FRANKIE B. JEANS

Jeans. One simple word that describes the endless world of denim we as Americans know and love. Although jeans are worn for work, play, school, going out on the town and infinite other reasons, form and function meet in the ultimate concoction known as Frankie B jeans. These jeans are growing popular all over the world and are worn by celebrity's, teenagers, and trendy women everywhere. But despite all this popularity it's difficult to determine just what makes this brand all that. Could it be the tremendously low rise cut that every pair sports, transforming any outfit into an eye catching number? Or is it the curve hugging material that makes any butt resemble that of Jessica Alba and legs look instantly longer? Maybe it's the huge selection of cuts and styles ranging from skinny jeans, boot cut, to flare and coming in a variety of looks always with an interesting and eye catching pocket detail they offer, that allows a girl to make a statement even while wearing a well known basic such as the jean. Yes, it's difficult to put your finger on just what makes Frankie B.'s the quintessential pair of jeans and entirely worth their costly price tag. But I've decided that's it's all of these quality's put together that make it the toal package. These sassy jeans have the ability to make their wearer look and feel good, having at least one pair is a complete neccessity for teenage girls of today.

BEL AND SERPENT EXTRAVAGANZA

In literature circle today, my group and I discussed a lot of interesting connections and foreshadowing we found in Bel and the Serpent. It starts off with Nathan talking about the scripture story of Bel and the Serpent. Bel is a statue believed by the Babylonians to be a god because of the tons of food she ingests everyday. A boy Daniel proves them all wrong when he lays ashes around it and catches the priests who were stealing all the food by their footprints. Supposedly this story was ment to be much scarier than the summary I provided because it comes from the Old Testament, which was best known for manipulating people into becoming good christian believers by the way it "scares the dickens out of you," as Leah puts it. At the end of the chapter when the readers are hit with the Death of Ruth May we are somewhat put into the detective Daniel's position as we discover the culprit to be Tata Kuvudundu by the six toed foot prints he left behind when he brought the snake. The green mamba snake was ment for Nelson, however, as an animal sign to carry out his profecy that the animals would turn on the people of Kilanga on account of their ignorance towards the old ways. In one way, Tata Kuvudundu was acting almost exactly as the priests by tricking the people into thinking certain things were being made to happen by a god when in reality it was mere mortals. In another sense he was acting similarly to Nathan Price because he was using scare tactics to trick people into believing.

Another foreshadowing we noticed was the title of the chapter. In the summary we get of the scripture there is no actual mentioning of a snake. The title also closely resembles the belle and the serpent which would mean "girl and the serpent" possibly repesenting Ruth May and the snake. I got to thinking that maybe Daniel was the sneaky serpent in the scrispture because he ratted out the ministers, in the actual story the snake incident is responsible for ratting out Tata Kuvudundu. These were just some things I noticed and they led me to a few questions.

Do Nathan and Tata Kuvudundu have more things in common besides their teaching tactics?
So far I'm not sure although being priests they both have to deal with coming up with ways to inspire followers and have both seen the benefits of scaring people into believing. They both believe they know best on religious matters and both seem pretty crazy in the head. I think they both have been scared themselves lately in the book because both of them have experienced a loss of followers. Does fear lead to fear?

Why do scare tactic's work and are they the best way to accomplish things?
When emotion is incorporated into any type of teaching I think the biggest results occur. If doing/learning something gives you desirable results (happiness, laughter) you will want to do that thing. If something makes you scared, sad or threatens you on the other hand you will definetly stay away from that. I think using this theory is a pretty intelligent way Nathan, Tata Kuvudundu, the bible, teachers, parents, and friends have realized using emotions can achieve a certain outcome. I also believe fear is one of life's strongest and most powerful emotions.

Why is fear such a strong and intense emotion?

9th guide

I started to write this post about a month ago, but never fully got around to putting the thought into what I wanted to say. The idea came to me when I was preparing for 9th guide. Because I'm in peer helping I am required to T.A. 9th guide, and lately I surprisingly have been getting a lot more out of it than I did the first time around.

The core idea of 9th guide is knowledge is power. We provide the freshman with information about relationships, sex, drugs, decisions they'll have to make, and most importantly we have them decide what the 5 main morals and values that they base their entire lives around are. This class has opened my eyes and made me realize that our own personal and individual morals are the only thing we have to back ourselves up. We have to live with every action and decision we make as well as our reputation, no one else does. The only way sure fire way to prevent regrets is to have a core set of morals and values to base decisions and actions on. This way no one can make you feel bad about yourself and most importantly you'll do the right things for you because they are all done in accordance to what is right to and for you. This also goes to say that what's important and moral to one person will not and should not be exactly the same to another, and because of this those morals and values can't be decided by anyway but the individual.

This idea of the importance of morals as well as the importance that they are decided by the individual strongly relate to the practice SAT essay we just wrote about moral choices and social values. Because of my 9th guide experiences I have realized the necessity for strong morals and the need for time to be given to student's to realize their own. I think 9th guide was a perfect place and the way it is done is pretty good to. Pretty good in the way that no particular morals or opinions are pushed on them only information and time is given.

As I got to thinking more about personal morals and decision making vs. morals forced on by others such as teachers, religious figures, or families, I got to thinking about P.W.B. and specifically Nathan Price. He on the one hand has an incredibly strong set of morals that he basis his actions and decisions. He has no regrets because of the way he makes decisions based on his rock solid ideas of morals ad what is right, so where and how does he go so wrong in being a good person? In the way he goes about forcing his ideas and beliefs in what is right onto others. He has a strong set of morals suitable for only him, and when he starts to force them on others is when the problems start because he has no way of knowing what is important them. He has no understanding of what's important to them because he refuses to open his mind to their lives and how different they are from his own. If the headstrong Nathan Price can't even do it, it should be an example to schools about how forcing idea's on students won't work either. Everyone is an individual, therefor everyone requires individual morals and values, but they're needed nonetheless.

All this brings me back to some essential questions:
How can i be a good person/how should I live in this world?
The only way I can live a life that I will be proud of in the end is to live morally. I am my own judge and if I live in accordance to my core values and what's most important to me, then I have lived a good and important life. Community service, relationships, giving back and etc. are necessary for people who consider say sharing, responsibility, or being humble important because that is the way they believe themselves to be living the proper way.

Numero 2

It is my understanding that the role a school plays in a student's life is a huge one, with lasting effects. The job of a school is to best prepare each student to have a sucessful life in the "real world," a.k.a. after all schooling is finished. A huge part of getting along and succeeding in life is not the square root of 117, but knowledge of current events, social issues and having a solid structure of moral values to help you make make decisions along the way. For this reason I think it's absolutely necessary for schools to help student's understand their own individual morals and give them information and current social issues. This is imperitive because it is these things that supplement, complement and allow the application of things learned in school, such as math, in the real world.
The talk of values and moral choices has always been a sensitive subject for schools, which has led them to avoid integrating either of them into the curriculum's. This is an easy way to quiet controversy and steer clear of problems such as the pledge of allegiance "under god" wars. However, I believe this to be cowardly, and if the true intention of a school is to send it's students into the workplaces and leading positions of the world best prepared to succeed, which the it should be, they must address moral choices in school. However, this isn't to say they should project any particular morals, values, or choices onto the students. There should simply be time set aside for the student's to come up with morals and values that are true to themselves. That way they are more likely to stick to their decided morals having agreed to them themselves, and this makes it more likely that they will follow them and use them to make moral choices for the remainder of their lives.
A person's entire life is a very long time, and I acknowledge that morals can and will probalby change due to many things, one of them will probably be social issues. "Social issues" can mean anything from bullying, to the Iraqi war, to gay rights and abortion. These issues going on in the world will undoubtedly will affect one's moral choices and values and vise versa. Because evryone's choices and stances will differ it's not appropriate for teachers to decide what stand the students should take on the issue but present them with information about it. Knowledge is always key and with the proper amount of info adn a strong set of morals, students will have much less difficulty making moral choices and forming opinions on social issues.
Success is a difficult thing to define, as it is different for all people. But usually it includes happiness and achievement. Neither of these things are easy to come by and to obtain them it takes hard work. Success is not achieved by taking the easy way out, and schools need to recognize this and however hard or time consuming it may be they must help students understand moral choices and social issues. However, they by no means should push any particular stance onto their pupils. If this begins to happen our world will undoubtedly become a more informed place and consequently a better one.

Some advice for Nathan Price;

A few days ago we had our first entire class discussion about the Poisonwood Bible, and let me tell you it got heated! Ok, well most people were in agreement on many opinions of the characters and book itself, but the things we dicussed and the questions that were raised were still quite interesting.

Our discussion mainly revolved around the highly complex Nathan Price. Basically, from what we know of him, he comes of ass completely selfish, thinks the world revolves around him, and he is both physically and mentally unable to see any point of view other then his own. These traits are beautifully displayed in Revelations, where he is argueing with Anatole about the stupidity of idolatry. And how the Congolese people are unable to change and see what could be actually helping them. I think this scene is pretty ironic because it is shadowing his complete inability to try and understand the Congolese people and compromise. He can't accept that his beliefs and teachings stand no chance if he doesn't take into consideration how different the people in his village are from his hometown. A good metaphor for this situation is in Genesis when he is talking to leah about his plants not bearing fruit. He seems to understand the necessity of adaptation when he explains to Leah how you can't just make African bee's pollinate American plants and you cna''t bring American bee's to the african plants. This perfectly mirrors the way he can't show up and force the African people to accept Christianity unless it is adapted to fit their lifestyle. He can't try as much as he wants to plant the seeds of his religion into the heads of the Congolese people, but he can't force them to follow it just as he can't force hisplants to bear fruit. It takes some sort of adaptation, or something like the planting mounds to bridge the gap from American religion to religion in the Congo. Nathan Price is a character I find very frusterating and it seems as I delve further into the book the more I am aggravated by his extreme stubborness, and disrespect towards nearly everyone besides god himself, especially his family members. I have not even started to address the sexist/gender issues in this book which I will attempt to do in Revelations. But on an ending note, as our class discussion was winding down someone playing the devils advocate brought up the fact that he thinks he is doing what's best for the people of Kilanga and for his family he just has a completely messed up way of carrying out his wishes. This raised some hard questions for me;

If someone had good intentions, but a bad outcome or way of going about it, does that make them a bad person?

If your intentions are good and pur is it ok if the results are not?

Nathan's Prayer

"Heavenly father, I have never once doubted or questioned your plan for me. Not even as I stood in the middle of a fruitless garden in Africa surrounded by confused and indecent sinners, not then did I doubt our ability to help them. But as I sit here in a chapel, for crying out loud, I am almost brought to tears by what surrounds me. I had only taken a few steps here when I spotted the first indecency. Girls running around like prostitutes with their boobs and midriffs showing, flaunting there nail polish and sex itself. And as if that wasn't bad enough. I saw two kids kissing in plain view of absolutely everyone! That combined with the profanity that carelessly runs from nearly everones mouth and the single ratty copy of the bible that this school has is enough to make me livid. That's why I came here to the chapel, because I doubt you would want to have anything to do with a single other place on this forsaken campus. Noone here seems to see you like I do. Could there possibly be some mistake, not to cast doubt upon you father, but is there any possibility you might have led me wrong, accidentaly to the place where you keep your mistaken creations that just weren't suitable for living and believing with the rest of us? I never thought these words would come from my own mouth, mine that has turned ignorant into believers, sinners into followers, and women into suitable disciples. Please send me an answer quickly, father, your wish is my command. But in all seriousness I think that this wretched place is too far removed from what miracles even I can perform. Amen."
-Nathan Price

P.W.B. (lexicography)

Most people know that vocabulary is not my strong suit, so I decided to challenge myself and incorporate lexicography into my Poisonwood bible reading.

SMOTE; (past of smite) verb, to strike or hit. Ex. She smote him on the back with her umbrella.

EMISSARIES; noun plural, representatves sent on a mission or errand. Ex. They were emissaries to negotiate peace.

GALLIMAUFRY; noun, a hodgepodge, jumble, confused medly Ex. I am a lame galllimaufry and she is always perfect.

CONSORTING; verb (from consort), partnering, associating, a husband or wife. Ex. He had been consorting with the locals.

CONTEMPTUOUS;adj., show or expressing contempt, didain, scornful, open disrespect. Ex.In Georgia I had seen people angered by my father before, or intimidated, but never comtemptuous. (p.40)

PAROXYSM; a sudden violent outburst, fit of violent actions or emotion. Ex. He had a paroxysm of anger.

PESTILENCE; noun, A usually fatal epidemic or disease. Ex. The bubonic plague.

CASTIGATED; verb (castigate) to reprimand severly or punish in order to correct. Ex. She was castigated for her use of a swear word.

INSOLENCE; noun, rude behavior or speech. Ex. She was punished for her insolence towards her elders.

LATRINE; noun, A toilet or something used as one. Ex. He was forced to make a nearby bush act as a latrine.

REGALED; verb (part of regale), to entertain lavishly with choice food or drink. Ex. They regaled their honorary guest for many days.


Definitions from; www.dictionary.com