evaluation

I was really not looking forward to the blogging process just because I thought it would be another homework assignment that was pointless that I would have to do every week. However I like it more than I thought I would. My favorite blogs were the ones where we could find poems or look up pictures and write a reflection about it. I also enjoyed finding a Mark Twain quote because I really like quotes.

My favorite stories this year were the essays by Emerson Nature and Self Reliance just because they involve some thinking.

a thousand tongues

Yes, I have a thousand tongues
And nine and ninety-nine lie
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth.

This poem is confusing to me, but I think it's about telling the truth and how people can tell so many lies so many times but it's hard to tell the truth just once.

Mark Twain

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

I really like this quote because I think there are a lot of people out there that like to see others fail. I think everyone's done that at some point in their life because it's easier to wish failure onto someone else rather than yourself. This one in cool because it says that great people encourage others and that other people are just kind of jealous and it reminds me I should cheer on other people too, and want other people to accomplish things in life.

Civil Rights

http://victualling.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/a-black-man-walked-into-a-restaurant-and/
this article is a combination of different times when black people have been refused service because of the color of their skin. All of the different situations are really interesting but the first one talks about how a civil rights group went around to 99 restaurants and 63 of them don't serve black people. Those numbers are astonishing to me, and there are different circumstances on this website that just seem like cruelity.

The Delany Sisters and a tour through Harlem

Bessie's dentist office was pretty close to Strivers Row, which African Americans started making their homes in 1919. Many doctors, lawyers, and musicians lived here. The neighborhood was given the name "Strivers Row" because of the lives of the people who lived there, which I find quite interesting. While I was looking through the site of the people who made Harlem what it was, I saw the New York Black Yankees, I remember Bessie and Sadie talking about how they occasionally went to the Yankees game, and it never occured to me that there was a separation there and that there were the Black Yankees, which looking back at it now makes sense, but I still find it interesting.

Tom Feelings

This picture doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the Delany sisters but out of all of his pictures it was my favorite. This picture symbolizes black people kind of rising against white people especially when they were slaves. To me it's more of a symbol because throughout Having Our Say it was all about African Americans sticking together no matter what was going on and trying to face the world that whites lived in and trying to live in it themselves. 

Sports

I feel really strongly about girls sports verse guys sports. I feel like girls don't get enough credit on a local or national level when it comes to sports. My biggesst issue is within the school. Our girls teams usually are a lot better than our boys teams and the funding isn't anywhere near equal. It's frustrating because I'm a successful athlete and I work just as hard as a lot of the guys do but the rewards and recognition aren't anywhere near the same.

There Was a Child Went Forth

In the first stanza I really relate to "And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became" This is my favorite part of the whole poem because growing up, kids have such a vivid imagination and when they find something that intrigues them they transform into that by mimicing the object. I also like when he talks about the parents becoming part of him, because when I was little I would spend a lot of time around the house with my mom or at work with my dad and I would try to be just like them and do everything they do, and in a way that's carried over into growing up.

Emily Dickinson

I haven't told my garden yet --
Lest that should conquer me.
I haven't quite the strength now
To break it to the Bee --

I will not name it in the street
For shops would stare at me --
That one so shy -- so ignorant
Should have the face to die.

The hillsides must not know it --
Where I have rambled so --
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go --

Nor lisp it at the table --
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the Riddle
One will walk today --

This poem's meaning is kind of confusing to me but I got the impression that she was talking about death and dying young, it seems like she was really sick when she was writing this saying she didn't have the heart to break it to the bee. I also think she is talking a little bit about religion and about how she's almost excited to see whats next.

transcendental

I would rather be a transcendentalist because in my opinion antitransendentalists are a lot more negative. I find the positive upbeat stuff easier to read therefore I like the stuff we've been reading recently with all of the transcendentalists because they focus a lot more on the good of people and of nature instead of the evil.