Essay for Week 12: The Future of Writing

When I think about the future of writing I often thing of it in the form of technology. People are becoming more used to reading their book from a kindle, iPad, laptop, etc., and less from actual physical books. I don't know about any one else, but I guess I am pretty old school when it comes to enjoying feeling the pages of a book as I flip each page. I also love seeing the bookmark travel further and further into the book (until it gets closer to the end and I want to just stop moving so I can enjoy the book longer)! Technology has sort of stolen that aspect of reading away. I will say though, that when I traveled to Haiti this summer and had very little packing space, my parent's kindle came into great use for bringing multiple books with me without having to force them all into a tiny carry on!
Another aspect of writing that I believe will decline because of technology over the years is the ability for students to write professional emails to their professors or to potential employers based on the way we write in text messages. Texts, Facebook statuses, Twitter updates, and Instagram captions can all be so informal by using abbreviations and acronyms. I think that young adults who overuse these social media platforms will have more difficulty with understanding how to write professionally.

(Technology Possessing the World. Image by: Pj93)

Essay for Week 11: Imagination

In the unit that I read for this week, Celtic Fairy Tales, I found that many of the stories lacked a lot of background knowledge. This made that a bit more difficult to follow, which I was not a big fan of. The missing background knowledge did have one advantage, however. It made the storytelling assignment much easier. Without the information for why something was occurring in the story, it was easier for me as a reader and writing to imagine some elaborate story for why someone was placed in a certain position. An example of this is in the story Andrew Coffey. The story seemed to be some weird dream that the main character, Andrew, was having that included a man that everyone thought was dead, the demand that Andrew tell a story, and a wildly random adventure. What we are not given in the story is what Andrew's connection with the man was and why he so desperately wanted to hear a story from Andrew. We also are not told anything about the four men that catch the man everyone thought was dead and hang him up over a fire to be roasted. It was completely random and hard to follow, but since I am always looking for a story to retell for the storytelling post, having these open ended questions allowed me to imagine the crazy background stories for each of these characters.  Another example is in the story Brewery of Eggshells. We are given no information on why the woman in the story has her twin children taken away from her and replaced by goblin twins that do not physically change, but can intellectually grow. We also are not told why the goblin children have this strange physical restriction, but can still show a level of intellect well beyond their years.

Overall, I thought that this unit was much more interesting than the previous unit because it allowed more room for imagination for myself as a reader.

(The Creative Brain. Web Source: Video Documentary)

Essay Week 10: aixelsyD

For this week's essay blog post, I am choosing to write about my first experience as a reader. I can remember when I was in pre-school at St. Joesph's elementary school where I was given my first school based book. I opened the large colorful front cover that depicted an image of a teddy bear sitting in a rocking chair with a book on it's lap and began to look at the words on the page.

As my peers began to read their books aloud, I sat in shame. The words on my book were unfairly scrambling themselves into incomprehensible inscriptions. When I looked really closely and slowly. they would occasionally return themselves to their proper orientation. I felt dumb.

My teacher had each of us kids line up across the rug and read the first page of our books out loud. One by one, my peers proudly read their lines and my anxiety grew. When my turn came, I shakily read my first page aloud and was met with laughter. I read what I saw and what I saw was jumbled words that formed a sentence that sounded something like Yoda.

(Dyslexia. Web Source: Wikipedia)

This fear of reading, books, talking out loud, and even math continued on until I was eight years old. My third grade teacher noticed my language handicap and recommended that I participate in a special reading program at Northeastern State. My parents enrolled me in the program and my life was forever transformed.

The psychology professors at the college told me that I have a disability called dyslexia that causes me to mix up my letters, numbers, and speech. They created a plan that was specific to my needs and had me meet with them three times a week for a couple of hours a day.

Now, I don't remember much of what we did, but somehow they taught me how to work with my dyslexia. Within a couple of months, I went from being a very shy mediocre student to the top of my class. It was as if something snapped inside of my and released me from my language bonds.

Of course, I still struggle with certain aspects of my dyslexia, but I have learned how to slow down and really try to understand what I am reading. Any mistakes that I make, I laugh off and move forward.

Essay Week 9: The Origins

I have always been someone who enjoys learning the origins of anything really. I find that it helps me to better understand whatever subject that it may be more fully. Because of this, I really enjoyed reading the Un-Textbook unit on Tejas Legands. I found the stories in this unit to be very creative and fun to read. Some of my favorite stories were about the origins of the orchid flowers, how the mistletoe came to be in the trees, and the reason why the woodpecker pecks. All of the stories gave explanations of how all of these things came to be as well as a giving an additional lesson. For instance, in the case of the Indian shoes turning into orchids, there was a lesson about how life can throw curve balls at you, but if you trust in God (or in this case, the spirits) than your path home will be made straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 is proof of this. Now in the situation where the woodpeckers are created, there is a lesson on greed and addiction. When you give up your life to a harmful external substance, you may lose the things that you used to value more. For the Indians that were transformed into woodpeckers, their loss came in the form of having their children taken away from them and hidden in the trees. These woodpeckers would now spend the rest of their lives searching for what they once had. Finally, in the case of how the mistletoe came to be in the trees, there is a lesson on symbiotic relationships. The bird needed food and the poor grounded mistletoe was the only one available to give the bird what little he had left. So, the bird took it up into the trees so that the mistletoe would be safe from other predators in exchange for allowing the birds to enjoys it's berries. It is a very "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" situation that almost everyone can relate to in some form or another.

(Indian Moccasins. Web Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Essay Week 7: Tricksters and Fools

For this weeks reading unit, I chose to read about the Stories from the Congo. Having only had time to read half of the unit this week, I do not know if I got the complete feel for how the people from the Congo tell stories or their way of thinking, but what I did read I did not particularly like. Yes, the stories were very similar in terms of having tricksters and fools as other countries stories that I have read thus far in the semester, but the ones from the Congo were particularly gruesome. They had a very wild and literally animalistic  way of describing their forms of trickery and what consequences follow those forms incur. For example, in the story of The Antelope and the Leopard, the fool was the prideful leopard and the trickster was the metamorphic antelope. The antelope knew that they only way to beat the leopard was in a game of intellect, not strength. The antelope ending up slowly killing the leopard by the leopards own hands until he was just a legless, eyeless, toothless, and worthless body consumed by blind love. It was a very grotesque and not particularly enjoyable story. Then there was also The Turtle and the Man that was not exactly my favorite story either. In the story, the ox, who was good hearted and willing to help the turtle until he was blindsided and murdered by the greedy turtle. Even when the turtle met his consequence for his trickery, it was still through the means of murder.

(Leopard Attack. Web Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I guess that I am a sucker for things like happy endings and fairness that this unit really rubbed me the wrong way. Hopefully my next pick will either be something that is happier or has a more playful version of trickery and foolishness.

Essay for Week 6: The Tricksters

(The Tricky Tortoise: Web Source: Wikipedia)

The week I read The Filipino Popular Tales and found a very common theme of trickery. In the tale of The Iguana and the Turtle, the iguana was continuously envious of the position that the turtle was in purely because the turtle made each position seem valuable. The turtle used the Iguana's quickness to greed to remove himself from bad situations. Another story that included a form of trickery was The Hummingbird and the Caraboa. In this story the hummingbird exploited and testing the caraboas pride by challenging him to a water drinking contest. The hummingbird knew when the tided would rise and fall and used that knowledge to trick the caraboa into thinking that he could drink more water than a giant water-buffalo! The third story that included trickery was the Hawk and the Coiling. This was very similar to the story of the humming bird and the caraboa in that a challenge was involved. The coiling knew that when the hawk challenged him to a flying contest, that his best chance of winning was to carry something on his back. The hawk fell for this and chose cotton to carry thinking that it would be light and easy, whereas, the coiling chose salt knowing that it would rain. When it did rain, the cotton became very heavy and the salt dissolved allowing the coiling to fly higher than the hawk and be victorious. I thought that this weeks reading was the most enjoyable because of the short mini stories that got straight to the point about their plots. It was also fun to see the physical underdog utilize their brain to be the intellectual victor by tricking their competitors. I think that the stories would have been even better if these underdogs had more of a reason for their trickery though. It seemed like many of them only did it because they knew that they could.

Week 5 Essay: Recurirng Motifs Turkish Fairy Tales

The two stories that shared a common motif were The Fish-Peri and The Crow-Peri. As you can already tell, both stories involve some sort of Turkish peri - meaning fairy. In both narratives, a beautiful animal is captured by some human who is ignorant of the animals true form. In the Fish-Peri, the animal is a lovely fish that the young man can neither eat nor sell because of the joy he finds in gazing upon this beautiful fish. The fish helped the young man during the day by transforming into a maiden and cleaning his house while he was out. In The Crow-Peri, the crow is caught in a trap by a boy. The crow tells the boy that if he releases it, it will help the boy catch an even better bird. The fish and the crow continue to help the young man and the boy through their various tasks throughout the stories by having the males make very strange requests. I'm not sure how the authors decided that things like "forty wagons of wine" or a "bolster" would transform into ivory or feasts, but in the stories that is what happened! Another thing that the two stories had in common was that they both ended with a happily ever after via the marriage of the youth to the fish-peri and the boy to the crow-peri. A final and more broad motif that I have noticed throughout a majority of the Turkish fairy tales is the very common time frame of forty days and forty nights. Either the subject is given only forty days to complete some task or the subject celebrates for forty days and nice - how nice would that be? I'm not positive on the origin of this idea, but I think that it would be an interesting thing for Professor Gibbs to add to the introductory notes of the unit. Overall, I thought that this unit was one of the more enjoyable and easy flowing units I have read thus far.

(Yellow-edged Lyretail: My idea of the fish-peri: Image by: Derek Keats)

Week 4 Essay: The Story Retold

Since this week's reading options were between the Middle East and India, I chose to go with the subject I surprisingly knew less about - Arabian Nights. I took Epics of India a year and a half ago and still remembered those stories pretty well, so I wanted to see what the Arabian take on an old favorite of mine - Aladdin - would be. When I started reading the story (starting with Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp) I was extremely disappointed to see in your notes that Abu and Iago were not a part of this story! How could they not include the stories most entertaining characters? I was also very surprised that Jasmine's name (or at least her name in the Disney movie) was never a part of this story either. She was always referred to as "the princess." It's very interesting that Aladdin was the only person in the story given an actual name. There was the "sultan," the "vizir," Aladdin's "mother," the "magician," and the "magician's brother." It would be interesting to know if this is common in Arabian storytelling or if it is just the writing style of this particular author. Maybe it is a way to avoid distraction from the main plot of the story. Who knows? Another aspect of the story that was very different was the idea of two genies versus one goofy blue guy and that the magicians were the two truly evil antagonists. Yes, the vizir slipped his son into the mix of marrying the princess before the three months were up and Aladdin would be given her hand, but I had anticipated for the vizir to something especially evil like take hold of the lamp/ring or thwart another one of Aladdin's pursuits towards a happy life while reading the story. All in all, I thought that it was a fun and interesting twist on the story that I was so accustomed to.

(Aladdin: Illustration by Michael Sporn)

Week 3 Essay: Some Lessons are Learned the Hard Way

A common theme that I have noticed in mythology is the idea that lessons are almost always learned the hard way. Advice is rarely heeded and the consequences are quite drastic! One example of this is when Phaethon learned that the Sun was his father so he went to visit him in his temple. Upon arriving, Phaethon asked the Sun to prove that he was indeed his father, so the Sun said that he would grant Phaethon any wish. Of course, Phaethon's wish was greedy, reckless, and dangerous - not too different from modern day teens, ha ha! When the Sun tried to warn his son that his wish would only bring harm, Phaethon would not budge from his demand. Well, Phaethon did indeed learn his lesson the hard way when he lost control of the chariot of fire and then was struck by a lightening bolt sent by Jupiter, which led to his death. Another example is in the story of Narcissus. Narcissus learned his lesson the hard way when he foolishly fell in love with his own reflection. He learned the perils of eternally seeking something that he will never have. As a consequence, he lost out on real love with Echo and was transformed into a flower hanging over the water in an eternal gaze upon it's own beauty. A final example that I will give regards Mars and Venus. This couple chose to commit an act of unfaithfulness and in return, they were caught in the act and put on display by Venus's husband to be mocked by all of the other gods. It is very interesting to read these stories and know that something bad is going to happen to the characters even though the characters themselves are ignorant of their impending doom. It makes you almost want to jump into the story and warn them that what they are doing will only lead to their ridicule or death. In life we all make mistakes and learn from hard lessons, but it's important to also recognize that not all lessons need to be learned from personal experience. Sometimes it works out much better to just listen to you friends or elders who generally know a thing or two about what they are talking about!

(Echo and Narcissus: Web Source: Wikipedia)

Week 2 Essay: The Power of Love

This week I read the story about Cupid and Psyche. I did not know anything about the background of the story before reading, so it was kind of fun to enter into it blind. I was surprised to discover that this story, like many other, dealt with the idea of forbidden love. Cupid was fully aware that his marriage to Psyche would be entirely against his mother’s wishes, but he chose to trust Psyche not to uncover his identity so that he could keep her as his. Just like most other forbidden love stories, this one also ended with the couple’s love being exposed and – in this particular case – literally tested. It is very interesting how easily love can be torn apart in life and yet it seems to always have a way of coming back together in the end. Even when Psyche had once again let her human nature get in the way of being with Cupid by opening the box Venus sent her to obtain, Cupid chose to forgive her faults and take her back into his arms. Whereas the young woman and her betrothed in the beginning of the story were separated by an external force, Cupid and Psyche were separated by Psyche's doubt and curiosity. There are so many factors that can play a role in ending a relationship, both stories and life, that it is inspiring to see an elderly couple walking down the street after fifty-plus years together. Sometimes love is challenged and strained from society and other obligations. Self-doubt, curiosity, envy, and anger all certainly contribute to the darker side of human nature. Also, work commitments and the stress of making it through the daily struggles of everyday life, can have a huge impact on your relationship, but when love can overcome all of those negative aspects, it is a pretty spectacular thing.

(Cupid and Psyche, Web source: Wikipedia)