Authors and Books

Libba Moore Gray- Libba Moore Gray wrote My Mama Had A Dancing Heart which was my favorite book when I was younger. I also have to give props to Raul Colon the illustrator. His illustrations are what first got me interested in art, and Libba Moore Gray's writing first got me interested in both reading and writing.

Ransom Riggs- Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which was a very interesting book. However, my favorite part, and the part that initially intrigued me about it was the vintage photographs that the book contained.

James Patterson- James Patterson is probably one of my favorite authors. he has written a ton of books that I love, such as the Maximum Ride series, the Women's Murder Club series, The Lake House, When the Wind Blows, and the Witch and Wizard series. I think that he is a great author because he has an ability to write a great variety of different books that appeal to many different age groups and I have been reading his books since elementary.

J.K. Rowling- J.K. Rowling of course wrote the Harry Potter series that I began reading them when I was eight, in 2001 right before the first movie came out. Originally I only began to read the series to show up my cousin who had been reading them. I was going to show her that I could read all four of the books that had been released at that time in the two or three month span before the movie came out. I succeeded in doing so and was then hooked on the series and now I own the entire series.

Harper Lee- To Kill a Mockingbird is probably one of the best books I ever read in school. We read it for my English class in ninth grade, but I had read it several years before and I really liked it. I think that Harper Lee did a wonderful job writing the book, and made it very powerful and realistic.

Margaret Peterson Haddix- Like James Patterson, Margaret Peterson Haddix has written many books that I love. I read most of her books while I was in elementary, and I especially liked the Shadow Children series, Running Out of Time, the Missing series, and Double Identity.

 Kate Morton- The Forgotten Garden is a book I bought last summer to read on my flight and I absolutely loved it. it dealt with a family mystery and secret that spanned three generations and was pieced together by stories from each generation. It was beautifully written and the plot was as dark and fairy-tale like as the stories within it.

Forrest Hutter- Forrest Hutter wrote The Dove and The Pigeon, which is about an angel who fell in love with the devil's daughter and has to fight to keep her out of Hell. Forrest was a couple years older than me and attended the same high school as me so it was cool to see him become an author and to read his book and it showed me that I too could go into writing if I wanted to.

Lois Lowry- Lois Lowry wrote two books that I really love: Number the Stars and The Giver. I read Number the Stars when I was in third or fourth grade and I read The Giver during my senior year of high school and I truly enjoyed both books. They both deal with terrible situations, how humanity has both a light and dark side, and how specific events can affect a person's entire being.

William Durbin- William Durbin was an English teacher at my high school while my parents were in school and still lives on Lake Vermillion near my town. He has written several books, of which my favorites are The Broken Blade, Wintering, The Darkest Evening, and the three books he wrote for the Dear America: My Name is America series. William Durbin includes many traits of northeastern Minnesota in his books which makes them feel very relate-able to myself. One in particular, The Journal of Otto Peltonen deals with the  towns in which I live (Bear River and Cook) and other towns on the Iron Range.      

group projects

Life in the Sticks

Life in the Sticks is now available on lulu,com through this link. It is currently 116 pages long, but I may add to as time goes on.

Life in the Sticks

I am still working on my second capstone project, Life in the Sticks. I have over half of the stories typed up at the moment, and am getting more ready every day. Life in the Sticks is just a collection of my memories from the past 18 years so all I basically have been doing is deciding which ones I want in the book and then typing out the story of that memory. 

My Look at Life

So here is the link to my first capstone project My Look at Life. It was originally going to be a collage book full of my favorite quotes, song lyrics, photos I've taken, my art work, thoughts, etc. but the formatting was being quite difficult. Instead it became a scrapbook of sorts with the quotes, song lyrics, photos, and thoughts, though the art work did not make it into the final product. All in all it was pretty simple to make, I just found the quotes and songs I wanted, picked out the pictures I liked (after going through a couple thousand) and then used the Lulu publisher to format the book, using one of the poetry book formats. Then all I had to do was pick out the layout of each page, type in the test that I wanted for each, and add my photographs.

Why Study the History of Mass Media

Mass media affects our lives every day. It surrounds us and is imbedded in everything we see. The messages of its writing adorn our T-shirts, books, magazines, billboards, posters, newspapers. Mass media and its writing exist everywhere we look, so naturally it has a huge amount of influence in our lives. Since mass media is such a large part of our lives studying the history of mass media can help us understand the meaning of life.

                Mass media consists of everything that exists, beginning with speech. Before the invention of writing messages were conveyed entirely through the spoken word, or oral tradition. People would remember vast amounts of text in the form of stories and poems and then pass them down from generation to generation. Eventually the oral tradition was replaced by the stories being reordered, first in pictures and symbols, and then in script. Still, the oral tradition has a huge amount of influence in our lives today.

                Because of the oral tradition humans have the capacity to remember large amounts of information, though this is often unnecessary in the present. Still, the skill is there, having been passed through genetics from our ancestors whom once relied on it to pass down there legends and culture. As well as giving us the capacity to remember large amount of information, and speaking skills that we use today, the oral tradition also led to the invention of writing.

                Writing, in both pictures or symbols and script makes up everything in our lives. We recognize certain symbols as meaning certain things, and certain letter combinations form words that have a particular meaning. The history of these symbols and words create their meaning, and without knowing the history they would just be a bunch of shapes and scribbles that no one would understand. The same goes for language. If no one knows what the combinations of sounds that form words mean then the language is meaningless. Therefore, the history of them is really quite important because without their history they would cease to having meaning which would make them basically cease to exist. Then, if we no longer had language or writing life would cease to exist. Language and writing in mass media make up such an immense portion of our life that life without both would make communication impossible. Since communication is such an essential part of our lives, the loss of ability to communicate would then lead to an inability to live.

                As well as being a crucial part of life, the meanings behind the words and symbols that make up language and writing is also very important in our development. The stories that we read and hear are often very different and in many cases are complete opposite views of the same idea. Because of this we must choose what we believe. This is evident in believing in religions, evolution, the creation of the earth, supernatural beings and superstitions, history, etc. What we choose to believe influences the rest of our lives in many ways. It leads us to form certain opinions, think a certain way, and act in a certain way. It influences what we will believe and how we will act both in the present and in the future. The present is a result of the past and the future a result of the present so what we believe and how we act has an enormous amount of impact on what will happen next.

                Because of the influence that the past and the present have on the future it leads me to wonder about time, destiny, and free-will. Is time something that is set, or is it relative? Does free-will exist, or destiny, or both? To me both exist. I think that we have the free-will to make decisions, and that those decisions affect our destiny because they influence what will happen next. I also think that time is a relative thing, and that there is no true past, present, and future. Instead, I think that all three are occurring at once. I think that we are at any instant just frozen in one moment of time, but I think that the moment we are stuck in is not the only one that exists. It is like watching a television show, especially reality television. The events that you are seeing have already happened, such as one team winning the Super Bowl, but because you do not know the outcome of the events you view them in the present instead of as a look at the past. The same occurs in our lives. While we are in the moment we view it as the present, and when that moment is passed then we call it the past. However, there is no real past, present, or future. By the time we perceive the moment we are in, it has already become the past, and the next moment that was the future has already become the present. And since we do not know the outcome of our future, we cannot truly know if we are living in the present or if we are simply a recording of the past being played back. Therefore, time is a relative thing. We are never truly living in the present because to perceive it the moment must already be in the past, and the moments that we cannot perceive are the future. This leads me to think that the future just goes directly into the past, without there really being a present.

                What we believe in life is an enormous factor in how we think, act, and develop as a person. Furthermore, by having an impact on our actions, which in turn affect our future, our beliefs are very influential towards our future. We form our beliefs by deciding which stories we are going to agree. The stories are conveyed to us through mass media, originally through the oral tradition, then from paintings and drawings, then from scripts. Now they come to us in all three forms, taking shape in radio, newsprint, television, and the internet. The different media outlets try to influence what stories we will agree with and believe, and there by influence what will happen in the future. Companies try to influence people to buy their products so their sales will increase. Books, magazines, and newspapers try to influence people to read them so that their popularity will increase or so their information can influence them to think in a certain way or about a certain subject. Every piece of media has some kind of goal, and is therefore some kind of propaganda. The propaganda of media then affects how we think and act and there by affect our futures.

                It is important to understand the history of mass media because mass media makes up our lives. Everything is written, said, drawn, painted, designed, and created with a purpose. It is meant to make us feel a certain way, think in a particular manner, or perform specific actions. These actions then affect our future, and affect who we are as a person. Studying the history of mass media teaches us the meaning of life because it is life. Mass media is embedded in every pore of our being, and without it life would cease to exist. The mass media we encounter, and what pieces of it that we choose to believe, make us who we are. That in turn determines how we view the world and what life means to us. Mass media makes up the meaning of life, but without knowing the history of it the meaning is lost. You cannot know something truly without knowing its history because it arises from its history and without it there is no meaning at all. Life would just be a jumbled mess of shapes and scribbles.     

final projects updates

Life in the Sticks is coming along nicely. Instead of doing a second volume I am redoing the stories of volume one (including more details) and combing them with the stories for volume two, making just one larger volume instead of two smaller. As for my look book, I am having some trouble with formatting the pictures with the quotes because whenever I put them into the Lulu editor thing the pictures end up quite fuzzy. So I am attempting a different approach to my original idea on how that is going to be created, and if this one doesn't work I have one more possible solution. Otherwise, I am not really sure what I am going to do about that but there will be more updates to come.