I am surprised sometimes
by the suddenness of November:
beauty abruptly shed
to a common nakedness--
grasses deadened
by hoarfrost,
persistent memories
of people I’ve lost.
 
It is left to those of us 
dressed in the hard 
barky skin of experience
to insist on a decorum
that rises to the greatness
of a true Thanksgiving.
 
This is not a game,
against a badly scheduled team,
an uneven match on an uneven pitch.
 
This is Life.
This is Life.
This is Life.
 
Not politely mumbled phrases,
murmured with a practiced and meticulous earnestness.
 
Thanksgiving was born a breech-birth,
a screaming appreciation for being alive--
for not being one of the many
who didn’t make it--
who couldn’t moil through
another hardscrabble year
on tubers and scarce fowl. 
 
Thanksgiving is for being you.
There are no thanks without you.
 
You are the power of hopeful promise;
you are the balky soil turning upon itself;
you are bursting forth in your experience.
 
You are not the person next to you--
not an image or an expectation.
You are the infinite and eternal you--
blessed, and loved, and consoled
by the utter commonness
and community of our souls.
 
We cry and we’re held.
We love and we hold.
 
We are the harvest of God,
constantly renewed,
constantly awakened,
to a new thanksgiving.


~Fitz

Thanks for all of you who emailed your final essays to me. If you have not done so, you can airdrop to me in class. 

I "might" not be in class today, but I hope to be back in time But if not...

Use today's class time to work on your Walden Video Essay. Here are the bases you need to cover. I am perfectly happy for you to spend the next couple of class sessions "learning" to use Garageband and iMovie, as we will be using both of these programs extensively this year. Learn from each other. Be ready to make mistakes and learn from them. A mistake should never stop your progress.

I have indicated in red how much time I think it should take to make a real wham dammer of a video essay.

1. Collect Enough Images: Figure on three minutes per 500 words. By using the "Ken Burn's Effect" it is possible to use images in a movie for longer than if you simply used a still image. Using the Burn's effect, you can realistically keep an image for ten to twelve seconds. If you do not know how to use the Ken Burn's effect, then  spend some time figuring it out.  (One-Two Hours)
2. Record Your Audio: Use Garageband to make an audio recording for your essay. If you are not familiar with Garageband, learn how to use it. The web is full of useful tutorials. Practice before you speak--and speak slowly and deliberately and pronounce every s  y  l l a b le of every word.  IN the long run of life, every mistake that you leave in will drive you crazy. Leave enough of a space between paragraphs.  Record a short piece and check your audio to be sure you have set everything up before continuing. Add appropriate background music to your audio track. If you make a mistake, you should not need to start again at the beginning. (Two Hours)
3. Create Your Movie: I am still learning iMovie myself, especially on the iPad, so I am of limited help to you--though I am actively learning right now, too.  (Two-Three Hours)
4. Upload to Your Blog: The easiest way to do this is to upload first to Youtube or Vimeo and then get the embed code from those sites. You can also upload a Quicktime movie directly to your blog--though it takes quite a while

How do you tell someone that something which is not bad is not good? I feel a bit like that with a bunch of the essays I have read so far. All of them are lively, have a fresh and real voice, and offer some incredible insights for a young man reflecting on Henry David Thoreau’s life and writings—all of which is good; one the other hand, many of your thoughts scatter around the page in seemingly random patterns: one minute you are writing about Walden, and the next sentence is about your life, and the sentence after that remembers some current event.  I am sure to you it all makes sense. To a reader, however, it is an earnest process of trying to figure out what you are trying to say and why you are saying it. Writing an essay requires a heightened diligence to how your writing will be read and perceived by your audience, and you certainly do not want a confused and aggravated audience.

The buck stops with me, and need to take responsibility for what I have control over.  I want (and wanted) your essays to be pretty damn incredible, but they are not. They do have the seeds of greatness in them. There is plenty of raw material that can be refined into a more precious metal than you have now—but given the stakes—we need to rethink what we have done and how we can salvage amazing essays out of the work already produced.

Last week I posted a guide for creating a video essay that outlined the general flow that a video essay (or any essay) could follow. Many of you loosely followed the outline.

Very loosely…

Do you remember this?

   Stumped? Maybe this will help get you on track. This basic formula will work for a video, an essay, and even a portfolio. It will also allow you to have both the cool factor of a video as well as great writing piece for your applications—if you want. This formula creates about a ten minute video.

Scene One: Introduce Thoreau. 

• Open with scenes from Walden Pond with a 30 second narration of an excerpt from “Economy.” (30 seconds)

Scene Two: Introduce yourself 

• Narrate (or video) your opening paragraph. "Set the scene and state the theme". (1 minute: 200 words is about a minute)  
  

Scene Three: Your Narrative. 

• Tell your personal story about your experience studying Thoreau, going to Walden, and discussing Walden in class. Be sure to touch on how your thoughts evolved and even perhaps changed as we dug deeper into the book and you wrote “deeper” and more thoughtfully in your journal. This is a good place to steal some of your reading responses and your reflection from the Walden trip. (2-4 minutes)
  

Scene Four: Analysis of Thoreau’s Ideas.

• Weave in your analysis paragraphs, but rework them slightly to reflect your narrative voice: (2-3 minutes)
  

Scene Five: The Takeaways.

• How are Thoreau’s ideas still valid today? What are the takeaways you got from this experience? (1-2 minutes)
  

Scene Six: The Conclusion.

• Give your viewer some final thoughts to ponder—maybe even end with an excerpt from Walden. (1 minute)
  

It is still a good “map” but I think we need to formalize this a bit more, so here is a more detailed rubric we'll follow. 

For most of you, this will simply be a process of getting rid of some stuff and tweaking some other stuff. For some of you, it will require you to write or edit a few more paragraphs that stick more closely to the themes of “Walden, Thoreau, and You” using the narrative paragraph rubric. 

I know that you do not want to spend time doing this, but neither do most of you want to let your essay, in its present form, out of the door.

So now at least your reader is pumped to read what is coming and he or she is pretty confident they know the direction the essay is going, so now is the time to start making good on the promise of your opening paragraph but writing a series of body paragraphs, each of which is unified around a single theme and each of which is connected to the other paragraphs in a compelling and logical way. No paragraph comes out of nowhere: each paragraph flows out of the stating of the theme in your opening paragraph, which is the reason and purpose you are writing; you should be able to draw a line from each paragraph to the opening paragraph and “feel” the connection. If a connection is missing, either create it or delete the body paragraph because it is out of place.

Each body paragraph has a purpose, and that purpose is to enhance, amplify, elucidate, and/or explain and explicate some part of the theme introduced in your opening paragraph. (Am I repeating myself?) from everything I have read so far, all of your “themes” have to do with you trip to Walden Pond; your reading and study of “Economy,” and how and in what way Thoreau’s life and words influenced you—so that means that all of your paragraphs need to, must, are required to, on pain of death you must do stick to the themes you are covering.

To create an essay that captures both your experience of reading and studying Walden—and your intellectual response to what Thoreau is trying to say in his writings, you will need an essay map that looks (at a minimum) like this--which is essentially the same as my video map, but more specific in "how" you can write.

Narrative Paragraph #1: Theme: Going to Walden Pond. Use the narrative paragraph rubric located on my sidebar: Weave at least two quotes from Walden into the paragraph

1. Quote to weave into paragraph: “Lorem ipsum dul cim”
2. Quote to weave into paragraph:  “Lorem ipsum dul cim”

Narrative Paragraph #2: Theme: Reading “Economy” Use the narrative paragraph rubric located on my sidebar: Weave at least two quotes from Walden into the paragraph

1. Quote to weave into paragraph: “Lorem ipsum dul cim”
2. Quote to weave into paragraph:  “Lorem ipsum dul cim”

(Add additional Narrative Paragraphs if needed)

Transitional Paragraph: At this point in your essay there is a transition from a narrative voice to a more analytical voice, so it is a wise idea to create a bridge paragraph (it need not be a long paragraph) to help the voice shift in a more natural way.

Analytical Paragraph #1: (Already created, so edit and revise as suits your purpose)

Analytical Paragraph #2: (Already created, so edit and revise as suits your purpose)

Metacognition Paragraph: What it all means to you: what are the takeaways from this unit? Where did you struggle and how were you enlightened? What are your final thoughts on Thoreau?

Conclusion: The Tri-colon sentence: Read my blog for details on how to create this type of sentence.

I just spent two hours writing this post—really...so it is not like I am asking you to do more than I ask of myself.  

Take the night off from homework. We can start this in class on Thursday. It should be something we can finish in a couple of class periods.

Thanks for being flexible--and I really would not being doing this if I did not think it was important and needed to do.

I wonder how many of you are coming here on a Sunday afternoon or evening trying to figure out where you should be and what you should be ready for.

• The final essay/video/portfolio is due on Wednesday
  
• By tomorrow--even if you do not have class--you should be ready to pull you whole project together.
• If you are doing a video, you should have recorded your script/essay and collected enough images to load into iMovie and create your video.
• If you are writing an essay, it should be ready to put together for eddying and revision over the next couple of  days.
• If you are creating a portfolio, you should have a document set up with sections for each part of the portfolio and brief "meta-cognitions" (introductions) to each piece.

In short, almost ready to abandon ship.

     Stumped? Maybe this will help get you on track. This basic formula will work for a video, an essay, and even a portfolio. It will also allow you to have both the cool factor of a video as well as great writing piece for your applications—if you want. This formula creates about a ten minute video.


Scene One: Introduce Thoreau. 

• Open with scenes from Walden Pond with a 30 second narration of an excerpt from “Economy.” (30 seconds)
  

Scene Two: Introduce yourself 

• Narrate (or video) your opening paragraph. "Set the scene and state the theme". (1 minute: 200 words is about a minute)  
  

Scene Three: Your Narrative. 

• Tell your personal story about your experience studying Thoreau, going to Walden, and discussing Walden in class. Be sure to touch on how your thoughts evolved and even perhaps changed as we dug deeper into the book and you wrote “deeper” and more thoughtfully in your journal. This is a good place to steal some of your reading responses and your reflection from the Walden trip. (2-4 minutes)

Scene Four: Analysis of Thoreau’s Ideas.

• Weave in your analysis paragraphs, but rework them slightly to reflect your narrative voice: (2-3 minutes)

Scene Five: The Takeaways.

• How are Thoreau’s ideas still valid today? What are the takeaways you got from this experience? (1-2 minutes)
  

Scene Six: The Conclusion.

• Give your viewer some final thoughts to ponder—maybe even end with an excerpt from Walden. (1 minute)
  

Failing to plan is the same as planning to fail.
~Ben Franklin

People--teachers especially--tend to make big deals about essays, but really the only big deal is that an essay is a bit like going to a wedding or a funeral: it is something you approach with an elevated sense of right and wrong, and you definitely want to dress appropriately for the occasion.

Your essay should be more like your going to a wedding and you are celebrating the marriage of your mind to powerful and enduring literature. It also wants to be a marriage of your personal response to reading Thoreau for the first time and your analytical critique of his writing.

The final shape it takes should reflect the depth of your experience, so if it has been a shallow and unfulfilling experience, you have a tough row ahead of you.

But I don't think that it is the case: all of you have plenty of "fodder" in your trough. You have our reading of "Economy;" you have our trip to Walden Pond, a slew of personal reading responses, a couple of analytical paragraphs, some Harkness discussions, and the myriad thoughts you may have kept to yourself these past few weeks that should serve as the tasty tidbits you can include in your meaty stew. (I am on a metaphor rampage here.)

Over the Weekend: 

• Organize what you have: collect all of your writing responses in an organized place--a place that you can easily access while you write. I, of course, am a fan of Evernote. I use it all of the time to create rough drafts, ideas, webpages and everything else that needs to be "stored" for easy retrieval. You could just as easily create a folder in your pages document area; you could use Google docs, Microsoft Office, Notability--and even your blog.
  
• Start a rough draft: I usually hate the term rough draft because it implies you are writing something that is unfinished, but it always help me to just start writing "about" an essay topic, and more often than not that process defines a direction, a tone, and an overarching theme to what is ultimately "my essay." Another option is to work in an opening paragraph: "Set the Scene & State the Theme."  Here is a link to my blog "Three Techniques for Writing an Opening Paragraph." 

The final essay is not due until a week from TUESDAY. You must post at least five "Checkins" over the course of the week posted to your blog. e.g. Checkin #1. 


We will work on the essay in class and at home all week and next weekend. Consider the possibility of creating video essay--essentially an iMovie slide show where you write a script out of your writing pieces. It can also be turned in as a written piece that will serve well as a writing piece to share with an admission application.  If you are totally befuddled and daunted by the task ahead, start by simply creating a Portfolio of your work in a neat and organized fashion--including pictures, quotes, and your best work.

I hope this helps. I imagine that a good essay of this scope will require 10-12 hours of your time, so plan accordingly and don't anticipate a sudden gust of insight next weekend to get you to a distant shore.

Writing is work, but you are all pretty decent and thoughtful writers, and I really want you to have fun creating this essay by uttering the skills you already have within you. I want you to be proud of both your efforts and your final work.

I want you to give damn if only to experience the rewards that follow.

And yes, please comment on this essay of mine for the very word essay is an adaptation of the French verb essai, which simply means "to try," and all I have done in this little blog post is to try to make my points as clearly as I could.

Can anyone ask for more?

Here are a few of my essays that might help you get going:

1. Give a Damn
2. Why Paragraph?
3. The Work of a Writer 

Your two literary analysis paragraphs posted to your blog: Categories: Journal and Walden

1. The title should be the theme of your paragraph
   
2. Format carefully: You probably need 3-5 boxes for each your complete paragraph

For Example:

Assignment information
Optional

Text box with broad theme>narrow theme>one/two punch and the setup.

Text Box with head and heart and get out.  Don't tab the beginning of this

Really, what could be more exciting than to start the head and heart of a literary analysis paragraph with a tricolon sentence?

And why, you might wonder, should you? Because so many of you are drifting off topic and theme in your head and heart, starting with this style sentence might be just what it takes to keep you on the safe and narrow path of true analysis.

So here is my "formula:"  After your smoking gun (text support) start your head and heart with this type of sentence:

Give it a whirl in your paragraph. The tricolon is an effective writing technique because it adds a powerful rhythm to a writing piece, and it forces a writer to stay focused on a single idea or thought.

Commenting on my blog is a requirement. Many of you will receive a zero out of two this evening for that if you do not post comments on these assignments and updates.

It has become painfully obvious to me that many of you are not reading the details of the rubric. Your entire grade for this assignment is based on how well and faithfully you are following the details. Most of what I have read so far is at  a C level.

The important "Thing" to remember is that you are writing an analysis of a major theme in "Economy," so stick to that one theme throughout your paragraph--and keep hammering that theme home on every step of the rubric. If you can trust me, this is the one writing rubric that will serve you well throughout your life as a writer. 

Please watch the video and download and use the "Full Rubric," not the basic one. [CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE RUBRIC] (It is also available on the sidebar) I think I may have jumped the gun by allowing you to use the blank rubric--unless you are absolutely convinced that you "fully" understand each step of the rubric.

My suggestion, since I am gone for the next couple of days, is to form groups with two or three other people to proofread and critique each other's work.

Watch this video and post a comment on something "new" you may have learned. Also: post the names of the people in your group.

I am away at a conference for the next two days. Hopefully, you will have finished your first literary analysis paragraph by your first class time.  Post your finished paragraph as a single paragraph on your blog. Save in journal category and in your Walden category. Be sure to proofread carefully!!!

In class Monday and Tuesday: Due for both classes by Thursday

• Work on your second literary analysis paragraph. 
• Be sure to follow all of the details of the rubric.
  
• Include at least one outside source in your head and heart that supports the theme of your paragraph.
• Work on your paragraph in Quip or in Pages and save completed paragraph to your blog in the same way as your first paragraph.  Due Thursday.