class 2/25/09

I am not sure if i agree with Anamnesis, it sounds a little unlikely. however, who am i to say that when i was a baby i did not know everything possible, i just forgot it as i got older. it is amazing to think that babies are able to understand all the knowledge of the world. Though one thing i do agree with is the idea of starting small with love. it amy not be practical to start by loving a tree, a rock, a cloud. Even though i do not think that starting with smaller objects to build your wayt to loveing a woman is practical. I do think it is important to appreciate what is smaller and to enjoy all the world around. it is a good thought to want to appreciate all things and not just the human body of a woman. my favorite part of class was the meaning of Sophia. My little sister is named Sophia. She is ten, i am not sure how wise she is right now but some day i am sure she will be. But i find it odd that Phil means love, every phil i have know has been a dunce. but once again all that is past possesses the present.

class

Over the weekend i attended a conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was for delegates from each school in the region to pass legislation and constitutional changes. A tradition at all the conferences is to try to steel the Ten Inch Thing! it is a huge plastic orange doll. Each school steels it, or at lest tries to and who ever can take it home gets the pride of the biggest honor. on the 3rd day of the conference I stole the Thing and was able to hold onto it, litteraly, for 12 hours straight. including eating and using the restroom! I felt just like Hermes when he is causing mischief for all the gods. I wanted to say "but i was just born yesterday" to everyone that tried to steel it from me! It was wonderful to feel mischievious and sneeky. Thanks to Hermes and thanks to MSU for the great adventure. it is true that all that is past possesses all the future!

class 2/13/09

When we talked about keeping a journal and loosing those memories once they are on paper, i began thinking of my own journal keeping. I was in Mongolia this summer and kept a journal of all the days we were there, about a month. And when i think back to it all i still have all my memories they are just made clearer as the specific dates and places that things happened durring the trip. I think it is crazy that men played women in plays before they hit puberty and had their voice change. But when i think about it, when i read and saw Rosencranze and Gilderstern are dead it was a young boy that played the beautiful women in one of the traveling plays. That is so weird? I wonder if guys or boys today would do that and be proud? I cannot think of any of my friends growing up that would want to play a girl in any way. I am nervous for the quiz this coming Friday. I am hoping that I read our texts well enough and remember all the details well enough to get a good grade. For anyone that has had one of his classes before, are the quizies and tests hard? is there a best way to study for them?

class 2/11/09

It was interesting and crazy how different the translations of the first speech of Antigone are. Personally i liked the translation by Fagle best, it has the best details and read the smoothest. Hyane was too loose and open ended for me, Watling was traditionald and stuffy, and Green was too short and sparce on the details. Fagle was defenitly the best translation, it remineded me of the Odyssey. One of my favorite lines in Angtigone is when she is talking is Ismene, "Ismene, dear heart, my true sister." I think that line is so beautifully put and even thought it states a fact it is writting in a beautiful way. When Oedipus is asking who his family is and where he comes from it reminds me of the little kid book "Are you my mother." Where the little bird is asking all the other species if they are his mother. I picture Oedipus wandering around Thebes and the mountains calling to women, "Lady, Are you my mother?" But my ultimate favorite line of Antigone is "He has no right to keep me from my own." When Antigone is stating her willingness to defy Creon and die for his transgression, i find it totally consuming. Her passion and conviction to save her brother is profound and truly endearing.

class 2/9/09

Today was great. I loved the images of Dr. Sexson being drawn to a t.v. set to watch some old lady with grey hair frying meat and veggies for a fajita. Plus his bright blue glasses today were so cute. I wonder if they were his wife's glasses. Plus, I am always ready to talk about farting and making clever farting jokes, i defenitly missed the farting part of Hermes in my first reading. Today's discussion about disfunctional families really struck me. I cannot believe that there is not one perfect or at least almost perfect family. not perfect in the pleasant ville kind of way but in a loving and always striving to be better and nicer kind of perfect family. I want a large family some day and i hope that my children will never sit in a class and call the live i give them disfunctional. I mean, i know that my family is defenitly set in that category unfortunately but i do want better for my future. i just hope that it is possible. i feel bad for Oedipus and his family, they are lucky they did not have severe birth defects with their gene variation.

class 2/4/09

I liked class and the discussion of Ground Hogs Day, the movie, but I do not fully understand the realtionship between the movie and today. I would much rather talk about Antigone and Antigones. I love the story of Antigone, the plot and the lessons behind it. I must say that I read it in high school and loved it then but not for the same reasons as now. I think this time i took away from the story the idea of family. I also like the idea of the downfall of the opressor, Creon. I think that he is a huge jerk, in modern terms, and am glad that his family fell apart. I just wish that he would have seen the errors of his ways sooner so his family would have been happier. Plus, it is crazy to think that he isolated his own son and punished him by still killing Antigone.

class 2/2/09

Class today was crazy and totally unfocused. I am pretty sure we only stayed on topic of the Homeric Hymns for around five minutes. I loved that we discussed the movie Groundhogs day. Which I will admit that I have not seen in a long long while. I am pretty sure that I saw parts of it as a young child with my family but I cannot remember any part of that movie, at all. I was surprised that Ben had not seen it, for some reason i assumed that he has done everything or read everything that Dr. Sexson talks about in class each day. I liked the story of Persephone and Demeter allot better than that story of Hermes. Simply because it was hard for me to understand the language of the praise to Hermes. The analogies that were throughout the story were hard for me to understand and after a while i simply stopped looking at the footnotes. However, it is definitely one of the more creative stories of the gods and has one of the best messages. The idea that in the end Music is all that matters in life is amazing.

class 1/30/09

Friday in class I was surprised that Dr. Sexson liked Rio's pen. I thought that perhaps he would say that our generation has disconnected from personalness even more. But he truly liked it. That pen does sound helpful but really expensive. I loved when Dr. Sexson posed the question; If there was a musical event in time that we could go back to what would it be? At first I thought that I would go to Woodstock, simply to say that I was there. But I do not think I would have that much fun with all the drugs that were involved. So what then, what musical event would I go to. I think I would want to go to the first time my boyfriend sang for me. It was the best musical moment in my life time. That means more to me than any historical event in music.