Thursday, March 8, 2007
Final Paper Extension
As the lift rose, Hermes mused to himself about the good ol’ days, working for his old man. Sure, Zeus could be a bit of a tyrant sometimes, but even the demands of the king of the gods couldn’t compete with the high-tech thirst of millions of people worldwide. Humans had an insatiable need for immediacy that even the quickest deity couldn’t comprehend.
The lift pushed through the clouds and came to a stop at Hermes’ loft, where he kicked off his winged Birkenstocks and poured a glass of wine before glancing at his furiously blinking answering machine. Each night, Hermes returned to thousands of messages listing customer complaints, from dropped calls to letters that arrived past their past their promised delivery date. Rolling his eyes, the exhausted messenger took a long sip from his glass, mentally thanking his brother Dionysus, and pressed “play.” Surprisingly, it was not an automated recording about a misdelivered package, but his father’s voice that came on the machine.
“Come on up when you get this, son,” Zeus boomed, rattling the little box that still flashed its blinking red alert. “I have a job for you.”
Hermes’ jaw dropped, his mouth as wide and gaping as the gates of Hades. Another job? He could barely handle Divine Delivery! Besides, how many times was he going to have to tell his dad that he had been too old for chores since he turned 2,000?
“It never ends,” Hermes griped to himself as he stepped back into the elevator and rode it all the way up. The doors swept open to the top floor of Olympian Mountain Apartments, where the king of the gods sat awaiting his son’s arrival. Zeus beckoned for Hermes to take a seat.
“I know you’ve been tired,” he began, hesitating for a moment at the sight of his son’s pained expression. “But it hasn’t been enough. The people’s demand for rapid communication exceeds the present capacity of your services, Hermes. I need you to find something more, something better.”
“But Dad,” the messenger protested, “I’m already working around the clock. They have express package delivery, instant telephone connections - what more could they want?”
Zeus sighed, rubbing his temples. “Son, we both know this can only end up a mess. Humans are foolish! They prove this to us time and again. Although they do have some attractive ladies down there...” Zeus trailed off in wistful thought until Hermes’ disgusted expression snapped him out of his lurid daydream.
“Anyway,” he continued, “it is their desire, and we must let them discover this truth on their own. Otherwise, they’ll never learn.”
Tired and dejected, Hermes returned to his apartment and brewed a pot of extra-strength espresso – he knew he wouldn’t be catching a wink tonight. He labored over his new project all night, stopping now and then to grumble about the unappeasable mortals. What improvement could he make that they would actually satisfy them? Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, it came to him. As Helios awoke and the sun rose, Hermes put the final touches on his creation: a worldwide connection of networks. He called it the internet.
The people of the world were overjoyed. Now, an even quicker and more accessible method of communication allowed them to instantly send messages to one another without any form of real human contact. It seemed perfect. Hermes was as busy as ever, but at least they had stopped their complaining for the moment.
Soon, however, the online correspondence that Hermes had provided wasn’t enough. The mortals wanted something even quicker than the electronic mail, or “e-mail” they had been using. After another sleepless night, the messenger god presented them with instant messaging, or “IM,” as the people called it. In order to expedite their messages, humans had created a system of abbreviations, shortening even the briefest of phrases.
Hermes dragged himself into Olympian Mountain after yet another frenzied day. As he struggled against his leaden eyelids, he rued the day he created this “IM.”
“Sure I’m in the best shape of my life,” he groaned, “but I never want to hear the word ‘LOL’ again! What am I saying?! It’s not even a word!” Disgusted, Hermes stalked into the kitchen, only to be greeted with empty cupboards. Not surprisingly, Hermes hadn’t even had time to stop at the agora today. He sighed as his stomach grumbled, a glaring reminder of the colossal appetite he worked up dashing around all day.
Hermes spent most of his time at work longing for his favorite phrase: “BRB.” Hermes loved when humans would “be right back”; it was his only chance to catch his breath and slap a Band-Aid on the blisters left by his now well-worn Birkenstocks. On this particular evening, as Hermes settled down on the couch and pulled off his sandals, one of the wings tore clean off, leaving just a regular, plain, tattered shoe in Hermes’ hand. The messenger was beyond indignant; now the very symbol of his daily labor was destroyed. Something had to be done.
A barefoot Hermes stormed back onto the elevator and once again rode it all the way up. Zeus glanced up in surprise as the messenger huffily exited the lift and announced his presence.
“I’ve had enough, Dad!!”
The king of the gods eyed his disheveled, shoeless son. With a heavy sigh, he set down his copy of The Olympian Gazette.
“I’m listening.”
“I can’t do it anymore, I can’t!” Hermes cried, the ire in his voice gradually becoming more like a whimper. “I’m tired, and my feet have blisters. And the wings fell off my shoes!”
Hermes slumped down on the seat next to his father, feeling like a little 500 year old again. He curled into the fetal position as Zeus rubbed his back in sympathy.
“There, there son,” Zeus soothed. “Yes, yes, I know it’s hard. But you’re a grown god now and that’s why you can handle this. In time, their lesson will be learned. You’ll see. The people will get what they deserve.”
Hermes knew his father was right, so he gritted his teeth and went back to work with one duct-taped sandal. At first, Hermes saw no punishment inflicted on these cretins who were causing him so much grief. As time went on, however, the people of the world became more and more withdrawn, spending days at a time hovering over their keyboards, typing furiously to the friends that they had once spoken to in person. Outdoor games of pickup basketball became online tournaments with virtual spectators cheering on digital athletes. Zeus’ prophecy was correct: communication had rendered the people of the world isolated.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Averno response
Most of Gluck’s piece seems to be set in a contemporary time period – she references modern things such as electric chairs (yikes!). However, in her narration about Persephone, the time period is left ambiguous. The tone of the piece is a little bit dark, especially due to the death-related content, but at the same time it is very contemplative. The narrator has a very reflective voice and is observant about the world around her. She seems to value her time to think, especially when surrounded by nature: “When I was a child, I suffered from insomnia. Summer nights, my parents permitted me to sit by the lake; I took the dog for company” (23). The Persephone narrator conveys more disdain for the earth than I would have pictured – “everything in nature is in some way her relative. I am never alone, she thinks, turning the thought into a prayer. Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer” (50). The last line on page 16 reads “a character in
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
My memoir
To the misguided
In causing another pain
Because of your own.
Contempt that becomes so vast
That it comes to this?
Of loss is one without true
Expression in words.
Grief is one without any
Remedy but time.
Underestimate effects
Your actions will have.
We were born and raised in typical American suburbia, in a town just south of
As a proud member of
The first time my mother’s number appeared on my caller ID, I ignored it without a second thought. ‘As far as she knows’, I reasoned, ‘I’m in a very important lecture and simply can’t be bothered.’ After my phone began to rattle for the third time in a minute and a half, I answered in mock irritation, ready to chastise her for tearing me away from Shakespeare and his ingenious use of iambic pentameter. I had barely begun to speak when my mother’s frantic words silenced me immediately.
“Jessica,” she trembled, “you need to come home. Something horrible has happened.” The rest of our conversation is completely blurred in my memory. I vaguely recall wondering whether I was on the verge of screaming or vomiting. The next thing I remember is staring vacantly out the passenger side window of Claudia’s Cherokee as she sped towards my house. In my reflection I could see the glimmer of tears coating my cheeks, although I couldn’t feel their moisture.
Though the immediate effects of a great earthquake are catastrophic, there’s something to be said for the destructive abilities of the aftershock. For months my mother engaged in a pattern of self-accusatory behavior, reliving the events of that ominous morning again and again.
“Colleen hadn’t been feeling well,” she would tell me tearfully. “I knew she was running a fever. Why didn’t I let her stay home? What kind of mother sends her daughter out into the world with a fever?” Right before my eyes, my once composed and capable mother melted into a puddle of regrets and misgivings. She couldn’t even find consolation in my survival. In her eyes, I wasn’t alive due to any effort on her part; I escaped the tragedy at Columbine by cutting class, which displayed her incompetence as a parent in a different, albeit less glaring, manner.
In the fashion of a true alcoholic, my father seized this opportunity to return to his binge-drinking habits, eliminating two years of struggling through AA meetings and ten years of blissful (at least for the rest of us) sobriety. As his drinking increased, so did my mother’s weepy self-criticism, and his response was to match each of her “what ifs” with a shot of whiskey.
“What if she had been running a temperature of 100, instead of just 99?” my mother would ask. “I always kept the girls home when the thermometer hit three digits.” The only sound that came from my father’s end of the couch was the clank of an empty shot glass hitting the coffee table.
The shock of losing my only sibling, my baby sister, was one I never could have prepared for. As I witnessed the collapse of my entire family structure, the sole comfort I longed for was that of Colleen, the one other person in this world who could ever understand how it felt to console our increasingly unreasonable mother or sweep up the glass from a shattered bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the kitchen floor. The idea that no matter what I did or what I sacrificed, I absolutely could not see her was completely suffocating and unbearable. My solitary consolation came from Claudia, my only friend who never tired of my random bouts of tears, or
It has been almost eight years since Colleen’s death and still neither one of my parents has quite recovered. I guess I’m not sure you could even say that I have. If nothing else, I'd like to think that I've learned from my experience. Though I can't forgive Fate for stealing not just one, but three of the people I knew and loved, I’ve developed an understanding of appreciation that you cannot obtain until you’ve lost something so great. There's something about loss that colors the things that you still have. In her own way, Colleen colored my life.
WRITING RESPONSE:
Writing this piece that joins imagination with real events was a heavy assignment. I wanted to express something creatively without infringing on the real experience of someone who actually lived through such a tragedy. This is why I chose this event – I felt like I knew enough details about the situation to write about Columbine, but I’ve also closely witnessed the effect that a child’s death can have on a family, although the extent of this family’s collapse was more of a creative extreme I took as a writer. The combination of imagination and reality reminds me of a discussion I had when reading The Things We Carried by Tim O’Brien. Although it is true that he served in the Vietnam War, he claims that the stories in this book are fictional, and so this blurs the lines a lot when you’re reading the book. A more “reliable” form of depicting a historical event could possibly then be in a textbook or something along those lines, because they carry with them the promise of bearing facts. However, I think that personal accounts give you a more genuine view of what went on at a different level, although its legitimacy can possibly be altered by emotion, perspective, etc. The Museo Storico dell Liberazione made me think more seriously about the pain that comes with tragic events and how desperate it can make a person feel, and I tried to reflect that in my piece.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
If This is a Man response
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
My dialogue piece
Some hours later, Mary was suddenly awoken by a beam of light cascading through their tiny bedroom window.
“No…oh please, no,” she murmured in despair, unable to even lift her weary head. “If a higher power truly existed, it wouldn’t already be morning.” At that moment, a delicate melody filled Mary’s ears, as if a symphony of harps surrounded her bed.
“Hello, O chosen one,” sounded a melodious voice that seemed to come from the ray of light illuminating the entire room. Startled, Mary snapped out of her sluggish fog and shook her sleeping husband.
“Joseph, wake up! Do you hear that? Do you see it?” she whispered, but was answered only with a guttural snore. Her anxious effort to awaken him was interrupted by another melodic utterance.
“Do not be afraid,” boomed the voice as the luminous beam began to fade, revealing a beautiful young man cloaked in radiant gold, his mahogany curls framing a lustrous complexion. “I appear to you with no intention to harm.”
The alarmed young woman sat up slowly, rubbing at her eyes as if removing their filmy coating of sleep would erase this manifestation before her.
“I’ve had some batty dreams,” she muttered, “but this one is by far the silliest.”
To Mary’s dismay, the man responded to her remark with a chuckle.
“Dear child,” he said with a confident smile, “this is no dream. My name is Gabriel and I have been sent here to inform you of your duty to our Lord and to the world…nay, to the future.”
“I beg your pardon?” Mary replied incredulously. “I am no child, and I haven’t the slightest idea of what you speak. You’re here to inform me of my duty? I don’t even know who you are!”
“I am Gabriel,” the man repeated slowly, “and it is my duty to-”
“You speak of duty, sir,” Mary interjected, “but to be perfectly honest, I see no reason whatsoever to abide by your decree. In fact, I’m appalled by your audacity! My home may not be noble, but that gives you no right to enter without invitation.”
Her outer bravado faltering, Mary turned to Joseph, who continued to snore beside her despite the animated conversation that reverberated throughout their undersized bedroom. With a tightening throat, Mary grasped her husband’s shoulder and heartily shook, again to no avail.
“Please, let me explain,” the man sighed. “Your husband will not wake, but you need not be afraid. I am here to announce your role in the future of this world. It is because of your integrity, Mary, as well as your strength. You have been chosen.”
“But…how do you know my name?” Mary stammered. “And what do you mean by ‘chosen’? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying, nor can I comprehend this entire situation.” She stared at her visitor in apprehensive confusion, awaiting an explanation.
“It is difficult for mortals to comprehend the heavenly realm,” he replied. “This is why I must reveal to you the duty of which I speak, in order to breach the gap between the two spheres.”
“Well then, breach it already,” Mary scoffed. “I await my enlightenment.”
“Very well,” the man began, inhaling deeply. “At the beginning of time, before the conception of man, there existed only one being. This being was our Lord, God, the creator of the world and the one true deity. Although His supremacy has remained absolute throughout time, humans have failed to acknowledge His eminence. It is imperative that His greatness be recognized. This is where your duty becomes crucial; you, Mary, are to carry the son of God. In nine months, you shall receive the greatest gift any mortal could hope for - you shall birth the son of God, our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“This is what you call a gift?!” the “chosen one” retorted. “What would my husband think of my pregnancy by another man? Why do you wish shame on me and my family? Please, I bid you leave my home and never return again. I want only a peaceful night’s rest and never to think of this indiscretion again.” Pulling herself out of bed, Mary beckoned towards the window, her molten glare smoldering with red-hot palpability.
The man’s once-confident face became contorted in desperation as he dropped to his knees.
“Please, Mary, I beseech you - heed my command! The future of mankind is in your hands. With your assistance, your son will carry out the word of God on Earth, and in turn he shall atone for the sins of all humans. Please believe me. Without your compliance, the fate of humankind is doomed!”
Mary’s face softened and her lips pursed in contemplation.
“Kind sir,” she began softly. “I deeply apologize, but I cannot submit to such a request. How could I? I know nothing of this God whom you speak of so urgently. I fear that it is much too foolish for me to acquiesce with your request.”
Slowly, the man rose to his feet and took a step towards her. As he did so, the faint glow that still shone through the window fell across his shoulders, revealing an ivory pair of wings sprouting from his back. Mary felt her breath escape her and she drew her hand to her chest, clutching at an exquisite burgundy and charcoal garment that had somehow suddenly replaced her meager nightgown.
“Gabriel,” she whispered, unable to muster any louder speech.
The angel returned to his knees at Mary’s feet and motioned towards the window, where the dim glow had returned to its earlier brilliance. Within the radiant beam, Mary glimpsed the innocent faces of two smaller angels and, between them, an illustrious white dove encased in a radiant veneer of light.
“Good Lord,” spoke Mary, her breath regained. “I will gladly accept my duty.” As a glimmering halo appeared above her, the mother of Jesus Christ bowed her head.

I chose the Annunciation piece because during our discussion, someone mentioned that Mary looked as if she were resisting Gabriel’s request, and that gave me an idea for the dialogue. I thought it was challenging to make the dialogue both convincing but also informative enough that it revealed aspects about the character and the situation in a realistic manner. I thought the visual work both added and detracted – it gave me a base to start with, but I was also limited to certain aspects within the painting. One of the most notable differences between
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Juvenal reading response
Juvenal depicts wealth very critically, speaking of wealthy groups of people as greedy and over-excessive. He does this by mentioning these different groups and scoffing at their indulgent activities, such as in the First Satire, where he writes, “Meanwhile, all by himself, on a couch unshared, their good king will Gobble and guzzle down the choicest products of land and ocean.” Like Twain, Juvenal is mocking this greed, although he does it in a very flat out manner, whereas Twain revealed his opinion through irony, by giving his narrator a personality that places a strong emphasis on monetary things. Similarly, the concept of hypocrisy in regards to wealth is a clear point in both Juvenal and Twain’s works. In the Fifth Satire, Juvenal writes of the wealthy patron’s gluttony, but then also his stinginess in sharing with others, as the artist Trebius is served “One prawn, half an egg – the kind of supper people leave at the tombs of the dead by way of a token.” This reminded me of Twain’s description of Roman churches – decked in marble and expensive décor, but indifferent to the herd of starving beggars outside their door. Juvenal address sedition and free speech in the same pointblank, stinging manner, stating “If you suppose that your tongue is going to earn you a living, Or do you teach declamation? What iron nerve must be needed While your class, by the score, knocks off tyrannical monarchs…What refutation will come from the speech of the opposition? That’s what they all want to know, but no one is willing to pay for.” I didn’t really remember these themes playing a major part in Twain’s piece however, so I wasn’t sure how they compared. The interaction between artists and patrons in Juvenal’s work is similar to Twain’s – he portrays the patrons as rich and uncaring and the artists as nearly begging for scraps, such as in the Fifth Satire: “The height of good luck! What more could you ask for? Trebius has good cause to break off his sleep, to come running, Shoelaces not yet tied.” From the reading, I got the impression that Juvenal finds morality to be the most noble thing of all. He criticizes things like gluttony, hypocrisy, and mistreatment of others, and overall his attacks are all at moral misdeeds such as these. He also expressly states that nobility “lies in more than a name and title,” which furthers my opinion.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
My satire
Essay on Overcoming Our Personal Hurdles
Mr. Johnson’s class – Period 4
By Courtney Coleman
First of all, people look up to me, you know? When I walk down the halls here at Jefferson High, I can tell that all eyes are on me, which means I have a duty to always look my best. Obviously I have loads of natural beauty – other people spend fortunes trying to get blonde locks like mine! But what makes me especially attractive is my stylistic abilities. I am an expert at hair straightening. There’s a technique, you know. And when it comes to fashion, let’s just say that I’m Christopher Columbus and new trends are like
As you can see, I have a lot to think about every morning when I wake up. What color looks best on Wednesdays? Should I wear the eyeliner that makes my eyes look smoky or the one that makes them sultry? And don’t even get me started on accessories. So many girls ignore this crucial part of outfit selection and it totally drags down their whole ensemble. Because I’m really interested in helping out the community, I’ve recently drawn up a petition to institute a class on accessorizing. That way, people can choose to take a helpful course instead of like, gym or something (all that class does for me is clog my pores – yuck).
Back to the point, though. My daily personal hurdle is living up to the expectations that have been set for me because of how I look. Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but sometimes I think that ugly people don’t know how good they’ve got it. They don’t have to worry about whether their baby blue tank top accentuates or detracts from their ocean blue eyes. It’s a little unfair when you think about it. If I make a mistake fashion-wise, it’s a BIG deal, but if they do something like wear navy blue with black (which happens all the time, and no, it doesn’t match!), well, nobody even notices. Some might say that invisibleness is bliss.
I can’t dwell on my hardships, though. I know that even though some days I’d kill to wear a sweatshirt to school, I have to remember my responsibility to my appearance. It’s like what my mom always tells me – “If you’re not looking your best, what else do you have to offer?” I know that sounds mean or whatever, but it’s just her way of reminding me to “emphasize my assets.” I mean, I’m really, really interesting and everyone loves hearing my stories about meeting my mom’s model friends and the Gucci fashion shows I’ve gone to with her. But…it might be nice if every once in awhile people wanted to hear about the funny story I wrote in English class, or the B+ I got on the Algebra final. I studied really hard for that, but my mom’s right – people would rather see my senior pictures on the fridge, not a boring old math test.
I’m really lucky to have a mother who is so involved in my life. She would never let me embarrass myself by going out in clashing shades of red, and she’ll spare any expense to make sure I always have a matching Coach handbag. Some moms just let their kids run wild and wear whatever they want, but I was blessed with a mother who cares. Just think – without her, I might be sporting Skechers right now! I guess you could say she’s like a really good trainer who helps me get in shape to get over all the hurdles in my life, like how to say no to brownies, even though they’re my favorite dessert. It’s tough but then she reminds me that I’ll never get a date to prom if I can’t even fit into my evening gown. That’s a life lesson too – I need to stay in good shape if I’m going to meet a successful, handsome husband to support me. After all, I probably won’t go to college or anything, and I’ll need a fallback plan if modeling doesn’t work out for me. Sure I’m gorgeous, but if I don’t work hard enough on my figure and complexion, I won’t get hired, which Mom never lets me forget. See, there’s another way she’s supportive. She helps me keep my priorities straight and plan for my future. What else could you ask for from a mother?
In the end, I know that my personal hurdles aren’t too high to overcome. I wake up every morning ready to look my best and I embrace the fact that I’m the golden standard of style at
Why did you choose the character(s) you did for this assignment? What was the most challenging part of writing a satirical piece? Is your character “round” or “flat”? Did you return to Twain’s excerpt while developing your own satirical piece?