WEEK SEVEN BLOG ENTRY

Is baseball still the national sport? Does it feel like there is more emphasis and support for professional football? Is that the new national sport?

WEEK SEVEN READING

Finish the Tortilla Curtain this week and get started on your paper.

WEEK SEVEN WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

As ou read, try to link the Tortilla Curtain to something that seems entirely unrelated. Is the book related to the World Series? To a movie you saw? To your favorite song? Just write imaginatively!

WEEK SIX BLOG ENTRY

How important are walls in our world? Which are more powerful, physical ones or non-physical ones?

WEEK SIX READING

Start to read Tortilla Curtain this week.

WEEK SIX WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

Since you have started to read Tortilla Curtain this week, what is one line that stands out to you? Why that one?

TC BOYLE SYNTHESIS “ESSAY” DUE TO TURNITIN BY NOVEMBER 8TH

I put "essay" in quotes because this is not an essay, per se. It is more, a synthesis exercise.

As you read TC Boyle, number on a page from 1-10. Write out the ten sentences from the book that catch your eye or make you think. After each sentence, give a brief description of what the sentences means to you or why you included it.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE:

1.    "For a long moment they stood there, examining each other, unwitting perpetrator and unwitting victim, and then the man let the useless bag drop from his fingers with a tinkle of broken glass" Page 8

This sentence caught my eye because of the word unwitting. Why does the author put these people together so early in the book and then say that they are both “unwitting?”

2.    She didn't answer, and he felt the cold seep into his veins, a coldness and a weariness like nothing he'd ever known.   Page 355

Boyle does a good job of describing the emptiness of death in this sentence, both cold and weary and unlike anything Candido, or anyone, can experience.

After those ten sentences comes the more difficult but rewarding part. You are going to write a synthesis. A synthesis is a type of writing where you take various unrelated writings and find some insight drawn from them. It is writing that creates connections between thoughts. You are not comparing the thoughts, but you are using these ten sentences to say one thing. When you examine the ten sentences together, what new insight do you gain that may have been undeveloped just by looking at the individual sentences?

That will be labeled “Synthesis” and will be at the bottom of the numbered ten sentences.

As I said, this is a little weird, but it usually produces good writing. You are simply numbering and writing about ten sentences and then writing about how they are connected. In fact, STRIVE FOR CONNECTEDNESS. GO BEYOND THE OBVIOUS. SYNTHESIS IS ABOUT INFERRING MEANING, NOT ABOUT STATING THE OBVIOUS. I am grading your writing in this section, but more importantly, I am grading your ability to create a unique synthesis, an original claim about the book.

THE SYNTHESIS SECTION IS APPROXIMATELY ONE PAGE.

Since it is a bit odd, I wanted to give you one good example of the synthesis part. The length of the synthesis is about a page. The author should have used one or two more examples of his main point of synthesis. But as you can see, the author has located clearly what the one area is that ties his sentences together. By the way, if your key idea only captures five or six of your sentences, that is fine too. You do not have to use all ten. Also, where this one is lacking is in the analysis. It is a bit pedestrian. Strive for depth!

STUDENT SAMPLE: 

SYNTHESIS

The similar connection between most of the chosen passages would be the racist or hate aspect. The focus on race or between being Mexican or not is a huge factor throughout the book. It seems as though all the characters want to be or think that they are better than the person next to them. “Fucking Beaners. Rip it up man. Destroy it.” (page 64). This is an example of a quote from the book that shows the anger or animosity towards different races. Most of the quotes are also driven with anger or hate. I found that harsh words were spoken when characters were most upset or seemed to be in some type of turmoil. The unique choice of words Boyle uses for these passages is also a connection between the quotes. It seems as though Boyle chooses words that build some type of emotion or fire within the reader, as if he was aiming to provoke emotion within the reader. At the very least these quotes cause the reader to pause and think or feel the anger or pain the characters are feeling at the time. Another link between these quotes would be their context they are almost all referring to someone other than themselves, or trying to pass the blame a different way. Overall this book and these quotes are thought provoking as well as emotion filled passages that allow a person to feel what the characters are feeling.

FACE TO FACE MEETING

Remember, our mandatory face to face meeting is this Saturday, October 18th, from 9 to noon. We meet int he Classroom Building 102. Look on a CSUB map to find out where that is...but if you park near the Dore Theatre and walk South you cannot miss it.
We will be writing the mandatory in-class essay. We will talk about the prompt on Saturday and will also work on some other writing issues that can only be done face to face.
I look forward to seeing all you fabulous writers on Saturday!

Dr. S

WEEK FIVE BLOG ENTRY

With Christmas just around the corner, (after Halloween, Thanksgiving, the rest of English 305, and about a million other things) I thought we would talk about the holidays.
1. What is your favorite holiday memory?
--or--
2. What is your earliest holiday memory?

By the way, this week's reading and writing will help prepare you for our lovely face to face meeting on Saturday.

WEEK FIVE READING

Kids' Belief in Santa Myth Is Healthy, Psychologists Say

By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer   |   December 19, 2013 10:19am ET

http://www.livescience.com/42089-kid-s-belief-in-santa-is-healthy.html

Spoiler alert: This article contains information suggesting Santa Claus may not be real.

Generally, lying to kids is a bad thing. But for many children, believing in Santa is a normal and healthy part of development, psychologists say.

The notion of a man who flies around the world in a vehicle drawn by flying hoofed mammals, entering people's homes through their chimneys and delivering presents, all within the span of a single night, is highly improbable, to say the least. Yet the Santa Claus myth is a long-standing and powerful tradition for many families, and may reinforce good values.

"I don't think it's a bad thing for kids to believe in the myth of someone trying to make people happy if they're behaving," said Dr. Matthew Lorber, a child psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "Imagination is a normal part of development, and helps develop creative minds."

Mythical story, real values

The Santa myth is grounded in truth — after all, St. Nicholas was a real person. He became famous for giving gifts and money to the poor, and it's those values that are important, Lorber told LiveScience. "It's a real story, it's a real value and it's something that inspires children," he said. That's the spirit of Christmas, though today's consumer culture may have drifted from that spirit a bit, he added. [10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth]

Santa Claus is just one mythical figure many kids believe in, along with the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and other fairy-tale creatures. Children use their imaginations all the time, even if they know the resulting creations are fiction. When kids play cops and robbers, they know they aren't really cops or robbers, Lorber said. In fact, psychologists worry about kids who lack the ability to write or tell creative stories, he said.

The Santa story is also deeply embedded in popular culture, with Santa showing up at shopping malls and in plenty of TV shows and movies, said Stephanie Wagner, a clinical psychologist at the NYU Child Study Center in New York.

"I don't think we could necessarily say it's a good thing, but I would certainly say it's not harmful," Wagner told LiveScience. Christmas brings families together, and the Santa myth reinforces these bonds, she said.

The Christmas tradition also reinforces some positive habits, such as writing letters to Santa. Lots of kids don't like to write, but they'll make the effort to write these letters, Wagner said.

Breaking the hard truth

But like many good things, the Santa story eventually comes to an end. Kids stop believing in Santa at different ages. Often, a friend at school will break the news.

Kids will also try to figure it out for themselves, when they start to notice that the story doesn't quite add up. For instance, they might stay up late trying to catch Santa delivering presents. Questioning what's real and what's not is a normal part of mental development, Lorber said.

When children ask their parents whether Santa is real, parents need to decide whether the child really is ready to know the truth, Lorber said. The best way to handle that is to ask the child if he or she still believes in Santa. If they do, it might be too soon to tell them.

"I think most parents have a good feel as to when their children can accept the truth," Lorber said. When parents do reveal the truth, they can tell their kids that the spirit of Christmas is real, and tell them about the real St. Nicholas.

Some families will go to extreme lengths to ensure their kids continue to believe in Santa. Parents should ask themselves whether they're perpetuating the myth to make their child happy or merely for their own enjoyment, Lorber said.

Of course, many children grow up not believing in Santa, either because they don't celebrate Christmas or follow traditions of a different culture. And some families who celebrate Christmas don't raise their kids to believe in Santa, and that's healthy too, Lorber said. However, if that's the case, parents should make sure their kids know that other children believe in the story and tell them not to ruin it for others.

Santa may be a Christmas tradition. "However, the spirit of giving to poor and to the needy, and the spirit of family and being together — that is universal," Lorber said.

WEEK FIVE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

So, is belief in Santa Claus good for children?

WEEK FOUR BLOG ENTRY

Answer one of the following questions in your blog entry this week:

1. What is the greatest single song of all time and why?

2. Do you have a memory that is directly linked to a song?
For example, you are on your first date and the Katy Perry song Dark Horse plays on the radio three separate times during the evening. So now whenever you think of the date, you are reminded of the song, and vice versa.

WEEK FOUR READING

October 12, 2013

Is Music the Key to Success?

By JOANNE LIPMAN

CONDOLEEZZA RICE trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.

Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?

The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.

The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.

Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.

Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft’s Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.

“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that connection exist?”

Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different type of creative impulse. In both, he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express yourself in a new way.”

Mr. Todd says there is a connection between years of practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.”

For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a “hidden language,” as Mr. Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn traveled to more than 100 countries, often taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct from their balance sheet.”

It’s in that context that the much-discussed connection between math and music resonates most. Both are at heart modes of expression. Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as he says, both “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses.”

Mr. Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a sort of synesthesia — they perceive patterns in a three-dimensional way. Mr. Taub, who gained fame for his Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can “visualize all of the notes and their interrelationships,” a skill that translates intellectually into making “multiple connections in multiple spheres.”

For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable than their talent. Woody Allen told me bluntly, “I’m not an accomplished musician. I get total traction from the fact that I’m in movies.”

Mr. Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job. He likens himself to “a weekend tennis player who comes in once a week to play. I don’t have a particularly good ear at all or a particularly good sense of timing. In comedy, I’ve got a good instinct for rhythm. In music, I don’t, really.”

Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day, because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position) if they don’t: “If you want to play at all you have to practice. I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.” He performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New Orleans jazz band. “I never thought I would be playing in concert halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,” he says. “I will say, quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.”

Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”

For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known for its early investment in Facebook, “music and technology have converged,” he says. He became expert on Facebook by using it to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by live-streaming its concerts. He says musicians and top professionals share “the almost desperate need to dive deep.” This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music and other fields.

Ms. Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day “holed up in cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase” on her cello. Mr. Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age 17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest mark — though he still was principal horn in Florida’s All-State Orchestra.

“I’ve always believed the reason I’ve gotten ahead is by outworking other people,” he says. It’s a skill learned by “playing that solo one more time, working on that one little section one more time,” and it translates into “working on something over and over again, or double-checking or triple-checking.” He adds, “There’s nothing like music to teach you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better. You see the results.”

That’s an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country.

Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity to reconcile conflicting ideas. All are qualities notably absent from public life. Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view — and most important, to take pleasure in listening.

Joanne Lipman is a co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the book “Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/is-music-the-key-to-success.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

WEEK FOUR WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

Is music the key to success?

--or--

How has music impacted your experience of or thinking about life?