As may be apparent, I did not update this page yesterday. That is because my computer, may it rest in peace, died a slow and tortured death on Tuesday night while I was at the theater seeing "Transformers." I am lucky to have my files recovered. The world is lucky I have my files recovered. Some one would have paid.
Yesterday afternoon was spent (literally) replacing my computer that was an HP from their summer 04 runway. This one on my lap is a new HP, and it is pretty and glossy. Goodbye paycheck.
Anyway, back to business.
Wednesday: We watched Everything is Illuminated, based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, a discussed how to "read film." Of course there was a fun worksheet to accompany our journey through the Ukraine. We finished off the day with some vocabulary and Catcher in the Rye.
Thursday: We read an excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's book A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, then answered some questions about what makes a "counter" culture and what gives different artifacts and ideas from a particular culture their value. We followed this up with a look at some more slam poetry by authors featured in the books Spoken Word Revolution and Aloud, as well as a poem by Fayetteville's Russ Ritter, and, most importantly, there was even some semi-slam, mostly not, poems by me, because as I always say - I love a good little jolt of public humiliation. We then wrote our own poems following the example of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." After break we closed with some grammar, vocabulary, and came close to finishing Lysistrata. Thank you to all of our boys who bravely took on the roles of angry Grecian women.