needs a good home

Yesterday a 10 week old puppy came in with a shattered leg. The owners had no money and had a couple of options; take it home and do nothing, find the money for surgery ($1500-$2000), or euthanize. No one in the office could bare to euthanize this adorable puppy so we gave the owners one other option, relinquish ownership to the hospital.They agreed to give up ownership and she can now get her surgery.
We only need to find her a good home now. We will keep her till she gets her surgery and to make sure her leg is healing. We only ask, if you can, that if you want her you pay a little to cover pain medication.
We have named her Buttercup and she is a caramel colored pit bull. Her ears have not been cropped so they are cute and floppy. She is really playful (even with her broken leg) she likes to cuddle and give kisses. We already started potty training her. 
She is good with kids and other pets and would like to be with someone who can take time to train her and entertain a energetic puppy
Please if you or you know someone who would like her please contact me ASAP (510) 220-2696

I can get you better pics that aren't to blurry. Just let me know.

Fall English 2200 Course

Several of you have emailed me or spoken to me about my fall teaching schedule. As I mentioned in class last night, I am teaching an English 2200 course, Intro to Lit, and I expect it to be a lot of fun. We will learn a lot about literary forms and genres and then apply that knowledge to discussions of really great literature. My hope is that after this class, you will never again read a poem, story, novel, or play in the same way again. If you have enjoyed the reading we have done this semester and would like some more in-depth discussion of literature, please come aboard.

This class is an HH course, which means it satisfies your general Humanities requirement, which all majors require as far as I know. If you are an English major, this will count toward your electives requirement. If you are one of those people who takes a course now and again just because you want to (gasp!), this might be a good one, too.

If you can't take the class (or don't want to), I would appreciate it very much if you would help me to spread the word that I am teaching it (the catalog just says "STAFF," a rather innocuous word that is not likely to inspire anyone). I'll be putting up some posters over the summer as well in case you want one for your refrigerator.

The details: English 2200 Section 001, TR 1:00-2:15.

Cheers. I'll see you on Tuesday. Remember: LIBRARY, Room 206, 3:00-5:00.

Miss California

I just recently heard about the Miss USA pagent and the controversy surrounding that. Watch this clip and you can see for yourself. Miss California shares her beliefs concerning the question on same-sex marriage and has been booed for it. I'm just glad that we have some girl up there who is sharing her real beliefs and not giving a fake answer to make people happy. I'm impressed that there are still people out there who will share their beliefs, no matter what the stakes are. Hope you enjoy this little clip and feel free to discuss it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XMvviFbkf0

Maslows Hierarchy

Daniel asked me to post Maslow's Hierarchy. I find the idea of Self-Actualization most interesting.

Pretty Nervous

Not going to lie I am super nervous about giving my presentation. I have really enjoyed this class this semester. Mainly because of how insightful everyone has been during our discussions. You all have such a great minds! Which is why I feel a bit shy about giving my presentation. I am also looking forward to hearing everyone else's presentations, as I have learned a lot from everyone in our class. I also thought it might be neat or cool for everyone to share maybe their favorite comment or insight from our discusses this semester. I think I have two.

1. Would have to be when we were talking about adrenaline and hurting people...after reading I think "Sweat". I will never forget when the guy in the back(sorry I can't remember your name!) said, "having an adrenaline high is the best kind of high I have ever had, I have broken people's legs and felt good about it after."(or something to that nature). I don't know, I loved his honesty.


2. Would be when we were discussing "Silken Tent" I cannot remember who said it- but I wrote it down. There are things in our lives that seem to hold us down, our "ties". But as we grown and change we become bound to them with love. We only really notice them when they call attention to themselves. When they do call attention to themselves and we notice them, it's not because of resentment(like maybe before) but because we have changed and we notice them out of love.
   

How many?

How many sources do we need? How many from our reading and how many from outside?

Stick it to the Man!

So when we were first given this paper to write and the assignment to come up with an original thesis, I thought of something that has always intrigued me...the portrayal of women today compared to how we were in history. Sounds pretty simple I know, and its obvious that we've come a long way since the early centuries. But I have never been more frustrated in my life as I am at this moment finishing up my paper! Our world is so sick and twisted it's unbelievable! Looking up different sources led me to see a lot of things that even I didn't realize was going on that was so diminishing in our world to the female race...if any of you have seen the movie Taken it reminded me a lot of that. Woman are, and always have been, portrayed as sexual objects of desire and no matter how much the world tries to say that in our day and time everyone is equal its a bunch of crap. I think I'm going to be a sexist advocate when I grow up...whatever that is.

A little help?

I have written just about all of my paper but I can not come up with a good thesis. I know that might be strange but my brain is just done thinking for the year.

So my topic is the idea of innocence, being naive and delusional.

If anyone could lend me a hand that would be great! Thanks!

i-15 fatality

I thought you guys would be interested in this story. The picture to the left is the car wreck I responded to on friday on I-15 where the vehicle blew a tire. It was all over the news, you may have been stuck in traffic for hours that day.... Let me give you a quick run down on my experience.

Do you see where the top of the car is laying on the road, directly up from the Exit 261 sign? That is where the body was laying when we pulled up. There were 5 victims involved in this wreck. Two were ejected, and one of those was an obvious fatality. When we arrived, there was an 8 year old boy laying in the middle of the road and 3 other people trapped in the vehicle. We called in Life Flight to fly the 8 year old boy to Primary Children's hospital where he could get the best care possible for being ejected from a vehicle going over 65 MPH. We called in AirMed to fly the passenger of the car to the nearest hospital... we weren't sure the extent of her injuries. The driver of the vehicle was sitting behind the passenger seat when we arrived. Provo Fire and Rescue had to remove the entire top of the car to get both of them out, hence the reason it is laying in the road. Their ambulance crew cared for the driver. My patient was a 4 year old little girl who was trapped in the trunk area of the car. She was laying on her back with her legs were up over the seat. I am convinced that had her legs not gotten stuck, she too would have been ejected. 

We later found out that my little girl walked away with minor injuries. However the other family members were not so lucky... the damage done to their bodies is equivalent to the damage done to that vehicle. (Which is a ford explorer in case you were wondering.)

I bet you can guess where the point of my story is going... WEAR YOUR SEATBELT. Not one of these 5 people had a seatbelt on. If they had, the mother would have lived and the injuries sustained would have been minimal. 

I love my job and what i do, but situations like these really hit home for me. This is one of the worse car accidents I have ever responded to. I have a perspective on life that most people do not get to see. Yes, people like me are there to save lives when unfortunate situations like these present themselves, but I feel it is my responsibility to relate these stories to hopefully prevent that from happening. Drive safe and buckle up. 

Violence and Crimes

Why is there to much violence in the world? We live in such a violent corrupt world right now I cannot even imagine having children and raising them in it. I think that there should be a stronger penalty for those who commit violent crimes. Most crimes that happen are for no reason at all, Just for the fun in doing it. My mom went to school with a man who went to Las Vegas and shot a cashier in the head just to see what it felt like to kill someone. He now sits on death row, while his attorneys fight to get him out. It looks like he could get out with just a short time served. He should never be able to get out, the punishment should fit the crime.

Just desserts

"God, sir, does not plan to judge man until the end of his days. Why should you or I?" This is the attitude that I so often forget when thinking of ways that others have wronged me. It is so easy for one to judge another, or to see the mote that is in the eye of someone else without noticing the beam in his or her own. Indeed Sykes was mean, he was hurtful (both physically and emotionally), and it seems that he got what was coming to him. Yet something bothers me. It is my own attitude. I was extremely gleeful and delighted to see what happened to "mean ole' Sykes" and gave virtually no thought to his pain and suffering. I thought only of the relief of Delia's tribulations. Granted, this is what the author seems to lead us to think, but those truly sensitive and caring would also think of the suffering of another. This is just a story, but I worry about the implications it may have in my personal life. Sykes screwed up. Bigtime. Could it be that Delia, in her insistence to avoid the situation, has erred as well? Judge not lest ye be judged, forgive seventy times seven. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do these mantras still hold true today?

A Different Perspective

Now, I agree with most of the things that have been posted: Sykes got what he deserved and Delia was in the right not to help him out at the end, or to be indifferent about it, but....like Daniel mentioned during class; haven't we been discussing what we do or do not do in occurrence of human suffering? Sykes was an AWFUL man indeed, but imagine this, you see the person you ABSOLUTELY detest, maybe this person shot your dog and laughed, walking a few feet ahead of you in the crosswalk just after they tripped you. BAM! He or she gets hit by a car right in front of you, but you're safe. What do you do? You know a few first aid tricks-unless you're Courtney who knows them all-but this person is severely injured, bleeding heavily and it's pretty obvious that they are not going to live much longer. They call YOUR name out, asking you for assistance. How can you not feel enough pity to eagerly assist in their last request for comfort? Even though it may seem unfair to serve him or her after the way you were treated, someday justice will be served, don't force justice to be served when it's not your authority to do so. Just a thought.

"Sweat" was a little hard for me to follow because of the different dialect. However, I did like how Skyes ended up loosing in the end. The snake that he threw on his wife in the beginning ended up biting him in the, helpinig Delia get revenge on her husband, Skyes. Skyes never respected his wife, causing her to never want to help him. Delia was never in the wrong, only her husband was because of the way he treated her.

Foreshadowing

After reading the beginning and how terrible Sykes treated Delia I began to think that something has to happen to Sykes for him to learn a lesson and once he brought home the rattlesnake in the box I knew that later on in the story at some point the snake was going to bite him and sure enough it happened. Once I picked up on the foreshadowing my reading sped up because I was soo excited to find out if Sykes was going to get what he had coming to him. The foreshadowing that the author used made the story more interesting and made me anxious to get to the end.

The analogy of sugar cane to domestic violence that Clarke made was a clever way of foreshadowing the end of the story. Just as sugar cane dries out after all the sugar juice is gone, Delia's sweetness towards Sykes had been beaten out through years of torment. Delia didn't want to help her husband in any way becuase it had never been returned. I loved the way Delia was vindicated at the end of the story, when her husband was the helpless one, being bit by the very snake he brought home to scare her with. Her husband was left to fend for himself, finally getting a justifyied taste of his own medicine.

Getting What You Deserve

Sykes “reaped what he sewed”. He pretended to be this great man and that everything he did was justified. He could beat his wife because she was skinny and he could spend her money because “it was his money too”. When he brought the snake home he just wanted to show off. Again gloating and saying that he was the best snake charmer. His whole life he planted lies and deceit and that’s what he got in the end when it literally came back and bit him. Delia had every right in not helping him and she had good justification. Like she said Orlando was too far and he might not even make it down the road so what's the point.

I see relationships like this all the time and sadly I was in one. Some men make up stories and go out with other women to make their life seem more exciting and worth something, when they realize that its not what the want they take it out on someone close to them, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. Most of the time it takes some outside force to help get people out of abusive relationships. Delia at one point calls the snake Satan, when in the end it was her savior. It probably saved her life. Sometimes the things that can save us from bad situations look or sound scary.

Dialect

I think Hurston's portrayal of the characters using their local dialect serves two purposes:

The first helps the reader gain a greater knowledge as to the background, character, environment, and even circumstance of Delia and Sykes. It gives the story a much more authentic feel, which done right, is beneficial for the reader and helps one sympathize with the protagonist.

The second (and downside), is that it can give the story too authentic of a feel. By overly expanding and focusing on the dialect, Hurston is putting the reader in a position where it is possible to make assumptions and judgments that are not relevant to the story, but have the capacity to overshadow the story. I'm not saying the dialogue ruined the story for me, but I can see how it could for others.

For example, when Sykes says, "Gimme some kivah heah, an' git yo' damn foots over on yo' own side! Ah oughter mash you in yo' mouf fuh drawing dat skillet on me."

Very authentic, and it makes it clear that Sykes is kind of a dick. But I had to read it twice to really get a grasp on it. That can be a little annoying.

A Triumphant Indifference

The line,"A triumphant indifference," is used in the story to describe the emotion of Delia's reaction to Sykes kicking her rudely, stealing the covers, and threatening to "mash [her] in [her] mouf fuh drawing that skillet on [him]." Delia taking up the skillet, earlier in the story, in defense was something new and caused him not to, "strike her as he usually did." This exchange is where her triumph comes from, because it was the second time since the skillet that Sykes had delivered an empty threat. As far as the indifference Delia after so many years finally didn't care. She was still set on being a good woman, as we see throughout the story, but she was done trying to mend her marriage. She was triumphant over caring and triumphant over Sykes physically pushing her around.

This line can also be used to describe Delia's decision in the end. Pulling the skillet out on Sykes wasn't wrong, nor was doing her laundry inside. Sykes had cowed her with hollow threats concerning the skillet and again with the laundry by leaving the snake in her basket. She was triumphant in more ways than one. She now had her house, she could do her work in her house, and she never had to be mistreated by Sykes again. Not only did she know this, but Sykes knew it too. We can assume this because the narrator explains that Sykes one open eye, "could not fail to see the tubs." She was indifferent because she wasn't joyful about Sykes pain, but she wasn't sad either, she simply knew there was nothing she could do. Just as she finally discovered earlier there was nothing she could do about their marriage.

Karma

  I thought the end of the story was great. It ended just like a movie. This woman who has been suffering all her marriage is finally able to get the "revenge" she deserves. When people are as messed up as Sykes they deserve to get what is coming to them. Karma is a bitch. 

 Although it is quite ironic that the one thing that Delia hates the most in her life got revenge for her in the end. Her two worst enemies fought it out and the snake won.

 I don't blame Delia for hesitating to help Sykes. It would be really hard to run to his aid after experiencing pain for so many years. Im sure she went eventually, but she was in no rush.