Literary Contest; An Awards Ceremony

Hello my dear readers, my journey has been extended!

A couple of weeks ago my classmates and I entered the literary competition held by The University of Puerto Rico. We were able to submit into three categories which were poetry, shorty stories and essays. Most of my classmates including myself, entered our works in the poem category. We had been working on our poems for a while already in our actual class and our professor had been helping us make corrections, therefore, I think we felt much more comfortable entering something that we had worked on for a while. Three of our classmates were part of the ceremony. Two of them were place winners while the third received an honorable mention. These three classmates are Luis, Nathan and Angel.

The award ceremony was in honor of a fallen professor which if I am not mistaken passed away from cancer a year ago. I thought that the way they read his poems was definitely a great way to honor him. Also his colleges honored him by giving us his biographical information and one of the professors even explained his poems. We were a bit pressed for time however, I think that most of us in the audience really appreciated having that brief interpretation of the poems before hearing them.

The awards ceremony was over pretty quickly however we did get a chance to hear the first place winners works. My favorite reading was the first place winner for the essay category. With the title ‘Do witches get financial aid’, I thought it was a brilliant analogy for many of the social and financial troubles we college students face. I would’ve loved to have been able to ask questions but we were pressed for time… If I’m not mistaken both classmates that were award recipients entered in the poem category. Our classmate Angel accepted his third place award with his lab coat on which I found pretty funny at the time. Second place went to Nathan however I don’t recall if he was present. He most likely was. Last but not last but not least was Luis that won a mention. Although I think he was in the story category. The remainder of the class was cheering them one from the final rows of the amphitheater.  The first place poem winner was a girl from a different class and I must admit her poem was amazing.

I think this experience taught us about the importance of cheering on for our comrades when they receive well deserved recognitions. I hope that we have the opportunity to do so in the future.

Triffling things.

Adding to my list of short stories I've read this semester is 'Trifles' by Susan Glaspel.

A short story or a one-act play that in a nutshell is centerd on gender discrimination against women as it is about how a woman, Mrs. Wright who murders her abusive husband John Wright and then distant friends Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters that both blame themselves for distancing from her and allowing her to get to the point of murdering her hsban and not only do they solve the case but they end up keeping the knowledge to themselves in a way of self-preservation and to help their friend. Both of their husbands show blatant disregard for their wives saying that they should worry about silly or trifling things. Prompting them to obviously keep vital information about the murder from their husbands.

The murder in itself was a metaphor. You see, John had killed a canary that Mrs. Wright had bought off of a traveling salesman that reminded her of her pre-married life in which she used to sing all the time, in effect it was as if he was murdering her or her spirit all over again. And she in effect killed him. In reality I as a reader know that there are methods of getting away from an abusive relationship and what Mrs. Wright did was obviously a tad excessive however, I can't really blame her for wanting a way out of that situation...

I can't say that I'm thrilled to have read this short story however I didn't dislike it. Its a very in between piece of literature for me.

Watching a mini-series; The 60's

The 60's mini-series stars people like Josh Hamilton, Julia Stiles, Jerry O'Connell, Bill Smitrovich and Annie Corley. The series shows the side of both African Americans and Caucasians in the time period of, obviously, the 60's.


The Caucasian family, the Herlihys, are a working class one originally from Chicago. we see the father Bill Herlih is a former marine that as we learn through the series is very set in his ways, he approves and supports the Vietnam War and is outwardly discriminant but rather a more silent one, the mother Marie is a typical housewife; she cooks, cleans and takes care of her children, a quote that aptly describes her submissiveness ways is when she says 'I've been married a long time, I know what battles are worth fighting' however she does taken a stand in that same scene by signing a presidential campaign petition to end the war that her son Michael gives her.  The three children take completely different paths, the oldest son Brian joins the Marines right out of High School much like his father after not being offered a scholarship to Sacred Heart College which  is offered to his best friend and goes to Vietnam, the second son Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement he campaigns for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, both of which his father looks down on him for, he becomes involved in radical politics, and little sister Katie gets pregnant at a party by a lead singer that moves away to San Francisco, prompting her to make the move herself after a less than desirable reaction from her father when she informs him that she's pregnant, she then joins a hippie commune 'Pig farm' if I'm not mistaken. In the end we see how oldest son Brian comes back broken from the war and how his brother Michael is one of the main reasons of why he gets better, Michael himself speaks on behalf of his movement protesting the war and asking for the government to bring back the soldiers from Vietnam and sister Katie is reunited with her brothers at Woodstock and finally comes back home with her child Rainbow.

Meanwhile, we see the Taylors that are an African American family living in the deep South. The father a pastor is very much involved in civil movements and after a protest march in their community of which they've been a part of for what looks to be a long time, their house and church is burned down forcing them to move. When Willie Taylor, the father is shot to death by a police officer in a riot protecting his son, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton. After he is killed, he takes up the position of leader in his community.

Fundamentally I must say that I do like this series, it gave a pretty good insight as to what it was like to live in that time period; I think it was more than historically accurate, it showed both views, and truly showed how society would function in the situations that were presented. Of your interested in this period I fully recommend watching this series and for you to give your own thoughts on the situations.

What happend in the 60's?

Thought these past weeks my literature classmates and I have been watching a mini-series titled '60's'. While I have to make two posts on the series I want to take on of them and use it to give you an overview of what actually happened in this time period as so that when I upload my next post about the series you can have a pretty good sense of what is going on... Shall we begin?

The 1960's... an eventful time in history not just for us in the western hemisphere but also to our counter parts in the eastern hemisphere. However, for now I'm going to concentrate on the western hemisphere just to keep it relevant toward the series. The economy in the 60's is know for being a prosperous one. A time were the unemployment rate was down, jobs were there for the taking, technological development was at an all time high with factories and the like offering many opportunities. In politics we clearly remember President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and his succession by President Lyndon B. Johnson. We see how both President Kennedy and Pres. Johnson focus mainly in their camping to the betterment of the economy. Were introduced to Medicare, food stamps, monetary funding for education, the decrease in taxes and upping military spending due to the presence of America in Vietnam. Pop culture in these times is stepping out of the Elvis Presley era and coming into The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, we get to see Woodstock in its prime, we see the iconic smiley face and we see a great many fashion icons such as Elizabeth Taylor. Socially speaking we find one of the most trying times in our history, we see racial discrimination, gender discrimination, political discrimination religious discrimination and ideological discrimination. We see how much energy was put into the war effort and just how much energy was put into the protest of it...

As we can see, these are but a few things that the 1960's gave us. I hope that now you may be able to capture what the mini-series is about...

'Freedom' A poem by yours truly

FREEDOM

Freedom,

It’s that little aspect,

of not being tied down,

It’s that feeling of Zen,

It’s that feeling of peace…

I love that feeling.

 

Freedom,

I have found that people have been privy to it,

This feeling,

The feeling of freedom,

I pity those that have perpetrated this,

Those that take freedom away,

For they themselves are not free.

 

Freedom,

So empowering and magical,

The endless possibilities of freedom,

You’re free to dream and wonder,

Wonder and dream about the beauty of the world.

 

Freedom,

Some might find peace with it,

But it means so much more than that.

We strive for freedom,

Yet we sabotage our own,

Why?

 

 

 Anthony Hamilton~~~ Freedom (Django)

Performing in front of the class

A couple of weeks ago my classmates and I had the task of presenting a sketch or play just for us. Since we have been covering the theme of discrimination, goes to show what our sketches were about. We pretty much covered all of the basis for discrimination; race, sexual orientation, living arrangements, religion, etc.

My group 'THE Writers' covered racial discrimination. Our sketch is titled 'TSA' and in overview it's  about a Mexican and his day at an airport. We see him and our other characters going through the TSA checkpoints and after clearing the first one, our main character is detained and questioned at the second checkpoint by a racist TSA agent because he is belived to be an illegal immigrant, another passenger overhears the dispute and goes to the aid of our main character. The actual process of coming up with the idea for racial discrimination, the dialogue, assigning characters and whatnot was simple enough. I consider on of the hardest parts of the assignment was the fact that we had to tie in a poem that had something to do with the sketch itself. We ended up going with a poem titled 'I Rise' by M. Angelou. Which I think is pretty much a straight forward poem as to what a person that has felt the brunt of racial discrimination actually feels.

The actual process of the sketch to me was pretty enjoyable in a way... but I much rather be in the creation process of it all than actually acting. But I must say that the theme while sometimes overdone is still a very prominent problem in society. I can even relate to this situation basically in its exact detail. Which I find outrageous not because of the fact that it happened to me but because that its happening in this day in age when we know the kind of consequences that stem from discrimination and we as a general society should know better...