Isabel Allende: In Giving I Connect with Others

At first, when I listened to Allende's essay I was thrown off by her accent that I loved, but in the beginning was distracted by. After listening to her read her essay again, I was able to pick up on different words that she tried to drive home to the listener. Words like 'passion, 'agony,' 'ferociously,' and 'cleansing,' to name a few, were clearing articulated to show their importance and to not only hold the attention of the listener but also truly grasp their attention by making them feel the emotion that those words convey.

Allende also did a beautiful job of hanging her voice and even in some times fading to let the listener know that this section of the story is over, but there is still more to come. Allende also repeated words to drive the example of giving into the listener and overall had a successful delivery of a beautiful essay.

Jackie Lantry: The Power of Love To Transform and To Heal

Although I enjoyed Lantry's essay, I did not enjoy the way that she read it. I felt as though she was reading a storybook to a first grader to entire time. What that means is that she sounded excited and joyful during the whole story about how hard is was for her when she went to China to get her son Luke to take him home. Though her pace was fine, her tone was completely off for this type of story.

Personally, while I was reading the essay, I did not have true excitement in my voice until the part that says, "It is four years later..." because this is the exciting part, this is where we find out that a once scared and small boy from China is now loving life and is happy and healthy. Not to say that Lantry should have been a downer the entire time, but for this essay, her tone seemed inappropriate. Though I adored her essay. I hated her delivery. It didn't fit.

From these two essays I noticed a lot of things that I will have to keep in mind for my own recording of my essay. Hopefully I will be able to keep the listener's attention like Allende did by picking out powerful words and I will use the right tone at the right time so my listeners are not confused about the content of the story and it's importance based on the tone of my voice. Overall though, I think I will be able to do well because of all of the communication classes I've been in.

Through those communication classes I have been able to learn how to "write for the ear" because when you're delivering a speech, people hear you, they don't see the paper in front of you. So with that knowledge and with the knowledge that we would eventually be recording ourselves reading our own "This I Believe" essay's I tried to write for the ear, instead of the eye. Hopefully, I did that well enough and the recorded version of my essay will be flawless.

Stay classy Seton Hill.

Anyway, this entry to to explain how wonderful the song "Rock Your Soul" by Elisa is. AMAZING. Like greatest thing I've heard in AWHILE. Like so good I could puke. I spent the last 99 cents left on the iTunes gift card my brother gave me on it today at approx. 1 p.m. and it has been on repeat since then. (It's now 2:31 p.m.) I want to use it for my Modern Dance final. Bah, December is so far away! We'll see how that goes. Check out the song here.

While that statement is true, I always liked giving something up for Lent, just for the sake of doing something during this time. I remember one year when I was in elementary school I gave up applesauce - which to most people doesn't seem like a big deal, but I LOVVVVVE applesauce, I eat it with everything, especially cinnamon applesauce. Hmmm...my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Anyway, I had never been so happy for Easter than I was that year. (Even though Easter is my favorite holiday, that year it was made 2,000 times better.)

Moving on...when I was in high school I thought about doing a media fast, but thought it would be too hard considering my intake of AIM, MySpace and Xanga. Well, since then my media intake has only gotten worse. I crave time to be informed on every little detail of the world around me, which is good, considering I'm double majoring in Journalism/New Media and Communication. But, currently I'm feeling a little worn down by it all. I feel like I'm in the know about too much. (On that note, I also considered giving up any form of gossip for Lent this year, but considering 85% of the conversations at SHU are in some form gossip, I don't think I can really avoid it at all costs, but I will still be trying to cut back.)

Anyway, over this past summer, while I worked at Jumonville I felt so free from the tension of being so in the know. I actually liked the process of not knowing everything and not knowing what was happening around the world while I was in a "bubble" up on that mountain. It made me enjoy my time there even more and appreciate the news that I did get randomly even more. So even though I do ADORE Seton Hill, I think that limiting my intake of the outside world would make me feel even more appreciative of this baby mountain like I am with Jumonville.

So, a media fast it is. However, I need some rules. I know I cannot go cold turkey so I've made up some boundaries.

• Internet. I'm giving up everything, except websites I have to look at for class and my Seton Hill email account, considering SHU doesn't know how to communicate without email; I have to be able to check it.
• Reading. Again giving up everything except what I have to read for classes and the Bible of course, and if this turns into me actually having time to read for fun, then I'm only reading books that have to do with religion in some form. (So that book about the spiritual journey of George W. Bush that I've been dragging along fits in this category.)
• TV. None. This shouldn't be too hard considering I don't watch T.V. unless there is nothing else to do, which during the school year is very rare.  
• Music. I cannot live without music and I never think I would be able to, but on that note (pun intended) I will only listen to Christian music. I feel like I've downloaded a sufficant amount and if I end up getting bored with what I have, I have friends that I'm sure will let me borrow what they have as well.
• Talking. One site I looked at said to give up cell phones but that is taking this a little too far, considering that is my only form of communication left for people outside of Seton Hill. However, like I said I'm going to try to cut back on being involved in the gossip conversations that float around like mad on this hill and I'm working on that "speaking in turn" thing so that I become a better listener. I feel like I am a good listener but I think everyone could do better in this category and I'm a camp counselor so I should be able to accomplish this better than I am currently. Also, I have to be able to call home on Sundays, it's basically a rule.

We'll see how this works out. If it doesn't I could always be generic and give up pop (soda). No worries, I'll be sure to blog about it all if I do make it through around Easter. 

Because of my major, I understand that they need to tell the news and need to get the story out there, but live taping of the memorial? And cameras crowding around a bunch of crying students? It made me sick to hear the cameras snapping away as soon as Father Stephen told us to give each other signs of peace and comfort. Do you really need that many pictures of people hugging? I'm sure everyone understands that Seton Hill is still in mourning.

However, I was proud, and more accepting of my second major, when I read an article in the Tribune Review today. After hearing countless times that there was a picture of me on the front page, I finally tracked one down at lunch to check it out. (I hated the picture.) But this is the best article I've read about Briggs so far. 

Thank you, Jennifer Reeger for painting a more accurate picture of Joe for those that did not have the chance to meet such a caring person. I picked the Journalism major because I wanted to give a better name to "media" and the reputation that goes along with it. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who is trying to do that.

Please continue to pray for the Seton Hill community, Joe's friends back home and especially his family. You're missed Briggs - you truly are. <3

Eric doesn't look too happy, but I assure you he had fun. Look how cute our puppy is and look how high the snow is....so pretty.

Silly puppy, you're not going hunting. (Wow, what a fashion statement I was making this afternoon.)

Look at that face!!! This is the part where I explain her name. Gordy. Apparently, in the movie about that pig, Gordy, around the pig's eyes where different, one eye was black and one was pink....now look at my dog, one is pink and one is black. The people that had her when she was just a babe gave her that name, I have to thank them for not going with a cliche name like snowball...that would have been annoying, esp. in today's weather.

Dominating a very large mountain of snow in the farthest part of the back yard.

Pretty good picture, taken on my phone, if I do say so myself. (I'm sure if you could, you would lick the snow off of your nose too.)

Although I look like a hot mess, look how cute Eric looks in this picture. And clearly our youngest sibling missed the memo about looking at the camera for this picture.

Great fun was had by all! Eric goes back to school tomorrow :(

I guess she would really be considered Christian Indie. But she is a worship leader at IHOP (International House of Prayer...I thought it was Praise, but looked it up for the sake of right-ness in my entry and it is Prayer. Either way, I would still like to go there someday.)

Anyway, I first heard her stuff during the summer, literally until I was sweating out the lyrics (how's that for a visual) and I have to say that I like her. Now, that's saying a lot, considering I don't think I truly, full-heartedly, like any female worship leaders or really any female Christian singers and the idea of female pastors still doesn't sit well with me; even though I'm all for women being on the same playing field as men...I digress. Misty Edwards is good stuff.

So since I lost the CD I had of her over the summer, I downloaded a bunch of her stuff from iTunes (gotta love gift cards and downloading legally) and have been listening to it, and I'm sweating out some sweet lyrics...which has got me thinking.

A lot of her stuff has to do with a really deep relationship with God. Like on a level that I don't know if many people actually get to during their lifetime. A relationship that is totally left up to God and is so intimate that God is a real, living and totally loving person...actually deeper than that - I am just at a loss for words and cannot explain it.

On her MySpace page she says, "I have a great desire to see the knowledge of God flood this generation. I mean the real knowledge of God, not the distant Sunday School version but the true encounter with the Uncreated," and later that this is all she cares about. Her songs are so much about being IN LOVE with Jesus and not just loving him, but being fully in love, head over heels, all you think about, all you care about, the reason why you breathe, in love with him. That's intense stuff! And I like it a lot! And I really like that she says "not the distant Sunday School version," because I really feel that America has become caught up in thinking going to church is a good thing to do - even if they are not getting something out of it. Ugh, I hate church....I adore worship. Let's get things right here and really praise God, fall out of tradition a little - don't just go to church...go to worship. (I'm reading Dirty Word by Jim Walker, if you ever read it, you understand my last statement, if you haven't than you should. He's good stuff too.)

Anyway, I really admire a woman that can say that Jesus is the first man in her life and really live that out, even if she is in a relationship with a guy on earth. I think it shows a very rare kind of beauty that our world should be starving for. I think it's easy for a woman to sing a song about being in love with a guy and make it a hit, that's been done since the radio was invented; but for a woman to sing of being in love with Jesus and make it good is just mind-blowing to me, because no one seems to think of the love that they are really needing. It's like Misty Edwards has made songs that every other female artist wished she came up with - but couldn't because no man on earth can love as perfectly as God can. (And I'm not trying to diss men; I know no woman could love like that either.) Like I said, she's good stuff.

There's a saying that goes something like, "A woman's heart should be so lost in God, that a man has to fully seek him to find her." Uh, that is beautiful, and Misty Edwards' songs are beautiful, do yourself a favor and download some. I'm making this out to sound like only girls can have this kind of relationship with God, but that is not true - it is just the way her songs sound to me, personally. I actually know more guys that listen to her than girls and a guy was the one that got me listening to her over the summer. (Just saying.)

But how wonderful would it be to be so in love with God, that someone on earth that wanted to love with you would have to so in love with God just as deeply to understand you and to be able to love you perfectly. That just sounds wonderful to me. But then again, I know I'm different.   

Also, as a side note, I discreetly complained in a note on Facebook recently about how boys do not seem to appreciate true beauty...."Don't depend on things like fancy hairdos or gold jewelry or expensive clothes to make you look beautiful. Be beautiful in your heart by being gentle and quiet. This kind of beauty will last and God considers it special." (1 Peter 3:3-4) Thank you!

I need to work on that quiet thing, but while doing so, I feel the need to work on being IN LOVE with Jesus as well. Hmm, to be in love with what every woman wants. That must be nice, and I already know that he's head over heels, in love with me - that's even nicer. 

Personally, I think that it lacks a little professionalism, but none of the testers seemed to feel the same, so I left it as is and only changed the things that I could for now.

With that being said, the changes I made are as follows:

• Added a clearer title or "introduction" to the home page to give users a reason to be there (apparently seeing my face wasn't enough, haha)
• Added a short navigation bar to each staff members page, so users could easily go to the next page or the prvious page or back to the home page.
• Changed the background of the Journal page (I hated the old one...this one is classy)
• Fixed typos and spelling errors throughout.
• Moved the home page navigation bar to the top so users didn't have to hunt for it.

What I would've liked to do if I had more time:

• Added more pictures to each staff members page
• Added more of a biography to each members page
• Had at least a little reflection from each of them of the whole summer to put on each of their individual pages

But overall, I think I did alright. See for yourself.

I was trying to make a site that shows the pictures that didn't make it to the staff site that Jumonville already has made and to show more of an inside view of what a summer full of camp is to the people that actually live it. (I think I got that accomplished.)

But please feel free to make suggestions and tell me what you like and hate about the site - personally it's starting to get on my nerves because I've been looking at it and working with it for so long now, it seems anyway. Let me know what you think, whether you're in the class or not - and if you need a person to look over your site, feel free to ask!

Although through the alpha testing I got a lot of positive feedback about my "in the making" website about the 2008 summer staff at Jumonville. I know there were quite a few people that looked at my site and didn't really have anything "bad" to say about it. (Come on guys, find something...haha) and so far, Maddie already commented in her blog about how much she liked my design....but besides that I need to add more writing to it because, after all this class is Writing for the Internet.

I think that I will continue to be my own worst critic though because I am very passionate about the subject that I'm working with. (As you can tell from blogs I posted over the summer from beginning to end of the "Jumonville Journey.") But I guess I could add those responses to the site (as I just think of that idea now) to make up for the lack of A LOT of writing. 

But there are also a number of things, besides the writing that I have to add as well:

• A better heading - I hate the block-y-ness of the one I have now
• A navigation bar like the one Jackie has on her WAF site to the bottom of my page
• Pictures, that I am still gathering, for each staff members individual page
• At least one link back to Jumonville's already established website

I think it will turn out decently well once I get all of my own personal touches in there along with some of the selected writings I already did - we'll see how that turns out. Although, I already talked to my bosses, Larry and Ree, and they said that they think this is a great idea and depending on how it turns out will want to link it to Jumonville's site...ugh, that just gives me more pressure to make it look good. (As if I didn't give myself enough reason to do so already, haha.)

But as a side note, if you are willing, you can help me sort through the entries I wrote over the summer by reading the following links. (Or if you think I should add them all, please let me know - or if you have any other ideas, please feel free to throw them my way.)

• 1 Samuel 12:24
• i will stand for You
• The beginning of chaos and fun
• And give us clean hands...
• Searching for God knows what
• Quoting Miss Hilton
• July 13-19
• My favorite Bible verse
• Wednesday = Home 

Must say, this class is not what I expected it to be; however, I've learned a lot through it. I learned where my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to the internet - and where I'm willing to learn. (ex: I may actually use html someday for a client, so I was willing to learn more and more about that but I never see myself making text games so I was never really head over heels in learning how to do that better.)

On to the entries.

Coverage - I did miss a blog entry this time around. I missed the blogging for October 29, and I'm going to guess that it's because that blogging was about making text games, which I said wasn't of great interest to me - so that homework assignment clearly was put on the back burner that night. (I probably had to write a large paper for another class that night as well. Good possiblity.)

Timeliness - Like I said in the portfolio two, my account of timely is much sooner than Jerz's so I did okay with that this time around. I've gotten much better at the timely thing especially since last year. Some entries that prove that are as follows.

• Rockin' Out
• Writing Novels
• Blindfolding
• That was easy
• Grr Rivals

Discussion/Interaction - Usually my best areas but this time around I fell through with it. However, there is some class business going on, on my blog - along with some outsider comments.

• Rockin' Out -link to Dani's blog
• Writing Novels -that's the reaction I was going for
• Blindfolding -lame titles bring in the crowds
• Looking Serious -comments from outside

Depth - I did not do as well as I did on this part as I did in the last portfolio either - but we did notice in the last portfolio that not many people commented when I had a lot of depth entries - so I'm trying to find the "happy medium" in this section still.

• Krug Practicing
• Writing Novels
• Go to source

A decent portfolio. Not one of my best but still decent.

So far I have a home page with a picture of everyone linking to their own personal (but so far blank) pages. I plan to put a little biography on each of the personal pages along with pictures from through out the summer. On the home page I also link to a page that I made at the beginning of the year when we first started making html codes and will make other pages like it for group photos.

I think I'm well on my way and will do fine - but I will need people to look over the draft when it's all set up - so I'll be looking out for people to fill that spot.

While I thought that both sites gave good brief over-views of the colleges, I still think that SHU's was better - but of course I have a biased opinion. I liked that SVC's site had more intimate things like the part about the "Crazies" (even though I think that is disrespectful) it made their site feel more like a student wrote it - where as SHU's site sounds like a brochure.

Both are decent Wikipedia sites. But both could have A LOT more thought put into them. They both sound like someone was just getting something onto the web - instead of really digging into the facts and the personal side of the schools.

Even if we're not in the same level of on-field competition anymore...we're still rivals - now it's just on and off of the internet.

Because we were told to pick a subject we knew a lot about and since I have known about Jumonville since I was eight, I figured that would be a good site to look at. I have to say that I was pretty disapointed when I went there and found that barely anything was on the page.

Not really knowing where to start, I just went to Jumonville's website and copied what they had to say - but I gave them proper credit, so no plagiarism was involved - I take no credit for writing what the Wikipedia site says now, all I did was upload it.

I also added a picture...but sometimes it doesn't show up. (Insert sad face here.)

Everything on the editing page was fairly easy to use though, I felt that it was like creating a blog page - so it wasn't too hard to use, which is nice so people can edit pages easily - but that's also bad because that means that anyone can change and alter the information - whether it's true or not.

I really was impressed with the Five Pillars and Key policies and guidelines pages because of how offcial and professional they both made Wikipedia sound. Which made me think about the article we read about how Wikipedia is becoming credible.

Though both of these "rules" pages seemed very professional there was still one thing that bothered me about them, which was at the bottom of each page was the edit link, that you can find at the end of every page on Wikipedia. Though I guess this is useful - who wrote these pages? The creators of Wikipedia - or some random users. For me, to feel like Wikipedia is a creditable source, they'll need to get rid of that edit link - especially on the pages that are supposed to display the rules for all of Wikipedia's users.

In those cases, I don't see why either sight is "bad" though many professors have told my classes to never, ever even look at those sites. However, is that all changing now?

In our Writing for the Internet class we read an article about how Wikipedia may be becoming an academic source, though I don't think Wikipedia will ever be that advanced if anyone with a computer is always allowed to edit it, this article brought up a lot of interesting points about how scholars use it, basically for the same reason I do. (Ha, who knew I was so bright!)

This part stuck out most to me... "Of course, just because more researchers—including some prominent ones—are citing Wikipedia does not mean it’s necessarily a valid source for academic papers.  However, you can begin to see academic norms shifting as more scholars find useful information in Wikipedia and begin to cite it." I like this part best because I don't fully agree with it. Even if some prominent researchers are now citing Wikipedia, I don't think I ever will. I don't feel that something that can be altered by any average human being at any time could ever be considered scholarly. So, you won't see me citing it until it is only run by a few, VERY smart people.

I think that my idea is justified by this article, where it talks about someone being sued for liable because of something he put on Wikipedia; when the only reason he did so was to make a joke - because he didn't think Wikipedia was a real website used for research, he thought it was just a joke site.

Both of these articles were interesting, but because both of these sides exist I don't think I'll ever be able to fully take Wikipedia seriously.