Reflection

Authors note:

This is a piece I wrote to analyze the way the author, Laurence Yep reflected a certain time period and history thought the short story "The Ribbons."

“She’s here! She’s here! Paw-Paw’s here!” this is how Stacy and her little brother, Ian, felt when their very old and traditional grandma arrived to their home in the United States from Hong Kong after she escaped from the communist way back in the day. The author, Laurence Yep, of the short story “The Ribbons” does a great job inserting little bits of information throughout the piece to help represent and reflect the history and the time period of the grandmas life.

When Paw-Paw was a child her mom started binding her feet, which is the very painful practice of modifying a woman's feet to make them about three inches long. At that time, bound feet were a status symbol, the only way for a woman to marry into money, most mothers had their daughters' feet bound when they were two to five years old. They would bend the toes under until they broke, then  they would break the arch of the foot, and finally wrap it tightly in ten feet long silk ribbons until the foot was a triangular shape. Once Paw- Paw got into the house Stacy was so excited to show her all of her dance moves she had learned. She pulled out her shoes to show them to Paw-Paw but Paw-Paw didn't react like she was hoping. When she looked at the satin ribbons, it was with a hate and disgust that Stacy had never seen before. “Give those to me.” she said.  After Paw-Paw said this Stacy head was filled with confused and disappointed thoughts with the reaction of her grandma causing them to not talk for days until Stacy’s mom sorted it all out. Paw-Paw and Stacy learned later that it was all just a big misunderstanding.

The ribbons represented many years of pain and agony to Paw-Paw so she wanted to get them away from Stacy to protect her but once Paw-Paw learned what the ribbons were really used for now a days she reacted differently. “She took my hand and patted it clumsily, I think it was the first time she had showed me any sign of affection“ Stacy said. “‘When I saw those ribbons I didn’t want you feeling pain like I do’” Paw-Paw said humbly. At this point in the story you can feel the way the mood changes with the way the author writes the story. The mood changes from a distant relationship between the grandma and the child to a close relationship where the ribbons were almost binding their relationship together more and more.

Foot binding was a major way that the culture of the grandma is shown in this piece but there are other ways too, like in the way that they greet each other. “Mother had coached us on how to do a proper Chinese greeting for the last two months, but I thought Grandmother also deserved an American-style bear hug. However, when I tried to put my arms around her and kiss her, she stiffened in surprise. “Nice children don’t drool on people,” she snapped at me.” In modern day a bear hug would be a normal way to say hello to someone but since Paw-Paw came from a different time period and a different culture, this was inappropriate. According to this history of the grandma it would have been appropriate for them to do just a firm handshake and to say “Joe sun " ,meaning welcome.

In addition to the greeting, another way they show culture is by the way they address their grandma. You will see in this piece that they call their grandma Paw-Paw to her face but to each other they call her grandma. Most people in the world don't call their grandma and grandpa by their original names, they call their grandma simply, grandma, but this is the american way, where name Paw-Paw literally translates to mother’s mother and that makes it much more of a traditional name. The grandma coming from the background that she came from would much rather be called a traditional name because it shows her that people respect her.

Similar to a multitude of other short stories across the world there are many ways that this short story reflects the culture and time period of their grandma.  This piece is perfect way to show that even in a short story like The Ribbons you can really learn a lot about a person’s culture and what is respectful or not respectful to do and or to say.

The Trojan Horse

Authors note :

This is two short paragraphs I wrote to answer these questions about the story The Trojan Horse adapted from book II of The Aeneid by Virgil. What was the conflict? How did the conflict get resolved? What was so sneaky about the whole thing? Could something like this happen now a days?Could something like this happen at a small school or business? Have you seen something like this tactic used in a novel/tv show/real life?

The conflict is the war  witch has been going on for 10 years. It gets resolved when the Greeks ruler Odysseus planed a sneak attack involving a huge wooden horse and a bunch of soldiers inside. At first the horse being there was suspicious but then they sent the boy in to convince the Troys that the horse was good and that if they didn't take it into their walls the gods would punish them.

I don't think that this could happen in a war now a days because the technology is way better and after 9/11 they are even more careful. They have thermal cameras that would look into the object that the solider were hiding in and see there was heat or movement inside. I don't think this could happen in a school or small building in the form of like hiding in something and come charging out as an attack but i do think that there could  be a sneak attack in the middle of the night to T.P another school for homecoming or something like that. I dont think i have seen this tactic used on T.V

Tragedy

Authors note:

This is an essay I wrote about the cause and affect people have around Laurel in the book The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle.

"I quickly imagined that I could reach my hand into my chest, yank out that awful feeling, place it on an invisible cloud of air in front of me, then push it away. Push it away (Castle, 2011). " This is how Laurel feels after the death of her mom, dad, and brother when she knows that she has a lot of dark days in her future that she will need to deal with, and David Kaufman is not making it any easier for her. When anyone in the world dies it is obvious that the effect will be tragic, but In the book The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle the true effect was in what David did as he coped with a tragedy of his own and how it effects Laurel on her journey to rediscover herself in the real world. 

When laurel went to a prom after party with her lifelong friend and date, Joe, David caused it to turn bad and this effected Laurel in a negative way. It started going downhill when David came in and yelled at her, just making her feel worse and worse until she didn't want to face anyone in the world again, not even her own best friend.  Laurel hit her last straw moment when David came in and shouted “You’re an orphan” right to her face. The party and the night had been going great, just for one night Laurel had forgotten about all the bad stuff that had happened to her. Leading up to that night Laurel was starting to find her place in the world again but after she was humiliated in front of everyone Laurel just went back into the cycle of “What if” thoughts of how her life turned out. “What if I would have went in the car with them”, “What if David didn't show up at the after party” ,“What if none of this happened”, what if this, what if that, what ifs consumed her whole world until she didn't even want to get out of bed in the morning.

Although messing with your mind can be confusing, it is even worse when your mind and your heart are confused  All throughout the book Joe has been there for her even if she didn't see it until the end. She starts to notice him and takes advantage of the smart guy that has been there for her the whole time, she starts to have feelings for him, but a curve ball gets thrown into her love life when she is on a walk with David and they kiss! David came over one night and they decided to go for a walk with his dog Masher to a cave they used to visit in the summer together. After a long serious talk on the way back there was just an awkward moment of silence before they kissed. Laurel didn't know what to do because she now had equal feelings for both guys. She didn't know what to do because she was trapped in the middle. The effect that this had on Laurel was that her heart was pulled in many directions. Her mind knew that David was a bad kind of boy, he was the kind of boy who came and went as he pleased never really being there as a solid rock but after that kiss Laurels heart was to him even though her mind knew he was bad. Her heart was pulled in two different direction not knowing which way to go, leaving Laurel in a world full of uncertainty and confusion.

In this essay about the book The Beginning Of After by Jennifer Castle I list only two of the way that David made Laurel’s life way more complex but there are many more. If a little girl took a toy away from a little boy and the boy started screaming, people would think the boy is disrupting the girl from playing with the toy when really it is the other way around. This is one way to show that sometimes the root of the problem is not what it seems. In the same way if someone loses a family member or multiple family members everyone tries to comfort them about their loss but really it’s the people that are still alive that are making it hard for them to move on with their life.

Bibliography

Castle, J. (2011). The Beginning Of After. In J. Castle, The Beginning Of After (p. 35). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

A Well Lighted Place

Authors Note:

This is two short responses to the story a well lighted place. The first response talked about the old waiter and the young waiter and what they represent and what the cafe represents and the second one is in response to how the movie is different from the story.

First Response:

The old waiter represents tradition and respect for the older more lonely people where the young waiter is a eager person that just wants to get out into the world and do something but doesn’t know the heritage in which the world comes from. I café is a place where the old man comes because he is lonely so he doesn't want to go home and face the loneliness and darkness of laying on a bed in a quiet dark room.

Second Response:

The movie was very different than i imagined it. Even thought it was obvious that the cafe was going to be a clean well lighted place based of its name I was still picturing it being a dark and airy cafe.  I think I thought this because In the beginning they said he was sitting with a shadow from the leaves on his face and shadows are dark so that put a dark looking scene into my head right away. Another thing that surprised me was the way the cafe looked, I was expecting more of a modern looking cafe with clean lines in the design of the building, I also thought the building would of had large windows to look through because they said they saw the solider and the women walk by so I was assuming they were looking out of a large window.

Some thing that added the affect of everyone there other than the young waitress being lonely is the music and the lighting. The music in the beginning was sad and depressing and just a little bit off key so that put a sad thought in your mind right away. Also it is night time so it is dark outside and they show the outside of the building and it is the only building they show that is open but it looks a little run down on the outside. If they would have started this scene in the day time and they were playing a song by Katty Perry or The Wanted it would have set a very different mood. 

Flipped Upside Down

Authors Note: 

This is an essay talking about the difficulty astronauts have living in a micro-gravity environment for long periods of time. Please notice my use secondary sources noted at the bottom. 

Imagine the world is floating, every task you try to do your weightless, your whole world is literally turned around. This is what it is like for people living on the international space station also known as the ISS. Everyday tasks become a challenge like eating, brushing your teeth, working out, and even going to the bathroom because they all require special equipment and skills.

The ISS is an important feature to the exploration to the atmosphere around us.  On the ISS they can find ways to predict weather more effectively, see where to clean up pollution and oil spills, and find lots of ways to improve our life on Earth. (The Space Operation Learning Center). In total, more than 400 scientific experiments in fields such as biology, human physiology, and physical and materials science,  have been conducted on or in the space station over the last decade. (Is the International Space Station Worth $100 Billion?) They also use this facility to see how peoples body’s adapt to living in a microgravity for long periods of time.

Now getting to how people live on the ISS, when they wake up the first thing they do is get up and go to the bathroom and brush their teeth, seams simple but it’s really not. To brush your teeth on the ISS, you first take a sip from a bag with a straw but don’t swallow,  then grab your tooth brush and your tooth paste and you brush, when it’s time to spit you have to do it differently. If you spit into a sink your spit would just float everywhere in the air so instead you spit into a  Kleenex then throw the Kleenex away. (The Atlantic, How to brush your teath on the international space station). Since there is no gravity to either hold a toilet bowl full of water in place or pull a humans waste down, the toilets are much different in space. Although it is designed to be as much as possible like those on Earth, there are a number of changes. Straps are there to hold feet against the floor, and pivoting bars swing across the thighs ensuring the user remains seated. There is a hose, which can be used in a standing position or can be used sitting (Space/Astronomy).

Although getting up, brushing your teeth, and going to the bathroom are all a key point in life you need food to survive! On the ISS there isn’t a refrigerator and since you’re in space for a long time the food you eat can’t perish you have to eat a special kind of food. The food they eat is like the food you would take camping for a long time. It has to be something that can cook by just adding moisture. According to Irene Klotz of the Discovery Channel website, some of astronauts favorite foods include Japanese takeout, Sweetish meatballs, yogurt, chicken  soup, tortillas, shrimp, hot sauce, M&Ms, dried produce, and mystery meals. If you want salt or pepper on any of those meals you can but they are only available in a liquid form. This is because astronauts can't sprinkle salt and pepper on their food in space, the salt and pepper would simply float away and that causes a danger that they could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut's eyes, mouth or nose (The Space Operation Learning Center).

There are many reasons why you must work out in space. Since astronauts are in orbit around the earth they don’t feel the effects of gravity there for they don’t have to use their muscles as much doing normal everyday things (Rothstein). Because of that they have to work out with special equipment to prevent muscle atrophy, a condition astronauts experience after long periods of inactivity (The Space Operation Learning Center). Muscle atrophy is a decrease in the mass of the muscle; it can be a partial or complete wasting away of muscle (Merrian-Webster).  So because of that astronauts exercise two hours per day. Lifting 200 pounds on Earth may be a lot of work, but in space it is easy, the 200 pounds appear to weigh nothing. Therefore, exercise equipment needs to be specially designed for use in space so astronauts will receive the workout needed.

One way they prevent muscle atrophy is by using a piece of specialized equipment call an Advanced Resistive Exercise Device or aRED for short. This device acts like a weight machine but it doesn't use weights at all, instead it has a system of vacuum cylinders; canisters with air that have had a vacuum suction that provide  up to 600 pounds of weight (Landau). When you’re using this device it is kind of like a bicycle pump only in reverse. So if you squat the vacuum compresses and then when you stand back up the vacuum sucks air into it and as a result puts strain on you as you try to stand back up making it a effective workout (Landau).

Every kid in the world had a dream occupation they wanted to be weather it was a fireman, a police man, or a doctor but in 2013 it was reported that astronaut was the second highest ranked dream job of kids across the world (Share Ranks). For all the kids and adults out there that want to be an astronaut just remember that you could live on the ISS and help the development of space exploration.

Bibliography

Is the International Space Station Worth $100 Billion? (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2013, from Space.com: http://www.space.com/9435-international-space-station-worth-100-billion.html

Landau, E. (n.d.). CNN health. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from www.cnn.com: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/11/18/exercise.in.space/index.html?_s=PM:HEALTH

Merrian-Webster. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2013, from http://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/atrophy

Rothstein, D. (n.d.). Curious About Astronomy. Retrieved April 19, 2013, from curious.astro.cornell.udu: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=367

Share Ranks. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2013, from Most Popular Careers Children Want when they Grow Up: http://shareranks.com/4780,Most-Popular-Careers-Children-Want-when-they-Grow-Up#b

Space/Astronomy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2013, from Potty Training - How To Go To The Bathroom In Space: http://space.about.com/cs/spaceshuttles/a/bathroominspace.htm

The Atlantic. (How to brush your teath on the international space station). Retrieved March 26, 2013, from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-to-brush-your-teeth-on-the-international-space-station/262046/

The Space Operation Learning Center. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2013, from What does the ISS do: http://solc.gsfc.nasa.gov/kids3/kids3_what_does.html

African-American Identity

Authors note:
Below is the poem Aunt Sue's Stories by Langston Hughes. In my short response I analyze how the way he was raised affected the style and topic Hughes chose to write about.

Aunt Sue's Stories

Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child in her bosom
And tells him stories.

Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of Aunt Sue’s voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue’s stories.

And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue’s stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
Out of any book at all,
But they came
Right out of her own life.

The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue’s stories. 

All throughout his life Langston Hughes had a passion to write about the beauty of African -American identity. When his dad left him while he was trying to find work and his mom worked various low paying jobs all around, he was raised by his maternal grandmother in Lawrence Kansas. Hughes remembers as a child sitting in his grandmothers lap as she told him long beautiful stories about the people who set the Negros free. Hughes grandmother never told stories out of a book witch makes me wonder if I the line, Beat out of blood with words sad sung,  from the poem "Afro-American Fragment" is a reflection of what his grandmother stories talked about or what kind of feeling they portrayed.

There are two main reasons that I believe Hughes was so interested in writing about the beauty of African-American people. One way is The way his grandmother told beautiful stories of the brave people who set the Negros free was the driving reason Hughes wanted to write about this. In her stories everyone always moved ahead heroically towards an end. Nobody ever cried in his grandmothers stories, they just worked, schemed or fought, but no crying. The second reason is after high school Hughes went and work with his father for a long painful year in Mexico where they clashed about a major issue, his father hated Negros. Since Hughes didn't know his father very well and he was raised with a clear image of all Negro being strong and brave people; and the fact that Hughes father hated Negros inspired Hughes more. When his father said this to him it inspired him even more to go on to write great poem, and plays about strong beautiful African american men and women.  

Crystal Stair

"Mother to Son" 

By: Langston Hughes

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Authors note:

In this short response I analyze what the crystal stairs are representing in the poem “Mother to Son” and how the poem changes at a time in the story when the mother says a certain phrase.  

In this poem called “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes the crystal stairs represents a good life, a walk in the park with no obstacles to get around. The mother in this poem is telling her son about how life isn't going to be easy, there are going to be bumps in the road. The crystal stairs are smooth and obstacle free but the stairs of her and many other people were bumpy and had splinters as the mother said in the poem. When the mother said “I'se been a-climbin' on, and reachin' landin's, and turnin' corners”  that was the turning point of the poem where she turns into an inspiring speaker trying to motivate her son to keep going in life no matter what happens.