how the picture is an example of romanticism

This picture is an example of romanticism because it is the picture perfect place. It is somewhere most people want to go when they are upset. This is because it is so tranqual and peaceful. With most people that is the life. It is also completely nature. There are no rodes, no buildings and no people. It is completely just you and nature. This is the most peaceful that you can imagine without knowing that its not possible.

In my opinion, this is paradise. This is what i want to wake up to everymorning. The reason for this is because i would feel like I am in heaven and thats exactly what romanticism is about, its about using your imagination and nature to reach goals and make your life happier.

The Ropewalk is an example of romanticism

In the poem, The Ropewalk, he is showing many signs of Romanticism. The main one is that he is using his imagination to escape from his boring job as a rope maker. Throughout the whole poem he is thinking of the people who really need this rope that he is making. He is imagining how many different jobs use this rope to push himself to keep going. For example:
“Then a booth of mountebanks, With its smell of tan and planks, And a girl poised high in air On a cord, in spangled dress, With a faded loveliness, And a weary look of care.”
Here his is thinking of a circus. He is thinking about the girl on the tight rope and how she wouldn’t have a job without this rope. Another piece of evidence is when he is comparing himself to a spider and the girls to doves. This is a example of imagination but it is also an example of nature.
“In that building, long and low, With its windows all a-row, Like the port-holes of a hulk,Human spiders spin and spin, Backward down their threads so thin Dropping, each a hempen bulk. At the end, an open door; Squares of sunshine on the floor Light the long and dusky lane; And the whirring of a wheel, Dull and drowsy, makes me feel All its spokes are in my brain. As the spinners to the end Downward go and reascend, Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs brighter and more fine By the busy wheel are spun. Two fair maidens in a swing, Like white doves upon the wing, First before my vision pass; Laughing, as their gentle hands Closely clasp the twisted strands, At their shadow on the grass.”

How Thanatopsis was an example of Romanticism

The name of this poem was Thanatopsis, which translated from the Greek language means “death seeing.” The whole poem was about seeing the good in death and how people shouldn’t be afraid of it. This is an example of Romanticism because in the first section he is talking about how if you are afraid of death, you should go out into the woods and listen to Mother Nature. In Romanticism, one of their main focuses was to celebrate nature because it was the only tranquil part of life. The reason this was so important to them is because, unlike the Rationalists, Romantics believed in viewing life through imagination and fantasy. The Rationalists believed that life should be lived through science. The Romantics didn’t believe in this because they didn’t believe science was an important part of life. This is because, in their mind, life was only happy when you made it that way, by books and stories and adventures.
” When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- Comes a still voice--.”
This is a line from Thanatopsis, and this proves what they believed about nature. He is talking about how if you’re frightened of death or don’t want to face it, go out into an open field and listen to the voice of Mother Nature. She will speak to you and you will no longer be afraid of death. The next clue I have that this proves that this poem is about Romanticism is that he is showing the focus of Promotion of the common people. They believed that the adventures were more so in the common people, and that they could turn out to be heroes just like the kings and nobles.
“Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt
lie down , With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.—“
Here he is talking about how when you die, it doesn’t matter who you were in life, in death you will be hanging out with all those people who were so important on earth and you are all the same.

Rip Van Wrinkle (Romananticim)

The difference between Romanticism and Rationalism is that Rationalists used logic to explain everyday life. Romanticists however, used the imagination and fantasy to explain how everyday life should be. In the story of Rip Van Wrinkle, he is showing how a simple man can go on an adventure and learn just as much as a king or noble. Romanticists used nature as an escape from the torn cities and upsetting life. In Rip Van Wrinkle, most of the story is based in a small country village where there is nothing but nature. It shows more of a simple life. Like when Rip would go into the mountains to escape from his problems at home, he would hunt or fish to keep his sanity.” In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland.” This is evidence that the mountains were an escape and a sort of tranquility for Rip. Imagination is also a big part in this story. If you were completely logical, you probably wouldn’t understand this story. For example, when he discovers the elves, in the life of logic, elves don’t exist. Or when he sleeps for twenty years, technically that is impossible, who could sleep for that long with no water or food and survive. This proves that without imagination, the world would be lost and life wouldn’t matter anymore because there would be no goals and no dreams.

My Moral Perfection

If I were to make a list like Ben Franklin to obtain Moral Perfection, I would use a lot of his key virtues. I personally live by the Ten Commandments. I believe that those are the most important virtues to live by because they make the most sense. If I had to make a list it would go something like this:
ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.' – or I only pray, respect and believe in one God
TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.' –or God cannot be described as a person or anything else, nobody knows what he looks like and that is the way it is suppose to be
THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'-or do not use Gods name in an un holy way
FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.' –rest on Sundays and go to church
FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.' –just what it says, don’t treat my parents wrongly and respect them
SIX: 'You shall not murder.'-do not take another life
SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.' –Do not have sex before marriage
EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.' –do not take what is not yours
NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.'-do not lie and say you saw something you didn’t
TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'-do not want what you don’t have or don’t become jealous

These are the Ten Commandments, or the main virtues that I live by, but if I were in Franklin’s situation I would use these and then add more like:
ELEVEN: Think of others before yourself
TWELVE: Live everyday like it were your last
THIRTEEN: Never dwell on the past; always look on to the future

I think that if I had to do what Franklin did, with these virtues I would succeed with great success.

Franklin is a Rationalist

Ben Franklin shows that he is a rationalist in his autobiography under the part of “Arriving at Moral Perfection.” He makes himself a list of thirteen virtues and sets himself a goal for self improvement. A puritan would just pray to God if he felt that he was sinning or if he was imperfect. A rationalist however, like Ben Franklin, would work on self improvement. Franklin decides to work as a scientist on improving his Moral Perfection. He decides to make a chart marking on the chart when he has made an error in his experiment. Because Franklin is using science and self improvement as oppose to praying to God for help and forgiveness, he is a rationalist.

Writing one

Michelle Snavely
11-13-08
Lit/comp 11
Writing one

Most people don’t look at competitive cheerleading as an actual sport. I disagree with this. I have cheered since I was eight, and there is an extensive amount of work that goes into cheerleading. When ever I talk to somebody about cheerleading, they just say that all we do is jump up and down saying “Go Team.” They are dead wrong and I am going to prove this in this essay by showing some key factors that qualify cheerleading as a sport.
The first important aspect is tumbling, which is very similar to gymnastics. Basically, it is flipping. There are two different types of tumbling which are standing and running. Tumbling is important because it is one of the hardest parts and is also very fun to watch. Tumbling is one of the hardest things because so many things can go wrong and it is very easy to get hurt. Standing tumbling is when you stand in one place and do a back hand spring, back tuck, layout or a standing full. A back hand spring is when the cheerleader jumps backward, lifts their legs off the ground, place their hands on the ground, and land on their feet. This is normally the first thing that you learn when it comes to tumbling. It takes about two to three months to be able to do this trick on your own.
The next step in standing tumbling is your back tuck. This is when the athlete jumps up and flips backward without touching the ground. She has to tuck her knees into her body so she looks like a ball. After she has flipped all the way around, she lands lightly on her feet. This trick normally takes from 6-7 months to master it on your own. The next step is a layout. It is a lot like a back tuck only when the tumbler flips she keeps her body straight instead of tucking. If you already know how to do your tuck then you can learn how to do a layout in about four months.
A full is the hardest part of tumbling, it takes about a year to master and sometimes even longer. A full is basically a layout, but when the cheerleader flips she spins her body. The reason that this is the hardest trick is because it is pretty much defying gravity. Anybody attempting to do a full has to have enough height or they could break their neck. They also have to be in really good shape so they can get their body to spin fast enough in order to land on their feet. I still have yet to be able to do a full and I have been trying for two years.
Running tumbling is a lot like standing tumbling. All that the cheerleaders are doing is pulling it all together in a sequence. They normally start running tumbling with a round-off. A round-off is a lot like a cart wheel only you land with both feet on the ground instead of one at a time. When a cheerleader is going to do a running tumbling sequence, she starts with a two step run into a round-off. She can then add what ever she wants to. Normally a cheerleader would do a back hand spring after a round-off but she can do a tuck or layout or full. She just can’t stop or pause in the middle of your sequence.
The next thing I want to talk about is stunting. A lot of people don’t really know what that means but it’s just when a cheerleader puts somebody up in the air. There is a variety of stunts that athletes can do. This includes: half, extensions, two legs, pyramids, one man or one leg. In one leg stunts flyers can pull a scorpion, heal stretch, liberty, arabesque or a bow in arrow. Those are just a few of the many different stunts that these athletes can master. The cool thing about stunting is that your cheer team can make up any stunt that they want to as long as it’s legal according to the rule book. The rule book is what the entire routine goes by. Any stunt that is likely to cause harm to one of the cheerleaders is normally illegal.
The simplest stunt is a two legged half. That is when the flyer, which is the girl in the air, is on both of her legs and is only being held up to her bases chests. Bases are the girls that are holding the flyer in the air by her feet. There is also a back spot. A back spot is the girl who holds the flyer’s ankles from the back and keeps some of the pressure off of the bases. A two legged extension is a lot like a two legged half only instead of being lifted to the bases chests, the flyer is lifted over their heads. Normally these kinds of stunts are put into pyramids. A Pyramid is when there is a whole bunch of different stunts going on at one time.
The hardest type of stunt is one legged extensions. That is when the flyer is on one leg and is being held above her bases heads. This is so hard because the bases have to be strong enough to keep the flyer steady and the flyer has to have a lot of balance and strength. Most one legged stunts are scorpions, heal stretches, bow in arrow, liberty or an arabesque. The time that the flyer stays is the air varies depending on the routine. Liberties are the easiest one legged stunts. It is just when the flyer brings her free leg up to her knee and puts her arms in a high V pose. Arabesques are the second easiest stunt. The flyer extends her free leg behind her and leans forward.
The hardest ones are heal stretches, bow in arrows and scorpions. A heal stretch is when she brings her free leg up to her head so it looks like she is doing a split standing up. A bow in arrow is pretty much the same thing only the flyer brings her arm in front of her leg so she looks like a bow. And the hardest stunt, in my opinion, is a scorpion. This is when they flyer brings her leg behind her and makes her foot touch the back of her head. This stunt takes the most balance and flexibility out of all the stunts. Not all cheerleaders can do a scorpion, but if you are a flyer then it is required that you can perform this stunt.
As you can tell, cheerleading has a lot more to it than most people think. Flexibility, balance and strength are all big concepts of being a good competitive cheerleader. Yelling is hardly even a part of competitive cheerleading, there is maybe 30 seconds of a cheer in a competition. So the next time you talk to a cheerleader, remember all the work they put into what they do, and remember that it is a sport.

Puritans vs. Rationalists

The main difference between a Puritan and a Rationalist is their beliefs. Puritans believe that mortals had no business trying to find out the mysteries of the world. They believed that we were put here and that was it, that everything else was God’s business. The Rationalists, however, believed that God put us here for a reason and that he gave us our brains for a reason. They believed that the mysteries of the world were supposed to be solved and that God put humans on this earth to solve the mysteries.
The main argument today between sience and religion is the theory of evolution. In a way, the creationists or the religious folk are the Puritans. They believe that evolution is false and should be left alone because God put us on this earth and by coming up with evolution they are crossing the line. They think that it is God's will and that it should not be questioned. On the other hand, we have the sientists who are looked at as the Rationalists. This is because they have shown reason that evolution is true. They say that we have evolved from other species acording to our genes.

Playing with fire by Melody Carlson

Playing with fire is about a young girl who gets messages from God while she is sleeping. In her latest dream there is a fire and she is not sure what that means but she thinks it has something to do with her brother who has just come out of rehab for a meth problem. Besides that, Sam is facing other problems as well. This includes getting arrested by the police for having meth in her friend’s car. The only problem is that she doesn’t know how it got there. To prove herself innocent, she takes a drug test and the charges are dropped. Only her close friend Garrett, who was in the car when the police came, refuses to take the test and Sam is becoming suspicious as to who put it in the car.

two beliefs

I decided to talk about the Puritan’s belief of Total Depravity. As you saw in my first post it is the belief that because of what Adam and Eve did, all people are born sinners. To this religion this means that God hates all people and only some are saved. In the clip of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, the preacher explains that there is no way of salvation for these people and that they will meet their destiny in Hell. He also expresses that God has no reason for even keeping these people on this earth. I personally think this is stupid, just for the fact that if God hates us so much and he doesn’t even want us here, then why make us? Why put us on this earth and give us life if he already knows what our destiny is? The other belief that I wanted to talk about is their belief known as the Perseverance of the “saints”. This is the belief that certain people are elected by God himself to interpret his word however they please. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, the preacher is telling everybody that they are going to Hell. He is saying this in a way of which he knows that he is not one of them. I don’t understand how he is so special, and what is it that he has done so right that everybody else is doing so wrong. Their beliefs just don’t make sense to me, how can everybody be going to Hell for the sins that Adam and Eve committed, but oh wait, some people are okay. For what reason, they don’t know but that’s just suppose to be how it is.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God vs. Of Plymouth Plantation

After reading Of Plymouth Plantation and watching Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I have come to a confused halt. Of Plymouth Plantation shows normal people experiencing life in a new place. These people seem kind and smart in the way they talk to the Indians. They even made a treaty with these Native Americans. In the treaty they decided this:
1) That neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of their people.
2) That if any of his did hurt to any of theirs, he should send the offender, that they might punish him.
3) That if anything were taken away from any of theirs, he should cause it to be restored; and they should do the like to his.
4) If any did unjustly war against him, they would aid him; if any did war against them, he should aid them.
5) He should send to his neighbors confederates to certify them of this, that they might not wrong them, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace.
6) That when their men came to them, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them.
I believe that these points of their treaty are pretty rational. The Puritans even took one of the Natives in with them, Squanto was his name. They treated him like a friend and keep him with them until the day he died.
The first harvest even seemed normal. They caught the fish, rounded up the turkeys and the Indians harvested corn for the Puritans. There was enough for everybody. The houses were fixed up for winter and everyone was happy and in good health. This was nothing like what I watched in the sermon.
Its almost like these people cannot be the same. They seem so nice and free spirited in Of Plymouth Plantation, but everything seems so scary in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The preacher talkes of how everybody in that church is going to hell and that there is no salvation, no hope for them. That God looks at these people with disgust. He says that the way a human hates the most venomous snake in the world, God hates these people ten times more than that. I just don’t understand how these people act so normal when they are convinced that their fate is hell.

Puritans Beliefs

The Puritans believed in something called Total Depravity which means that because of the sins that Adam and Eve committed, all people are born sinners. They also believed in Unconditional Election. This means that God only saves certain people and there are only a few that he gives salvation to. Limited Atonement is a very odd belief to me. It is the belief that Jesus didn’t die on the cross for everyone. He only died for the ones that God chooses and nobody can earn salvation from God. The last belief they had was called Perseverance of the “saints”. This belief was that the chosen few were allowed to live their life the way they wanted to and they could interpret the word of God any way they pleased.