MASTERPIECE PREVIEW

Kristen and I are making a video so there isn't too much that we can show without giving it all away, the creative process has been exactly that, a process. But we've received a lot of help from people who know more about making videos than we do.

And here is something we can show you, a blooper from one of our interviews!

SPRING BREAK ASSIGNMENT

I'm glad that I was tied with Sam Wellard for second place in the game on the last day before break, because of this I only had to comment on six literature analyses, the six I chose are:

1. Allyson Brown (To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf)
2. Edmond Yi (The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexadre Dumas)
3. Erica Marquez (Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia)
4. Hannah Savaso (A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway)
5. Kendall Villa (The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan)
6. Serena Nichols (Siddhartha by Herman Hesse)

FIVE STEPS

1. Finish the interviews for the video that Kristen and I are curating for our Masterpiece.
2. Begin editing and creating the final version of the video
3. Talk intelligibly with people who have extensive knowledge of video editing
4. Go back and re edit the video
5. Start analyzing the video for content, quantity, quality, and theme

MACBETH PRESENTATION

What are most people struggling to understand about Macbeth? 

• Incorporating the "Fair is foul and foul is fair" theme to the entire play
• Why Lady Macbeth seems to be "running the show"
• How the Chain of Command fits into to all of this
• Why Macbeth feels so guilty
• Simply following along with the plot

How we can help

• Review time! 
• Ask questions 
• Understand how monarchies worked back then
• Using literary techniques to dive into the themes of the play

Tools to use

• Last year's blog
• Our literature book might help
• There are a lot of good resources just a google search away
• Each other

MGOTM

Kristen and I are making really good progress on our video comparing the thought process of kids and their older counterparts.

We have all the recording we need, we just now need to curate a video.

The analysis of the tape is the most interesting, we are finding some interesting things about the way we all think...

ACT IV ACTIVE READING NOTES

• Foreshadowing (something wicked this way comes) Ray Bradbury alludes to this later
• Asks if Banquo's kids will rule and he is told to stop asking questions
• Macduff is in England planning a rebellion
• Macbeth acts like Lady Macbeth and decides to kill Macduff's whole family
• Also he says he's gonna do whatever he wants to do
• Macduff's wife is complaining that he is gone
• They murder Macduff's son
• Now Macduff wants to kill Macbeth after Ross tells him what happened

THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN SHOULD AND MUST

   The similarities between life and roads been drawn upon for centuries. Robert Frost took the one less traveled, Vladamir and Estragon waited for Godot on the side of one, Jesus rode a donkey over a palm-covered one, and now we have another one, the crossroad of should and must. 

   Should. A poorly constructed command. My aunt (a well known psychiatrist in the North West) calls should a shame word. Saying "should" is the way that others shame us in to doing what they want. To take that a step further, it is the way that we shame ourselves for not acting in the way we perceive society wants us to behave. Acting off this word is detrimental to our own mental health and success in the real world. If we intend to live happy lives we not live by the Creed of Should, but rather the Calling of Must.

   Must. A succinct phrase that creates an ethos of determination. The word "must" behaves in a manner that leaves the listener of said word wanting to achieve something. However Elle Luna uses this word in her article The Crossroads Between Should and Must as a synonym for "calling" so to incorporate both meanings we will just refer to it as the Calling of Must.

   Deciding the difference between these two can be very difficult if you are unwilling to ask yourself the very real questions about what makes us who we are. As Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." What Samuel Clemens failed to point out is that finding out "why" is the hardest thing we have to do on this earth. And sometimes when we do, we are wrong. I firmly believe that Adolf Hitler's "why" was not to create a master race, but he did. And the truly frightening thing is that we might be wrong about our Calling of Must and not figure out that we were actually just calling the Creed of Should our entire lives. We aren't all as lucky as Miss Luna to have dreams or visions to tell us our Calling of Must and while no one reading this will be as far off as Hitler was (hopefully) we can only be certain that what we want is really our calling if it answers all the questions we ask ourselves at night.

   All in all, we may have our white rooms we have to chase or we'll have to settle for our own Mavericks, but whatever the case the moment you start shaming yourself because of what others pretend to want is when you stop living. Do not die to society but rather live by your own Calling of Must.

MACBETH ACTIVE READING NOTES

• 3 witches (audience of one liked witches)
• Presented by characters with one version of Macbeth
• Shakespeare presents another (more somber) version
• Banquo is more of a realist, slower to believe the words of the witches while Macbeth is a romantic but he is trying to be humble
• Macbeth is constantly praised by everyone except Lady Macbeth
• She enters reading a letter and is rude to the messenger 
• Macbeth and lady are fighting?