W8, #6: NAME GAME

Set-Up: Like many new parents, my wife/I went through endless lists of possible names for our first child.  Our goals at the time were pretty simple:

• Retro/classic but with a ‘modern’ twist (“Beckett” seemed to fit that mark)
• Not typical, or at least not expected by most people who’ve heard a lot of baby names
• Had good/solid nickname possibilities over time (aka “Bex” or “Becks” thus far)
• No obviously ‘bad’ playground nicknames
• Fit well with “Long” as a last name

Ultimately we stumbled upon ‘authors’ names one afternoon while driving around Fort Worth, hence the choice to take Samuel Beckett’s (author of Waiting for Godot) last name as our son’s first (although Mr. Long will often claim that his lifelong love of the Boston Red Sox was the real reason; just don’t tell his wife).

Challenge: With a new kid soon to arrive in our home this coming March, we’re beginning to toss around various possibilities for her/his name.  We won’t know the gender for 2 more weeks, so we’re still pretty wide open to suggestions.

• Offer a literary name — author, character, location, concept, title –  that you think would be an interesting boy’s or girl’s name for my wife/me to name our next child.
• Make sure that it fits the criteria mentioned above (nicknames, retro/modern, etc).
• Explain why you think it would work, including anything cool trivia-wise about that literary connection.

Length: 5+ sentence

W8, #5: THE RIGHT ENDING?

Set-Up: To say we’ve been curious how the story was going to end would be a vast understatement. The real question has less to do with ‘what’ happens to Ralph and more to do with ‘why’ it happens.

Challenge: Do you think that Golding made the right choice in having Ralph be rescued at the end of the story?

• Part 1: Answer this question first based on your reaction to the ‘fate’ of Ralph as an intellectual consideration taking into consideration themes, symbols, and foreshadowing.
• Part 2: Once that part is done, explain whether you think it’d have been a ‘better’ story — in terms of plot and the reader’s hidden desires — if Ralph had been caught by the hunters and had to face whatever they had planned

Length: 7+ sentences

W8, #4: WHAT WOULD CAMPBELL THINK OF THE ISLAND?

Set-Up: We spent time recently talking about Joseph Campbell’s “hero stages” with an attempt to see how filmmakers and writes might employ these ideas to help craft a logical adventure.

Challenge: Using any 10 of the 17 stages we covered, prove that William Golding instinctively uses Campbell’s “hero stages” in Lord of the Flies.  See below for the stages:

Chap 1: Departure The Call to Adventure (1/17) | Refusal of the Call (2/17) | Supernatural Aid (3/17) | The Crossing of the First Threshold (4/17) | Rebirth (aka “The Belly of the Whale”) (5/17) Chap 2: Initiation The Road of Trials (6/17) | Marriage (aka “The Meeting with the Goddess”) (7/17) | Woman as the Temptress (8/17) | Atonement with the Father (9/17) | Apotheosis (10/17) | The Ultimate Boon (11/17) Chap 3: Return Refusal of the Return (12/17) | The Magic Flight (13/17) | Rescue from Without (14/17) | The Crossing of the Return Threshold (15/17) | Master of the Two Worlds (16/17) | Freedom to Live (17/17)

Length: 1+ sentence for each of the 10 stages as to prove how they work in this story.

Note: Mr. Long will NOT publish any entries until the deadline is reached (for all blog entries this week).  He wants to see how individual students solve this on their own.

W8, #3: THE RETURN TRIP HOME

Set-Up: Most of our attention has been placed on how the boys will survive.  We assume, however, that sooner or later some of them will return home.  That being said, we haven’t talked about what that would be like.

Challenge:

• Mandatory:  If you were one of the boys on this island, what do you think it would be like to return home given all that you’ve been through?  Note:  it may be easier to answer this once you’ve finished the book, but you can certainly answer at any point.  Just identify what chapter you are on when you answer this question.  Thank you.
• Optional: Once you’ve done the previous one, you may answer this, too.  Watch the film trailer from Tom Hanks’ film, “Castaway”.  Once you’ve seen this, imagine you were — like Tom Hanks in this film — stuck on a deserted island for years by yourself, without any contact with the real world.  Eventually, you’re rescued and return ‘home’.  Knowing your personality, what do you think it would be like to return home to the ‘real’ world after such an experience?
• Optional: Just for fun, watch the FedEx commercial that spoofed the Tom Hanks’ film.  No response needed; this is just for your amusement and to see how pop culture passes around similar ideas in unexpected ways (just like the use of Lord of the Flies; wink, wink).

W8, #2: 6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Set-Up: There is an expression — “6 degrees of separation” — that suggests how connected we individuals are as collective humanity, no matter how big a world it may be.  In short, it means that:

if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is an average of six “steps” away from each person on Earth.

Playing off of this concept, we’re going to play a weekly game called “6 Degrees of Separation” where we are given 2 topics (that seem to have nothing in common) which we must figure out a creative way to connect.  The trick is that we have to use a logical set of connections to show how the 2 items are related in “6 steps”.  Additionally, we will also offer a bit of trivia about each new step to showcase our knowledge and imagination.

Example: Let’s take 2 random topics — Ancient Egypt and “Lord of the Flies” — and figure out how to connect them in “6 steps” with some added trivia to show our knowledge:

Step 1: When someone in America thinks of ancient Egypt (1), he/she can’t help but think of legendary pharaohs given that everything one can easily think of from that period of Egypt’s history — from golden statues to the Great Pyramids — are remnants of these god-like leaders. It’s particularly interesting that pharaohs were often buried with everything they owned, gifts for them for the afterlife, and even their living servants.

Step 2: The most famous pharaoh (2) that I can think of is King Tut (1) which was one of my favorite stories growing up.  Even though the amazing amount of gold discovered and the identity of the “boy king” were supposed to be the important parts of the story, this wasn’t what captured my attention at first. As a young kid, I actually daydreamed a lot about the idea of a curse placed on all of the people involved in finding the original tomb, especially given that the spirit of the pharaoh may have been angry that they disturbed his eternal slumber. This led me to study a range of curses and superstitions when I was in elementary school.

Step 3: King Tut’s (2) exhibit just arrived in Dallas (3) — as a major art exhibit called “King Tut and the Golden Age of Pharoahs” being held at the Dallas Museum of Art — for several months.  Hundreds of thousands of people (paying up to $32/ticket) are expected to attend the show, including some of our own art and archeology students who will go there on an upcoming fieldtrip.

Step 4: On Elm Street in Dallas (3), specifically near the Texas School Book Depository (4), was the location of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

Step 5: The Texas School Book Depository (4) was “a multi-floor warehouse for the storage of school textbooks and related materials” (according to Wikipedia) that shut down in 1970 when the business moved out.  It was also in the year 1970 that the American Library Association awarded the first Coretta Scott King Award was given to African-American writers/illustrators who focused on the creation of books specifically for children and young people (5).

Step 6: One of the most famous school books ever taught in the United States, Lord of the Flies (6), appears to be about children and young people (5). Clearly, however, it is not “just a book about kids on an island”.  Golding’s book was ranked by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English language books published since 1923 (and was also ranked by the American Library Association as one of the most “challenged” books between 1990-2000.)

Challenge: Using these 2 random items, connect them in “6 steps”:

• the epic poem, Beowulf
• the star, Hannah Montana

Length: Varies

W8, #1: VISUAL VOCAB STORY

Set-Up: Vocab, photos, you get it. At least — by now — I hope you do. [smile]

Challenge: Use any 10 words that you select from all vocab words given so far [with the part of speech, please] to creatively describe 1 of the following photos:

Length: 7+ sentences

Words: Refer to the full SAT vocab words list (& additional words you were given during the week of 9/9)

Photo 1: (link: http://tinyurl.com/3j3ayya)

Photo 2: (link: http://tinyurl.com/4zl2ow)

Photo 3: (link: http://tinyurl.com/6ad88y)