English discussions today

Okay, just a gist for now of what went down in the writings for this past week. In retrospect, there were a couple funny things Henry Adams said. I thought mostly it was all boring and hard to get into. He talked about things happening in the world and how it was changing with the advances of thought and technology, and yet said there was nothing we could do about it. His audience was his close friends. His words were long and meant for the well-educated. He used a lot of metaphors, thus making his intent somewhat abstract. As he said, it was an experiment. An experiment with what?
Gloria Anzaldua had a lot of Spanish and English mix with several others thrown in there. She is trying to tell of her history. She is a lot more personal and uses forceful words and imagery. She is engaged in a war. She believes white man will pass by and her people with their solidity yet malleability will still be around going about their business. I believe she means malleable in the right ways so that, where others would break, her people would not, but simply change in the ways necessary to adapt.
James Baldwin is my most favorite of the three authors. I like his subtle way of pointing things out and helping the reader to feel that he is on their side. He talks about it all as third person and doesn't point any fingers. He could be totally upset and not let it show. He goes about it calmly and thoughtfully and even entertainingly. Even though he spends a whole paragraph about the rage of being treated differently, you can't tell that it is he that is enraged, if he is enraged at all (though I believe he has to be to go through that experience and then write about it.) It is easy to read; easy to relate to. And yet it makes such a great impact on the reader. Very good writing. And consistently calm and poised and distant as if to say "look at that over there."

Freedom Writers and Dead Poets

I just watched Freedom Writers and Dead Poets Society. Both very good films about writing and ways of thinking. Both inspire to reach beyond what lies in our grasp cognitively, just as the introduction to the book Ways of Reading tries to get us to really think when we read these essays. I find the movies to be more compelling and inspiring, but then, they included a great smattering of quotes from several good writers, while I have not yet given the rest of the articles in Ways of Readings a taste yet...

Link to ENGL 102 group blog

Here is a link to our English 102 group blog site: http://ed-posse.blogspot.com/

First Post

My very first post to a blog ever. It surprises me that I am a Computer Networking major with one semester left, I have 3 servers and 3 computers (and 3 routers) running at home (okay, so maybe 2 of those are turned off at the moment) and have done some web design in the past, and this is my very first post to a blog and it just happens to be my own personal blog. Actually, it seems like I might have posted something somewhere a long time ago, but I can't really remember. Anyways, I look forward to more of this... and it's the kick-off!