Sea Biscuit.

In the movie Sea Biscuit which I had never seen a man named Charles who is a self-made millionaire, has to deal with the accidental death of his young son by putting him into racing. He then comes into contact with a guy named Tom, who is a race horse who is adapting to life and the world around him. However he is impressed by Tom's abilities when it comes to horses. He then hires him as head trainer for his racing stable. When he is on the lookout for new horses he spots a small horse. His name is sea biscuit. he convinces Charles to buy him and sees something remarkable in him.
Sea biscuit would not let anyone ride him until one day the come in contact with a boy Red. Like Smith, Red has a gift working with difficult horses. He and Seabiscuit immediately trust each other, and Smith then hires him. Red and Sea Biscuit begin taking the gold and winning races left and right. They are unstoppable.
Sea biscuit becomes a quickly becomes national hero. This story is filled with such a great meaning and such a meaningful plot and summary.

I can see why books are made into movies. It gives them way more meaning and you can actually see what is going on like it is real life. However I do like books because you can use your imagination and that truly is a gift. Movies are a great part of literature and you can learn a lot by them too. Positive and negative. You take the good with the bad. I am glad I chose the movie I did because I learned a lot and I got to see the love that animal and man have. That type of connection is so amazing. And it gives the movie such deep meaning and such a type of love that no one really knows until they experience it. I enjoyed the movie a lot !

Interpretation

The story a very old man with enormous wings is a story that is really for children. The story is about a family that has a son who becomes very sick. After crabs completely took over their home where they had to kill and then dispose of them. Upon disposing them they came across a man; an angel. He is lying face down in the mud and has huge wings as if to come off as some sort of angel. The many however is old and can hardly function on his own. He is helped by then and kept outside where by morning the entire neighborhood has seen and heard about this so called "angel." The angel brings different types to all of the characters. Some seem to believe that he is just not an angel at all, while others believe that since their son is sick that he is the angel of death that is trying to come to get the little boy. But because the angel has struggled so much to get there he has become ill himself. The angel does not speak much in the story and kind of keeps to himself. The people are fascinated with him and bring him food, and in a way taunt him. The angel is quite and when he does speak it is as if he was a shipwreck sailor that washed aboard.

The things in the story that I want to point out are as follows.

At first I want to come to the conclusion that this man is in fact not an angel at all. He is quite possibly the angel of death or something with the devil. When I think of angel I think angelic and type of beauty that is so surreal, and the way this "angel" is described in the text I am not seeing that in the least. His wings are completely torn and tattered, and I believe by the words he says even when he speaks of Satan that he is some how intertwined with the devil himself. It makes sense that he appeared as the boy began to get sick. I don't necessarily believe that he was coming for the little boy, but I do believe he is a dark angel that does not mean good.

Another thing I want to point out is that the boy and the angel kept being sick at the same time. Or as the boy gradually got better, it was if the angel would be able to make it out on his own, but when the boy was completely sick the angel was the same way. I find this very ironic and I think in a different way the author was trying to tell the readers something without putting it right out there. Maybe this is his guardian angel and the worse off that he is the same is true for a the little boy, but it is just a guess.

I also want to point out the fact that the weather is also bad when the angel and boy are sick. It all seems to get better as the story continues. The boy becomes better and is able to go to school and all of a sudden the sun is out when it has been bad weather the entire time he has been ill. How ironic is that. That the weather just like the so called angel might actually have an effect on the boy and his health overall.

If you look all throughout the story you can finds things in which you can interpret and come to a conclusion about. My conclusion for this story is a lot of different things. I believe that the angel was coming but maybe not for the boy and he happened to be sick. Maybe he came to prove and make a point and let those know that in their minds they should think they never want to be in his position because he is a bad angel... I think that is involved with Satan. But I could be totally off base.. it is just my view on everything.

I believe that if we do not have interpretation that we are lost in our own words. If we cannot think outside the box and see a piece of art or literature in more than one way then we are so narrow minded. Everyone sees things completely different and the different interpretations you have I think the better off you are. Interpretations from a group and putting them all together is such an easier way to understand not only that person but the piece of literature as a whole. It is such a great way to start of discussion and to remember that you are never wrong in an interpretation but with everyones ideas together you can learn a lot more than just your own thoughts on the piece of literature.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

The beginning of this story there is a man and wife whose child gets completely sick and they find this man in the field that turns out during the story is said to be an "angel." I like the part of this where it states, "He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary." How deep. You can see that in every day life, Satan gets ahold of us in trickery ways where he end up getting us to fall to his level. Then making it that much more challenging to come out of the dark hall in which you have fallen.

I was confused at points in this reading, thinking is this man really an angel? Or have the people just made this fabrication and made themselves believe he is. Maybe he is just a regular man who happened to be there when the child became sick. The whole entire town treats him and helps him as if this man is an angel, but I am still lost to know if he really is. The "angel" does not say much so I have speculation as the story continues.

However it does state that he has wings, but what is ironic is in the text it states, "or maybe he was just a Norwegian with wings." It is as though they contemplate the same thing that I do.

It seems strange that there would be such thing as an old angel unable to fly and do these things in which he needed to. The angel finally is able to go back out to flight, and I liked the ending to this story how it said,"he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea." The angel was gone for good, and no longer would she have to fool with it.

This story made me think a lot about angels and about life. I recall when I was younger watching the show Touched By an Angel, and the angels not having wings in that program, they were people just like you and me. That angels could be right here among us doing deeds and helping us and we not even know it. But of course if we saw someone with large wings we would immediately assume they were not of human decent but possibly an angel.

I just could think of angels in numerous different ways. An angel could be your friend, your mother, someone there... that guiding source in your life. Or a real angel, sent from God. However we are all sent from God. It is a lot to think about, and comprehend.

Field Trip :)

So, today on the Field Trip I got a total new respect for people with disabilities. I have always had a soft heart for those that have disabilities, and I used to want to work with them until I changed to elementary education.

This field trip opened my eyes, as did the play that we are reading. It tied so much together. When we read the play in class out loud I found it humorous and I realize that as much as we laugh at them we should laugh at ourselves. It is not a making fun of them sort of way, its more in a loving way. We do humorous things and so do we. We laugh at ourselves and they laugh at themselves as well. We are just alike. The only thing different is they have incapability's. They are just like you and me. What I found so interesting was that at the field trip.. is the lady said that they are unaware of there disabilities. I thought how cool is that... it is as if they are aware, but they aren't. They are people just like us.. same feelings, emotions, and everything.

I have such a great respect for people that work with those are disabled and I have a new found respect for the place that we went here in Lakeland. I think it is so great that those people have somewhere to go and socialize because i think it is harder once they get out into the real world, and if they are own their own. It is harder for them to be in society that is for sure. They make friends there and they have so many activities and it seems as though they continue to learn and learn how to survive out in the real world. They have jobs they perform and they learn about the real world and what to do. It is a great opportunity for them, and teaches them a lot. It was a great experience and opportunity to go there and see the facility and I am glad that I went and learned what I did not al ready know.

Field Trip :)

I went and stayed for 40 minutes :)

A picture worth a thousand words

rests in a confusion, for those to see

someone raised to life, feelings of sympathy

unaware and too distant for concern,

upon skin-pale skin, i still gaze

Imagine the one who did this, lost

what they tried to get across

and the painting of such lovely colors:

blood red, violet, bright yellow

and fierce, nature green.

Framed like a window

to the artist's heart, you cannot see

all that is before is a painting to thee

and uncomprehending the meaning

offering what it can and must

to those who stop and stare

all around are a cries for prayer

And below him, are word printed over our world for

all eternity.

I had no idea that we had a museum of art. I was so excited I love stuff like this! It gives me such appreciation because I cannot do things like this. It intrigues me and makes me get excited like I should start some type of new hobby. I love that this class has opened my eyes to all that is around me and to become more aware when I am in a different place that there are so many things to explore and get to know. At the museum I re read all the literature and at first was quite eye opening I was looking at paintings and pictures and sculptures and reading and seeing that I can relate or pick things out a lot easier now. It was so weird, but I really enjoyed it. I loved seeing the different types of art there were. It's so weird to get into an artist head or at least to try to. To get that deep in a painting takes pure talent from God. I love the different interpretations people get when they look at paintings, and that is what my poem is sort of about. Because I may look at one type of painting and become quite sad, however someone else could really appreciate it and like the way it is done. I find this so neat, and I think that reading and art go hand in hand. They are identical and a way to keep ourselves in tuned with the world around us. I have such a huge appreciation for art, and now I am excited there is another place for me to go. I thought it was so neat, and I enjoyed being there. It was definitely a good experience to walk and see the different things the place had. I loved it all !

Transformation.

This article first got me thinking as soon as I saw the word Easter. Since Easter was just yesterday it was fresh in my mind. The quote said, "Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us." That got me thinking just like the author. I as the author had never heard it used as a verb. How inspiring and different. This introduced to me to Hopkin's and let me see him as an author/poet. I admit I am not big on literature unless it is something that is exciting and fun to me. It's not that I don't enjoy the things in literature class we read, because I sure do. I am just not the type of person that will do a lot of research to come across great poetry. It's like going through a lot of bad before you get to the good, and I don't have the patience for that. I am truly thankful for this class for broadening my horizons on literature and other forms of writing, and my own. In the article it also states we pray with poetry whether the biblical poetry of the psalms or non-biblical poetry open to Christian appropriation, we open ourselves to the possibilities of spiritual experience. I for one was someone who just read for the aesthetic pleasure which I see now is not what I should just focus on. There is more to a piece of literature than that. Going deep down in it can help me to better understand it and relate it to life and even God. A lot of the poetry we have read in class can be related to Christianity and God. Everything in itself is Christ alone, and when we read as spiritual people we are able to relate and connect to it in different ways. Just as we did with nature. And I can almost guarantee the works of art we have read were probably not all written by Christians but they still can be interpreted with a Christian outlook. I think this is awesome for the real world because even though they try to take Christianity out of everything it is still there and existing. Christ is all around us, we can't be blind to it. He's even in poetry. Everything relates back to him.

Darkness

"One can understand what hope is really about unless one wrestles with despair. The same is true about faith."

This statement struck me hard. It is so true. Throughout my life the more and more I have lost, or the more I have been through the more I turn to my faith. Others may not be the same, but this is true for myself. In life when something goes wrong I turn to faith.

However do I have enough faith to do as the article states, "go sell everything you have and follow me.." Do I have that much faith that God will take and provide for me. I question my faith at times, but who really hasn't been so caught up that they have. Someone perfect, that's for sure. This article gave me a lot of insight and made me look at myself from the outside in. I never really thought of darkness in the way that Professor Corrigan stated in this text. It was much more deep than I could have ever imagined. It's a sort of confronting to yourself and looking at your life and your views on worldly type things. But then as the text states, "It's not about facing that darkness, but the hope in your spiritual life.." I have hope that Jesus will return for me and I have hope that I will live out such a life that I will return to live with him again. Everything about this article made me think.

My favorite quote out of it was, "In facing darkness we face our personal capacity for darkness.." How much more true could that statement be. It is true for a lot in our lives. It is what we can handle and what we choose to handle. Once we face it we can accept it and change it and move beyond it in certain circumstances.

Darkness does not define us, nor should it scare us. It should make us step back and think, and help to improve on our lives.