have to use these crummy professional ones?

Monday

Add to your items to note as you read through page 313: the marriage of Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda; the change in the house as Fernanda rises and Ursula declines; and the way Marquez creates the echo of Remedios the Beauty in Meme.

A-day should be through 313 tomorrow. B-day has helped you with some notes. Find them on Downloads.

Friday

Just read, baby.

Be thinking about the marriage between Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. What is the basic conflict between them, and why (in a literary or psychological sense) would they marry?

Or, if you prefer, think of the change in matrons of the Buendia household as Ursula ages and Fernanda rises.

Read pages 203-313 by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 26-27.
Read pages 315-417 by Monday/Tuesday, March 3-4.

Thursday

Loved the discussion today. Your blog entries had anticipated some of this. Reread the postings to see how you arrived at it before we ever talked about it in class. Keep up with the reading schedule! Note and tag page numbers in your book.

Wednesday

Remember to take the little quiz to your right.

Comment at least twice on this post. Comment at two different times so that others can comment in between your comments. Respond to the prompt and to each other -- it's like a conversation -- but use specific text references. Here is the prompt material:

When Aureliano Segundo enters Jose Arcadio Buendia's workshop, nothing has changed, "nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose Arcadio Buendia vaporized mercury." Melquiades speaks to him and is but forty years old. Yet when Jose Arcadio Buendia sees Prudencio Aguilar, Prudencio has aged and decomposed in death. Why do you think Marquez depicts an aging, rotting Prudencio in Jose Arcadio Buendia's eyes and an ageless Melquiades to Aureliano Segundo's eyes? How are these perceptions revealing about the history of the town? Consider what Aureliano Segundo is doing when Ursula comes to clean the room, which does not need cleaning. He is reading or deciphering manuscripts...Be fresh and piercing here! Try not just to go through the motions.

Tuesday, Part Deux

Bring in One Hundred Years of Solitude for use during first block, please. (It's a senior thing, you wouldn't understand!) You will get them back the same day.

Good work on the blog...some thoughtful remarks. To WK: I did count!

Comment on the following:

Comment at least twice on the following. Comment at two different times so that others can comment in between your comments. Respond to the prompt and to each other -- it's like a conversation -- but use specific text references. Here is the prompt material: When Aureliano Segundo enters Jose Arcadio Buendia's workshop, nothing has changed, "nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose Arcadio Buendia vaporized mercury." Melquiades speaks to him and is but forty years old. Yet when Jose Arcadio Buendia sees Prudencio Aguilar, Prudencio has aged and decomposed in death. Why do you think Marquez depicts an aging, rotting Prudencio in Jose Arcadio Buendia's eyes and an ageless Melquiades to Aureliano Segundo's eyes? How are these perceptions revealing about the history of the town?

Reading schedule, repeated...

Here's a reposting of the reading schedule. It will move down the list as new posts go up, but still, look at it.

Read pages 103-201 by Thursday/Friday, February 20-21.
Read pages 203-313 by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 26-27.
Read pages 315-417 by Monday/Tuesday, March 3-4.

B-day

Write your one-page, MLA formatted paper for Monday. See below for a more complete version of the assignment. I've linked Macondo to this page. Poke around it, but if you want a definition of magical realism, go to the left sidebar and click "Magical Realism" and scroll down to "Selected Sites" and click "Magical Realism Overview." That page will not link without taking you right back to Macondo, which is curiously like the novel itself...

Tuesday

B-day -- bring in One Hundred Years. We will study magical realism and do a few close readings.

Monday

Read assignments listed below for Wednesday.

Assigned Friday to A-day

For Tuesday, respond to elements of magical realism and their apparent purpose in the reading selection. Write exactly one coherent, sensible, and specific page. Phrases such as *really makes you feel like you are there* or *really really brings out the emotion of the characters* will result in immediate zeros. That will earn you a big BS: Be Specific. Write about the selection you read and YOUR thoughts, not on some nameless imagined *reader* upon which any wild notion could depend. I suggest that you focus your one page focus on a single important idea (important to humanity as well as to the book): time and memory; history and difficulties knowing it; isolation and alienation; dangers of half-understandings; the nexus of scientific ways of knowing and primitive intutions.

Friday

Bring One Hundred Years of Solitude to class with you.

Tuesday

Continue to prepare to do presentations. Be ready to PLUG and PLAY.

Read from 100 Years!

Thursday

Read pages 1-101 in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 12/13.

Read pages 103-201 by Thursday/Friday, February 20-21.
Read pages 203-313 by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 26-27.
Read pages 315-417 by Monday/Tuesday, March 3-4.

Wednesday

More presentations tomorrow. Also, you will get One Hundred Years of Solitude.

See the downloads page for a list of items required on Monday/Tuesday.

See the downloads page for a list of items required on Monday/Tuesday.

Oh, no! Monday is the day we have to present!!!!!

Oh, no! Monday is the day we have to present!!!!!

Thursday

Try to form the most specific questions you can concerning the presentation. We will have on more day in the lab to work on the presentation.

Wednesday

We'll be in the lab again tomorrow.

Will it float?

Will an emailed post actually work?

First day

Hey, kids! You'll find your stuff here!