Thursday, January 29, 2009

luxury house


Who am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

VIGNETTE




The best of times is now.
Tomorrow is so far away.
The best of times is now.
Not some forgotten yesterday.
So hold this moment last.
For, the best of time is now, now, now.

KISS MONSTER



Remember that sometimes monsters only need to be kissed to be turned into beautiful princes and princesses.
Visualize the most despicable person you know. Then envision the price or princess who also resides in him or her.

SCIENCE FOR PEACE NOT FOR GREED













Instruments of peace are things of beauty and of art. Weapons of war are products of technology and science.
I t seems to mean that art is the way to peace, science the road to destruction. Quite true. Many countries have laid waste with guns, missiles , bombs , while Rizal, Luna , Gandhi and others have proven that painting, literature-the arts- are peaceful means by which we can conquer people’s minds. The intellectual human race, in its desire for progress, has dared Mother Nature and she is on revenge; the servants of arts have tried and succeeded in “concretizing” our most impossible dreams in the obra maestros. Through science, we have even the peace of the conscience. We have killed our fellow through abortion and the lethal injection. Worse we have created people who do not even have conscience. Just consider the inhumanity of the crimes drug addicts commit. On the other hand, the arts have also contributed to the increasing rate of crimes in the world, but more because of science. Works depicting the beauty ant the nature of emotion of man and woman are not the degree of privacy they need so they may be called truly art and nit just nude exposition. Thanks to privacy, which make available those masterpieces to those who cannot appreciate them.
But it’s not really science which is bad, is it? In fact, science presents peace as order and stability wherein in each unit of the universe behaves according to the unwritten, unchangeable natural law. The least diversion from natural law may result in very great chaos.
It’s we, humans, who intervene with the order of nature to satisfy our hunger for progress. It’s we who are too reckless in using science and technology just to make ourselves better. “The world is enough for everyone’s need, but not for anyone’s need”, as Gandhi put it. To these, we may add, science and arts must go together. For what good is the arts if there would be no progress in this miserable world? Can we just continue singing and dancing while poverty and crime remain realities? On the other side, the study of arts teaches values. When values are gone, there is an important question: what good is science, if there would be no one to use its principles for the betterment of humankind. Science is not for people of greed but for people or service.So, we may therefore conclude that role of science in our world depends on us who made it exist and for whom it exists. We can make it to become either beneficial innovator

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

THE SUMMER GETAWAY









Traveling is prime time for family bonding. While it brings out both the best and the worst in everyone, going on a trip is, by far, the best way to bring the family closer. Schools out for the kids, so file for your vacation from work and get ready to create some of the most enjoyable and fun-filled memories under the sun, on the shore, or among tall pine trees. Summer is when the kids can try all the activities they otherwise can’t while buried in books so make sure they can swim, ride horses, pick flowers, eat out -of-town delicacies to their heart’s content.
Get everyone involved at every stage of your summer vacation- from planning the trip to arranging photos in the post-vacation family album. At the planning stage, assigning a role for each family member will make everyone feel important and crucial to the success and fun of the big summer out-of-town event. Get ate to make sure you’ve got enough rolls of film to document every memorable moment or site, and remind kuya that he’s in charge of counting all the bags at every stop. The little ones will find utter joy in making sure that the family is well-stocked with munchies – whether packed into the car on a road trip, or in hand –carried bags if you need to get on a plane.
Needless to say, the vacation itself will weave plenty of memories for the family, and bonding will continue long after you’ve unpacked back home. While making the family album, get everyone to contribute a line about the photo and scribble it on a piece of white sticker at the bottom of each picture. Working on the album will bring back all the fun-horsing around, eating mounds of seafood , snorkelling , and more eating-and will get everyone excited and looking forward to the next big summer getaway.

Monday, January 19, 2009

comparison of the story and a poem of the Last Leaf

The Last Leaf" is a story about 2 female roommates and aspiring artists that live in Greenwich village. One of them, Johnsy, gets sick with pnemonia, and the doctor doesn't give her much of a chance. Johnsy's roommate, Sue, keeps watch over her and notices her counting. She asks why, and Johnsy replies that she is counting the "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too." Soon, there is only one leaf on the vine, and Sue is in despair that it will fall, and Johnsy will die. She expresses her fears to the unconventional and often grumpy old man that lives downstairs, Behrman. He comes up and sits with her for a while. The next morning, Sue opens the blinds to find the leaf still there, and Johnsy recovers. Later it is revealed that it was painted there by Behrman, who then, from exposure to Johnsy and the cold, dies of pnemonia. It's a classic O. Henry "surprise" ending, but a sweet commentary on not judging one by their outward personna.

Stanza 1

In "Memory," a woman still suffering from the break-up with her lover is addressed by the invisible "visitors" who inhabit a "seventh" dimension, the "sixth" being sex, which they have explained in poems that precede this one in the collection. The first line begins with their question: "And do we remember our living lives?" — our lives as they were lived without the revision of memory? In the first, five-line stanza, the woman in the poem recalls the details of a daily life in which strife and death are temporarily absent — details such as the clock measuring seemingly endless time or the door in which a lover enters. Near the end of this stanza, however, the reader becomes unable to deny what is coming, tipped off by language escalating in emotion from the almost quotidian though tender "I love you" to an urgent and anguished "why?" What caused the argument, which the poet does not actually discuss in detail in the poem. What was its now elusive trigger? What did the speaker mean to the lover who broke from her?

Stanza 2

In the second stanza, lines 6 through 10, the poet's unseen visitors reveal to her that death does not take the sting out of memory, improve the quality of its ability to record events, or resolve its conundrums. "You see," the visitors say, "our memories are much like yours, / here a shadow, a sound, a shred, a wisp." But they also frame for her the choice that she has, which will allow her to put aside memory's puzzle. "And what do we want to remember?" one said.

Stanzas 3 and 4

The third and fourth stanzas describe the poet's immediate rebellion. She believes she can improve her memories by summoning the courage to relive the terribly painful emotions this catastrophic lover's quarrel provoked. The third stanza begins, in the first three of five lines, as the poet's prayer: "Never never Oh give me the blurred wish / or the dream or the fact half-forgotten, the leaf in the book but not the read page." She asks for even more, not merely the facts but what they meant, what she can bear to know.

Stubbornly, perhaps, the woman in the poem tells her visitors in the next stanza that she has made a choice. "I recall only the blue dusk," the aftermath of dissolution in its sad and non-negotiable finality, and not the climactic pain of her last argument. But her visitors, made wise by the transformation of death and the realities of life in the untouchable seventh dimension, attempt to be instructive about the inevitable nature of memory. "Do you think you choose?" they say. "If only you could determine your secret determinates." The last line of this penultimate stanza reveals the poet's immediate reconsideration of her desire to overrule memory as it leads us to the poem's end. Her anguish is once again poignantly apparent.

Stanza 5

In lines 23 to 25 of the last stanza, the narrator's acknowledgement of "that terrible time" recedes, yielding again to the blue transition of dusk and leaving only the essence of catastrophe to the realm of "the inner eye."

What is Readers Theater?

Reader's theater is often defined by what it is not -- no memorizing, no props, no costumes, no sets. All this makes reader's theater wonderfully convenient. Still, convenience is not its chief asset.

Like storytelling, reader's theater can create images by suggestion that could never be realistically portrayed on stage. Space and time can be shrunk or stretched, fantastic worlds can be created, marvelous journeys can be enacted. Reader's theater frees the performers and the audience from the physical limitations of conventional theater, letting the imagination soar.

Almost any story can be scripted for reader's theater, but some are easier and work better than others. In general, look for stories that are simple and lively, with lots of dialog or action, and with not too many scenes or characters.

Reader’s Theater involves children in oral reading through reading parts in scripts. Unlike traditional theatre, the emphasis is mainly on oral expression of the part. Reader’s Theater is "theatre of the imagination". It involves children in understanding their world, creating their own scripts, reading aloud, performing with a purpose, and bringing enjoyment to both themselves and their audiences. Reader’s Theater gives children a purpose for writing, for reading, and for sharing their learning by bringing others into the joyful "imagination space" they create. Reader’s Theater "succeeds in giving the same suggestive push to the imaginations in the audience that the act of silent reading gives to the imagination of the perceptive silent reader". It is a simple, effective and risk-free way to get children to enjoy reading. As children write, read, perform and interpret their roles they acquire a better understanding of the literature.

"Everyone needs to talk - to hear and to play with language, to exercise the mind and emotions and tongue together. Out of this spirited speech can come meaningful, flavourful language, worth the time and effort of writing and rewriting, phrasing, rehearsing, and reading aloud."

How the Class Handled In This Assignment (Theme: courage)

Our professor gave us a task in making a presentation about the story that we have discussed. We have a long time to prepare for this assignment it was almost a whole week to prepare but no one practice for this presentation that’s why at the time we were going to present it in front of a class, all of us are dazing of time to practice it but the time is not enough to perfect the practice. We have no choice is just to present it in class without having an enough practice. After all the groups have been performed our professor told us that in those kind of related learning experience presentation we deserved a not so good grade in that assignment. We all know that it was our fault that we get those scores because we are just spending our time in a worthless thing. For the second time that we were having this assignment, we promised to spend a lot of time in preparing for that assignment.

“TIME MANAGEMENT IS ONE OF THE KEY TO SUCCESS”

The Last Leaf Story by O. Henry

http://www.balancepublishing.com/leafstry.htm

The Last Leaf Poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/owh/ll.html

Man Upon The Cross

Upon the cross against the hills of the night

They nailed the man, and while

They speared his breast they made him drink

The bile.

He bore the pains alone,alone

But in the hallowed darkness saw

Sweet Mary’s face upturned

In grief below.

Tears filmed her eyes, but love

Chastened the tragic beauty of her face,

Which neither death nor sorrow

Could erase.

He saw and feebly in the silence strove

To speak a few remembered words:

But now the whispers left his lips

Like tender birds.

His arms were cold and death

Was in his eyes; the streams

Of blood were dry upon the whiteness

Of his limbs.

His breath was like wounded bird

Wanting to stay, bereft

Now Mary rose and, treasuring

His sorrow , left.

Reach For Your Star

Do not take anything

As being forever,

Because forever is only

As long as today.

Know that the people who

Are the richest

Are not those who have the most,

But those who need the least,

That we are at our strongest

When life is at its worst,

And at our weakest when life

No longer offers a challenge.

That it is wiser not to expect,

But to hope,

For in expecting you ask for

Disappointment,

Whereas in hoping, you invite

Surprise.

That unhappiness doesn’t come from

Not having something you want,

But from the lack of something

Inside that you need.

That there are things to hold

And things to let go,

And letting go doesn’t mean you lose,

But that you acquire that which

Has been waiting around the corner

Most of all..

Remember to use your dreams as a

Way of knowing yourself better,

And as an inspiration to reach

For your star.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

What Ivy Means?

You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing.

You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long.

You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.



You are very hyper. You never slow down, even when it's killing you.

You're the type of person who can be a workaholic during the day... and still have the energy to party all night.

Your energy is definitely a magnet for those around you. People are addicted to your vibe.



You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in.

You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising.

You may miss out by not settling down, but you're too busy having fun to care.