This poem tells the story of a woman named Bianca from birth to her death at 93 years old. It summarizes key moments in her life including being born after her mother struggled with infertility, falling in love at 26, giving birth to her own daughter at 40 after facing the same fertility issues, walking her daughter down the aisle after her father passed away at 104, and losing her husband at 85 before passing away herself with her daughter by her side. The poem emphasizes that despite living a long life and experiencing both joy and loss, at the end she sees herself simply as "just a girl."
Pam Allyn, the founding director of LitWorld, a 501c3 non-profit organization devoted to spreading the belief that words can change worlds through teacher training, school development, and the empowerment of children, tells the story of a girl she met while she was working in Liberia last year. Visit http://www.litworld.org for more information.
A Bunch of Random Facts about Facebook AdsWishpond
Curious about the Facebook Ad CTR of different industries? How about the difference between Facebook conversions in Canada vs the US? Or how about the efficacy of ad rotation in combating Facebook ad blindness?
These questions and many more are answered in this, 'A Bunch of Random Facts about Facebook Ads'.
Check it out and Share it 'Round!
Dirty secrets of complicated relationshipsAkash Gautam
This Valentine Week I ran a campaign across my Social Media on 'Relationships'. Lot of my students asked me to consolidate my ideas and share it with them.
So, here's a compilation of all the 'Dirty Secrets of Complicated Relationships'. I have talked about how we complicate simple things and how we can simplify them as well.
I have one post each for the 7 days of the Valentine Week of love and a few more; the ones that I really like to share. Because I know they create an impact!
The ppt has tips for you to become better at your relationships and not let them stunt your growth in life. After all, happy people are more successful.
These tips to improve relationships are just snippets. I have also written about my thoughts on the same in detail on my blog. If you would like to read them, the link is - http://akashgautam.com/blog
If you believe my ideas resonate with you or you find some truth in them or you have friends who need help, please feel free to share this.
Don't complicate your relationships. Love is simple. Keep it Simple Silly!
SPEECH OUTLINE : INFORMATIVE SPEECH
TOPIC : HEALTHY LIFESTYLES
BY MAHFUZAH MOHD MANSOR
INTRODUCTION:
- The definition of healthy lifestyles
- Statistic about healthy lifestyles of the students
BODY:
1: Healthy Body
- What: Exercise, Physical Activity
- How: Spend time for exercise, Get enough rest, body' function.
- Benefits: Allah loves a strong believer, become energetic, less diseases.
2: Healthy Food
- What: Eating habits that are suitable for needs of the body
- How: plan in Consuming food (different people has different consume of food), taking breakfast, eat halal (lawful) food.
- Benefits: Al-Baqarah: 168, function food gives a beneficial source of health, maintain the body.
3: Healthy Mind
- What: Good thinking reflects to action
- How: good intention, use time wisely, planning our lives, Relationship with Allah
- Benefits: Gives strength, rewards by Allah.
CONCLUSION:
- Emphasizes the relationship between healthy body, food and mind.
- Good mind is in healthy body
* CCDS 2351, Class for PRESENTATION SKILLS & CRITICAL THINKING on 11th May 2013. Section 6, Semester 2, 2012/2013 with sister HANNAT TOPE AHMAD ABDUSSALAM as my trainer.
Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You BeenWhere Ar.docxcherishwinsland
Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates (1966)
for Bob Dylan
Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or
checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and
who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are
you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right
through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was
everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were
gone and that was why she was always after Connie.
"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't
see your sister using that junk."
Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't
bad enough—with her in the same building—she was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time
by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and
Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at work most of the time and when
he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking
much to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she
herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high,
breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not.
There was one good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls who were just as plain and steady as she, and so when
Connie wanted to do that her mother had no objections. The father of Connie's best girl friend drove the girls the three miles to town
and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie, and when he came to pick them up again
at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done.
They must have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always
scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if
someone passed who amused or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drew anyone's eye to it, and she wore part
of it pulled up on her h.
Questions for Responding to Fiction in English 2328Use these q.docxcatheryncouper
Questions for Responding to Fiction in English 2328
Use these questions below to guide you as you complete your reading responses for short stories (fiction). I suggest that you choose only a few questions to answer in your response--but make the response a paragraph--don't number your responses. You will probably notice that some of the questions are similar and that some of the responses may overlap--that's fine. Your response should reflect your own thoughts and analysis of the story. Your response to each story should be at least 200 words (but will probably be longer) and should show that you have read the story carefully. You should mention the names of characters, details from the story that support your response, incidents in the story that affect your reading of it, etc. You must use quotations from the stories in your responses.
1. What did you like about the story? What did you dislike? Why?
2. Who is your favorite character? Is he or she like you in any way? Would you make the same decisions (or react in the same ways) in the same situations as this character? Why or why not? Which characters remind you of people you know?
3. What did you learn about American history, society, art, literature, philosophy, science (etc.) from this story? What research might you do to help you understand the story better?
4. What did you learn about life from the story?
5. In what ways do you identify with the story?
6. How would you describe the writer's style or voice? Style includes use of irony, symbolism, figurative language, point of view, etc.
Here's an interesting checklist of literary style that you might find helpful: Checklist: Elements of Literary Style
7. What are your favorite sentences, passages, words, etc. from the story? Explain your choice.
8. What would you tell a friend about this story?
9. Who would you recommend this story to and why?
10. What value does this story have for you?
11. What connections do you find between the life of the author and his or her work?
12. What questions did you have after you finished the story?
13. What words did you look up?
1st story: Two Kinds by Amy Tan
My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous. "Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky." America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.
But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.
We didn't immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese
Shirley Temple ...
Desiree’s Baby Answer 3 of the following sets of questions i.docxcuddietheresa
"Desiree’s Baby"
Answer 3 of the following sets of questions in your initial post.
Then respond to two peer posts.
Make sure to incorporate quotes from the text and a secondary source into your posts to support your opinions.
1) Look at the names in the story: Desiree, La Blanche, L’Abri. What is the associated meaning of each name and how does that relate to the story? Examine the character of Armand. Is he pitiable or not? What motivates him? What is his background? Does he have a choice at the end of the story regarding Desiree and the baby?
2) What does the fire symbolize at the end of the story? (There are several viable answers.) Tied in with the fire symbolism, if we as readers see Armand linked to satanic images, what support from the text could we find? Identify the 3 main colors in the story. Who is associated with each of the colors and what is the significance?
3) In this story, Chopin is encouraging a discussion of gender roles. Based on the character of Desiree, what conclusions can you draw about a woman’s place in society? Argue whether or not Armand loves Desiree. Support your answer with specific textual references. Project how you believe Armand will feel after the conclusion of the story. Why do you believe this to be true?
4) Argue whether or not Armand knew he was “tainted” before discovering the letter at the end of the story. Use specific examples from the text and draw some conclusions. Do you think he even knew about the letter before the end of the story? Find a few examples of irony in the story.
5) Look for and find at least 2 examples of foreshadowing that prepare the reader for the ending. How does Chopin use diction in her favor to evoke feelings of sympathy for Desiree and her child as they are walking into the bayou? Give specific words and explain how they are used to affect the reader.
Desiree's Baby
by Kate Chopin
Desiree's Baby (1894) is set in the Creole region of Louisiana and takes us back in time to the Antebellum South. It's featured in Short Stories for High School and our African American Library.
An illustration for the story Desiree's Baby by the author Kate Chopin
Alice Schille, Puerto Rican mother and child, 1916
1
As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see Desiree and the baby. It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Desiree was little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar. The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame Valmonde abandoned ev ...
Eveline by James JoyceSHE sat at the window watching the evening .docxturveycharlyn
Eveline by James Joyce
SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:
"He is in Melbourne now."
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"
"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mot.
The Rocking-Horse WinnerbyD. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)Word Count .docxssusera34210
The Rocking-Horse Winner
byD. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)Word Count: 6015
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.
Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!"
It came whispering from the ...
Review the Strategy Questions for Organizing Your Argument Essay.docxronak56
Review the Strategy Questions for Organizing Your Argument Essay in Chapter 5, and then write a 1000- word response to the primary question of Chapter Activity #4 at the end of Chapter 8: How do family traditions and cultural legacies contribute to and/or inhibit an individual’s self-identity?
Chapter 5
Strategy Questions for Organizing Your Argument Essay
1. Do you have a lead-in to “hook” your reader? (an example, anecdote, scenario, startling statistic, or provocative question)
2. How much background is required to properly acquaint readers with your issue?
3. Will your claim be placed early (introduction) or delayed (conclusion) in your paper?
4. What is your supporting evidence?
5. Have you located authoritative (expert) sources that add credibility to your argument?
6. Have you considered addressing opposing viewpoints?
7. Are you willing to make some concessions (compromises) toward opposing sides?
8. What type of tone (serious, comical, sarcastic, inquisitive) best relates your message to reach your audience?
9. Once written, have you maintained a third person voice? (No “I” or “you” statements)
10. How will you conclude in a meaningful way? (Call your readers to take action, explain why the topic has global importance, or offer a common ground compromise that benefits all sides?)
Chapter activity #4
How do family traditions and cultural legacies contribute to and/or inhibit an individual’s self-identity? What do you know about your family history? How is this history shared, and how is it valued among individual family members? Beyond its literal meaning, what are the broader implications of the cliché “keeping the family name alive”? Or has this cliché outlived its validity? A number of readings in this chapter address an aspect of family tradition/cultural heritage and individual identity and fulfillment—for example, Walker’s “Everyday Use” (page 385); Rich’s “Delta” (page 412); Kelley’s “The People in Me” (page 424). Drawing on evidence from several readings and your own experience and observations, write a claim of value argument about an aspect of family heritage and individual identity.
Everyday Use (1973)
Alice Walker
for your grandmama
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her.
You’ve no doubt seen those TV sh ...
A N C E L E S M A S T R E T T Afrom Big-Eyed WomenAun.docxevonnehoggarth79783
A N C E L E S M A S T R E T T A
from Big-Eyed Women
Aunt Natalia Esparza
One day Natalia Esparza, she of the short legs and round ti$, fell in love
with the sea. She didn't know for sure at what moment that pressing
wish to know the remote and legendary ocean came to her, but it came
with such force that she had to abandon her piano school and take up
the search for the Caribbean, because it was to the Caribbean that her
ancestors had come a century before, and it was from there that what
she'd named the missing piece of her conscience was calling to her with-
out respite.
The call of the sea gave her such strength that her own mother could
not convince her to wait even half an hour. It didn't matter how much
her mother begged her to calm her craziness until the almonds were ripe
for making nougat, until the tablecloth that they were embroidering
with cherries for her sistert wedding was frnished, until her father under-
stood that it wasn't prostitution, or idleness, or an incurable mental ill.
ness that had suddenly made her so determined to leave.
Aunt Natalia grew up in the shadow of the volcanoes, scrutinizing
them day and night. She knew by heart the creases in the breast of the
Sleeping \foman and the daring slope that capped Popocat6petl.* She
had always lived in a land of darkness and cold skies, baking candies
over a slow 6.re and cooking meats hidden beneath the colours of overly
elaborate sauces. She ate offofdecorated plates, drank from crystal gob-
*Popocat6petl: volcanic peak near Mexico City
o
F R O M B I C - E Y E D W O M E N
lets, and spent hours seated before the rain, listening to her mother's
prayers and her grandfather's rales of dragons and winged horses. But she
Ieamed of the sea on the aftemoon when some uncles from Campeche
passed through during her snack ofbread and chocolare, before resum.
ing their joumey to the walled city surrounded by an implacable ocean
of colours.
Seven kinds of blue, three greens, one gold, everything fit in the sea.
The silver that no one could take out of the country: whole under a
cloudy sky. Night challenging rhe courage of the ships, the tranquil con-
sciences of those who govemed. The moming like a crystal dream, mid-
day brilliant as desire.
There, she thought, even the men must be different. Those who lived
near the sea which she'd been imagining without respite since Thursday
snack time would not be factory owners or rice salesmen or millers or
plantation owners or anyone who could keep still under the same light
his whole life long. Her uncle and father had spoken so much of the
pirates of yesteryear and those of today, of Don Lorenzo Patifio, her
mother's grandfather, whom they nicknamed Lorencillo between gibes
when she told them that he had arrived at Campeche in his own brig. So
much had been said of the calloused hands and prodigal bodies that
required that sun and that breeze, so fed up was she with the tablecloth
and the piano, that she took of.
2. She was a miracle child,
Born to a mother who had failed
countless times before in her efforts to
become pregnant,
And a father who would give up his life to
see his family happy.
3. They named her Bianca, meaning white
or shining in Italian.
5. Light danced in her blue eyes, and her long,
dark hair-
Wavy, like her mother’s-
Bounced in the wind as she flew everywhere
her little feet would carry her.
7. Her long hair was bleached blonde,
The top of her head constantly adorned with a flower
crown.
She was recognized everywhere as the girl with the
long legs and mouth that got her in trouble.
8. Her life was kissing boys on
tiptoes,
Laughing with friends,
And traveling the world.
A blur of memories.
22. At ninety three, she lay in bed, the last of her
strength dripping away.
Her daughter, married now for twenty three
years, clung to her hand.
23. Laying her head down on her mother’s chest,
she whispered “You are my inspiration.”
Her mother laughed and whispered the last of
her words faintly into her daughter’s ear.