Topics and Brainstorming Week 2

Topic: Miracles performed by Jesus

Comments: Jesus performed quite a few miracles. I have always been interested in why some of these miracles are considered miracles, when honestly there are some forms of explanation as to why these miracles could have happened naturally. I think the key point in all the miracles is the point of view of the people present to witness these miracles, so exploring the people that witnessed the miracles would be a great way to go.

Possible Stories: The Bible is an obvious place to start and the Gospels in the new testament do all tell differing accounts of the life and times of Jesus. I think a good idea would be to take a particular miracle and tell it from the point of view of the people that witnessed the same miracle. I think this would provide three very different stories and accounts much like the books in the new testament give different accounts of the life of Jesus.

Sample Story Comments: The Gospel of Mark gives the story of the miracle of Bread and Fish. This would be a good story to explore because there were a number of people present. Jesus was able to feed his followers even though there was no possible way to do so with the amount of Fish and Bread on hand.

Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Miracle of Bread and Fish from the Gospel of Mark
Book Title: The Bible
Author: Mark



Topic: Greek Mythology

Comments: Greek Mythology has always interested me. One of the reasons it has done so is because the stories are presented as truth, even though in today’s age we look at them as great tales that have been passed down. Seeing how the political structure of the God’s mirrors the political climate of today is extremely interesting. The gods are on lookers to the man and use men as chess pieces, much like the government political structures use the populations as chess pieces.

Possible Stories: I have always found the story of the Odyssey fascinating. It is one of the oldest epics and while the battle of Troy most people know about, I think people would be surprised just how little it has to do with the Odyssey. This story is also a sequel of sorts which says a lot about how the author viewed the character of Odysseus. Achilies gets all the fame, but it is Odysseus that the story is truly about. I think it would be creative to update the story so that Odyssey takes place in 2016 and the God’s represent different political parties and Odysseus is on a quest in a political campaign to become president.

Sample Story Comments: Odysseus and Polyphemus interesting. I think using the story of these two characters and updating them to be rival candidates in a political race would be interesting. There are a number of storylines, but most important would be how Odysseus out smarts Polyphemus. This could play out in a series of Political Debates.

Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Cyclops defeated
Book Title: Homer’s Odyssey
Author: Homer translated into English by Tony Kline


Topic: Native American Folklore and Animal Stories

Comments: Animals play a huge part in Native American Folklore. I have read these stories for years because I am Native American and I love how the stories seem so simple but are used to explain complicated things. An example of this would be the story of the water spider. The story is used to show two things. First, how the Native people got fire and second, it teaches a lesson about self belief and overcoming obstacles. This is one of the key components about Native Folklore, they use the stories as historical representations about how they got medicine and other things, but there is always another level that teaches a lesson.

Possible Stories: I think to retell these stories the best thing to do is to keep it simple. The Native stories I have read allow for expansion, but I think less is more. I would like to take a story, and retell it like a “Grimm Brothers” type of fairytale. The Native stories are used to teach and by creating a story for children I think that is good place to start to teach lessons. I remember as a child my mother reading me fairytales and now that I am older I understand that this was a sort of bedtime school, so I would like to bring the Native stories into that realm not just for Native children, but for children of all cultures.

Sample Story Comment: The native folklore of The Ballgame of the Birds and Animals would be a great story to retell as a children's bedtime story. It already has a children’s story fairytale feel to it, but I would love to retell it in a ways that focuses on the morals of the story and updates it to something like a soccer game. I think one of the aspects that I have always liked about this story is that it is about acceptance and overcoming adversity and those are messages that I would want to bring forward.

Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Ballgame of the Birds and Animals
Book Title: Myths of the Cherokee
Author: James Mooney
Year: 1900


Topic: The story of the Crucifixion

Comments: The crucifixion of Jesus is the foundation of my religious faith. Without his sacrifice on the cross for my sins I would not be able to be saved and thus would be going to hell for my sins according to my religion. I have always found it interesting to imagine the mindset of a man that is sentenced to death. There was a simple way out during his trial that would allowed him to live, but he chose to stand his ground and basically sentenced himself to death.

Possible Stories: What would it be like to be on deathrow. I think it would be interesting to put Jesus on Death Row in today’s society and have him keep a diary of his thoughts. The idea of sacrifice is a romantic idea in writing, but I want to remove that part from the story and make this a gritty reality of what actually goes through a person’s head before they die. Jesus knew he was the son of God although in a number of biblical stories he never came out an admitted it, this was a title placed on him by other people. So in his private thoughts in a diary would he admit it and if so, what does that mean about his sacrifice? He knew that he would have to suffer the crucifixion as a man, and what were his thoughts on that aspect of his sacrifice.

Sample Story Comments: I’ve read a bible and there is no diary of the Jesus and his personal thoughts. This is a challenge to the story, but I think if I take into consideration that Jesus was a man, and focus on the thoughts of a other men in their final hour on death row I would be able to write something compelling. Also I could use the events in the Bible to add to the setting of the story. In his diary Jesus could write about what led up to the crucifixion, and also use actions of Jesus in the Bible to shed insight on the thoughts of Jesus about the political aspect of the Church.

Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Crucifixion of Jesus
Book Title: The Bible: The Gospel of Mark
Author: Mark

Christ on the Cross

Picture Attributes
Carl Heinrich Bloch [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Gospel of Mark Reading Diary Part A

Jesus Performing the Miracle of Bread and Fish

The Gospel of Mark Unit

The Miracles of Jesus

I have never considered that there were different accounts in the bible about the life of Jesus, but in my spring semester I took a Bible class and realized that the disciples all differed in their telling of Jesus’s life.  This part of the Unit was particularly interesting to me because I have done a close reading before, but the way this unit is set up the chapter and verse numbers are removed so I was able to read this from a strictly literature point of view. I have never stopped to imagine the feelings the men must have felt when they realized that there was not enough bread. I have always thought that this was just kind of a silly thing to place into the Bible as a miracle. When reading this version of the Bible I began to realize that there was a crowd of people that showed up and should they not have had enough to feed the people then quite possibly the story of Jesus would have ended right there, so it was an important miracle because by performing this miracle Jesus was able to preach to the people and his message was then able to be spread out. This is not to say that there would have been no possibility that the Jesus we think of today would not have existed if this miracle didn’t happen. Still after seeing this unit in this format I was able to better connect with the story and understand why the miracle was placed in the Bible.

 

 

Picture Attributes

Giovanni Lanfranco [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Famous Last Words Week 1

Sooooooooooooo about this past week.........

Ok, so last semsester I was living in Kansas City, and last Thursday I chose the coldest day ever ever to move. It was a sad day for me because I had to leave my two little neices Emma and Lily behind, but I had to be on campus for one last class this semester so it was something that had to be done. The move went pretty much as expected.

I will admit that settling into a house without little footsteps has been an adjustment, I have no one sneaking into my room early in the morning to give me a kiss goodbye before they goto kindergarten, and I don't have Lily sneaking into my room early in the morning to throw some object that I am sure weighs more that she does, at my head.

I only goto class on Tuesday and Thursday so for most of the week I am free to goto the gym and look at the workout equiptment and say "Ehhhh, not today," and my channel surfing skills are really improving. It is amazing how much you can accomplish when you have a ton of free time. Take monday morning for example.

8 am Woke up and looked at the alarm clock and then went back to sleep

Noon Woke up, crawled out of bed, made a pot of coffee, looked out the  window and gave the sun a mean look

2 pm finished pot of coffee and made another pot of coffee, popped some eggos into the toaster and waited for them to finish. Poured syrup on them all by myself without any instructions.....

2:01 pm finished eating eggos and thought about working out but decided it was a lost cause and could only work towards damaging my self esteem and decided to take a nap

5 pm woke up and scratch my head, looked at youtube videos of epic fails, laughed so hard it made me tired so I took another nap

6 pm woke up and cooked myself some dinner. It was a bologne sandwich. Sat on the couch and starred at the TV. For some reason it was on Lifetime and I wanted to change the channel but the remote was on the coffee table and that would mean I would have to move to get it...Thought about getting the remote.....

6:30 pm TV is still on Lifetime channel

7 pm I took a nap on the couch

9 pm Woke up and did a sit up ( The remote was finally mine) watched some Netflix and drank a glass of Iced Tea

10 pm Took a shower and went to bed

See if I didn't have so much free time I might not have been able to get that 7 pm nap in, and I am old so I needs me naps. Well that is about the extent of my day....Well it is getting close to 7 pm so I gotta sign off.....


Here is a picture of a Remote Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture Attribute

 

By Muband (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 



UnTextbook Week 1

For my first reading choice I chose the Alice in Wonderland UnTextbook because this was one of the Disney fairy tales I remember watching as a child. I didn't know as much about it as I  do now because Disney always makes the stories child friendly, so when I became a teenagers I remember discovering the other versions of the story. I was excited when Tim Burton made a movie and when I watched it I thought it was a great attempt at recreating the original story. One of the things that has always interested me about all the adaptations was the crazy visuals of the story so I really was interested in seeing the original version to see what inspired all the adaptations.

My next reading choice was the Aesop Fables because as a child I was read the stories and fables as a kid. I have read the Aesop Fables a number of times and the reason they still interest me is because as a child the stories my parents would read me always had a happy ending. In fact as an adult I know now that most of the fairy tales I was read had extremely violent story lines and endings. This is why I love the Aesop Fables because they teach the same lessons I was taught as a kid without the Rosy glasses. So though I have read them a number of time I continue to read them and would read them again and again. So Interesting.

The next group of stories that interest me is the Adam and Eve section of the UnTexbook. I love the Paradise lost and other adaptations of the story of Adam and Eve. I like how people take a very short story and expand on it. I  am interested in how other author's change details about story to fit their point of view. I took a class on Indian Epics last semester and one of the things that I loved about it was how the Ramayana left a ton to the imagination, and I think the Bible does the same thing, which allows author's to retell the stories in their own words while remaining true to the original facts of the story.

As I already said earlier in this post one of things I love is comparing the stories I was told as a child to the original stories. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales are the stories I think most children are familiar with because all the fairy tales I do know from my childhood were some adaptation of their original story or another. One of the things I like about these stories is how much they have been diluted down through time to fit the current beliefs of people. By today's standards these are violent stories and over the course the details may have changed, but the themes of the stories have remained the same.



Alice from Alice in Wonderland

I found this picture from the pintrest boards. I chose it because I think it really goes along with the idea that the stories we are told as children rarely reflect the actual nature of the stories. These images play and important part in our formations of the characters in the story and though this may not be a completely inaccurate depiction of Alice, it does give a false happiness to the original story. This simple image works to promote the Disney version of the story, instead of promoting the original story.

Picture attributes...It was pinned on pintrest but I was unable to find complete user rights so all I am able to do is give the link to the page.   http://lipmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Aice-In-Wonderland-alice-in-wonderland-6928094-1000-766.jpg

Storybook Favorites Week 1

The Tale of the Traveling Cat

https://sites.google.com/site/taleofthetravelingcat/

The layout of this storybook was simple and clean. The pictures used by the author were amazing. The choice to use black and white photos added a tremendous amount of depth to the pages of this storybook. The concept of the storybook being told from the point of view of a cat was creative. Though it was told through the eyes of the cat the character could have been human, so while this could have been cheesy and at times it did border on it, with tongue in cheek comments, the storybook did a great job of presenting the stories.

Goddess Talk

https://sites.google.com/site/goddesstalk21/

The picture on the introduction page was good. Though I found that the font and color scheme of this storybook were weak, the pictures chosen really worked to overcome that weakness. The first picture seemed in some places to be a painting and in other places appeared as if the figures in the picture were real people. It was a nice illusion. The other pictures followed suit with the first picture, except the second picture. The second picture really stood out as something unique. The he said she said aspect of the the stories were unique because this method allowed the reader to listen to the inner dialogue of the the characters. Also I really appreciated the humor used by the author throughout the stories.

Ballads as told by R. Kelly

https://sites.google.com/site/trappedinaballad/

This was such a creative way to tell the stories. I remember the R. Kelley videos, and one of the things that did capture my attention was the opportunity to be a fly on the wall, a passive player in the everyday lives of people. This storybook really captured the spirit of the hiphopopera. Seeing these poems and stories from a voyeuristic point of view added a different to these stories, plus it also peeked an interest in the original works used that was not there before. Though the layout of the pages are simple, and the alone the pictures do not appear that spectacular, by placing them in the  framework of this storybook they really contribute to the creativity of this storybook.

Storytelling Week 1

Billy and the Dingy Man

The Big Bad Wolf

Billy had always been a rambunchous kid. His parents would tell him often that he needed to be a child and play but, none of these things interested him. When the other kids were out on the playground Billy would be inside his classroom lecturing his teacher. At dinner time Billy would always disobey his parents by not finishing his food when they did, and this often led him to having to stay at the dinner table long after his parents had finished eating.

One day while Billy was at the mall food court he looked up to see that his parents were nowhere to be found. Billy looked at this as an opportunity to be a grown up and explore the mall for himself. He walked up and down the mall pathways until he came to a video arcade. Billy knew that he should probably find his parents but he was grown up and grown up’s did what they wanted when they wanted. So he entered the arcade and looked at all the games he wanted to play. Unfortuanatly for Billy he had no money in his pockets. This seemed unfair to Billy because he was a grownup and grownup’s should have money to play all the video games they wanted to play.

An old man, in dingy jeans with long hair and a beard to match approached Billy.

“What is the problem little man?” the dingy man in dingy jeans asked.

“Well I wanna play these games, but I don’t have any money.”

“Oh I can fix that, I have a bunch of money in my van. It is just outside in the parking lot. How bout you come with me and I will give you a bunch of money so you can play all the games you want to play?”

Billy agreed and the man grabbed his arm and began to walk through the mall with the man. Along the way when Bill would try to stop the man would just tug Billy’s arm to keep him moving. Each time that Billy would stop the man would tug him a little harder. Billy was no fool. After all he was a grownup and if he wanted to stop then he should be able to stop. Billy realized that the man was trying to kidnap him, and that if he got into the man’s car Billy would never see his parents again. Unfortunately Billy noticed this at the exit to the mall. He looked around and did not see a single soul around that could help him. The man now tugged Billy really hard and though Billy tried to resist he was unable to stop the man from dragging him to his car.

“Oh please sir, I know you are going to kidnap me, and I understand that I can do nothing about it, but I wanna be the one that unlocks the door. My mom always let’s me unlock the door and I promise if you give me your keys and let me unlock the door I will go with you and not put up a fuss.” Billy said.

The man didn’t understand this request, but felt it was much easier to kidnap a kid if they didn’t put up a fight, so he handed Billy the keys.

Billy looked at the keys and pretended to push the unlock button on the key fob, but instead pushed the panic button. The loud noise caught the attention of the mall security and they came and rescued Billy from the dingy man in dingy jeans. When the police arrived and arrested the man, he realized that he should have just unlocked the door himself instead of letting Billy do it. Billy realized that he should be a kid a little longer and start listening to his parents.

Authour’s Notes

This is a retelling of the “The Wolf and Kid” from Aesop’s for Children book. I updated it by making it about a kidnapping of a child because I am a parent and I worry about my child all the time. I think kids grow up too fast these days and one of the lessons that I show was that children listen more to their parents and stop trying to grow up too fast. The original message of the story was about the wolf not allowing a goat to get him away from his purpose of eating him, and that element is in here also, but I wanted to change that a little more and make it about the young boy needing to not grow up so fast and understand that parents have reasons for the things they make you do.

Bibliography

The Aesop for Children by Aesop. 2006. web source The Project Gutenberg Ebooks

Picture Attribution
By Gunnar Ries Amphibol (Own work (own photo)) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Introduction Week 1

  Welcome to my page. Hello my name is Joe. The basic information about me is that I am an English writing track major at the University of Oklahoma, and some day I hope to try my hand at the law profession. I hate these introductions because I always feel like I am writing a profile for some dating website like eharmony.com only at my age my likes are waking up and oatmeal, and my dislikes are not waking up and cold coffee so for the remainder of this introduction I will try to give you guys a little my personal information that usual.
      First off I am a father of one amazing 11 year old boy named Ethan. I know this is going to sound cliche but for me my real life began the day he was born. So I guess under likes I would have to say spending time with my son. I know that most people say they have a good looking kid, but mine really is a good looking kid.

Ethan from Personal photos 2011

      Besides spending time with my kid I enjoy eating. I am a total foodie, I love trying new things I have never eaten before, and then taking friends to try the food items I have discovered. I am a Starbucks junkie, and when I say junkie I mean yes I would sell a family member for a venti Mocha. I am the type of person that if you take seriously, you will think is a person that is pompous, rude, and without social manners, but if you realize that I am joking then most likely you will just laugh at me because you know I am being stupid. I love to hear laughter from people and don't mind being the butt of a joke at all. If I had a motto for life it would be: Live Awesome.
      Living awesome encompasses so many things but mostly it means that you don't need permission from anyone to shine. When I say "I'm Awesome" and I have been saying it for years, people always look at me as if to say, "Oh really," my point in saying that I am awesome is not because I am trying to diminish anyone else but rather I am lifting myself up. I believe that everyone should think they are awesome, because it is important to tell yourself something then go out in life and live up to your words. If someone believes that it is more important to be humble then I think that is great they can have my humbleness and be humble for both of us. It is not an arrogance issue but rather I wanna live each day at one hundred percent effort so that I can squeeze every bit of good out of it, because let's face it, when it is over, it is over and this body will be thrown in the ground and turn to dust, so might as well try to succeed each and every day.


Picture Attribution
Personal Photo from 2011 on my computer

Tech Tip Week 1

Tech tip for this week is how to add video...This is simple just start a post and in the post click the movie icon at the top of the page, then you can choose from a number of different ways to use video. I chose to do a Youtube video because it is the most common and there would not be any issues with the ability for the video to play on the page. I chose this song because it makes me happy lol.

My Favorite Place Week 1

I've Never Been Skydiving

I have always wanted to go skydiving! So if I was going to say that I had a favorite place it would be somewhere that I have never been. The freedom of falling through the sky just seems like the ultimate place to be. Plus I am really afraid of high places and over coming fears is a big part of growing as a person in my opinion. Sure I would love to visit other places like Europe, China, and Africa, but for me at this point the most attainable goal would be to get in a plane, take off, and have someone push me out of it. 

This just seems like it would be an awesome thing to do. Being able to see the world from that point of view would no doubt give me a different perspective of my own world. Being able to understand how big the world is from up there would make me appreciate how small I am in the grand scheme of everything and give me a greater appreciation of the little things in my own life that I think I take for granted each day. 

Having the fear of death from falling with only a couple of ropes attached to a piece of fabric, and then being given the sudden feeling of life when the chute opens up would really make me appreciate how fleeting life is. I think this would force me to appreciate the relationships that I have with people in my life more because it would just make me understand how limited my time is with them.

Mostly I think it would just be a rush. I love being scared. The feeling of cheating death in someway shape or form really excites me. Well that is my favorite place.

Picture attributes

By Ann W (Skydiving!  Uploaded by Gary Dee) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons