Moldy pork The Bay Area seems like a shiny toy, but actually it is a piece of moldy pork – I do not feel prosperous living here, but rather very uneasy. Justice is treated unjustly, those who are given the power of maintaining justice don’t do it, and this needs to stop as soon as Read more…
The Hagfish: a living wormy fossil Scientists estimate that the hagfish has been around for 300 million years and has barely changed. They are the only animal with a jawbone but no spine. They are so interesting and unique and must be studied for their ways of helping our world and for their unique characteristics. Read more…
Hoaglund’s Shell The critic and editor Phillip Lopate has many insights on the personal essay – how it functions, what makes it tick, how it is attractive to readers, and its various unique aspects. In his second aspect of the personal essay (the first is “The Conversational Element”), he defines “Honesty, Confession, and Privacy” as Read more…
JASON IS READING LORD GRIZZLY BY FREDERICK MANFRED. This novel, written in 1954, is the authoritative creative nonfiction masterpiece by Manfred, far far superior to the more recent The Revenant, which was made into a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle of the same name. In Manfred’s work, buffeted by many long hours exploring the countryside where Hugh Read more…
The two novels, Stuart Little, by E.B. White, (1944), and The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden, (Newberry Honor Award, 1961), are similar in some ways and different in some ways. I think there are three main ways that the texts are similar. The three ways they are similar is that both of the Read more…
In 2005, George Lucas gave us one of our best Star Wars films yet. When he featured Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson in the cast, he whipped up something special. This is the third movie in terms of chronology, but the sixth in order of production. In The Revenge of the Sith you’re knocked Read more…
Skiing Probs Me and my dad had just skied from the Gold Coast Express lift down to Siberia Express and we were ready to conquer my first-ever black diamond lift and trail. We got in line and waited until our turn to get onto the lift. The chair spun around the humongous gear and hit Read more…
The Battle of Kadesh 1350 B.C. In the capital of Hittite empire, Hattusa 76 years before the Battle of Kadesh The barracks adjacent to Hattusa were usually in constant motion. Even in passing you could always hear the sharpening of swords or the grunts of a late night spar. But tonight, the city lay still. The majority Read more…
Chaim Potok’s The Chosen throws the reader into a bildungsroman, a coming of age story, of two Jews, Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, during the tail-end of World War Two and its aftermath as the horrors of the Holocaust are unveiled to the public, and movements like Zionism rise to debate the idea of the Read more…
Seneca the Younger and The Art of the Personal Essay, ed. Phillip Lopate “On Noise” is an essay that reveals the musings of a man, known as a classic Stoicist, statesman, dramatist and satirist. Twelve of his essays survive, and in The Art of the Personal Essay editor, Phillip Lopate, four are collected. In this Read more…
