Monday, January 21, 2013

Blog #4 Malcolm X



            It is interesting that Malcolm X was self-taught and was a major figure in the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, especially for only having an eighth grade education. Also the fact that he learned a majority of it from copying the dictionary from front to back was amazing. His friend Bimbi was his inspiration for wanting to expand his knowledge and sparked his determination to better himself so his ideas can be heard and expressed through his writings. Malcolm X is pretty inspirational because of his tenacity and tactfulness in the face of adversity. He proves to be pretty resourceful in his ways of learning like his use of phonics and other writing skills that we use now as students is pretty intriguing. The repetition and concentration is definitely outstanding especially how he remembers that aardvark is the first word of the dictionary as well as its description in detail. The writing he learned while in prison gave him a means to fight back against society in his own way and establish himself as an important figure of the 1960’s. He goes on to explain how the prison helped him focus his mind to learn from books and how if he was to attend college instead that he would have been involved more with fraternity pranks then actually studying his homework or in the least bettering himself. In that matter I cannot help but agree with him given that most college students these days spend a majority of their time partying or clubbing instead of learning or taking their homework seriously. It could also be said that people today can find it harder to do what he did due to the fact that most prisons nowadays give prisoners access to Facebook accounts or television as reward for good behavior rather than giving them books. The upside is that most prisons offer education programs that way inmates do not have to go it alone. Malcolm X’s reference to how reading books opened new vistas for him to reflect on while in prison showed how far he had gone in his journey for knowledge is impressive to say the least.  I just think that these excerpts from his autobiography show just how intelligent and dedicated Malcolm X was and that he had the tactfulness to lead and be considered one of the greats right there alongside Martin Luther King Jr. I also don’t think that it was coincidence that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were friends but disagreed greatly on the direction the Civil Rights Movement should take.    

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Blog #3 Shitty First Drafts

          I enjoyed reading "Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott and found how she explains that everyone's first drafts are shitty. She also went on to mention that writing horrible first drafts is part of being a writer and that when you write your first draft just write what comes to mind at the time, because what you write at that time may not make any sense then but later will end up making sense. Like before writing this blog I wrote a pretty shitty first draft while riding the forty-three bus from the Eugene station to my home. I find it nice knowing that there is actual writers out there that have to go back re-write their works multiple times. I always had this preconceived idea that they always knew the right way to write their stories and it only took them once or twice to get it the exact way that they wanted it. The way her friend explains what a first, second, and third draft is to them is one of my favorite parts of this article. Finally I just found that this whole article was filled with good advice and interesting facts about writing and can't wait to put some of it to use in our writing 95 class 

Friday, January 11, 2013

Blog #2 The Price of Reading is Eternal Vigilance


                     I find reading " The Price of Reading is Eternal Vigilance" an interesting read and would of never thought much about the authority of books and the effects of books on my reading before.When I  read books I always find myself questioning what the authors reasoning for doing the things they do to characters in their books. I did that recently with a fantasy series that I have been reading for a long time. The author over the years created four protagonist that you really grow to like because of their intricate ties to the main character of the series. He recently decided that the four needed to be killed off over the last set of the most recent series of stories before he started with a new one and i found myself getting very agitated over their deaths. Just as Anatole was getting angry with the authors he was reading. I think that Anatole Broyard makes really good use of analogies in his writings; one my favorite ones from this writing is when Anatole compared most writers to that of beggars that are willing to lie to take advantage of the unsuspecting.
                 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

A Little About Me



A map of the Samoan Islands where my dad's family is from.
         My name is Risiti Aina, I was born in Oxnard, California and was raised in Klamath Falls, Oregon which is close to the Oregon/California border.
A picture of a little harbor that is on Klamath Lake across from Moore Park.
My name is Samoan and in English Risiti is Richard; as for my last name Aina means land or family. I love history and I'm planning on trying to major in Archaeology, but have been entertaining the idea of going for a business degree. I moved to Eugene for the first time in 2008 and left to live in Hawaii with my parents until the summer of 2012 when I finally had enough of the high cost of things there. I still can not believe that I was paying $10 for a gallon of milk and $9 for a loaf of bread there. When I was about 4 or 5 years old  I used to do Polynesian dance competitions at my grandparents.  I like watching movies especially comedies and horror movies,
One of my favorites it has a good mix of comedy and horror.
Comics especially graphic novels and I like reading Fantasy and science fiction books. and yeas I like playing video games what self respecting nerd wouldn't haha. my favorite kind of food