Sports Illustrated

In a Sports Illustrated magazine article, the author talks about different NFL head football coaches’ views on their players getting into fights at practice and the punishments for the team if anyone gets into a fight. While most coaches say that they try and break up the players when they start fighting and either send those players home, or make the whole team run wind sprints. The new Jets head coach Rex Ryan is different; he says that if his players start fighting he lets his players fight till they are done. He said that after watching film of his team last season, they needed to toughen up and start getting each other players back.
This is a big question for all coaches; in a physical game like football where do you draw the line for your players? In such a physical game like football, players can get caught up with all that adrenaline and one little thing can set them off. Even though I don’t agree with Rex Ryan’s theory on allowing his players to fight, I understand his theory of letting his players fight to bring them closer. I know that people looking from the outside in and who haven’t played football might not understand the discussion here; they look at it as there is no reason for player to fight. The only way I can explain coaches letting the players fight, is to tell these people that yes the players dont like each others when they are fighting, but when the offensive player come to help another offensive player while they are fighting a deffensive player. This causes the offensive group to come together and the deffensive unit to also come together. This is the struggle coaches go through with bringing their team together and making sure they have each players back. With new players coming in every year, coaches have to get these players to commit to their system and have them grow close to their teammates. These are teammates that players are going to be around each other for close to a year, so it is important for them to respect and be there for each other.

The Painting

This painting that I made is supposed to be of Jesus on top of a hill, showing his power and grace to his people. The person at the bottom of his hill is supposed to be a follower of Jesus looking at him and knowing that the time has come for his return to the earth. I got the idea to paint this from the part in Joel were it says…
“Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered; For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As the Lord has said, Even among the survivors whom the Lord calls”.
For some reason when this assignment was given for everyone in the class to pick out something they liked most from the book of Joel and paint it, I stopped and thought about this part of the story. When I first read the book of Joel, I found that this was the part of the story that caught my attention the most. I like this part of the story the most of any because it shows that the day of the Lord is coming and it is soon, it also states that those who are believers will be brought by the Lord into the kingdom of God. “…whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered;” This was a fun assignment for me because it got me to take my thoughts and my understanding of the text into a painting, while it also got me to try to in vision what this day is going to look like when the Lord comes for his people.

Questions
1. What are your interpretations of this part of Joel?
2. What do you think of my painting?

Reading to the pond

After reading Joel, my favorite lines were;

The Lord roars from Zion, And utters his voice from Jerusalem, And the heavens and the earth tremble But the Lord is a refuge for his people And a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord your god, Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain So Jerusalem will be holy, And the strangers will pass through it no more.

This part of the text stood out the most from the others while I was reading. I don’t know what it was that really caught me, so I read it over and over again. After a couple times reading this part of the passage, I came to conclusion that I liked this so much because it shows the power of the Lord. I know this is going to sound different to a lot of people but in a sense I visualized the Lord as a lion. Just as a lion roars to show his power and to show the others that he is the king of all. I know it funny thinking the Lord as a lion but it was just the first thing came to my mind. For me, reading this and thinking about how close we are to this coming to fulfillment and trying to picture what it would be like was crazy. This was a fun passage to read and it helped me a lot to read it out load at the lake. Doing this helped me actually take in all the passage was saying and get the whole message.

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When LilacsLast in the Dooryard Bloom'd

a) I found most of this poem to be very challenging for me. The language was very Shakespeare sounding to me. For example:
"O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
b) I understood this to be a poem about the time during the civil war but the author makes it seem like the soldiers that died during the war had it easy or something.
h) I overcame the difficulty of reading this poem by going online and reading different peoples interpertations of the poem. I really was struggling reading the poem till I read what others were getting out of the poem and once I saw what they were saying in the text, it became easier to read and kinda understand.

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Frankie and Johnny

This song raises so many questions about what actually happened between Frankie and Johnny. The way the story begins, Frankie and Johnny were lovers. Oh, lordy how they could love". The key phrase for me was "were lovers". This shows that before anything in the story happened, they were already referring to thier love as past tense. As if to say they used to be lovers but now they are not. So if you look at the story from this point of view, you start to think maybee Johnny broke up with Frankie prior to what happened in the story. So if this was true, then this story Frankie could not take the break up. She still looked at Johnny as her man, no matter what. Another part of this that makes this assumption seem true is when Frankie went to the saloon. She approached the bartender, "Has my Johnny man been her?", then the bartender call her by her name as if to show he knows her. Then he said, "If he's your man, if he's your man, then he's doin you wrong". This shows the bartender knew her but did not know that Frankie and Johnny were lovers. That makes it seem that either he did not know that they were lovers or he knew that they had broken up and did not know they got back together. So maybee after she shot Johnny, Johnny felt bad because he promised to always be true to her.

New Blog

This is a story about soldiers life in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and one soldiers love for someone who didnt love him. Even though the soldiers would rather be anywhere else in the world, they are in Vietnam doing their duty for their country. Without knowing the reason or purpose of what they were doing, they still carried out their orders. "By daylight, they took sniper fire, at night they were mortered, but it was not battle, it was just endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost". The narrator is explaining that the soldiers didnt believe in what they were doinghad any purpose but they still went on through it all.

One soldiers love for someone that didnt love him. War can be a very lonely place for soldiers, so they try to think about their previous relationships or love. For this soldier it was a college girl back in New Jersey, that he went out on a date with but like him the way he liked her. This is sad because he is in the middle of a war and all he can think about is this girl. Then one of his soldiers gets shot and killed while he was day dreaming about this woman. So he burns the notes and pictures he has of her and tries to go on without thinking about her.

Questions

Did he really love this girl?
Could he of saved the soldier if he wasnt day dreaming?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

This is a story about two couples sitting around a coffee table talking with two of them telling about their previous love or lack thereof. This story also shows two very different views on what true love is and what it is not. Terri and her husband are telling their friends about her last relationship before she met Mel. “Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her”. Terri is trying to explain that even though people act crazy and try to harm you, which does not mean they don’t love you. While Mel disagrees, he states “I don’t know what you call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love”. I would have to agree with both of them, her boyfriend obviously had something messed up in his head but that doesn’t mean he didn’t truly love her. Later in the story it goes on to tell you that he used to stalk them and make numerous threats, then kills himself. This shows that he had many mental issues, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t love Terri. Then they talk a little about Mel's ex wife and thoughts about her.
After finishing the article what I find very interesting is that Mel said he truly loved his ex wife. Even though He states that she is allergic to bees and he has contemplated killing her using bees. This is hypocritical because he said earlier that Terri’s past relationship wasn’t true love because of her ex trying to murder her. Then he states that he was truly in love with his ex wife even though he has thought about killing her.
Questions:
Do either one of them actually know what true love is?
Do we sometimes past judgments without looking at our own actions or statements first?