Week 8

                                                       

        The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Good afternoon.  I hope that you are all well today, and feeling good about life and your place in the world.  Today's classwork involves followup on the interview work and essays written last week, and further work that involves use of skills essential in expository writing.  I have two options, from which you will choose one.

     The first involves exploring or defining at length the meaning of a word that has some significance in your life, in your behavior and in your thoughts and perhaps spiritual practice, or in the essay your intend to write as your final project.  I use the phrase spiritual practice in no particular religious sense but loosely to refer to the many ways we attempt to bring ourselves in to harmony with the world, the people we share our lives with, and, perhaps most importantly, with our own self.  The essay involves defining in an extended fashion the word you have chosen.  To begin you might employ a simple dictionary definition of the word's most common meaning in use, or the secondary or tertiary meaning, as listed in a dictionary entry.  The development of the essay will proceed with narration and description of what the word means to you; i.e. the meaning the word has come to have in more senses than a dictionary could possibly convey.  The following is a list of abstract words and phrases (i.e. they cannot be physically seen or touched as say an apple or a diamond or a tree can) that you might choose from:  

Attention

Beauty

Compassion

Devotion

Honor

Faith

Grace

Justice

Peace

Reverance

Wonder

Nature

Intelligence

.........Concrete and Abstract

climate change

peak oil

tar sands

the sun

the moon 

the stars

black holes

nuclear energy

celebrity

With abstract words or concepts, one must bring them to life by means of the specific, concrete, the tangible, the three-dimensional world we live in.  Our notions of beauty, for example, derive from the visible, the audible, the tactile–the world of the senses–even as we also comprehend abstract notions such as truth and peace as being, in a real sense, manifestations of beauty.  So the assignment requires you to define a word as you have come to understand its meaning.  I want you also to use one quotation, either as an epigraph (appearing just below the title of the essay) or somewhere in the text of the essay.  A simple google search of the word plus  key word "quotations" should provide you an array of choices.

You might choose a concrete word, rather than an abstract.  Again, you have the dictionary to supply an essential definition but you provide description of appearance, constituent parts, function, historical and cultural and personal significance.  What is a tree?  Clearly, it is a living organism, with certain characteristic features (depending on species), an ecological role to play, an historical and cultural role in the life of humankind, and so on.  Trees are also symbols of strength and shelter and wonder and beauty and mystery.  We've all admired trees, played among them, climbed them, photographed them, too, perhaps.  What is it about trees that makes us love them so?

The second option is to select from the cartoons featured at slate.com (or elsewhere) a cartoon that addresses an issue about which you would like to speak.  Or you may choose to  describe another sort of image, a photograph or video clip or film scene, discussing the contents of the piece precisely  to articulate the apparent point of view of the author.  Cartoons are one form of journalistic commentary, along with writings and photography and video and film.  Key to this piece will be providing context, that is the news or event to which the author has responded.  You may have to do a bit of research in presenting this context and you should to respond to the issue yourself.  Your essay will build on the work of others, the cartoonist, photographer, and news writers, scholars, scientists or pundits.  Source materials will be referenced accordingly, by type, title, author, and place of publication.

Whether you choose the first or second option, you should write from 450-600 words.

Note:  the final essay exam is set for week ten.  You should have all outstanding work in by that day.  If you miss class week ten, you must come week 11 to take the exam.