As the story continues, Jeannette's life became more and more, well, unorthodox. Her family was trying to escape from the FBI, they move around constantly, looking for small towns, etc. However, I also learned that her father always had this dream of building a glass castle. 'All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that [glass castle]. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he'd start work on our glass castle.'(25) Jeannette's family was searching gold in the endless desert, just hoping for the best chance thus they can eventually build a glass castle.
The glass castle, in my opinion, resembles unreachable, untouchable dreams that people have in their heart. Those dreams are like motivations that keep people moving through their repetitive, boring life. Although to most people, those dreams ARE impossible to reach, and they know that, yet still blindly believe in the dream and 'try' to accomplish it. That, I think, is the beauty of dreams. No matter how discouraged, dispirited you are, you can always remind yourself: oh, I still have this dream (goal), and drown in your own imagination of success, become numb to the reality. Dreams are one type of drug that's legal; they provide a way to escape from reality.
25 September, 2007
Glass Castle post 1
The Glass Castle is a book about an everyday girl who lives an unordinary life. The way she lived was, by today's standards, unorthodox. The first memory she has is from when she was three and accidentally lit herself on fire while making hot dogs. Once she leaves the hospital, Rex Walls style (basically her father picks her up and they leave without paying the bills), she is back to making hot dogs and her father has her wave her hand over a flame so as not to be afraid of fire. However, eventually she becomes obsessed with fire and melts her favorite toy.
People often found themselves can't open entirely to, accept and live with the reality with a satisfied manner. They can found themselves telling lies, covering up things for not to embarrass themselves. For instance, Jeannette, the author, hides and pretends that she had not seen her mother when witnessing her picking things out of the dumpster. However, Jeannette’s mother became less easily caught by surfaces of things. '"Just tell the truth," mom said. "That's simple enough."'(5) was Jeannette’s mother’s answer when her daughter asked her what she should say if her friends ask her about her parents. When people start, let’s put it this way, ‘having a life’, they put attention to things that are in their control, for example, friends, fame, career, etc. and fear to lose any of them. Yet, what they don’t realize is that as they are trying to hold firmly onto material wealth, they are probably losing things that are very important to them which they might think, at that time, worth absolutely nothing. The quote from Jeannette’s mother let me rethink about many things. Didn’t we all grow up this way: giving off the very sincere, truthful and simple answer to any question? Since when we started to put the way others view us into top priority? When we acted, or at least looked like careless about things, were there doubts in out mind that we just decided to ignore? After all the struggling, what was gained? What was lost?
People often found themselves can't open entirely to, accept and live with the reality with a satisfied manner. They can found themselves telling lies, covering up things for not to embarrass themselves. For instance, Jeannette, the author, hides and pretends that she had not seen her mother when witnessing her picking things out of the dumpster. However, Jeannette’s mother became less easily caught by surfaces of things. '"Just tell the truth," mom said. "That's simple enough."'(5) was Jeannette’s mother’s answer when her daughter asked her what she should say if her friends ask her about her parents. When people start, let’s put it this way, ‘having a life’, they put attention to things that are in their control, for example, friends, fame, career, etc. and fear to lose any of them. Yet, what they don’t realize is that as they are trying to hold firmly onto material wealth, they are probably losing things that are very important to them which they might think, at that time, worth absolutely nothing. The quote from Jeannette’s mother let me rethink about many things. Didn’t we all grow up this way: giving off the very sincere, truthful and simple answer to any question? Since when we started to put the way others view us into top priority? When we acted, or at least looked like careless about things, were there doubts in out mind that we just decided to ignore? After all the struggling, what was gained? What was lost?
14 September, 2007
This I Believe: The 50-Percent Theory of Life
National Public Radio: This I Believe
By Steve Porter
I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.
Let's benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die. I've dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.
Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son's baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he's swimming with the dogs, discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.
But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.
One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed. I felt chagrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutal -- the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tune -- music I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.
Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldn't last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive. The 50 percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals' recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.
Oh, yeah, the corn crop? For that one blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods. That winter my crib overflowed with corn -- fat, healthy three-to-a-stalk ears filled with kernels from heel to tip -- while my neighbors' fields yielded only brown, empty husks.
Although plantings past may have fallen below the 50-percent expectation, and they probably will again in the future, I am still sustained by the crop that flourishes during the drought.
===============================================
Just want to share this essay to people, I found it quite inspiring.
The 50-Percent Theory of Life
By Steve Porter
I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.
Let's benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die. I've dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.
Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son's baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he's swimming with the dogs, discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.
But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.
One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed. I felt chagrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutal -- the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tune -- music I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.
Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldn't last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive. The 50 percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals' recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.
Oh, yeah, the corn crop? For that one blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods. That winter my crib overflowed with corn -- fat, healthy three-to-a-stalk ears filled with kernels from heel to tip -- while my neighbors' fields yielded only brown, empty husks.
Although plantings past may have fallen below the 50-percent expectation, and they probably will again in the future, I am still sustained by the crop that flourishes during the drought.
===============================================
Just want to share this essay to people, I found it quite inspiring.
This I Believe: Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness
National Public Radio: This I Believe
By Andrew Sullivan
I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be remembered tomorrow. I believe in its indivisibility, in the intimate connection between the newest bud of spring and the flicker in the eye of a patient near death, between the athlete in his prime and the quadriplegic vet, between the fetus in the womb and the mother who bears another life in her own body.
I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion. I believe in a system of government that places that liberty at the center of its concerns, that enforces the law solely to protect that freedom, that sides with the individual against the claims of family and tribe and church and nation, that sees innocence before guilt and dignity before stigma. I believe in the right to own property, to maintain it against the benign suffocation of a government that would tax more and more of it away. I believe in freedom of speech and of contract, the right to offend and blaspheme, as well as the right to convert and bear witness. I believe that these freedoms are connected -- the freedom of the fundamentalist and the atheist, the female and the male, the black and the Asian, the gay and the straight.
I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile.
And I believe in a country that enshrines each of these three things, a country that promises nothing but the promise of being more fully human, and never guarantees its success. In that constant failure to arrive -- implied at the very beginning -- lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start, an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one day many will forget. But the point is now. And the place is America.
===============================================
In Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, Andrew Sullivan clearly states this in both the tile and in between the lines of his brilliant essay: "I believe in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." In which, is the foundation of the United States of America. The most remarkable part of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness is, in my opinion, how the ending goes perfectly back to peoples' first impression of the tile, the USA. When I was reading through this essay, I can picture this man, who is loyal to his country, telling me how he believes in the USA. The belief he held to the US is much stronger than just simply trust, it's far beyond relying on the country, much deeper than 'I believe you'; it's a belief that is not just believing in the past, present, but also the future. And even if a inperfect situation has been reached, Andrew Sullivan stated: "In that constant failure to arrive -- implied at the very beginning -- lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start, an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one day many will forget. " And I, also, believe in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as well as the country and the people they represent.
Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness
By Andrew Sullivan
I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be remembered tomorrow. I believe in its indivisibility, in the intimate connection between the newest bud of spring and the flicker in the eye of a patient near death, between the athlete in his prime and the quadriplegic vet, between the fetus in the womb and the mother who bears another life in her own body.
I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion. I believe in a system of government that places that liberty at the center of its concerns, that enforces the law solely to protect that freedom, that sides with the individual against the claims of family and tribe and church and nation, that sees innocence before guilt and dignity before stigma. I believe in the right to own property, to maintain it against the benign suffocation of a government that would tax more and more of it away. I believe in freedom of speech and of contract, the right to offend and blaspheme, as well as the right to convert and bear witness. I believe that these freedoms are connected -- the freedom of the fundamentalist and the atheist, the female and the male, the black and the Asian, the gay and the straight.
I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile.
And I believe in a country that enshrines each of these three things, a country that promises nothing but the promise of being more fully human, and never guarantees its success. In that constant failure to arrive -- implied at the very beginning -- lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start, an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one day many will forget. But the point is now. And the place is America.
===============================================
In Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, Andrew Sullivan clearly states this in both the tile and in between the lines of his brilliant essay: "I believe in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." In which, is the foundation of the United States of America. The most remarkable part of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness is, in my opinion, how the ending goes perfectly back to peoples' first impression of the tile, the USA. When I was reading through this essay, I can picture this man, who is loyal to his country, telling me how he believes in the USA. The belief he held to the US is much stronger than just simply trust, it's far beyond relying on the country, much deeper than 'I believe you'; it's a belief that is not just believing in the past, present, but also the future. And even if a inperfect situation has been reached, Andrew Sullivan stated: "In that constant failure to arrive -- implied at the very beginning -- lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start, an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one day many will forget. " And I, also, believe in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as well as the country and the people they represent.
12 September, 2007
Greetings!
Welcome to my brand-new, shiny blog!
This is a blog regarding literacy.
(Mainly on English 10--Ms. Tholen, you rock!! ^o^)
I will put on some new posts once I start reading the Glass Castle.
Take care, and...
Enjoy life.
This is a blog regarding literacy.
(Mainly on English 10--Ms. Tholen, you rock!! ^o^)
I will put on some new posts once I start reading the Glass Castle.
Take care, and...
Enjoy life.
