Pictured is Arthur Miller. The beautiful girl on his arm: Marilyn Monroe. This is the man who wrote The Crucible, and the very same man who refused to give up his friends while under investigation by the HUAC in the 1950's. However, Arthur Miller also "edited" his son, Daniel Miller, out of his life. Read the following article from The New York Times:
This Friday, October 11th, you will be taking the Unit 4 vocabulary quiz. Also anticipate a section on the quiz dedicated to prepositions. Specifically this: you will have to list 50 prepositions! Get to memorizing. Here is some help.
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Our time with The Crucible is nearing an end, and we will soon begin discussing its other implications: mainly its role as a political allegory reflecting the turmoil of the 1950's. I'd like you all to create your own blogs. They will be used for publishing and collecting the writing and research you will complete for the remainder of this school year.
To get started, visit blogger.com, and use the existing Google accounts you created to comment on this blog.
If you are stumped, the site also contains a helpful tutorial that covers all of the basics of posting.
Due Date/Requirements
You are responsible for creating a blog. Please give it a school appropriate title.
Compose an initial post and publish it to your blog.
The post must contain at least one link, one embedded video, and one embedded image.
Post a link to your blog in the comment section of this post by Friday, October 18.
Let us quickly review the difference between "less" and "fewer."
Simply put, less is used with mass nouns, and fewer is used with count nouns.
The cute, Scottish Fold is baffled.
A count noun refers to something that can be definitively counted; mass nouns are things that cannot be counted individually.
For example let us consider two of my absolute favorite things: guitars and coffee.
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Guitars, which are distinct, solid objects of wooden wonderfulness, can be counted; coffee, the delicious, caffeinated beverage, is something that cannot be counted individually;
"I need to own fewer guitars," is a grammatically correct statement; "I need to own less guitars," is grammatically incorrect.
"I really need to drink less coffee," is a grammatically correct statement; "I really need to drink fewer coffee," is grammatically incorrect.
Your task: Write a two sample sentences in which you properly use less and another in which you properly use fewer. Please compose your sentences in the comment section of this post.
Your responses are due by midnight, Sunday October 6th.
NPR's "13.7: Cosmos & Culture" blog is devoted to exploring the relationship between society and science. It is a mixture of physics and metaphysics if you will.
Today's article explores the scientific basis of the perception that women are somehow more virtuous and less corrupt than men: "Are Women Less Corrupt Than Men?"
It is an interesting thought, especially when the theory is applied to The Crucible. Is Abigail somehow more virtuous than the corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry men that have created the stifiling patriarchy, rife with hypocrisy and systematic oppression, the very society that she rebels against?
Read the article and respond to the following questions in the comment section of this post:
What is the relationship between gender, government, and the perception of corruption?
How does this article affect your perception of The Crucible? Is Abigail absolved of any of her guilt? Explain.
Your responses are due by midnight, October 3rd. Late responses will not count!
Comedians Key and Peele created the following video for their recent appearance on Conan O'Brien:
The video makes light of the names of some professional athletes, and while it is intended to be humorous, it is far from being politically correct. To better put this in perspective, it is relevant to note that 20th century American culture does not have a monopoly on unusual names.
Slate Magazine just recently posted a humorous and telling article concerning some of the most unsual and occasionally downright spiteful Puritan names of yesteryear: "A Boy Named Humiliation". If this article sparks your interest, feel free to check out Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, a comprehensive study of Puritan naming practices published in 1888.
What about your name? What does it mean? What does it reveal about you and your relationship to your family?
Please research the meaning of your own name using the Behind the Name website. If your first name does not deliver any results, try your last name, or ask your family members what the name means to them.
In the comment section of this post, respond to the following:
Do you find Key and Peele's sketch offensive? Is it racist? Explain.
Select what you feel is the most memorable Puritan name from the article from Slate Magazine and explain what the name reveals about the Puritan culture.
Finally, explain the significance of your own first or last name. Please include information you find from Behind the Name or from your own research.
Responses are due by midnight, this Friday (9/20). Also, I have emailed invites for you all to join the blog. Please create blogger accounts. If this is an issue, post an anonymous comment with your full name and see me in person on Monday.
Eventually I will add your email addresses and make you all official members of my blog, but I have not yet done this. In truth, I am waiting to get my EPA.
Lazy, yes; dishonest, no, I am not.
Tomorrow I am giving you 9 questions on the overture from act 1 of The Crucible. You will have time to work on this on class, but if you do not finish tomorrow, I wanted you to have access to the text. It is available online: http://teacher.bsd405.org/murphybr/files/2011/11/the-crucible-act-1-and-intro.pdf. Your responses to these questions will be due Tuesday, September 10th. I am giving you a bit of time, so I am expecting some thoughtful responses supplemented with specific responses to the text itself.
Question #10 asks you to interpret an excerpt from John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity." In the speech, Winthrop expresses his hope that the Massachusetts Bay Colony will serve as a "city upon a hill." This phrase, which itself is a biblical allusion, was mentioned by John F. Kennedy in a speech made in Boston prior to his inauguration and by President Ronald Reagan in his farewell presidential address.
Finally, in a passage that differentiates Reagan from many modern Republicans who invoke his name, The Gipper painted a poignant picture of what he had in mind when speaking of his metaphorical "shining city" on a hill. "The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. . . . He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still." John F. Kennedy invoked John Winthrop, too. In fact, he spoke of the shining city in a speech in Boston two weeks before his inauguration. That is fitting, for Winthrop was a Massachusetts man like Kennedy; or, rather, the Rev. Winthrop was on his way to Massachusetts when he wrote his own "city on a hill" speech. The imagery is orginally from the bible, and Winthrop's speech was actually a sermon exhorting his followers to be a light to the rest of the world. The most striking thing about Winthrop is that he had yet to make landfall when he wrote those words, underscoring Reagan's point that America was -- quite literally -- an idea before it was a country. At the heart of that idea is a notion that America implies opportunity for all its pilgrims, along with the chance for self-betterment.
“There
was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.” Bob Dylan, a
seminal figure of the 1960’s, succinctly describes the decade: it was a period
of great change socially and culturally in the United States. Popular
music, professional sports, and the Civil Rights Movement all underwent
dramatic changes during the 1960’s.Bob Dylan revolutionized folk and popular music alike by writing
topical protest songs and using electric
instrumentation; Muhammad Ali revolutionized professional boxing by dominating
the sport and using his religious views to protest the Vietnam War; and Malcolm
X revolutionized the Civil Rights Movement by urging his followers to seek
freedom through self-determination and even violence.
