Writing Challenge # 4

Saying Too Much

Once upon a time in a teeny tiny village was a teeny tiny lady that lived with her teeny tiny cat. They lived together in a teeny tiny house, with a teeny tiny garden, located next to a teeny tiny creek. They lived a very happy life in teeny tiny land. The village was very quaint and everyone that lived there was very very happy. There was only a teeny tiny bit of sadness in the village. The town had a teeny tiny airport that had teeny tiny airplanes. There was also a teeny tiny market. The Market sold teeny tiny food for the teeny tiny people in the land. 

The outside world was seemingly very very large for the people of teeny tiny land, so they rarely left. In the summertime, it got very very warm, but the teeny tiny creek kept them cool. In the winter it got very very cold, so they all had teeny tiny stone fireplaces to keep them warm and toasty.

When they got sick, they visited the teeny tiny clinic. The doctors name was Dr. Hodge.  People were not very fond of her as a person, but she was the best doctor they could find. She lived in a giant palace and controlled all of the land. She did not like trash cans, so she threw all of her food outside. Her beautiful palace was wrecked by her nasty nasty food. Luckily for the rest of the teeny tiny town, she lived in the deserted part. ( Just kidding Hodge, you're actually my favorite person and the earth loves you even if you leave crap everywhere :) )

You might think that life in teeny tiny land would be very very boring, but it was exactly the opposite. All of the teeny tiny kids went to the same teeny tiny school and had fun fun play dates in the teeny tiny yards. There was no college in the town, so they all had to leave teeny tiny land when they reached the old age of 18. Eventually, they all moved back to teeny tiny land because they missed their teeny tiny families and their teeny tiny friends; and sometimes they even missed Dr. Hodge. 

Teeny tiny land was probably the most annoyingly annoying blog you are going to read, and looking back at it, I think I said too much.

Writing Challenge #3.

Last fall, some friends and I were hanging out. It was late at night and we had nothing to do. We decided to go for a drive and just see where we ended up. As we drove, we came upon a eerie and dank cemetery. I was wary of entering the cemetery at first, but as soon as I saw how ardently my friends felt about going, I decided it would all be fine. As we walked along, we began to hear voices. We looked around, but we did not see anyone else there. In the sky, there were crows circling the sky and squirrels running around the tomb stones. In the distance, there was a dog barking. We continued walking, and as we walked, we kicked the superfluous leaves around. We all stopped kicking the leaves as soon as we heard someone else doing it. Again, we looked around, but could find nothing. We decided that it was all in our heads, but thought maybe our parents would be worried so we turned around. Just as we turned around, we saw a shadow creeping across the lawn. As soon as we looked in the direction of the shadow, it disappeared; it was no longer existent. We began to run and as we ran we all felt as if we were being chased. Just as we were walking up to the gates, it swung shut. We could see are car, but were not able to get to it. The wind was so strong that we were not able to open the gate. We decided to go to the next gate. Just as we turned our backs, the gate swung open. We escaped while we could and went to the car. That was our adventure in the cemetery...

Writing Challenge #2

TORTILLAS DECLARED KOSHER FOR PASSOVER;

CREATES DILEMMA FOR JEWS.

Minneapolis- Local Rabbi's announced today that they were in agreement over a new set of foods that can be labeled as kosher for passover. Tortillas have now been declared kosher for passover, the Jewish holiday that falls this week. " Besides matzah, there are not many other options in terms of foods that can be eaten during passover" says a MN Rabbi. He went on to talk about the introduction of ethnic foods into passover " in the past, we have never had a mexican food item that is kosher for passover. This is really exciting!"

A member of Temple Israel who wished to remain anonymous felt just the opposite. " I think this was a horrible idea. Chinese food has always been our go to cuisine, but now we are forced to choose between mexican and chinese. It's going to be a stressful transition." The MN council of Rabbi's agreed unanimously on this decision over a lunch of peanut butter and jelly matzah sandwiches. They said they were all sick of relying on the bland, tasteless cracker to get them through the holiday. 

Does this introduction mean we might start seeing quesadillas on the seder plate? Guess we will have to wait and see!

Writing challenge # 1

One evening, My best friend Charlotte and I went down by the Guthrie Theatre. It was a spring night and there were tons of people out and about. We parked by MTN and then walked accross the Stone Arch Bridge. We had met up with some other friends along the way and took our time walking accross the river. When we got to the other side, we were debating what we were going to do. As we made some potential plans, we saw a group of people congregating around a fence. We decided to go check out what they were all watching. As we walked over, the amount of people around the fence grew. When we got there, we discovered that there was a beaver that could not get back into the fence to get back by the river. Noone was helping the ebaver, they were only making it more difficult. People were chasing it and taking pictures. We hung out in the back and watched as people started to lose interest and continue on with their walks. Soon, we were the only people by the beaver and decided we needed to do something to help it. When we tried to go near it, it would waddle the other way. We then realized that it was injured ( people later told us it had been hit by a car). We called animal control but they were closed. We realized there was nothing we could do for this beaver so we walked towards the guthrie. On our way back to the car, the beaver was gone. Later that evening, we were driving down Chicago Avenue and came accross some more wild life. On 46th street and Chicago, we saw a deer walking down the side walk. At first we thought it was a dog, but as we got closer, we realized it was a deer. This time, we called 311, but they were closed for the evening. We continued on with our evening but kept thinking about all of the wild life we had seen in the city. It was sad, but also kind of exciting. Later that night, I got a text from Char saying " That was some adventure, huh?" and it sure was.

Documentary Blog #10!

I thought this poem had a lot to do with fitting in, or struggling to fit in. The author of this poem was born in Pakistan, but grew up all over. In this poem, it seemed as if she was detailing the struggles of fitting in, fitting in a country where the culture differs greatly for your home. You will not always feel comfortable and adjusting will take time, but you begin to accept that this is home for now. I'm not usually a huge fan of poetry, but I did really like this piece.

Our documentary is almost done. We are editing Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, I have had a busy work schedule and a lot of family things going on, but I am hoping to be able to put in as much time this week as I am able. We will definitely have a finished project on Monday!

Documentary Blog #8!

I think that everyone, in their lifetime has given a gift to humanity. This could be any type of gift. Mainly, their presence is a gift. All the gifts that they have contributed to humanity, have created our society today. Without the traits and gifts contributed by everyone, our society would lack any type of originality. Our gift to humanity is our personality, something that benefits us all.

Our documentary is coming along! This week, we re-did some of our interviews that were originally not the best. These re-do's will allow us to use larger segments for our final project. Our filming for our project is complete! We just need a little more footage of bikers on the greenway, but then we are set to edit! It seems like we might actually have this project done early!

Documentary blog # 7!

After reading this, I started thinking about social change and what it really is. I guess that before, I had assumed that it meant it impacted society as a whole.  After thinking about it, I think that Social change can mean either that or the impact that society has on an individual member of society and the changes they experience. Tying in with the theme of homlesness it this reading, I think that any of the people who stand on the corners asking for money have made meaningful social change, or have undergone changes as the result of society. The courage that it takes for one to stand on the corner and put themself out there to ask for money is remarkable. It is something that I don't know If I could ever do. This has to do with social change because the changing ways of society on this individual have led them to become homeless.

On Friday, we finished our documentary trailer, so we were happy to have that done ahead of time! We were not at MTN for as long as we were expecting, so that was nice. We are now working on lining up several interviews for our final documentary. We are talking to some environmental planners for the county and we are hoping to line up an interview with Mayor Rybak soon.

Documentary Blog # 6

A group that I feel I belong to is my neighborhood. I have been a part of it since I was born and have grown up immersed in it. My family is very close to all of my neighbors and we participate in activities with them regularly. They have always been there for em and I know they will be even when I am no longer living at home.

Our documentary is coming along well. We had three interviews this week, two with bikers and one with a man who works on transportation for the county. We will be editing tonight and tomorrow and will be able to have our trailer done by monday!

Documentary Blog # 5

The Langston Hughes poem on this weeks reading is one that I remember from sophomore year in Ms. Horswill's class. Poetry isn't something that really interests me, but I really enjoyed this reading. This also kind of tied back to the question form the beginning of the year of how  do our communities and associations we surround ourselves with impact us. Hughes says, I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you. His communities he has grown up in have shaped him.

Our documentary is slowly coming together. Our project will be answering the question of is love the main part of human relationships. We will be looking at several types of relationships involving love such as mother and daughter, twins and one couple. Our person we will be interviewing is Eva, who works at south. We will talk to her about her thoughts on love and relationships.

Documentary Blog # 4

Something that has been stressed from the beginning of the documentary project is the importance of research. The amount of research you do contributes to the overall value of your film. This reading showed the importance of digging deep and finding the information you really need, not just the information that is easily accesible.

My project has changed a little bit since my last blog, but is still relatively the same idea. Instead of focusing on just couples and their relationships, we are going to several kinds of relationships. We will still do couples and non traditional couples, but we thought it would be cool to also look at the relationships of twins and Identical twins and show the bonds their. Basically showing that Love can exist between two people without them being in a relationship

Documentary Blog # 3

My group has decided to focus our documentary on Monogamy. We are going to explore whether it is possible for two people to be together forever, not just physically, but also emotionally. We are going to interview several couples and get their perspectives on this question. We are going to find 3 different couples, meaning that not every couple will be a male and a female. Before we start we are going to have to do some research on the statistics of divorces, or the science on what leads people to get divorces.

It was very fitting that this weeks reading was on research. The subject of research has come up with EVERY speaker we have had and everyone has stressed the importance of it. Without research, you do not have a documentary that serves it full purpose. Our speaker today, Melody Gilbert, mentioned that research is not always necessary. Sometimes, you are able to learn about your subject by just talking to them. It was interesting to hear his perspective because it has been stressed by so many people already.

Before we begin our filming and interviews, we will make sure that we have done a good amount of research!

Documentary blog # 2

My group came up with several potential ideas for our documentary. We have decided that we are either going to do it on the restorative justice programs for youth in the city or a story following several different couples who are in love, but they are not the average couple. I think that doing the restorative justice one would be easier because we have access to people we can interview, where as in the other one we would need to actually find some couples. They both would be cool projects that we could create good documentaries out of.

I have always though of documentaries as the stories that are portrayed by Michael Moore; one sided and controversial. This reading had a line that stuck out to me which was "no code of ethics have ever been agreed upon by practitioners of the art..." referring to documentarians and their work. Documentaries are supposed to be about what interests you whether that be capitalism or restorative justice!

Documentary Blog #1

For my documentary, My group was thinking about several topics. One was the restorative justice programs for youth in Minneapolis and another was women in politics. We thought both would be interesting topics and would make for good documentaries. Having the speakers in our class this week also helped us come up with a bunch of ideas for making our documentary interesting and appealing.

This reading also helped me develop some ideas. I have always known about documentaries, but from this reading I also came up with some ideas on how to create a documentary that information can actually be attained from. I like the idea of doing these readings as we move along with the documentary project!