Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

Henry David Thoreau--Civil Disobedience

Rage Against the Machine...

Self-Reliance In-Class assignment

Here is the link to your In-Class assignment google doc.

Wordle--Self Reliance

  "Self Reliance" Wordle

   "Nature" Wordle

A "wordle" is a program that creates an image based on text that you feed into it.  It creates a word cloud where the words that are used most frequently (after filtering out commonly used words) are made larger and more prominent.

If this is all we saw from "Self-Reliance," what would we conclude about Emerson and his message? 

Here's a link to create your own wordles

  Thoreau "Walden"

    Moby-Dick Melville

Blogger vs. Groupfusion

Men, if you wish, please post your thoughts to the following document.  Do you prefer blogger.com over groupfusion?  Why?

Here's your link to the google doc

...it used to be science fiction.

 

ITW Review Links

Fellas, here are the links to your google docs study sheets:

H Block

J Block

Lunch Block

S Block

I walk into the wild...

...well, not really. 

  I walked into the woods behind the freshman soccer fields.  It felt pretty wild though.  I've run in that area before a number of times, but always on a path.  I remember thinking, stupidly, "I better make sure I go in a straight line so I can find my way back."  I was walking 200 yards... 

  Needless to say, my first couple thoughts as I strolled in the fresh, October air was how foolish this assignment was.  The whole concept of solitude here is a total farce.  I'm less than half a mile away from my car (which I still have many a monthly payment for), I have a cell phone on my person, and I'm going to BLOG about this later.  Let's be serious. 

  As I walked further, I found lots of reminders of human civilization.  Trash.  The sweet perfume of the outdoor latrine near the soccer fields.  A random steel well that is in the middle of the forest out there.  It made me sympathize with Chris McCandless.  How do you have a genuine wilderness experience?  Is it even possible? 

  As the pessimism raged, I found a rock near a streambed and sat down.  I started to think.  During football season, when my mind wanders it strays into the land of blocking and tackling.  I started thinking about our practice later today.  My girlfriend often comments that I go into my "village."  That's codeword for me not listening to whatever she's talking about.  A very common occurrence.  However, she's pretty much right.  My mind is hyperactive at times.  When I was a young kid I had a lot of trouble sleeping.  I would read until the wee hours of the morning just to take myself away from my own personal monologue.  I still do sometimes. 

Not just any tree...

  But then I saw a tree.  Yes, there are lots of trees in the forest.  But this one was straight.  Almost perfectly so.  And it was right in front of me.  I had walked past it on the way in unwittingly, but when I sat down, there it was.  It went up as perfect as a carpenter's square.  And that just amazed me.  It was so unified, one symmetrical trunk, reaching to the sky.  It was a living, organic thing, yet it seemed so right, as if it was put there as an example. 

  And then I started to look around more.  And I thought about what "Nature" is.  The big N.  There was just so much out there, so much life.  Green sprouts everywhere on the ground, tree branches yearning for light, birds chirping, brush, lichen.  The randomness out there, the lack of order really struck me.  Maybe nature is this chaos.  The lawful chaos that we are all a part of. 

  And then the school bell rang.  That's right.  The clock that chimes for every quarter of an hour at Delbarton.  I could hear it.  It totally screwed up my Zen moment.  What the hell. 



For serious, Delbarton?  Thanks. 



  As I walked out of the forest and back to my apartment, I looked at the soccer field.  What a juxtaposition that is to the disorderliness of the forest.  Perfect lines.  Right angles.  A completely clear, crested field. 

   It made me think how we love to create order as human beings.  We like to make sense of things. 

   I'm not sure Nature has a lot of answers, but maybe that's ok.  Melville once said, "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." 

Will Richardson: You Know This is True

Will Richardson talks about changing conceptions of learning and teaching. How much of this stuff is obvious but we don't have the cajones to actually change? Students, you are a part of the change at Delbarton School. We are creating something different. Appreciate that!

You Know This is True

Breaking Down the Thesis

Break it down!

Breaking down the thesis for a longer essay

Who wants a cool T-shirt?

Introducing the Full Novel-T League from Novel T on Vimeo.

Krakauer Penn 2

This is really worth watching.

This is a longer version of Penn and Krakauer

Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn hang out together...

Sean Penn, director of Into the Wild, and Jon Krakauer, writer of Into the Wild, featured in a show on the Sundance Channel.

Ben Franklin is awesome....