Did you survive?

I am hoping you all survived the Velocirapture yesterday. The thought of large, angry dinosaurs sweeping down to bring judgement to the masses makes me giggle. Sadly, if you did not survive, I won't be giggling for long.

If you did survive, I hope you have checked your email for an important AP warrior announcement.

May the raptors have mercy on your soul.

-MCC

Happy Mother's Day!!

I hope everyone gave their moms some extra love today! Also, happy mother's day to you, Mrs. Conklin. I think being pregnant on mother's day counts :D Hope everyone enjoyed the fabulous weather today because I know I did. Definitely looking forward to the 70 degree weather all week this week, finally. And I actually read a book outside today... A book for fun... *Gasp!

Nobody bring fruit to the breakfast, I have that covered with a very impressive fruit tray if I do say so myself...

See ya tomorrow!

Everyone Loves a Parade

Blossomtime 2011!!

Hurrah!! The rain held (at least until after the parade was over) and it was a great day for parade participants and spectators.  I got a chance to see Lisa on the Blossomtime float before the parade began. I especially liked the bee hovering above the flower on the back of the float. A nice nod to our BHS Blossomtime Queen!!

Not a great angle on the Baroda float, but it's hard to wave to people and take pictures at the same time. Adam and Anna looked fabulous, as did the 'Green Acres' themed Baroda float!

I LOVED the Las Vegas themed float for Bridgman!! AWESOME!!! The court all looked great, especially Kelsey! I just love seeing our girls all gussied up in their court finery :) And Emily Mead's dad as Elvis was pretty entertaining, too!

 I didn't realize it at the time, but I got a shot of Sam with the color guard just behind Nick Quardokus. The band sounded great!

...and the drum line sounded awesome! There's Chelsea on the base drum closest to the camera!


A great day for the annual Blossomtime Parade and a terrific showcase for some of the finest bands and community representatives in our area!

Don't forget about the post-exam breakfast tomorrow! There will be bagels, OJ, chocolate milk, and whatever other goodies YOU contribute. There are 15 students in our class (in case you do some baking today!)


-MCC

Not School Related

As my titled suggests this isn't school related but please forgive me that for I won't be taking up much of your time.
I just wanted to make a request. Krysta has began her own blog (because we just can't get enough of her mouth in class) and she would really really really love it with cherries ontop if people would pity her and read it! It is school appropriate and i thought it was a little funny so maybe you people could stop by and relate. Thanks and once again, I apologize for taking up precious school space. Carry on!

AP ENGLISH LIT EXAM!!!

So?

Was it better than you expected? Worse than you expected? Do you feel overwhelming relief or the desire to sleep for the next three days?

I hope you enjoyed the goodie bags. That is my favorite part of the AP exam day! Ms. Cuthbert dropped them off at Lakeshore for you this morning since I needed to be at school to supervise those trouble makers, Krysta and Sam ;)

Monday will be our post-exam breakfast/party. I will provide bagels and cream cheese, so if you have a special request, please let me know. I plan on getting a few plain, wheat, blueberry, sesame seed, and everything. If there is a bagel you MUST have, please let me know so I can add it to the order. Please bring something to add to the pot-luck style celebration: mini donuts, coffee cake, fresh fruit, muffins, etc. I will also be providing chocolate milk and orange juice. If you prefer a different beverage, please bring it. I have an electric kettle, so if you would like tea, bring a mug and we can make tea.

I plan on previewing "A Thousand Acres" this weekend, but will have "The Princess Bride" as a back-up. If you would prefer one movie over another, let me know. Last year the AP class wanted to watch "The Importance of Being Earnest" again, so we did. I have no objection to that one either :)

Dress in comfortable clothes - AP T-shirts, sweats, etc. If you STILL have not paid for your AP T-shirt, Monday would be a great time to bring your $17 in to Chelsea so you can wear your AP tee with pride!

Congratulations on a job well done, warriors! Regardless of the scores, I am proud of each of you and appreciate how hard you have worked this year. Enjoy your day off tomorrow and I'll see you on Monday!

-MCC

Poetry

First off, I don't like this guy. Let's get that straight right off the bat. Secondly, OF COURSE we need a month dedicated to some form of literature and personally I think poetry is the smartest choice. There's a poem out there for everyone, and different styles appear to different people. Obviously, this man has not found his poem yet. I can only hope he will in his long, sad, anti-poetry years to come. It pains me to think that he cannot enjoy the thought process that goes into poetry. Maybe he's not a rhyming kind of guy but what about haiku? or maybe he'd like James Joyce (they could have a nice long depressing chat)

All I'm saying is this guy needs to think before he writes. There are MILLIONS of poems out there. SONGS are essentially poems. Most literature could start off as a poem. And for someone who writes A LOT, shouldn't he be able to appreciate something so wonderfully simple yet complex as a poem?

In response to Mr. Bernstein...

OK dude, seriously? Chill...just chill.
Bernstein seems more preoccupied with bashing Poetry Month itself than if there is any poetry worth presenting. He talks about how most poems that "average people" are capable of understanding, are about nothing. Well, he is welcome to his opinions, even though they are wrong...Just because a poem doesn't have some sort of deep hidden philosophical interpretation of the author's view on life, death and where to have the best picnic lunch, doesn't mean that that particular poem is sentenced to the "mediocre" stack.
Whew...take a breath...OK.
Instead of just lumping poetry together into "good" and "bad" Bernstein should try to see the effects that poetry has on people. "In Flanders Field" is one such example that many people know and understand. "Taps" would definitely be an example, even though it is a song. Music is simply poetry that is put to notes and sound. Poetry is something that people hear and see everyday, even if they don't realize it.
Bernstein should take some time off and try to write his idea of "good poetry". If it takes off like a rocket and is an immediate bestseller that has people climbing over his garden wall to get his autograph...we will talk and renegotiate what good poetry is. Until then...Mr. Bernstein can shove it.

Poetry

Wow, this man may be the most opinionated man I have ever seen. And for what? Arguing that poetry isn't worth our time? That's quite insulting to the poets who have made it their lives work to create these poems... While I do agree with him that poetry gets a little lost in main stream media today, it still deserves to be recognized as a form of art. Poetry is meant to be savored, like a good dessert, not consumed quickly like so many people want to do with other literary works. In order to promote this "savoring", I feel that we do need to make the poetry more accessible at first to draw people in, then challenge them with some of the more complicated (and yes, more depressing) poems. Most people have not had the advantage of an AP course like us, so they need those baby steps in order to appreciate poetry, not matter what this extremely opinionated man has to say... And really, how is this promotion of poetry any different than promoting a new book or movie or art museum? These works of art need to be put into main stream advertising in order for people to learn about them and in turn appreciate them.

A risk we take by advertising poetry is the chance that once people read poems regularly, they start to over-analyze them. While many times there is a second meaning hidden in a poem, there are also cases in which you need to just take the poem for what it is. No, that poem isn't about the sacrifices that people have to make in society or about the grim death of a soldier in battle. It really is just about a toad getting it's leg cut off by a lawn mower. But Mr. Bernstein will obviously never experience this problem, because he believes he is far too superior than the lowly people who read poetry... Makes me wonder how intelligent this guy is, because he may as well not read books while he's at it...

Poetry! Merit or No Merit?!

I believe poetry has incredible literary merit, but about 99% of the time, it's over-analyzed. I like to think that most poets use symbolism intentionally, but honestly, I really believe it usually happens accidentally. When people talk, write, draw, sing, or what-have-you, it usually reflects their past and present. I think poetry is a huge example of that. Even if you don't have a purpose when you sit down to write, I think one comes out subconsciously. We over-analyze poetry to the point of murder, and I think that's why I dislike poetry.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Heller!

It's the birthday of the man who asked, "What does a sane man do in an insane society?": American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright Joseph Heller, born in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. He didn't begin any story until he had the first and last lines in his head, and the idea for Catch-22 came about after he thought of an opening: "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, 'Someone' fell madly in love with him." He didn't have the character's name — Yossarian — yet, but the story began to unspool from that first line. "It got me so excited," Heller wrote in the Paris Review, "that I did what the cliché says you're supposed to do: I jumped out of bed and paced the floor. That morning I went to my job at the advertising agency and wrote out the first chapter in longhand. ... One year later, after much planning, I began chapter two."

His agent started sending Catch-22 — called Catch-18 at the time — to publishers in 1953, when Heller was about a third of the way through with it. Simon and Schuster paid him $750 up front, with another $750 to be paid upon completion. Heller missed their deadline by four or five years, but eventually delivered it in 1961. They changed Catch-18 to Catch-22 to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's new book Mila 18, and the title has entered the lexicon as a description of an unsolvable logical dilemma, a vicious circle.

Heller published six other novels, three plays, a collection of short stories, and three screen adaptations. He died in 1999, shortly after finishing his last novel, Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man.