Acts I and II

True to Shakespeare, the set up is very much the same as I'm used to when it comes to reading his works. That being said, I still enjoy them a lot. And, as always, I had a little trouble deciphering some of meanings due to the complex sentences, but I found something help me breeze through it with no problem.


I really am enjoying the story so far with the idea of everyone falling in love with the wrong person. It's almost as if he's speaking about the idea of fate and how tampering with it can lead to mischief. I also enjoy the use of descriptive word choices such as how he throws in nature as such a heavy metaphor and the appearance of red has made its way into the story as well. I really do enjoy where the story is going and it leads me to make a few predicaments.

I believe that by the end of the story, Hermia will remain with Lysander.
Titana and Oberon will somehow put aside their differences to at least have a truce (mayhaps even that old love?).
And I'm hoping that Helena will wise up and get over her infatuation with Demetrius.
This is what I predict/hope.

Pre-Writing Pyramid(Ethics)

      While working on my pre-writing pyramid today I chose to try to come up with three questions/ solutions to how we should live (ethics) because that is the issue I think about on a personal level all of the time. One of my responses to this portion of the work sheet was that we should live with current human issues in mind such as how to empower peoples marginalized by imperialism, how to empower woman, and how to create a way to live that is sustainable for our planet. These issues are huge and how do they really relate to one another. If you help allot of people come out of poverty, you tend to over use resources more quickly. Can part of the solution even be linked to people living a certin way?


     I was overwhelmed by these questions by just thinking about them and feeling really low for a while. After doing some research I found some good starting point responses to these questions. I watched tons of ted talks!! I have attached one of my favorites so far. It is a talk given by Jane Goodall who I know now should be everybody's hero. She speaks about how humans and animals are correlated and things that we can do to mend our problematic relationship with nature. Watch this video there is a link right down there VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

      Jane Goodall helps humans and animals live together | Video on TED.com


      It is really inspirational to me because you can tell that Jane has really spent her whole life and career thinking about these issues and has come up with wonderful cohesive solutions.  I enjoy that she has advice, often we here the statistics and the problems with no way to practically apply any solution to what we have just learned. I feel that her philosophy has to do with thinking about every aspect to a problem and seeing conservation and human needs as one united issue. She also emphasizes personal responsibility which was eye opening for me. You don't think that turing the lights off when your not using them, or mending old jeans instead of buying and buying and buying more makes a difference but after listening to this talk I realize that it can, and that we as westerners need to be very conscious of how we utilize resources. We have the power to make so many things better in the world but also to make so many things much worse. Let me know what you all think. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.


P.S. There is a really nice 1960's documentary done by national geographic about Jane and the chimps during her early years. I used to watch it over and over when I was a child. I think it is called "My Life Among the Wild Chimpanzees". That would be good to watch if you enjoyed this talk.

Mid-term grades

At the risk of ruining your spring break by reminding you about school, I just wanted to let you know that I have posted your mid-term grades. Since we have not done the paper and presentation yet, the weights were as follows: Lab 30%, Blog 30%, Quizzes 15%, Class Participation 25%. If your grade is much lower than you expected, it probably means you have not turned something in. Don't panic, just talk to me when you get back so we can get these things taken care of. Enjoy the rest of your break, and see you Monday!

Nelson Atkins Sign Workshop

Today I went to the Nelson Atkins to complete my sign lab assignment. It was difficult to choose which object or painting to interpret and find the symbols and signs in. the reason for this is that I feel that many of my interpretations of what I would consider for these are pieces are based off of learned "obvious signs" or symbols are common to art history and more broadly Western society. for example I saw the color red as blood or sacrifice, white as purity, gold leaf as preciousness, a woman holding a baby as Maddona and child.  Most of what we would consider necessary signs and probable signs are based off of our interpretations that have been constructed by our history and our society. It is hard for us coming form a now very visual culture to not look at certain things and then automatically draw certain conclusions. Most signs there for in my opinion are directed by a soul or are deliberated. They are either directed by our selves with this subconscious westernized visual dictionary or by the person that knows what information we carry around in our heads.