Read-Think-b4-u-Write

We all know someone who died too young or too soon. Some of us have friends and relatives that were killed in a vehicle accident that we memorialized in a roadside shrine. Some have added a tribute to their own vehicle or inscribed some bit of graffiti on the side of a building to remember their loved one. In the past it was popular to compose a poem to our dearly departed and this habit goes way back . . . past the Victorians, the Renaissance, the monks of the Dark Ages, all the way back to the Romans. Sometime after 120 A.D., a grieving Terentia visited Egypt. She was so moved by its beauty and the death of her brother that she inscribed the following poem in the limestone of The Great Pyramid. Open Culture records it: I saw the pyramids without you, my dearest brother,  and here I sadly shed tears for you,  which is all I could do.  And I inscribe this lament in memory of our grief.  May thus be clearly visible on the high pyramid the name of ...

You've heard this piece before in many, many, many creepy movies, but why do we find it so creepy? First, the Dies Irae was written by 13th-century Catholic monks as a funeral dirge for the funeral mass (that's pretty creepy). But that's not really why we find it so creepy. It's not as if we subconsciously connect a funeral dirge to creepy things. We find it creepy because the first four notes of this music are in a minor key . . . and minor keys are always creepy. In western culture, our ears are trained not to "like" those notes, especially when they are played together, or go down the musical scale. As pointed out at Open Culture: "Of course, we know these notes from the iconic, oft-parodied Amadeus scene of Mozart composing the “Dies Irae” movement of his Requiem in his sickbed, as ultimate frenemy Salieri furiously transcribes. Once you hear the magisterially ominous sequence of notes, you might immediately think of Wendy Carlos’ themes for  ...

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd recorded his musical interpretation of William Shakespeare's 1595 Sonnet 18. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date;   Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd   But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:             So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,           So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Shakespeare is talking about poetry and immortality. The young man described in the sonnet will never lose his youthful beauty as long as this sonnet lives on. How does...

Let's take a step-by-step look at how to write the introduction for a response to a literary critique. First write a sentence mentioning the novel you read for class and include an overview of the entire book.            Benito Cereno  by Herman Melville (1855), Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945), or Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897). This will help your audience to understand what your paper is about. Next: Write a sentence explaining to what critical literary essay are you responding?           1) Grandin, Greg. “Who Ain’t a Slave? Historical fact and fiction of ‘Benito Cereno’. The Chronicle of Higher Education . 16 Dec. 2013. www.chronicle.com.            2) Rodden, John and John Rossi. “Animal Farm at 70.” Modern Age . Vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 19- 27. EBSCO host.            Or 3) Senf, Carol A. “‘Dracula’: The Unseen Face in the Mirror.” The Journal of Narra...

"O, Beware, My Lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Iago to Othello (3.3)   Let's do a close reading if these lines. Think about why Shakespeare depicts jealousy as a green-eyed monster. Why not a blue-eyed monster or a black-eyed monster? How does jealousy tease or make fun of the meat it feeds on? What is that "meat"? When looking at possible essay topics how would you use these lines as evidence to prove your thesis. How does jealousy play into Othello's "uncertain vision"? How does Iago manipulate Othello's inability to distinguish between what is and what seems to be? How does this quote foreshadow Othello's destiny and/or self determination? How does jealousy lead to Othello's irrationality? Desdemona can't imagine any woman cheating on her husband, but you could say she dies at the hands of the "green-ey'd monster". How does jealousy contr...

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!  What is explication? Let's take a quick look at the  beginning of an "A" example : This poem dramatizes the conflict between appearance and reality, communicating the idea that even in the unnatural city Nature’s presence can be seen. From Westminster Bridge, the speaker looks at London at sunr...

We all know that Amazon is going to take over the world and we are all going to end up as bot-tenders in some factory somewhere where our robot overlords will spray us with bear spray when we try to organize for our rights. Is this the basis for some sci-fi movie? No, but it just seems like it could be the next Hollywood blockbuster. Anyway, back to the non-fiction. An Amazon robot in New Jersey malfunctioned and ripped through a can of bear repellent that sent 24 workers to the hospital. LOL!? Too soon. I guess, but all the workers are expected to make a full recovery. The repellent-spraying robot does bring up the issue of workplace safety and working conditions. But not to worry, Amazon released a statement saying, "The safety of our employees is our top priority, and as such, all employees in that area have been relocated to safe place and employees experiencing symptoms are being treated onsite,” an Amazon spokesperson told ABC in a statement. “As a precaution, some empl...