The End

Thank you so much, Searcy! Thank you for all the hard work you put into making our Lit class AMAZING!!  You went out of your way to allow us to have a blast and learn in a fun way, and I am so glad for that! From haggis to cinnamon buns, sword fights to baguettes, we had an awesome class that we will all remember for a very long time to come!

And that's the way the cookie crumbles...uh huh, uh huh, I like it!...

P.S. - Haggis wasn't so bad while we were eating it...the aftertaste was disgusting though!  But your stew was great! And your cinnamon bun recipe is to die for, it it just THAT good! Just thought I'd mention....

Disembarking at The End

Me with my gelato on our first day in Italy!

Margaret Atwood's poem, Disembarking at Quebec, depicts the true immigrant experience and the feelings of isolation and loneliness.  I have never had to move to a new country or even a new city, as I have lived in Penticton my whole life, but even just changing schools can be tough.  When I changed from Carmi to Skaha Lake Middle School, only about six people came from my elementary school to my middle school, and so we had to face the daunting new task of getting to know all the other students, who had mostly all come from Wiltse.  It was a frightening and nerve wracking experience at times, but I know it is nothing compared to what an immigrant must face when coming to a new country where no one speaks the same language as you're used to.  I travelled to Italy and Greece not too long ago, which was an amazing experience but I can understand how lonely it'd feel to actually move somewhere foreign like that, for, although we tried to speak some of the languages, and the majority of the people spoke some English, all the customs and systems were different.  On our first afternoon in Italy, we went down to a beach store to order gelato, and later pizza, and the system for paying, getting a ticket, then actually receiving the gelato, or pizza, was so frazzling and frustrating and it felt so complicated just because we weren't used to it and couldn't understand the man's thick accent and broken English as we had yet to become accustomed to it.  "I am a word in a foreign language" Atwood wrote in her poem which rings true when referring to both the immigrant experience and just the experience of travelling to another country.

Hollow Day

In T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, the poem ends with "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper" where the men waste away with a disjointed and confused "whimper" kind of like the way some of our grad class went out.  The school year has been amazing, until we reach the final two days, in which none of our classes were very productive and we mostly played games and sat around talking.  The last day was especially bad, as pictured above, when four of us just sat on the couches in the library talking.  I expected the last day to be the best day ever and to be extremely fun, but, instead, it was probably one of my worst days of high school.  We all expected our yearbooks to come in so we could sign them on the last day like we usually do, but they never arrived, which dampened our moods.  I always pictured us running out the doors when the final bell rung like they do in movies, but that never happened either as I went home at the end of lunch to study for my bio exam during my spare and then go to work after school.  In the end, high school ended, not with a bang, but a whimper.

Do Not Go Gentle

 

My godsister, Cailla's daughter, Teagan.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light" is what Dylan Thomas said to do in his villanelle, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which is exactly what my family's friend, Cailla, did when she was diagnosed with non hodgkin's lymphoma a few years ago.  The cancer had spread to many areas of her body, but Cailla was only in her early thirties with a baby, my godsister, Teagan, not more than a year old at the time, and was a fighter.  She'd competed in many Ironman races over the years and used to race as a pro, and now she was determined to overcome this disease, even when the odds were against her.  She's a wonderful young mother and friend, who got sick far too early, but, just like Thomas instructs people to do, she fought against Death, raged with all she had.  And won!

The Old Lie

Although not a picture I took myself, when reading Dulce et Decorum by Wilfred Owen, I thought of all the war propaganda posters Mrs. Sutherland showed up and talked about during Social Studies 11.  This poster seemed very fitting when I was looking through pictures of old propaganda posters, as, one, this man depicted died in the war, sacrificed himself for others, actually knew the meaning of sacrifice, while others sit at home and just talk of sacrifice!  This reminded me of "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" from the lyric Dulce et Decorum Est in which it is saying that if you had ever actually experienced way, you would never tell children the old lie that it is honorable to go to war and encourage them to go to war.  This is just like this propoganda poster where the man actually knew the meaning of sacrifice and what goes on at war, whereas others just sit at home talking about sacrifice, thinking they know what sacrifice means and everything about the war, when really they don't as they have never been there to actually experience war and sacrifice firsthand.

How Do I Love Thee?...Let Me Blog the Ways

 

Whenever anyone mentions anything to do with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 I think of Lurlene McDaniel's novel entitled How Do I Love Thee.  I read this book many years ago, long before I knew how famous the poem, How Do I Love Thee, is, and I fell in love with the poem for it was written at the very start of the novel.  Now that I actually understand the poem and am becoming a loving and lovable  young woman, I appreciate it just all that much more.  I always think of the classic romance story from The Titanic and how fitting it is with this poem, as Rose and Jack truly loved each other "to the depth and breadth and height".  As well, I think of my own current young love, and I hope that someday "I shall but love thee better after death."

Because I Could Not Write This Blog

Because I could not write this blog -

It kindly wrote itself for me -

The Blog spoke of just Ourselves -

And my Mind's Ideas.

It slowly wrote - it knew no haste

For I had put away

My patience and my work ethic too,

For this overwhelming Blog.

It passed the Stanza, where opening words strove

About the page - in a line -

It passed the Middle of never ending phrases -

It passed the final remarks -

It paused before a Bed that seemed

That it could not wait for me to Enter -

The Pillow was barely visible -

The blankets - in a Mound -

Since then - 'tis Hours - and yet

Feels shorter than a Minute

I first surmised the Bell would Ring

At 7 o'clock every Morn -

Emily Dickinson wrote Because I Could Not Stop for Death, where the speaker is dead and is remembering back to when she died hundreds of years ago.  The speaker didn't really have a negative experience with Death, she is just remembering her death and accepting Death.  Three of my favorite songs: I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie, How to Save a Life by The Fray, and Somewhere Out There by Our Lady Peace, all have the same mood as this poem has, connecting to one another by way of their atmospheres.