The Wind Spins Me

It's one in the morning and I am not even tired,
Staring at the ceiling with my eyes glued open.
Is the fan in my room nauseated,
When I make the petals spin in the wind?

The storm crunches on my door,
Offering tickets and lollipops,
Inviting me to a late night concert,
Of drumming pans and cooking pots.

As I drift back and forth with the rattle,
Twirling my arms like a carousel,
The wind spins me.
The wind spins me.

Why are my arms and legs restless?
My hair is being backwards braided.
Am I an insomnia or just anxious,
To be stuck inside this bed?

The wind crunches on my door,
Offering fountain treats and lollipops,
Beckoning me to a late night concert,
Of dancing pans and cooking pots.

As I drift back and forth with the sound
Twirling my arms, riding a carousel
The wind spins me

The wind harmonizes with the trees,
Until the sunshine's calmness breaks free.
The wind spins me.
The wind spins me

I'll write the lyrics while the wind provides the beat,
A song about how the wind spins me.

** Synopsis: This is a song about someone who is jamming to a wind storm.

Sitcoms

A sitcom is a "comedy arising from a consistent situation," usually in half hour installments once a week. Sitcoms usually involve characters "stuck together in a situation from which they cannot escape, usually family or work," showing the highs and lows of both situations. We need time to "develop an understanding of its protagonists, place, and humor. . .," of a sitcom, so it's disappointing if a sitcom gets cancelled after only two or three episodes.
The purpose of a sitcom is to poke fun of families and workplaces, making fun of social norms by telling us "about the way we live" in a way that is over the top but makes us think about it more. It is also a "promise of laughter" to its audiences, if they tune in each week, through funny characters rather than outrageous plots or stale jokes. Each episode also needs a happy ending to give us hope in the world.
I love sitcoms. It is nice to get away from the drama in our lives and watch people being funny. I especially love the sitcoms, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Friends. It seems like for the last five years, sitcoms were going extinct, with only a couple on each network. It seems like networks prefer reality shows and drama, when sitcoms seem to be cheaper to make than hour long dramas. The ABC and CBS networks really has brought sitcoms back to TV in the past couple years, so hopefully that trend will last.

Belief by John Mayer

Belief by John Mayer is one of my favorite songs of past five years and my favorite song he has ever released. I became a fan of Mayer after he released his first single, No Such Thing, because I was impressed with his writing quality of metaphors, rhymes, and allusions to messages he puts in his songs which also have great hooks, guitar riffs, and beats. I think Belief is an important and contemporary song about our world and how we should live in it.
Belief is a song from Continuum, an album which includes songs dealing a lot with contemporary war times and getting older, such as the title track, Waiting on the World to Change, which also has a similar message to Belief. The song, Belief is about how beliefs can make us fight with each other, because no one's beliefs are more correct than others, and warns us of the dangers of believing certain things through life and death. The situations he describes throughout the song visually move us, because we have all seen protests, funerals, and other effects of war in our life times.
Belief is written with a third person voice and is in AABACA format. Mayer uses a couple of creative rhymes such as "sword" with "for" and "exhibition" with "weapon" that I wouldn't have thought of. The progression of the song is precise and flows smoothly, using each stanza to back up his overall message. The story and situations make us realize how our beliefs can help us get through toughness of life and create more dangers. Believing also can hurt us and others through their power, and the song makes us ask ourselves tough questions about how we should act according to our beliefs.
The title, Belief, is a great one-worded title with lots of meaning and a universally known concept which everyone in the world could relate to. Mayer emphasizes the title by putting in the song seven times in five of the stanzas, to clearly make its placement important. He also uses key words like "mind," "armor," "everything," "everyone," "think," and "war" to go along with title's meaning.
In the first stanza, Mayer uses the metaphors of "paint on a sign" to represent protesting and "breaking rank" as a term for soldiers. Protests and soldiers go hand in hand with war, indicating Mayer is talking about our current situation with being at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and is reminiscent of September 11th, which he shows in his lyrics. It is what is hidden in the lyrics that is the most important message about this song.
In the second stanza, which I believe is a bridge, Mayer simply states twice, "Everyone believes," meaning everyone has beliefs, whether they are morally and ethically right or simply wrong. "They're not going easily" is about how beliefs can't change deep down, are hard to get rid of, and we can't change other peoples as much as we would like to.
In the third stanza, he describes belief as "a beautiful armor but makes for the heaviest sword," meaning our disagreement in beliefs are what causes war in the first place. He makes mention to the innocent casualties of war, such as the children and bystanders caught in the crossfire, by writing, "Like punching under water, you never can hit who you're trying for."
Mayer writes, "Some need the exhibition/ And some have to know they tried, " meaning people need to fight for what they believe in and stand up for them instead of being quiet. Mayer writes of the personal struggle with our beliefs due to outside factors, describe it as, "It's the chemical weapon/ For the war that's raging on inside."
In the second bridge, he writes repeats "Everyone believes" from the first bridge, making its repetition more effective throughout the song. We can have beliefs "From emptiness to everything," meaning we can believe it what we want and no one can tell us what to believe in. "And no ones going quietly," further emphasizes the point of fighting for what we believe in.
The sixth is the most important because it is the summary for the entire song. He tells us "We're never gonna win the world," meaning we can't force our way of life onto others and people are always going to fighting against us or trying to destroy us. He follows this important line with "We're never gonna stop the war" and "We're never gonna beat this" as an agreement with the message of the title and the first line in this stanza.
In his last stanza he talks about death, the death of soldiers based on war and the fight for freedom. Mayer uses sentimental lines like, "What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand, belief can," making us wonder if the deaths of thousand of soldiers are worth the fight for freedom. He follows up by asking, "What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand, belief can," which tugs at our heart strings, through the war images we have seen on news or experience personally. Mayer's message of the last stanza, which I think reflects the entire message as a whole, is that beliefs can do anything to anybody, whether there are good or bad consequences.

My Son The Fanatic

My Son The Fanatic by Hanif Kureishi is a story about a father and son who struggle with communication and cannot agree on religion or cultural issues. Parvel, the father, is a taxi driver and avid drinker and gambler. One of his best friends is a prostitute named Bettina. Parvel notices his son, Ali, is acting weird and starts believing the worst in his son, thinking he is doing drugs, going to kill himself, or kill other people until he hears his son praying.

Little does Parvel know, it seems worse now that Ali has found the religion Parvel has escaped from. Ali, the teenaged son, has become a minimalist by "throwing out his belongings," changing his entire life and attitude, and trying to live the Islamic way of life to the strictest enforcement. On the other hand, Parvel gave up this religion since his move to England because of the humiliation and harsh punishment he experienced as a child and has fully embraced the culture of England, enjoying the vices. The issues of religion and culture are the center of their disagreements.

All Parvel wants for his son is for him to "get a good job, marry the right girl, and start a family." He describes his relationship with his son before as "not father and son- we were brothers," making it seem like he wants to be friends with his son more than be his father. Instead of asking his son directly what is happening, he sneaks around, spying, and asks his friends, "Why is he torturing me?," taking it personally.

This story has unique views based on religion and the old country versus the western world, like the ones we have read before like Achebe and Thiong'o. Usually in the stories I have read, it is the parents who try to enforce their strict religious beliefs on the children. In this story, it is the son who has the strong religious faith and is trying to get his dad to believe in it too. It is also the son who fights against the culture of the western world instead of the parent, which is also an unusual perspective.

Ali clearly hates the culture of England, telling his father he is "too implicated in Western Civilization" and "Western education cultivates an anti-religious attitude." He also tells his father the problem with England is that it will "let you do almost anything. . ." Parvez clearly is upset by his son telling him he is "going to hell" and his response is to want to tell Ali "to pick up his prayer mat and get out" of his house.

I believe the father and son are both doing what they think is right in their hearts, based on their experiences with both cultures. I think the Parvez crosses the line when he beats Ali at the end for disrespects him. I also think Ali crosses the line when he is very judgmental of his father's actions as well as the hateful things he says to his father and Bettina, the prostitute. I sympathize with both the father and son at times. I feel bad for the dad trying to get his old son back and how he wants to reconnect with him, and the son won't compromise. I also feel bad for the son when his dad won't accept the new him, calling his son's new behavior an "injustice."

Kureishi's writings connects with Achebe and Thiong'o, because they all deal with peoples' cultures being changed by the western world. They all deal with people who have grew up one way and have either moved to another country or had change in their own country. It is the next step because it is very reminiscent of what we have dealt with in the past nine years after September 11th. In our current world, we have terrorists and religious fanatics who believe in destroying us and the other believers of the religion who aren't such fanatics, trying to clear their bad reputations.

Headphones

Rhythm's got a crush on you.
My rhythm's won't let you ever go low.
If you can't play me, you're in danger.
Why won't my beat let you say no?

Yeah...Keep my volume going strong.
Yeah...Loving music isn't wrong.
Yeah... Keep your headphones out of sight.
Try to resist me with all your might.
Go ahead, listen with all your lust,
And who really cares if you want to sing on the bus?

Bridge

Feel the pumping through your ear lobes.
Rhythm's eager to dance.
My lyrics are itching to be scratched,
And can you ever hold the silence?

Bridge

(Try to resist me with all your might)
Go ahead, listen with all your lust,
And who really cares if you want to sing on the bus?
(Sing on the bus)

Don't use your headphones.
Don't use your headphones.
Don't use your headphones.
Don't use your headphones on me.

Bridge

Chorus

*** Synopsis: This song is about music tempting someone to play it loud and not use their headphones, from the music's perspective.


Monograph
I made several changes based on the two critiques I received, which were very helpful. I like receiving advice in order to make my lyrics stronger and more understandable. To my song, Headphones, I added proper punctuation, corrected the spelling errors, and tried to make my lines more understandable and more to the point I was trying to get across. I tried to make the song more from the music's perspective by adding me and my to some of the lines, so it would have a clear message about the headphones.

I added "low" to "Rhythm's won't let you ever go," to make a rhyme in a sentence. I added the line, "Try to resist me with all your might" to the bridge, to rhyme with "out of sight," as a way of adding more perspective from the music. I changed "sing on the side" and "want to sing on the side" to "sing on the bus," because I hear a lot of people singing on the bus along with their iPods or laptops, which was my inspiration for this song.

I changed "your might" to "lust" to rhyme with "bus," further emphasizing my point. I changed "You feel the pumping through your ear lobes" to "Feel the pumping through your ear lobes," based on your suggestion. I changed "got you grasping breaths" to "eager to dance" to rhyme with "silence." I changed the last line in the chorus from " Don't use your headphones" to "Don't use your headphones on me," to add more emphasis.

Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o is brutally honest example of how colonization is both good and bad for both sides of the issues of culture and language. Thiong'o describes his history of growing up in Kenya, during the time it was colonized, and how he was forced to learn English and abandon certain aspects of his culture, which is very sad. The violence he experienced inside and outside school for not speaking English and wanting to speak in his original language Ginknyu is horrible to read. He should have been able to embrace his ancestry and the new studies of English.

Thiong'o believes in order to communicate with the societies outside of our own, we have to have "co-operation" from the locals in order to make great achievements. He believes the locals, the people, literature, and language of Kenya were "suppressed" by the "colonial system," through his experiences and I don't blame him. What the visitors did in order to make him like them was inhumane and unethical. It reminds me of when I hear people in this country getting mad they have to press one on their phones to listen to English, when there is no official language of this country. Instead we should be learning Spanish and trying to communicate with immigrants to become a more peaceful society. Without communication, ignorance is not going to solve anything. Thiong'o believes without cooperation from the natives or the outsiders, the visitors will face serious consequences and we as invaders shouldn't force our way of life onto the locals.

Language is one of the most important factors of life because it provides us with a way to communicate with others and is a "carrier of culture." We use language by using "language of real life," "speech," and "written signs," to communicate visually and orally, and define ourselves as human beings. Thiong'o believes the studying of English literature and language as a child took him and "further and further from" his own culture and his identity. He also believes that language carries our own values of what we know and what we believe.

Thiong'o defines cultural language as a "collective memory bank of people's experiences in history" and "an image forming agent in the mind of a child." I believe this is true, because we are taught at a young age to speak and to read in order to learn the survival skills for school and the rest of our lives. If we didn't have some sort of sense of culture and language, we would have no identity of our own and would be lost in this hectic world. Our language and how we use it to keep our traditions alive is very important. While there is room in our brains to learn more languages, it is hard to learn because we are so used to one way of doing things and it doesn't belong in our paradigm. I have taken all four of my required Spanish credits and if I had to speak it frequently instead of English, I wouldn't succeed because it is extremely difficult to think in another language.

Thiong'o believes one the purposes of colonizing is to "control the people's wealth," which I think he means the Western world wants to take other countries' natural resources and land to make a profit. He also believe colonizing is to "control a people's culture," to make everyone in the world follow the civilized society's ways of living, rules, and customs. Thiong'o warns us, "to control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others." I believe we colonize by dividing land, controlling the people, and enforcing our standards on the locals. The ways we colonize are harsh, even if we do it for good reasons and resources.

The Writings of Chinua Achebe

The Sacrificial Egg by Chinua Achebe is a story about fear of change. The natives are afraid of what the western world is going to do to Umuru by moving in and taking over their territory. The narrator tells us, "There is good growth and there is bad growth," meaning the village has uninvited visitors who outnumber them and they are not happy about it. Will it help them to get new resources or will it hurt the resources they already have? Did the newcomers come for "trade and money," or did they come to pillage and cause genocide?

The way the story is told, it seems like there is a virus called Kitikpa sweeping the towns and there is no escape, which a good metaphor for big chains forcing the mom and pop stores to close. Julius Obi steps on an egg of "someone oppressed by misfortune," which is a metaphor for the western world stepping on the way of life the locals have been living and are used to doing business. Julius seems to worry about the youth who "had never yet experienced the power of Kitikpa themselves," wondering if the young generation will grow up never knowing the dangers of the western world and will feel it is perfectly normal to outsiders taking over their land.

In Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Achebe states that he believes Conrad is a "thoroughgoing racist" based on the themes and his description of the African people in his novel Heart of Darkness. It is Achebe's opinion is that Heart of Darkness "cannot" be called "a great work of art." I read Heart of Darkness for my Critical Approaches class and thought it was a great novel. At the time I believed the novel was very psychological draining, which worked well for it, and the title referred to the area of grey people have in bad surroundings.

Achebe believes Conrad, like Western psychology, views "Africa as a foil to Europe" and Africa is "the other world, the antithesis of Europe and therefore, of civilization." I think people believe Africa is has people who act like savages and are uncivilized based on reading books like Heart of Darkness and the films that are based on stereotypes. The same civilization theory could be said for how the Europeans viewed America right before they came over to "tame" it. It makes it seem like Europeans believe they are more civilized and more educated than any other continent. I think Achebe's argument is to say they are people everywhere who are good and bad and it doesn't matter what continent they are in.
Achebe also notes the dialogue of the characters when they speak during the story as being uneducated and inferior, which he believes in Conrad's "best assault" on Africa. Couldn't the same be said for other novels like Huckleberry Finn which uses a similar style of dialogue for slaves? Is Achebe trying to point out that we should not read books which have hints of racism? I think we should be able to decide for ourselves, if we can view them critically.

Achebe points outs that it could be "contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed by holding it up to irony and criticism." Since Achebe didn't include an interview with Conrad saying he believed Africans were uncivilized and uneducated, I have to give him the benefit of doubt, storytelling wise.

I agree with Achebe when he says Africa plays a bigger part in the story than the destruction of the mind of Krutz and the adventures of Marlow. I think if this story was set in some other place, like a deserted island, it wouldn't have had the same controversial effect on the readers.

Wood Project, Part 2

I had to combine the wood from my first project with 4 other girls.

Balcony at Sea

Balcony- little bit of heaven.
When we're sailing off, everybody's waving,
Leisurely floating out of Miami.
Today- we sail away.

Balcony- a place for napping.
Don't have to worry about unpacking.
Just relax and dream your cares away.
Today- a sea day.

Balcony- better than our cabin.
We can sit, eager for a amusing
The room bill is sure worth paying
Good money for an upgrade.

Balcony- in the zephyr, sailing.
Salt mixed with lots of ease, smelling.
Watching the dolphins as they pass us by.
Today- a play day.

Balcony- the sunset is upon us.
The clouds are beginning to rust.
The ocean still looks vast,
worth seeing in the deep darkness.

Balcony- its getting too dark now.
Turning on the light so we can see out.
The waves are becoming lazy.
Today was a good day.

Just relax and dream your cares away

*** Synopsis: Song about sitting on a balcony of a cruise ship throughout a day.

Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul

Professional Foul by Tom Stoppard is a play about a group of professors from Oxford fly to Czechoslovakia to give speeches and come across catastrophe theory, police corruption, ethic boundaries, and the oppression of human rights. The title, Professional Foul, comes from a football term, which Anderson mentions while watching a football game. It was the least shocking play I've read for this class so far, but it was a very deep read with relatable issues. I liked how each of the professors represented one of the issues by their field.
Anderson is a language professor and he deals with most issues in the play, as he is the main character. He struggles with the local government, foreign languages and policies, and good and bad ethics. He faces moral dilemmas of helping his former student or following the laws and regulations of the foreign country. After he goes through all of his struggles while in Czechoslovakia, he gives a speech about "the conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of the community," and to prove his point, the chairman of the convention stops his speech with fake fire drill.
Pavel Hollar is Anderson's old student at Oxford, who is back in his own country workings as a "cleaner at the bus station." He should be able to get a better job, but can't, since he "walked across a minefield" to an enemy state, Britain. Hollar's thesis is "about correct behavior," which Anderson says is "rather slanderous from the state's point of view." After Hollar gives his thesis, Anderson says "I hope you're not getting me into trouble." Little does Anderson know it is the just the start. We know the police are corrupt since they plant American dollars in his apartment and go through his belongings, especially his books, for twenty hours. The searchers reminded me of Nazis and the firemen from the book, Fahrenheit 451.

Chetwyn is an ethics professor. We don't know whether he believes in what he teaches, because he is caught at the airport trying to return to Britain with a bunch of suspicious letters to other countries. Anderson brushes Chetwyn's arrest and detainment off, saying, "they couldn't treat Chetwyn as though he were a Czech national anyway," which is good for Chetwyn, based on the treatment of Hollar and his family throughout the play.

McKendrick is a politics professor and is a Marxist, with no apologies for what the Marxists have done in the past. He tells us his teaching and research field is the "philosophical assumptions of social science" and he also makes it know he hates football which gets him into trouble with the others. He seems paranoid about everything during his visit and says when they arrive at the hotel, "Do you think the rooms are bugged?"

We are introduced to catastrophe theory by McKendrick during his speech, which suggests morality and immorality "are two lines on the same plane," which makes a lot of sense since there is a grey matter with every dark and light in every decision. After Anderson plants Hollar's thesis in McKendrick's suitcase and McKendrick seems angry by this, calling him an "Utter Bastard" Why does he seem so surprised?

Anderson's theory on ethics is "The difficulty arises when one asks oneself how the individual ethic can have meaning by itself." He tells the cops who are searching Hollar's place, "I assume it is not illegal" if he brings Hollar's papers to read, showing he has a twisted sense of humor. The author, Tom Stoppard makes the play go full circle by starting and ending their journey on the plane, with the characters arriving with hope and leaving with shock. Anderson has the last line of the play, saying, "Ethics is a very complicated business." Indeed it is.

Elevator

Elevator
A place to leave fliers
Decorating your sides with gum
You are messy, elevator
Elevator
Metal cage of black wire
Less space than I desire
You cramp my air, elevator

Full of gravity, space, and rhyme
Keeps me inside, up, and down
Doesn't let me lose much time
Never lets me go around

Ignores the thirteenth floor
A proper people keeper
Treated like a whore
Sorry I used you, elevator

Top Girls by Caryl Churchill

At first I didn't know what to make of this play, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, and was disturbed by the scene between Kit and Angie. I had to read it a couple of times to grasp the concepts. I believe Top Girls is a play about the roles of women in society and the workplace, using a career orientated women compared to the typical homemaker type of women to show how far a woman's place in society can and will come.
I think the intent of the author was to say that the women who want to succeed in the business world must think like a man and not give up their careers to just be a housewife. It is very reminiscent of the times and shows how much women have to struggle for independence and the right to work.
I think Marlene talks to Isabella, Nijo, Griselda, and Joan the Pope, because they are her examples of the past of women have been and what they have become, and she needs to believe that she can continue their legacy and rise above society's pressures on women. I think Churchill adds this opening to remind us why Marlene has to fight and how far women have come.
Compared to the women Marlene works with, we can tell her ambitions are higher than her co-workers. There is Win, who seems content with "living" with her boyfriend while his wife is away and there's Jeanine, a clear opposite who only wants a job to save money "to get married" and have kids Marlene asks Jeanine, "Does that mean you don't want a long term job?," and offers that she sells lampshades, because it probably boggles her mind to think of someone not wanting to be independent. The one co-worker exception is Louise, who seems similar to Marlene and has "seen young men who I trained go on" and feels like "Nobody notices" her.
When Marlene gets the promotion over Howard, we can tell that this a controversial decision for the time period. Even the man's abused wife even comes in to tell Marlene to let him have the job since, "What's it going to do to him working for a woman? . . He's got a family to support. He's got three children. It's only fair." It is not fair for him to have the job just because he is a family man and Marlene is a single woman. Her co-worker Nell even says, "Our Marlene's got far more balls than Howard and that's that."
In comparison, her sister Joyce is a divorced single mother, trying to make it on her own with "four different cleaning jobs." Joyce doesn't seem interested in men anymore and says, "Mind you, the minute you're on your own, you'd be amazes how your friends' husbands drop by. I'd sooner do without." Little is said about Marlene and her social life outside of work. She only says the men are "waiting for me to turn into the little woman" and admits "she does need them, but I need adventures more." In the first act, Isabella says to Marlene, "When I was forty, I thought my life was over," referring to a time when women of this age were considered washed up and old maids if they weren't married. Nowadays, women like Isabella and Marlene get married after forty and have babies after they have settled into their careers. While Marlene lives to work and to be successful, Joyce works to live because she has to take care of Angie.
We later learn that Marlene gave her infant daughter to her sister Joyce, so she could work and not have to raise her. Angie is very unhappy and hates Joyce, wants to be "American," wanting to work and to get away from the "working class" like Marlene. I don't know if Angie would have been happier being raised by her real mother, but I'm sure Marlene would have been more miserable.

Painting Wood, Petula Clark, and the Blues

For British Lit, I did a presentation on Petula Clark and showed a youtube video of her singing "Downtown." I also read "The Homecoming" by Harold Pinter. That is such a weird and shocking play about pimps and prostitutes.

For Design 3D, I finished painting and sanding my three pieces of wood, assembled it, and turned it in on Thursday. I painted them purple with a shade of blue.

For Song Lyrics, I had to write a blues songs and an "AAA" format song.

For Biological Anthropology, I read Imitators That Hide in Plain Sight and Stay Alive by Sean B. Carroll and wrote a paper on it. We also watched "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" in class on Tuesday.

I also read The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and A Greater Love by Rachel Ann Nunes on the bus.

Wood Project, Part 1

I cut the wood into three pieces using a radio arm saw. Then I sanded the pieces and painted them with liquid purple watercolor with shades of blue.

Camouflaged Animals

Carroll, Sean B. "Imitators That Hide in Plain Sight, and Stay Alive ". The New York Times February 15 2010

In this article, Sean B. Carroll describes the theories of Henry Walter Bates based on the 14,000 species he study in the Amazon jungle. Bates traveled to South America with Alfred Russell Wallace, but the two didn't see eye to eye, so he ventured off on his own. Practically giving up on his research because of money issues, Bates got yellow fever the week he was supposed to leave Brazil, received a new grant, and spent another eight years there. His research studied "the close resemblance of some animals to living or inanimate objects" and concluded that "defenseless mimics gained an advantage by resembling well-defended species." He tried to find out if it was through evolution that this occurred. Charles Darwin was "excited" that Bates' findings supported his own theories of artificial and natural selection.
It is incredible to see how scientists like Bates, Darwin, and Wallace researched and how similar their work is, supporting the evolution theories of the other scientists within years of each other. Which is interesting that Bates worked with Wallace and Darwin, because Wallace and Darwin both came out with papers at the same time. I think the combination of working with both of them gave him more ideas of how to research and do experiments. If Bates hadn't gotten yellow fever, would he have discovered what he did or would someone else discover it later? I think his theory about the animals makes a lot of sense, because we as animals have to adapt to our surroundings if we want to survive. Even humans use camouflage when they are hunting and trying not to be seen by their prey, so it would make sense for animals to try and hid from their attackers.

How Could I Forget?

On a non stop flight to Honolulu from Phoenix
Sitting on the runaway because of mechanics
The plane had no power, no air running
We used the barf bags for fanning
Flew us to Los Angeles, an hour wait there
A flight to remember
How Could I Forget?

On a bus to Cancun from Playa Del Carmen
Riding along with our tour guide Len
Down the coast of the golden serpent
The driver tried parking on the cement
The sidewalk tree branch barking
Going through the windshield, cracking
A great hole in need of repair
A bus ride to remember
How Could I Forget?

On a trip to Orlando to visit Disney World
During hurricane season, clouds swirled
We thought we would be okay
We argued with the sky
The rain was bucketing
The thin crowds were departing
Buying yellow ponchos in a storm
Continuing until we left there
A visit to remember
How Could I Forget?

My British Musical Influences

While I was growing up, my parents listened to The Beatles, Herman's Hermits, The Animals, The Troggs, The Hollies, and The Moody Blues. My parents owned all of the records and most of the CDs. Their favorites were the Beatles and the Moody Blues. They would play their albums in the car over and over while we were on road trips to California or going camping in the mountains, so this was my first exposure to these bands. I thought they were okay, but had my own favorites.

I really didn't become a fan of The Beatles until I saw a couple of television biopics on them when I was in junior high. They became my favorite band from the British Invasion at the time. I watched most of their films such as A Hard Day's Night and Help!, which were my two favorites. I read Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney by Geoffrey Giuliano, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation by Philip Norman, and Dark Horse: The Life and Art of George Harrison by Geoffrey Giuliano. I also read a book on their songwriting, but can't remember what the name of it was.

After I became a fan, my parents took me to see and listen to Beatles cover bands such as Imagine when they performed one summer regularly at Lagoon Amusement Park and The Fab Five perform during a Spring Break at Disneyland a couple of years ago. The first Beatles album I bought for myself was Revolver, after I saw and really enjoyed the movie Across the Universe, and couldn't buy the songs on Itunes. I've also been on a couple of Carnival cruises where they have had shows dedicated to the Beatles in the main lounge. Over the summer, I watched a couple of Paul McCartney's concerts on TV, because he is my favorite Beatle.

I didn't really start listening to The Rolling Stones until I saw the reality competition show Rock Star, where the contestants sang several of their songs and I bought them on Itunes. Before that, I was only familiar with their song, "Satisfaction," because of Britney Spears cover version that came out when I was in high school. I recently watched Gimme Shelter and the Shine a Light documentary by Martin Scorsese on TV and the documentaries made me appreciate the band more. Usually if I learn how they came to be and what methods they use to write their songs, I become a super fan. It's really fun to discover bands like The Rolling Stones, by random situations. My musical tastes go through phases, I guess.

The Poetry of Philip Larkin

Church Going by Philip Larkin is about a man who has lost his faith in the world and looking to find God, but feels God isn't on the same wavelength as those who run the churches. He only goes inside a church if "there's nothing go on," feeling like the patrons aren't doing the work of God outside of Sunday service and wonders if God is really inside the church on the other days when no one cares. When he goes inside, he notes the church feels empty and the flowers are "brown," as if the patrons of the church don't care about it enough to take care of them or to throw them away. He wonders if the church really "cleaned or restored" people by baptizing them, through the power of God or their efforts are a lost cause.

He tells us, "the place was not worth stopping for," but then tells us, he "often does stop there," leaving us to wonder if he is going from church to church. Does he expect something to happen or is looking for something to feel that he hasn't found? He admits he feels a "loss" of spirituality, feeling empty.

I noticed how he says, "When churches fall completely out of us. . ." and not "if." Does he believe churches are doomed for extinction? I think he believes people will no longer need churches because of their lost faith or wickedness and churches will no longer have a reason to exist. He thinks we will turn churches into barns, shelters, or ghost towns when no longer using them for religious purposes such as "marriage, birth, and death," and the future generations will not even know what they are.

He wonders if the future generations will even recognize the churches as anything else but a old burial ground, that "so many dead lie around." He wonders if the future generations didn't know what a church was for, would they will "seek" God on their own or do churches and God have to go hand in hand.

He says, "Our superstition, like belief must die and what remains when disbelief has gone?," wondering if one day people will think of God as a nice story, but nothing else. I believe he is losing hope in his quest and expects others will feel the same. He says, "It please me to stand in silence here," as he likes trying to talk to God without other things, such as man, getting in his way.

Talking in Bed by Philip Larkin is an ironic title about a couple who are having a hard time communicating with each other. They are only talking in their own minds and are separated from each other by darkness and silence. I noticed how all the stanzas are three lines, instead of two. I believe the lines were purposely set up that way as a metaphor for the distance, lack of communication between the couple, or them needing therapist as a third party to help them. They both find it "difficult to find words" to bring them closer together and to recapture what they once had, but neither one tries or knows how to resolve their loneliness.

A bed is considered one of the most intimate places a couple shares, yet this couple feels estranged while lying next to each other. It is a place where you give yourself completely to someone else, yet you can be close but far away from each other, mentally. This couple feels "isolation" They feel the "wind's incomplete unrest" even though they are inside. Even the weather echoes their estranged and unhappy situation.