Second day of class

Thoughts of Ex Libris:
I enjoyed this book, more than i thought i would. When i first looked at it it looked like a book about books, how boring. I was greatly surprised by what i read. Anne Fadiman has an amazing way with words. Her essays were thought provoking and entertaining. I don't there there is a person in this country that cannot relate to one of the things she wrote about in this book. An example is we all have gotten more mail order catalogs than we want, I think i could fill a bath tub with them in just a month. what i liked about the section on the mail order catalog is how she could take a sears catalog and find poetry in it. i bet she could make the value menu at Burger King sound like an epic poem. This book is defiantly one that makes you think about the world around you in a slightly different way. It makes me want to go to an old book store and buy as may old ratty books as i can find.

Thoughts on Class, 7/2/08
Today in class we talked about not using cliche in class. Ok this makes sense, no one wants to here the same thing over and over again, it is just boring. not 10 minuets after we had this discussion Prof. Sexson said, "easy as pie." I found this quite amusing. I started thinking about the saying "easy as pie" and it made me wonder why we say easy as pie. I don't know how many of you have cooked before, but to make a pie is a long and involved process, and is not too easy (unless you buy a frozen pie crust, but that's cheating) so why is it easy as pie? So like any person in this modern world i Googled it and here is what i found on http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-easy-as-pie.html
"How though, are pies thought to be easy? It seems that, while not being easy to make, pies are generally thought to be easy to eat. At least, that was the view in 19th century America, where this phrase was coined. There are various mid 19th century US citations that, whilst not using 'as easy as pie' verbatim, do point to 'pie' being used to denote pleasantry and ease. For example, the related phrase 'as nice as pie' was used in Which: Right or Left? in 1855" so there you go that is the origin of the saying, assuming Phrases.org is right...


So far i have to say my favorite part of the class is story time. it is too bad that the classes are not longer so in stead of reading the books Prof. Sexson could just read them to us. As one of my fellow class mates said in their blog (sorry I forgot who it was) listing to his is like listing to a book on tape, only better. I would defiantly buy a book on tape read by Prof Sexson.


Ok on final tangent about some thing in class that is kind of bothering me. It seems like every one in the class hates technology. i don't see it like this. Technology is cool, i mean think about it, i can go out buy an iPhone and have the whole world of information at my fingertips. I can see photos of my brother on the east coast seconds after he takes them. I can watch the web cam at my parents mountain House in Colorado. I can even do things like look up were the saying "easy as pie" came from. I mean that's cool. here is a good story where technology was a good thing. Over in Iraq an Army Sargent was stabbed in the head with a kitchen knife. The knife entered his skull blow the brain and went into a cavity of the skull that hold vital blood vessels that feed the brain. At first he did not know he had a knife sticking out of his head. He was taken to a medical unit where they x-rayed his skull to see what the damage was. They determined he needed surgery, by a neurosurgeon, and a good one at that. If they just pulled the knife out of his skull then he would have died. . Before he left the Army sent his x-rays, and his information to the top neurosurgeon in the Army. He was sitting in Washington DC rush hour traffic when he got the call. He was able to load the x-rays and the patient information onto his laptop, and determined the Sarg. needed to be flown back to the United States. The doctors in Iraq put him into a medically induced coma, that he might never wake from, for the journey. Before he did this he was able to call his wife and talk to her. He made a full recovery from his surgery, and is now back with his unit. Ok so technology is not a bad thing, it is really a great thing. Don't get me wrong people don't read as much as they used to, and should probably read more. But it is not the technology that is causing this, it is people. Think about it, a book can't read it's self, a computer and turn on with out a person plugging it in an pushing power. So do not blame Technology, blame your self. If your a parent (I'm not) then it is your responsibility to read to your kids. It is like Anne Fadiman said in her book, parents are the ones that teach their kids how to be. So I'm going to continue using my ipod, my computer, and watching TV. But i still read almost every night before i go to bed, so i think people should be able to find a balance between the two, because the technology is not going to go away, and neither are the books.