Nick Thornsby's Blog: พฤศจิกายน 2011

วันอังคารที่ 22 พฤศจิกายน พ.ศ. 2554

Students put their poetic words to work

Two Cody sophomores are putting their words to work. They are entering writing contests, and they’re winning.

Myshell Smith, 15, was encouraged by Karen Careathers, a teacher at Medicine and Community Health Academy at Cody, to enter the City of Detroit Angels’ Night Poster and Oratorical Contest. Smith had only one day to write and submit her entry because she didn’t find out about the contest until the day before the deadline.

Submitting her poem wasn’t the end. Smith had to recite her poem to be considered for a prize. She didn’t like that idea, but she did it because part of why she entered the contest was to show that it’s possible to follow your dreams.

“I was so nervous! At first I thought I was going to puke!” said Smith, who was even more nervous after she saw that she wasn’t dressed as formally than the rest of the students.

Her outfit didn’t matter. She took second place in the contest and won a digital camera.

Academy of Critical Thinkers at Cody student Latasha Irby has written poetry for years, but she wrote more after she started working with Sherina Sharpe from the InsideOut Literary Arts project last year in her English class.

Irby didn’t wait for a contest announcement. She searched the Internet for contests and recently found out that she won two of them. Creative Communications at www.poeticpower.com has new deadlines every few months, and Teen Ink at www.teenink.com/Contests/PoetryC.php accepts entries any time. Both contests publish the winning entries.

Irby said winning the contests boosted her confidence about her writing.

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วันเสาร์ที่ 19 พฤศจิกายน พ.ศ. 2554

As top regional leaders gather, a timely appeal to become less parochial

วันพุธที่ 16 พฤศจิกายน พ.ศ. 2554

Review: The Ides of March

Expectations management’ is a crucial tool of modern politics: what matters is not how objectively effective or ineffective a person is, but whether they can exceed the standard people (or, more importantly, the media) expect of them.
My expectations of what to expect from The Ides of March had been raised pretty high – I mean, George Clooney and US politics: what could possibly go wrong…?
Well, quite a lot actually. I can’t, of course, say much more than that the film didn’t match my expectations (by a rather long way).
But I found the film very disappointing. The plot was weak, the drama was, well, non-existent and the characters (particularly those played by Ryan Gosling and, in particular, George Clooney – ie the main ones) were utterly unconvincing.
But do you know what my first thought was? It was that the film was not a patch on The West Wing.
It’s inevitable that we West Wing fans are going to judge the film relative to what is one of the finest political dramas ever made, and because of that it was always in the back of my mind that the film wouldn’t be up to the challenge. But I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so wide of the mark.
All of which, incidentally, shows the difference between expectations management in film-making and politics: high expectations help film companies (after all, I still bought the ticket, whatever my opinion of the film now) but high expectations are terrible for politicians (ask Barack Obama).
In short, West Wing fans should prepare to be disappointed. And if you’ve not seen The West Wing, pick up the box set on your way home from seeing The Ides of March and look forward to political drama with characters worth investing in, interesting plots and plenty of drama.
P.S. The film had one redeeming feature: the rather cool poster advertising it: