That’s the million dollar question.  At this point I’m so completely miffed with where my the whole blogging process that I could scream. 

I’m the second of four.  The order goes: girl, girl, boy, girl.  Ironically enough, my older sister’s name is Beth and she’s nothing like LW’s Beth.  She has the tendency to be condescending and patronizing.  Though, she does this less as we all get older.  Anyway, she’s a smart person and always got good grades in school.  Mr. Ecklehoffer thought she was a genius.  Maybe she was.  He used to call me Beth which drove me crazy.  Names are very important and when someone gets your name wrong it negates your identity.  Just spelling it wrong doesn’t count.  Afterall, who can calculate the infintesimal variations on “Christie?” 

Though I digress.  Birth order does matter.  The oldest child sets the stage for all the rest to come.  If he/she walks at 8 months then, the others should do the same.  How about this one, “Your sister Beth eats fried chicken.  Why won’t you eat it?”  My dad must have hated having to stop at McDonald’s to get me a hamburger everytime they got a bucket of chicken.  If he forgot to stop I sulked and cried until he eventually went back out and got a hamburger. It must have been tiring to have to go back again after working all day, but he did it because he loved me.  It didn’t matter that I was the second born.  He loved me for me, which believe me isn’t easy.  My dad used to say he didn’t know why he loved me so much because I was such a pain. 

By the time the third, fourth and fifth kids come along, parents are just physically and mentally worn out.  Their bodies can’t take anymore mileage and their brains have shut down.  They’ll do whatever the kid wants.  By this time, expectations are lower and wallets are fatter.  Also, child-rearing has softened them considerably as they are more tolerant of imperfections.  Additionally, they no longer expect that “Little Johnny” will find a cure for cancer, run marathons and be the first president to achieve world peace? 

Birth order affects how childre are treated and may play a part in the formation of personality.  However, the individual has the repsonsiblity for deciding who they will be.

 THE END

Hi Dr. C.  I ‘m getting really frustrated with this whole blogging thing.  My blog page hasn’t shown up in the updated column for at a least a week now.  Now, it seems as if my comments aren’t showing up either.  I responded to B&B about the Jo/Beth/Amy/Meg quiz.  For some strange reason it showed up under “Coffee and Chocolate.”  I’

I have finally finished the novel but did not read all of the afterword.  Towards the latter third of the book, it struck me that “Little Women” might be a deconstructionist work.  This idea caused me to pull out “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms,” Second Edition by Ross Murfin and Supriyia M. Ray to either confirm or disproved my idea.  On p. 91, Murfin and Ray quote J. Hillis Miller (quoted as being the preeminent American deconstructor) in an essay called “Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure” (1976) as stating that “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has alread dismantled itself.”  It goes on to state that deconstruction involves contradictory ideas standing next to each other.  So might not LW be a sort of tension-laden juxtaposition of text?  It is my understanding after reading the entry for deconstruction that Western cultures express themleves by means of binary opposition.  Examples include, but are not limited to, light/dark; presence/abscence; black/white and on an on ad nauseum.  In understanding this system of binary opposition, something (concept, noun, adjective, etc…) may be defined by what it is not.  For example, darkness is the absence of light.  In thinking about this concept, for lack of a prettier word, I remembered Dr. Campbell talking about how the sisters in LW yearn for family and the bonds it provides, as well as the yearning for independence and love and a life of their own.  When I apply a deconstructionist viewpoint to LW I see that perhaps it may just fit the definition.  They are women, not men, and so therefore not perceived as being readily able to attain the same rewards in life as men.  Yet somehow, they attain everything they want.  Even poor, pitiful Beth attains her sainthood in the end.  Father has gone off to war so they have only a mother who manages to effectively transport her charges through what is perhaps the most precarious and troubling times of their lives.  Further, they are not rich so they must be poor.  Poverty imbibes in them a grace of spirit and charity of heart not be felt by their wealthy peers. 

As a final matter, I just want to mention the tension aspect of the text.  It appears as if all of these binary juxtapositions infuse the text with tension.  It seems inevitable that if an entity is one thing and therefore not another, then tension must ensue.  I feel that this is a very surface-level discussion of deconstructionism and by no means do I mean to suggest that I am an expert in the field.  However, I feel strongly, that every worthwhile text contains deconstructionist elements. 

This post is for Dr. Campbell.  I’ve noticed that my posts don’t show up in the column called “Updated Posts.”  Does this matter? 

When Dr. Campbell asked us to think about who we identify with most in the novel I immediately thought, “I’m all Jo.”  However, after I thought about it for a while I realized that I have a lot of Amy in me.  I relate to Amy’s practicality and her matter-of-fact way of going about life.  She seems to get what she wants out of life without hurting others (I’m not counting what she did as a young child).  She is confident, self-assured and proactive.  These are qualities I find attractive in people of both sexes.  Jo appeals to the tomboy in me as I  too like to hang out with my guy friends and have fun.  Jo reminds me of Peter Pan in her desire to stay a child and never grow up.  On the flip side, Amy reminds me of stereotypical woman of the eighties who thought she could have it all.  These are both very distinct and tangible personality types.  However, I don’t think it’s possible for another to say that they are all one or the other. 

Dr. Campbell asked us to think about whether or not these characters were four separate entities or just four parts of one person.  I feel (this word just won’t go away) that they are all just too dynamic to be encapsulated into one person.  Someone like this would be very hard to deal with.  Anyway, I think part of the appeal of “Little Women” lies in the fact that there is something in all the characters for most women to identify with.  Personally, I find Meg and Beth to be too sappy and shallow to be of any real interest to me.  I’m not suggesting that they don’t have value; just that their appeal is not universal.  Perhaps this is one way to “read” the book. 

It looks like to me that if MS wants to patent something they will give it their best shot.  However, when I reread the article I referred to in my earlier post, I saw things a little bit differently.  That is, it seems like MS is trying to get their RSS patent by means of going around the issue.  If they’re granted the patent for the RSS management of an operating system, isn’t that effectively getting the RSS patent itself?  Just some food for thought.

This post is primarily one for Dr. C., however I would like to hear from anyone who has thoughts on the subject.  My post concerns an RSS patent.  From my scant research (primarily Google), it looks like Microsoft is involved, or planning to be involved in, patent litigation against other holders of RSS technologies.  Is this so?  They did file an application for RSS inside a web browser.  The inventor is Amar S. Gandhi plus seven others.  The issue seems to center around whether or not this patent application is based on prior art.  That is, is it merely an improvement on something previously patented.  What are your thoughts?  I’ve included a link to a website where I got some of my information.  I’d like to hear your thoughts.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061225-8491.htmlrs

I’ve been thinking about the metaphor of cuts in a movie being metaphoric extensions of the human heartbeat.  It made me think about all kinds of things.  For example, what would a heart murmur look like in a scene?  My understanding of a heart murmur is that it is an extra sound that is not supposed to be there.  They’re graded on a scale of 1-6, with 1 requiring no intervention or medicine.  Anything that’s rated 4 or higher requires some kind of pharmaceutical.  I know cause my poor kitty had a grade 4 heart murmur as well as a myriad of other cardiac issues.  In any event, would it be entirely too ridiculous to apply this same line of thought to movies?  I would like to watch the movie again in hopes of supporting my theory. 

As an aside, I now feel that I have to pay attention to things like cuts, heartbeats, shot lenghts and lighting when watching a film.  Before, I would have just watched a movie to be entertained.  Yes, I’m complaining a little bit.  Not in a bad way though.  But now I have to take a closer look.  I guess that’s a good thing.  I have a question for the class; Does anyone feel overwhelmed when watching a movie? (looking for all the cuts, lighting techniques, etc…)

As simplistic an exercise as it may have seemed in class today, it proved quite helpful to me in understanding what Dr. Campbell meant by the term.  At times I felt myself longing for a “cut,” while at others, I didn’t want another one.  I noticed that sometimes the director cuts while a character is speaking.  While it is a little distracting, I couldn’t help wondering if this way a way to draw attention to something in the new cut, or to disregard what was said previously.  What is the effect of a really long shot-does it grab your attention or lose it?

It would be interesting to know if cut patterns repeated themselves in this film as well as others.  Also, what was the term Edward used at the beginning of “Miller’s Crossing” and what did it mean?

Ok, so, I finally got cable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is nothing in life I can’t conquer now that I have cable.  The sky is the limit.  I think getting cable will even make me a better blogger.  I’ll understand the films I’m watching and be able to say “smart” things in class like everyone else.

Dr. C. – I’ll be able to keep up with my blogging requirements.