Photo Analysis

Houses in the Negro section of Eutaw, Alabama

Source: Library of Congress

In this photo, the things that stick out to me the most are the grass, the lack of clouds, the dark shadows, the power lines, and the inhabitants that look to be resting outside of their homes, but out of the sunlight,

I thought this photo somewhat represents my vision of Maycomb because it exudes a lethargic vibe, which is what I was looking for based on this quote from page 6 in the soft cover edition of To Kill A Mockingbird:

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town, when I first knew it.

People moved slowly then...A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer."

When I first saw this picture, it reminded me of when I had nothing to do on an afternoon when the power lines were cut, I didn't live in a shack, mind you, but this photo gives me the same feeling as the one I had during those powerless afternoons: sleepiness.

Setting personal feelings aside, I have some connections to make between the text in page 6 (which will be what I base my analysis upon for most of this blog post) and this picture.

"...grass grew on the sidewalks..."

In this picture, there seems to be no sidewalk, but that may be because it has been completely overrun by grass, which in turn may be due to this being the Negro section of the neighborhood. There may also be a "Negro section" in Maycomb--I think this because Calpurnia goes to a colored church (p. 100 soft cover), suggesting that segregation was in effect in Maycomb. And, knowing the conditions in which Negroes were usually put in, it's possible that the grass in this photo was growing before there were inhabitants in the land. It is also possible that it is simply the effect of neglect, although I would not like to believe that since I took such a long time typing my theory up.

I'm kidding.

"Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer's day..."

The time of day during which the picture was taken was likely at noon, since the shadows are pronounced and seem to come from overhead. Since noon is usually very hot, more so without clouds to block the sun's light, it makes sense that there are people relaxing under a roof.

But one of the questions that came to my mind when I saw this was, "Why are they outside their houses? Even the person that I can barely make out in the distance seems to be by the door, so they must be doing the same thing. What is it, exactly?" My mind wandered back to my science classes, and I remembered that clear weather usually brings a light breeze. So then these people probably went outside, feeling a breeze blowing through the windows. It should be better than feeling uncomfortably warm in the house.

To explain the presence of power lines, I questioned if power lines existed during 1933. To me, power lines seemed more of a technology discovered in the 1950s. Don't ask me why I think that, since I don't know why myself, either. But I digress.

I did a bit of research and discovered that power lines have existed for practical use since as far back as 1837, meaning it is possible that Maycomb had power lines. It becomes more likely as Atticus goes to answer a ringing phone and returns to say that it was Eula May (p. 86 soft cover). The paragraph after describes Eula's occupation, which was in short Maycomb's leading telephone operator. Since telephones require electricity to run, it is safe to say that Maycomb has power lines.

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I typed a lot, I guess. Hopefully it isn't too confusing.

Theme

The last book I finished, The Titan's Curse, had the theme of sacrifice.

While the book has a very humorous tone, it is rather serious as well. Ask a fangirl about Zoë Nightshade's or Bianca di Angelo's death and they'll go on a rant while crying.

Speaking of those deaths, those are the main reason why I think a theme of this book is sacrifice.

All of the heroes in the quest were uncertain about their fate, which is a terrible feeling if you think about it. Even more so when the prophecy that caused this quest to begin states that two people on the quest will die, one in the desert and one by a parent's hand. It's a rather serious thing, which is easily masked by the humor and sarcasm in Percy's narration.

In the Hephaestus's Junkyard, which is located in a desert, the heroes were told not to touch anything.

"Things get thrown away here for a reason."

While some of the heroes picked up a few things, apparently it's okay as long as you don't hold anything for too long. Once Bianca stole an action figure, she sealed her fate as a metal giant activated. To save the other heroes on the quest, she sacrificed herself by going into the giant to mess with its controls. Unfortunately, the giant collapsed, perhaps due to her lack of knowledge on mechanics, and she lost her life.

Zoë was a different case. As more things were revealed through the story, along with a few foreshadowings, it became evident that she knew all along that she was going to be killed by her father, Atlas. She essentially sacrificed herself by going on the quest.

There are a few more hints of sacrifice aside from the deaths of certain people. For example, the skin of a Nemean Lion, which was the same as a Kevlar vest, except multiple times stronger and lighter. Percy wore it for most of the story, and in San Francisco he sacrificed it to his father in order to let his friend Grover transport the Opheotaurus all the way back to New York safely.

1st Quarter Reflection

  The first quarter of the school year is coming to an end, and I have to say, that was fast.

  The 40 Book Challenge shouldn't be a problem. If you count what I read outside of ELA activities, I'd have two books under rmy belt, with a third one coming soon. If you don't count what I read outside of ELA, I'm struggling, since I've only finished one book I picked from the library, and haven't made much progress with another. Then again, I enjoy reading. I read quickly, so I may be able to catch up on that second book.

  My blog here hasn't been growing too well. I was told to made this blog and post weekly with things related to the title of the blog, but that was when I was in Miss Rut's class. I'm not sure about what to do with it in this new class. I'd appreciate it if anyone gave advice in the comments.

  Any strategies that helped me throughout the quarter? I don't pay attention to how I think, so I have little to no idea if I developed any strategies for any specific classes. Although I would say that subconsciously developing my muscle memory to open my locker quickly has helped me be more on time.

  I haven't learned anything about the world when it comes to ELA. Even then, I can't come up with anything for other classes, either.

  Here's something everyone should know about me: overall, I think I have the worst short term memory here. I remember listening intently to memoirs by other people a few weeks ago, and remembering nothing shortly after.

Shadow and Bone (Compare the life of the main character to your or a friend's life)

[SPOILERS]

[Well, sort of.]

  I recently finished a book named "Shadow and Bone", by Leigh Bardugo. I have a feeling it's supposed to be for young adults due to a couple of scenes (that aren't exactly to my taste), but it's a well written book, with words that describe wondrous settings clearly and vividly. The human characters acted as if they were real humans from the actions they were depicted of doing—well, except for one human character, and it was deliberate that he was so.

  While reading the book, the main character, Alina Starkov, had an attitude towards her crush that caused me to be reminded of someone I know. I'll use that resemblance as an opportunity to use one prompt: to compare the life of the main character to your or a friend's life. The only part I know about my friend's name is her last name, Blanco, so I'll be using that to refer to her.

  Both have a crush on someone of a higher status, with Alina's crush, Mal, being a high-class tracker, and Blanco's crush (name not known) being a year or two above her in high school.

  Both have a love-hate relationship with their crushes. Alina hates that he has a big reputation among the ladies, with his good looks and confidence. But because of those two characteristics, she loves him as well. Blanco has a love triangle problem, in which she has a crush on someone, but that someone currently crushes on another person. The fact that Blanco keeps seeing her crush interact with his crush makes her heart shatter. Or so she tells me on Twitter. It confuses why she likes him, and even more so about why she still won't give up on him, so I won't mention that.

  Now, to compare their life excluding love-life. During the beginning of the story, Alina was but a mere cartographer, with no special talents. Until something happened that would trigger her "talent"—better called an ability—and she had no idea it would happen. She proved, unwillingly, that she was special.

  A sudden change had the opposite effect for my friend Blanco. She was aiming for 7th in an examination encompassing around 50 schools, and over a thousand students. The examination awarded students up to 7th place in previous years, but this year it had been changed to 4th place. So Blanco came prepared, only to fail because of the unannounced change.

StoryCorps Interviews

  All right, it's 4 AM in the morning, and I accidentally slept for three hours yesterday and procrastinated throughout the evening. Last-minute-panic-induced-burst, go.

  So there's a website called StoryCorps that, as far as I know, podcasts interviews about very touching stories, such as the son of a hijacking victim meeting up with the daughter of the hijacker to share stories. Our English teacher instructed us to listen to at least two stories and describe or narrate them in our blogs as if no one had ever heard them before.

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  The first story I'm going to tell you is about Andy Downs and Angelia Sheer.

  They both have a very interesting backstory, since they are linked together by their fathers' actions. No, it's not because their fathers were best buddies or something like that. Quite the contrary.

Photo courtesy of Andy Downs.

  On October 4th, 1971, George Giffe, who was Angelia's father, hijacked a charter plane at gunpoint, while claiming to be in possession of a bomb.

  This was not very normal, but if you think about it, it was—at least for Giffe. He was a 35-year-old suffering from a mental illness.

  Low on fuel, Brent Downs—Andy's father—pleaded for Giffe to at least let him land somewhere nearby to refuel the plane. Downs had secretly contacted the FBI for help.

  As they landed at Jacksonville, Florida, the FBI was waiting, and decided to shoot at the plane in hopes of bursting some tires or shooting the engine, with no regards to the people inside. Because of this, Giffe panicked, and killed both hostages. One of the two was Downs. After this, Giffe took his own life. While this helped shape the way the FBI handled hijackings, it heavily impacted two certain people's lives.

  At StoryCorps, Andy spoke with Angelia.

  Andy said, "My mother told me that Dad had gone to fly for God."
  He begins to recall the story, adding that he was 18 months old. Whenever he saw an airplane in the sky, he used to point up at it and say, "There goes Daddy." He states that he remembers it very vividly.

  Angelia recalls that she was thirteen and was in junior high when the hijacking happened. She remembers that her father was very delusional, and a lot of people were scared of him. She then recollected that her father had once grabbed a salesman who had walked in the door by the throat, and then threw him out of the house.

  Scary, isn't it?

  It took a long time for Andy to understand what happened. "This was a mentally ill man, and in his mind he was forced to do what he did." To that Angelia commented, "You have more heart for my father than I do."

  Andy proceeds to ask, "What were you thinking when I first contacted you?"

  Angelia responded, "In a lot of ways I had a lot of guilt, because... My bloodline destroyed your father, and... When I was 20 years old I actually sought out a trauma therapist. And I told him, I said, 'If you think I should be sterilized, I will go tomorrow, 'cause I will not pass this madness down to one other single person.' And just meeting you, it helped my heart and soul understand that there was still love and compassion in the world, even when there's so much darkness."
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  The second story is about Herman Heyn, a self-proclaimed "star-hustler" in Fells Point on the Baltimore waterfront.

  For decades he has set up in the same spot, inviting passersby to gaze at the stars through his telescope. He was invited by his nephew, John, for one StoryCorps session to remember how he became a "star-hustler".

  John asked, "Uncle Herman, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?"

  "I wanted to be a scientist," Herman replied, "but I have certain kinds of learning disabilities."
  "My mother used to say, 'You can spell Andromeda but you can’t spell anything they want you to do in school.' I don’t know, some people like trees, some people like birds. For me, it was stars," he laughs.

  "How long have you been doing street corner astronomy?" John interrogates.

  Herman responds that he had been doing street astronomy for 27 years, and that he's been out 2,637 times. Amazing, isn't it? "It’s like being on a Broadway show that has a long run," he adds.

  Before he started street astronomy, Herman used to work unsuccessfully for "the man". He states that he grew tired of it , and that on Friday night—November 13th, 1987, he saw that it was a really beautiful evening, and that the moon was up.

  "I decided, 'Heck, I’m going to take my telescope on the street, and invite people to look at the moon and Jupiter.' And as I was walking out the door I said, 'I’ll take a hat with me and see what happens.' That first night I made $10. And I went back the next night and made $40, and that’s how it started.

  "Back in 1997, a local writer wrote about my being a 'star hustler' on the street. One of the questions was, 'How did you get started in astronomy?' and I said, 'Miss Wicker’s class in the eighth grade.' She drew the Big Dipper on the blackboard. Said, 'Go find it.' I didn’t know if Miss Wicker was dead or alive. But she saw the article and called me up. And I was one of the eulogizers at her funeral."

  John then asks him how he would like to be remembered, to which he responds that he doesn't want to be remembered. He mentions that Halley's Comet comes back in 2061, and that he wants to be around by then.

  "But I could name people who have looked through my telescope and taken up astronomy themselves, bought their own telescopes. Somebody else said they’ve named a boat 'Saturn' after looking at it through my telescope. It makes me feel it’s worthwhile, what I’m doing. That I’m doing a good thing.

  "And over the years, I’ve been hoping that somebody would come along and say, 'I got my Ph.D. in astronomy having first looked through your telescope'—but it hasn’t happened," Herman Laughs. "…Yet. I’m hoping it still may."

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(As you can tell, I struggled commenting on the first story. I don't know why. But I have a connection with the second story, specifically the part where he states that someone named a boat "Saturn" after looking through Herman's telescope. I did something similar without realizing it. Basically, two other people and I started something silly on Twitter, and through that someone with depression got distracted enough to be able to pull himself together. I won't go in detail, though.)

(I don't excel at this stuff... I could've added some adverbs to help picture the way they looked when they said it, but as a foreigner here it's hard distinguishing voices.)

Splatfest and Other Things

  Oh, I forgot to mention.
  This blog will not ENTIRELY be about Splatoon; whenever I feel like it, or when nothing interesting happens concerning Splatoon (which is unlikely), I might write out my thoughts about other things that I am interested in, such as other video games (Smash Bros. 4 in particular), books that I've recently read, and anime that I've recently watched, pretty much anything I find interesting.

  But, this blog IS named after two weapons in Splatoon, so this blog will mainly be about the aforementioned game.

  So, uh, Splatfest. If you don't know much about Splatoon (you probably don't, who am I kidding), Splatfest is an in-game event that occurs once every three weeks, where you pick a side from two, and battle against the members of the other team. The last Splatfest was Art versus Science.

Marie delivering a fatal burn.

And oh, boy, was it close.

But Art had the upper hand in both popularity and wins, having 1% more members and 1% more wins. (Curses... I was in Team Science.)

  I had a rad time playing in the Splatfest, though. I got a long win streak before I left when I reached Level 33 and ranked up to Science Champion. I was just too lazy to get to Science King...

  Before that... You do not know how many unskilled players I had on my team...

  One interesting thing is that during Splatfest, the world of Splatoon is set at nighttime, regardless of the time in real life. The stages' surroundings (not necessarily the stage layout) look a lot different during this event. One stage in particular caught my eye.

Taken during the Hot Dogs vs Marshmallows Splatfest.

Camp Triggerfish looks lovely...

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  In other Splatoon news this (or last) week, a hacker is on the loose. A malicious one. People have seen someone using unreleased content online, which they're not supposed to do.
  Any "unreleased content" is added to the server every time there's a patch, and they are not made accessible to the normal player until whenever Nintendo "unlocks" them for the servers. I don't understand why Nintendo does that. Hackers can access them in the game's files and use them early.

A friend of mine who got early access to the Carbon Roller Deco. Not the same as the wild hacker, I swear.

  The unreleased content isn't in other people's copies of Splatoon yet, so whenever people who have last been in a match with the hacker try to go back to the plaza, the game soft-locks, and the victim cannot load Inkopolis Plaza until the next patch or next Splatfest, both of which clear the plaza's data.

  All because of one hacker.

  So if you play Splatoon, or have a friend who does, tell him to watch out for a hacker using an Octoling with a Hydra Splatling online, and do not exit the match if he is with the hacker in the lobby until the hacker leaves. After that, he can play one more match and load the plaza safely.

Hacker's in-game name given.

One victim of the hacker, who decided to make another account. Misinformed: the hacker using unreleased content far from completion only soft-locks your game, and doesn't erase your save.

Apparently if you post to Miiverse, it appears in the game even though you didn't post in-game. Also misinformed about what it does to your save.
(There's an explanation as to why this person is an Octoling.)

A playful Miiverse drawing on the subject of the wild hacker.

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On a lighter note, Splatoon is becoming an esport!

(An esport is a video game that can be played competitively and seriously, usually with cash prizes. Like DOTA or LOL and stuff like that.)

One competitive team, Squids Next Door, has been signed by a sponsor, Panda Global Gaming, and soon other teams might be sponsored as well.

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(Friendly reminder that not all hackers are bad. I know a friend who is a hacker, and she's a really cool person. She's the hacker I showed having Octolings in her plaza. It was simply a file swap between the Octoling and Inkling Girl models with a bit of modification. She has early access to the Carbon Roller Deco as well. She doesn't use hacks online when she's playing with people she doesn't know, too, so she really is fine.)

(Eh, this reminds me of the fifty-three shootings this week in Chicago... *shudders*

At least it's not exactly fatal for the people playing Splatoon. In fact, my hacker friend said that the next Splatfest is on October 9th, which isn't too far away.)

(It would be really awesome if any of my fellow 8th Graders tried played Splatoon. Like, seriously, try it out, please. I dare say it's better than Call of Duty, and I have many reasons to back it up.)

(What really amuses me is that I didn't need to use an official news site for this. Heh. I get everything through Twitter, which technically isn't a news site. Not on this iPad, to clear up any misconceptions.)

Credits to @NWPlayer123 for most of the pictures in this post.

Introduction to the Author

Hello there. My name is Paolo Lulu.

This is my blog, which is part of a school activity. I am an 8th Grader in Heritage Middle School, which is in Berwyn, Illinois.

I know this introduction sounds a bit on the stiff side, but that's because this is my first blog, and I have no idea how any of this works.

I will mostly post things about Nintendo's newest IP (intellectual property), Splatoon, as I play it more.

Hope you enjoy.