What's the meaning of success?

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hero essay


Hero Essay
Due, Friday, Dec. 3
Four pages, double-space
Need at least four research articles cited, including the Campbell book. Online sources are not accepted. Use standard footnotes. Note sure how to cite movies, reviews, newspaper articles? Use this website for help: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Choose the “notes and bibliography tab”

Include a bibliography. Yes, your footnotes will have the complete reference I am just asking for a second page attached. Make it page five. The Kate Turbian Guide is based on this style and is also acceptable.


CHOOSE ONE. Post your choice on the blog. Only one person per topic.

The questions

Option One (seven choices)

Explain how the following used Campbell’s work. You will have to include the 12-steps mentioned in the initial lecture (and posted on Blackboard), the works themselves, information on (Vogler, Adams, Rowling). All are believed to have been influenced by Campbell’s work.

• Hollywood film producer and writer Christoper Vogler
• Novelist Richard Adams
• Author J.K. Rowling
• Author Arthur C. Clarke
• Singer Bob Dylan
• Singer Jim Morrison
• Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia

Option Two (five choices)

• Explain the drawings in the book. How do they illustrate the text? Says Campbell: “Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives.”

Part One (one person)
Part Two (one person)

• One of the questions that has been raised about the way that Campbell laid out the monomyth of the hero’s journey was that it focused on the masculine journey. Is this true? Explain, cite. Why might this be true? Why not? You might also consider the influence of Freud and Jung in this discussion.

• Analyze how perceptions of a 'Hero' change among different cultures and throughout time.

• Campbell often refers to psychology in the book. What was the influence of
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung? (You might also consider Arnold an Gennep, James Frazer, Franz Boas, Otto Rank)

Option Three (17 choices)

Describe the elements of the following based on Campbell’s monomyth. You will have to include the 12-steps mentioned in the initial lecture (and posted on Blackboard) and the works themselves.

1. The Epic of Gilgamesh
2. The Iliad
3. The Odyssey
4. The Aeneid
5. Beowulf
6. The Ramayana
7. The Lord of the Rings series
8. The Harry Potter series
9. The Hobbit
10. Bikeman
11. Lion King
12. Count of Monte Cristo
13. Madame Bovary
14. Narnia: The lion, the witch and the wardrobe
15. Wizard of Oz
16. King Arthur
17. Aladdin

Are there discernable patterns? Is the hero a remote figure, or someone a “normal” person can identify with? What is the lesson learned? What is the hero's relationship with his homeland (whether that place is ancient Greece or the imaginary Middle Earth)? What are the archetypes? What are the ways that heroes go about leaving on their journeys? What is the moral objective of the hero?

Honors 102 book choices VOTING

The descriptions come from various book reviews. They are posted here in no specific order.
I am numbering the books. You get to pick four books. List them by number in first, second, third, fourth choice. In other words. The first book is your first choice. I am going to award points to develop a tally.

I am also open to any suggestions you might have.

Deadline: Dec. 3 (noon)


1. Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill


After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them.

The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud become gold, as the alchemists believed? These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science.

Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists (and writers, too) invented the Western tradition of realism.

On visits to the great cities of Europe—monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto—Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world

2.At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson turns his attention from science to society in his authoritative history of domesticity. While walking through his own home, a former Church of England rectory built in the 19th century, Bryson reconstructs the fascinating history of the household, room by room. With waggish humor and a knack for unearthing the extraordinary stories behind the seemingly commonplace, he examines how everyday items--things like ice, cookbooks, glass windows, and salt and pepper--transformed the way people lived, and how houses evolved around these new commodities. "Houses are really quite odd things," Bryson writes, and, luckily for us, he is a writer who thrives on oddities. He gracefully draws connections between an eclectic array of events that have affected home life, covering everything from the relationship between cholera outbreaks and modern landscaping, to toxic makeup, highly flammable hoopskirts, and other unexpected hazards of fashion. Fans of Bryson's travel writing will find plenty to love here; his keen eye for detail and delightfully wry wit emerge in the most unlikely places, making At Home an engrossing journey through history, without ever leaving the house.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife By Mary Roach
3.Mary Roach chooses a broad subject that pretty much everyone's interested in, then investigates the hell out of it in her unique, lighthearted style. No one dissects a topic as entertainingly as she does — I'd have killed to have her for a science teacher. And make no mistake, this may seem like light and jovial stuff, but it's not. It's as precise, thorough and informative as the stiffest, most pompous books on whatever subject her insatiably inquisitive mind is exploring. She just does it without pretense and with a lot of fun. She'll talk to the experts and ask the questions anyone with common sense would like to ask, especially the ones we'd be embarrassed to bring up, and then reports it all with a clear mind, a ruthless eye for self-editing, and a mordant, dry wit. The subject of this particular book of hers — the weird and wacky world of ghosts, mediums, near-death-experiences, reincarnation and the afterlife — is, as with her other books, one that suits her talents (pun alert) spookily well.

4.The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Three million years ago, a meteorite plunged to earth in a cataclysmic collision, out of which emerged a beautiful blue stone. One hundred thousand years ago, a girl named "Tall One" discovers the crystal on the African plain and finds her destiny after looking into the mysterious stone. Thus begins the story of The Blessing Stone, an account of the ways in which the stone changes the lives and reveals the destinies of those it comes into contact with. The history of the world unfolds as the stone is passed from generation to generation, and across 5 continents from the Jordan River Valley to ancient Israel, from Imperial Rome to Medieval England, from fifteenth-century Germany to the eighteenth-century Caribbean and finally to the pioneers of the American West. Wood's 19th novel is comprised of eight individual books linked by a common thread—The Blessing Stone. Each story is set in a different country and period of time featuring Wood's trademark attention to historical detail. This backdrop provides a compelling canvas on which are painted the lives of the book's characters as they search for truth, courage, solace and even revenge, aided they believe, by the mystical powers of a cosmic blessing stone.

5.My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. It's a small book and not overly technical, and might be a wonderful link in this chain of thought. Taylor, first and foremost a scientist, describes scientifically and humanistically the event, her subsequent recovery, and the insight she developed regarding our spiritual selves. This is not an 'I almost died and found Jesus' sort of book, rather it is a scientific 'explanation' of how and where our spiritual energies manifest.

6.An Inconvenient truth by Al Gore: Gore considers global warming to be an inconvenient truth and a pending planetary emergency. In his political career he was an advocate of measures to deal with this and other environmental crises, and in his post-political career he has accelerated these warnings. An Inconvenient Truth, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and the film that was released at around the same time, are his attempt to take this message to the masses.

7.People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: is an intricate, ambitious novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the Silver Age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of northern Australia.
Inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, People of the Book is a sweeping adventure through five centuries of history. From its creation in Muslim-ruled, medieval Spain, the illuminated manuscript makes a series of perilous journeys: through Inquisition-era Venice, fin-de-siecle Vienna, and the Nazi sacking of Sarajevo.

8.Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks: This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the “Plague Village,” tucked in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, when an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to the isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes the reader follows the story of the plague year, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice: convinced by a visionary young minister they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of illicit love.

9.The Case of the 1996 Failed Everest Expeditions
In 1996 dozens of teams of climbers made their way to the top of the world seeking the greatest trophy in the world of mountaineering: Climbing Mt. Everest. But when a snowstorm swept down on the two teams as they made their way down from the mountain, tragedy struck. Eight members of the two expeditions died from exposure, including the team leaders.

10.A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Describing the land around the author's home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the collection of essays advocate Leopold's idea of a "land ethic", or a responsible relationship existing between people and the land they inhabit. Edited and published by his son, Luna, a year after Leopold's death from a heart attack, the book is considered a landmark in the American conservation movement. The book has informed and changed the environmental movement and stimulated a widespread interest in ecology as a science.

Extra credit post--One

Honors 102 takes the theme of "Self and Society" and springboards it to the world. As instructors we are cahrged with covering these themes in the eight books. Four books are common texts. I get to choose four others. I am seeking your recommendation. I know you might not be in my section but your input is still important to me. The books I am considering follows in a separate blog. Here is information on the required texts. The second blog has books suggested by a variety of people. You get to vote.

Honors 102: Focus on Science, Nature and Religion
• Self and cosmos
• Self and nature
• Role of religion
• Evolution theory
• Environmental issues
• How do we interact with the natural world

Required Common texts
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The Life of Pi follows the strange journey of Pi, a young Indian boy whose zookeeper father decides immigrate to Canada with his family and some of the zoo animals. On the way, their ship sinks and Pi is cast adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a huge Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The animals battle for survival in the cramped boat as Pi tries to avoid being part of the food chain. Eventually, just the tiger and he are left in the life raft. They develop a mutually beneficial relationship and save each other from various disasters. The novel ends with a dramatic twist that raises questions about the true identity of Pi.
• Abel Sanchez and other Stories by Miguel de Unamuno
The stories "Abel Sanzhez", "The Madness of Doctor Montarco", and "Saint Emmanuel the Good Marty" are three of the Spanish philosopher Unamuno's most haunting parables. Quixotic madmen are the protagonists of these imaginative stories, which probe the horror of a nothingness beyond death. The Introduction by Anthony Kerrigan, the translator, traces Unamuno's life.
• Copenhagen by Michael Frayn winner of the 2000 Tony Award for best play, attempts to answer the question that has been on the minds of many quantum physicists and historians from World War II: What actually took place in a secret meeting between Niels Bohr, who is considered the father of quantum physics, and Werner Heisenberg, who was working on, but failed to create, the atomic bomb for Nazi Germany? The meeting took place in 1941. Heisenberg had been a student of Bohr’s. The two scientists had collaborated and brought forth the basic tenets that would become the foundation of quantum physics. The meeting took place while Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. All that was publicly known was that after the meeting, Bohr would have nothing to do with Heisenberg. Bohr would eventually help the U.S. forces and he was instrumental in the creation of the atomic bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But what happened to Heisenberg? Did he deliberately confound the Nazi efforts to create a similar weapon? Or did he attempt to create it but fail? Frayn leaves these overarching questions for the audience to ponder.
• Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.

Blog: Due 6 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 28.
Summarize the theme of your assigned section in about 100 words. What is the relationship to the monomyth? Sections were assigned randomly.


Graham Williams, Part II, chapter II, section 1
Dan Rust, Part II, chapter II, section 2
Will Shirley, Part II, chapter II, section 3
Emory Smith, Part II, chapter II, section 4


Camille Olson, Part II, chapter III, section 1
Kenna Collums, Part II, chapter III, section 2
Katie Portner, Part II, chapter III, section 3
Brad Gordon, Part II, chapter III, section 4
Kristen Laprade, Part II, chapter III, section 5
Kevin Scott, Part II, chapter III, section 6
Lance Ezell, Part II, chapter III, section 7
Archer Hodges, Part II, chapter III, section 8


Matt Niemeyer, Part II, chapter V, section 1
Timothy McArthur, Part II, chapter V, section 2

Madison Stewart, Part II, Epilogue, section 1
Tony Stvartak, Part II, Epilogue, section 2
Ryan Rigney, Part II, Epilogue, section 3

Thursday, November 11, 2010


Blog posting: due 6 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 14.

Summarize the theme of your assigned section in about 100 words. What is the relationship to the monomyth? What is the point Campbell is making? Sections were assigned randomly.





Lance Ezell, explain the chart on page 210

Camille Olson, Part I, chapter III, section 1
Kenna Collums, Part I, chapter III, section 2
Katie Portner, Part I, chapter III, section 3
Brad Gordon, Part I, chapter III, section 4
Kristen Laprade, Part I, chapter III, section 5
Kevin Scott, Part I, chapter III, section 6

Archer Hodges, Part II, chapter I, section 1
Tony Stvartak, Part II, chapter I, section 2
Ryan Rigney, Part II, chapter I, section 3
Matt Niemeyer, Part II, chapter III, section 4
Madison Stewart, Part II, chapter I, section 5
Timothy McArthur, Part II, chapter I, section 6

Graham Williams, Part II, chapter II, section 1
Dan Rust, Part II, chapter II, section 2
Will Shirley, Part II, chapter II, section 3
Emory Smith, Part II, chapter II, section 4

Friday, November 5, 2010

The call to adventure


Joseph Campbell writes in The Hero of a Thousand Faces: “The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of this society into a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delights.”

Explain this in the context of the chapters assigned so far. Relate to two specific myths from two different chapters. Cite chapter and page number. If not using the assigned text include a note so I can locate the cite. Cite as in (Chapter XX, page XXX) right after the myth.

This posting will be longer—about 100 words.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Question for the week



Are 5,001 Facebook Friends One Too Many?
By AIMEE LEE BALL
Published: May 28, 2010, The New York Times

THE British anthropologist and Oxford professor Robin Dunbar has posed a theory that the number of individuals with whom a stable interpersonal relationship can be maintained (read: friends) is limited by the size of the human brain, specifically the neocortex. “Dunbar’s number,” as this hypothesis has become known, is 150.

Facebook begs to differ.

Friending “sustains an illusion of closeness in a complex world of continuous partial attention,” said Roger Fransecky, a clinical psychologist and executive coach in New York (2,894 friends).



Do you agree or disagree?



Or, do you have a front porch? (local conversation, people you really know or see?)