ferrellweb

The Curfew

Mr. Ferrell — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:52:12 +0000

“A game about civil liberties and teenagers,” from the BBC.

Low Budget X-Men

Mr. Ferrell — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:16:35 +0000

Why wait around for your mutation to manifest?

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:15:55 +0000

Writing a Paragraph Analysis—
Here’s the information from the book (if you need it) to help you write your paragraph analysis. Remember, these are due on Monday!

» In the opening sentence, include the title, author, and subject of the story.
» In the body sentences, briefly describe the elements (character, plot, setting, symbols) of the story that reveal the theme.
» In the closing sentence, state the theme of the novel.

Sample Paragraph

Scrooge’s Awakening
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge,is a hard-hearted man who sees no meaning in Christmas.Flashbacks reveal that he has become more and more focused on his business, shunning contact with friends and relatives. Scrooge is a character living in a cocoon of selfishness, blinded to the world beyond his counting house. One Christmas Eve Scrooge follows his usual holiday pattern—refusing requests for charity, berating his employee for wanting to take Christmas Day off, and rejecting the holiday dinner invitation of his only nephew. But as darkness falls, the setting shifts to mysterious images of deceased acquaintances, lost youth, and a prophecy of Scrooge’s own cold and lonely death. What he sees horrifies him and brings him to his senses. Scrooge learns that Christmas is a yearly reminder about the importance of love and the rewards of generosity and kindness towards one’s fellow humans.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:14:48 +0000

We concluded our collection of Vocabulary #4 today, and turned in papers. As far as we’re concerned right now, this was the last BYOV vocabulary for the year. The rest of the time, we worked on odds and ends—2nd Period heard a few words about the nature of dictionaries in general, and took a quick look at the Onmificient English Dictionary in Limerick Form, and 6th Period continued their quick trip through Holbein’s Dance of Death.

Assignments? Only one.

Vocabulary #5 Quiz is Friday!

Of Death, and Dances with Same

Mr. Ferrell — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 20:49:54 +0000

We’ve looked at the Dance of Death concept in class (or in French, La Danse Macabre) and I thought I’d take a minute and put some extra links here for those interested. It’s certainly not exhaustive, and searching the Web for “Dance of Death” will no doubt provide more. I’ve picked these few for now mostly because of the quality of their images, or depth of information:

For a scholarly take on the Dance of Death phenomenon, you might want to check out this Finally, you might like to read this article at the Catholic Encyclopedia—it’s not very long, and provides a solid overview.

Pieter Bruegel (the Elder)
We looked at Pieter Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” in our slideshow. Here’s his page on the Artchive, and here he is on Wikipedia. His paintings (like I said in class) weren’t all gruesome; many showed snippets of ordinary life in his day. You might like to take a look at a couple other rather famous paintings of his in that vein: “Children’s Games” and “Peasant Wedding.” He also painted the very famous “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” that British poet W.H. Auden (1907–1973) wrote a poem about.

Hieronymous Bosch
I may have mentioned Bosch in passing; he’s not really relevant to our exploration, but you’ll want to check out his paintings anyway, simply to—oh, I don’t know—blow your minds. Some hold that Bosh’s work did influence Bruegel’s “Triumph of Death,” and taking a look at the center of his “Temptation of Saint Anthony,” you can really see similarities in style and tone. Check out all of Bosch’s bizarre paintings on his Atrchive page.

Hans Holbein
It was Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death we looked at in class. The Project Gutenberg version has by far the best set of illustrations (click each to enlarge) I’ve seen on the Web (better than the ones I used for my slides, I think!) The texts, however, are in French, and the Bible verses in Latin, with no translations provided (Gutenberg’s hardcore like that).

This site has a ton of information about Holbein’s engravings, but is a little weird to navigate. (The plates, for instance begin near the upper right-hand corner with “The Creation,” rund down the side of the page, and finish in what appears to be another section all stacked in rows and columns.) You can click on each, though to read a detailed description of what they represent, as well as see other variations on the same theme in other versions—very nice! Also, check out the rest of the site for information about and illustrations from other Dances of Death. (Dance of Deaths? Does that have a proper plural? )

Finally, this page has a few more modern engravings (from the 1700s and 1800s) along the same theme.

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:09:43 +0000

Both classes began collecting Vocabulary #5 today, and we made it through about number seven or eight, which, by our standards, is pretty respectable. We’ll finish tomorrow, turn papers in, and expect a quiz on Friday.

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:31:22 +0000

Just in time for the Halloween weekend, 2nd Period read (or, actually, “heard,” I guess) Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” with an accompanying slideshow. We talked briefly about how the ideas from the past few days (and even Tom Benecke!) tied into the story, and we’ll solidify those next week.

Alas, for 6th Period! An impending Rally for Pep cut our class short, and we barely had time to make up our Vocabulary #4 Quiz we had moved around from our last shortened class times. Oh, well. We’ll just have to have Halloween in November, it looks like…

Assignments? Here they are.

Vocabulary #5 is due on Monday, November 1st for all classes.
6th Period’s “Write Like a Dead Man” sheet is due on Tuesday.

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:12:02 +0000

In 2nd Period, we turned in “Write Like a Dead Man” sheets, and continued examining the Dance of Death with a quick spin through Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death, noticing the moral lessons that could be “read” in the pictures, as well as our omnipresent hourglass.

6th Period began what 2nd started yesterday, with a brief interruption to get our “Write Like a Dead Man” assignment assigned.

Assignments? Still.

Vocabulary #5 is due on Monday, November 1st for all classes.
6th Period’s Vocabulary #4 Quiz is still this coming Friday!
6th Period’s “Write Like a Dead Man” sheet is due on Tuesday.

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:50:20 +0000

2nd Period moved on today—leaving Tom Benecke at the movies with his wife (we assume he made it safely, and wasn’t run over by a bus, or didn’t fall down an open manhole) we wandered back to plague-time in the Middle Ages, and looked at some pictures: namely Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death, a cadaver tomb, and introduced the Latin term “memento mori” and the concept of the Dance of Death.

6th Period, in a frantic rush, finished up “Contents” with an abbreviated discussion of symbols and themes in one day. (see the previous day’s notes for 2nd Period for details.)

Assignments? Still pending.

Vocabulary #5 is due on Monday, November 1st for all classes.
2nd Period’s “Write Like a Dead Man” sheet is due tomorrow!
6th Period’s Vocabulary #4 Quiz is still this coming Friday!

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Mr. Ferrell — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:47:16 +0000

2nd Period completed their discussion of “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets” today, talking about the main thematic idea in the story: There are more important things in life besides collecting money and prestige, and oftentimes we have to be shaken around pretty hard before we’re able to stop and look at our lives with a different perspective. This lead, incidentally, to a famous quotation from Thoreau’s book Walden…

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

…a poem from Edgar Lee Masters…

George Gray
I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

…and a quote from Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Heavy stuff. Then, I gave you an assignment sheet: “Write Like a Dead Man.” Tomorrow, we discuss death.

And what of 6th Period? We’ve only just begun. We begin down the “Dead Man’s Pocket” road that 2nd Period has already travelled. We’ll try to do in two days what they did in three, and thus catch up. The basic outline?
» Part 1: The Hero’s Journey in “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket”
» Part 2: Of symbols and the yellow paper
» Part 3: Thematic ideas in “Contents,” or, “What happened to my dead man?”

Assignments? Yep.

Vocabulary #5 is due on Monday, November 1st for all classes.
2nd Period’s “Write Like a Dead Man” sheet is due on Thursday.
6th Period’s Vocabulary #4 Quiz is still this coming Friday!