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Advanced Literature & World Geography-American History 2008

Welcome to the Advanced Literature and World Geography for 2007-2008! Carpe Diem! Seize the day! This year we will be studying classical and modern genres of novel, drama, poetry and the short story for Advanced Literature, and we will be studying the cultures and history of people as they relate to their environment for World Geography. The textbooks for Advanced Literature will be posted on this website as we proceed this year. You will also be entitled to a 20% discount on all book purchases at Borders. Further books and updates to come!

 

Advanced Literature - We so far have read Hamlet, Don Quixote, The Prologue to Canterbury Tales, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 19th century American poets Emerson, Poe, Dickenson, Whitman, Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", and , "The Great Gatsby". Also, we have finished Steinbeck's "The Grapes Of Wrath", the Christian classic, "The Screwtape Letters", and have finished Elie Wiesel's "Night".  The last works we have read were, "The Life Of Pi",  a novel of the student's choice, and a collection of short stories by a variety of authors, including O'Henry, Chekov and Malamud.  Thank you for a thought-provoking year !!

 

WORLD GEOGRAPHY - The subscription to national Geographic has been postponed, rather, selected articles will be copied and discussed from each month's new issue by the instructor.

 

 

 

 

 

Assignments For Next Class Sessions

ADVANCED LITERATURE -  Thank You for a great year !

 

WORLD GEOGRAPHY  - Keep up the National Geographic !

 

AMERICAN HISTORY -  Keep Reading !  Read your daily newspaper.  The news of today is the history of tomorrow.   Read Howard  Zinn's  "A People's History Of The United States".

Send your comments!

If you have any questions about this week's lessons, comments or suggestions, please send me an e-mail at hgurrola@gmail.com !

My blogs...blog on!!

 

September 11, 2001 I expect that those of you who are older, or have parents who will remember this day and it's significance and how it has changed how we perceive the the world we live in. I will always remember where I was and what I was doing when the twin towers were attacked that bright sunny morning. Events like this forever are etched in our psyches as individuals and as a nation as a whole. I too, remember the exact time of day and what I was doing in my sixth grade class when President Kennedy was shot. Our teacher, Mr. Richter, gathered us all around the desk and assured us that things would be okay. It was scary back then, as the school intercoms were broadcasting all over the building the radio station's narration of the event unfolding. Just like Mr. Richter had told us, we need to reassure ourselves that in the end, our freedoms as we know it, will prevail during times of crisis, and "things will be okay". We need to keep reading, expanding our visions thru the many "windows" that literature provides, in order to understand other peoples and cultures, and in the long run, to preserve our freedom.

September 14, 2007 ...you know, people have no literary sense...people never accept the tale for itself...that the writer writes a story to prove something...that some kind of lesson should be taught, rather than a tale written for the sheer pleasure of writing it, and for the story that is told... JORGE LUIS BORGES

September 28, 2007 .....READ, READ, READ!! So simple a notion, belief, idea. Read the major poets, read classics. Yes, read Shakespeare! He will never be outdated, his (writings) will go on till the end...much like the bible...Yes! Read the B-I-B-L-E!!! The King James first, then compare. Read drama, read essays, study history...it's what makes the man (or woman) who writes according to what's happening in his world around him...The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda says it this way in his "Invisible Man"

"...my poor brother, the poet, everything happens to him....he believes he is different from everyone else in the world...I must write down what is happening, not forgetting anyone..."

 

 

October 17, 2007 Recently sent an e-mail to the literary critic, Harold Bloom. To my suprise I got an immediate response. I encouraged him to continue doing the good work that he does, being one of the most "well read scholars" in the world. He claimed in one interview that he was going to try to read every book in the Yale University library where he teaches. Of course, that's an impossibility he says, but he is attempting. he pointed out that we are all mortal, we all only have so much time, so don't squander it by reading "trash". He rattled off a list of books, and near the top of anybody's reading list is DON QUIXOTE. He said it is one of the most important novels ever written......enough said...... ENJOY reading it!!!!

November 13, 2007

How to Read a Poem  
by Edward Hirsch
 

Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture--the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us--has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. I think of Malebranche's maxim, "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul." This maxim, beloved by Simone Weil and Paul Celan, quoted by Walter Benjamin in his magisterial essay on Kafka, can stand as a writer's credo. It also serves for readers. Paul Celan wrote:

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the--not always greatly hopeful--belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense are under way: they are making toward something.




Reprinted from Issue 6 of DoubleTake, by permission of the editors.

 

February 6, 2008

For those American History students, we will be following the presidental race over the next few weeks. We are in times of major "history making" changes. For this country's first time, we could very well have a female president, or a president of color. Major changes in our country's history will be developing in these early years of our 21st century. It is an exciting time, and it is also a time of discernment. What is current news of today will be in the history books of tomorrow!

 

 

May  19, 2008     It has been an honor  to teach all of the students this year at  HERO.   Shalom !! 

 

Poem Of The Week

Ballade [I die of thirst beside the fountain]
by François Villon
Translated by Galway Kinnell

I die of thirst beside the fountain 
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth
In my own country I'm in a distant land
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames
Naked as a worm, dressed like a president
I laugh in tears and hope in despair
I cheer up in sad hopelessness
I'm joyful and no pleasure's anywhere
I'm powerful and lack all force and strength
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I'm sure of nothing but what is uncertain
Find nothing obscure but the obvious
Doubt nothing but the certainties
Knowledge to me is mere accident
I keep winning and remain the loser
At dawn I say "I bid you good night"
Lying down I'm afraid of falling
I'm so rich I haven't a penny
I await an inheritance and am no one's heir
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I never work and yet I labor
To acquire goods I don't even want
Kind words irritate me most
He who speaks true deceives me worst
A friend is someone who makes me think
A white swan is a black crow
The people who harm me think they help
Lies and truth today I see they're one
I remember everything, my mind's a blank
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

Merciful Prince may it please you to know
I understand much and have no wit or learning
I'm biased against all laws impartially
What's next to do? Redeem my pawned goods again!
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.



From The Poems of François Villon translated by Galway Kinnell, published by Houghton Mifflin, © 1965. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.