The Backseat

It is strange to think so much of our time as children aspiring and wishing to be in the front seat of every vehicle we have the privilege of riding in.  When we are finally old enough or big enough to start riding in the front seat consistently, we race our brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends to reach the coveted "shotgun"seat first.  Through high school and college and beyond this game goes on with confrontations and negotiations, with victories and defeats.
However, in my opinion sometimes the backseat is more fun.  No, I do not mean that in any dirty or negative way.  I simply mean the backseat is the place where, of course it is usually crowded, but it also the place to relax and stare out the window without having to be the driver, navigator, DJ, or anything.  There are no responsibilities for the backseat rider except for trying to keep your face out of the rear view mirror so the driver can see behind him or her.  In the backseat the rider can simply ride.  One can participate in the conversations one wishes to participate in or simply listen to music or read a book.
Beyond that,  the interactions and conversations or the backseat are more conversations.  There may be more people than there should and with that there is a certain bond.  There is the thrill of going to a new and exciting place with these friends or acquaintances in a car that is filled to the brim.  There is laughter and loud music to sing along to and phones to be passed back and forth.  There is wonder that is tangible in the air as the day/night begins.
In the same way there is the quiet peace of the ride home.  Probably the same people that came in the car will not be leaving in the car but maybe so.  The ride home is much calmer.  The music is just background noise now and each is in there own thoughts.  Of course on the first few minutes of the car ride may be conversation of tales and stories being recounted with such fervor but after all the events have been discussed everyone slips away to a quiet ponder to recover from such exhaustion.  These are the best moments of the back seat.  These are the moments when some may drift off to sleep on the shoulder of a friend rather old or brand new.  It is in these moments when a girl, who has strategically placed herself next to the boy who has given her butterflies from the journey's initial commencement or maybe even before then, has the opportunity to sit close and maybe lean her head against his shoulder in real (or fake) exhaustion.  It is these moments that can change the course of a night and spark a relationship even if the movement stops here, the dynamic has changed.  Or the situation may continue.  He puts his arm around her and she snuggles up next to him in a quiet and easy way.  He may whisper something to her and she turns to respond and there may be a kiss that causes an eruption of butterflies. It is the quiet moments like these on the car ride home that make the backseat an unforgettable space.
There are the loud and exuberant moments and there are the quiet and unforgettable moments that make the back seat the place for each person in their own way. So the next time you lose the competition do not be too dismayed.  If you have the privilege of sitting in the back seat and have a moment to pause and think, remember all of the memories you have from when someone else had control of the direction you were going. Remember all of the moments that have led you to this one.  For it is in these moments of relinquished control that we have space to think and feel and act in the bubble that is the car taking you away from the pressures of the outside.  It is here, in the back seat, you can experience butterflies and peace.

Musicality and the Brain

Multimodal Project

Colorful Music

Music is essential to culture and society and has been for centuries.  Music surrounds us where ever we go; elevators, shopping malls, football games, and festivals.  Music is lovely and artistic, like this photo.  

In this image, the viewer is initially drawn to the color on the keys of a black piano.  Typically, piano keys are black and white but in rare instances all of the keys are black.  In this image, it is difficult to tell if there are white keys because of the paint covering the keys.  The yellow especially is apparent because of the sharp contrast to the black piano.  The colors could metaphorically represent the way the piano invokes creativity and brings color, or individuality through music.  Every piano player plays and performs the music differently in the same way that every person writes in their own individual way.  In each person's individual way the player changes the music, even the pieces by Beethoven or Mozart that have been around for centuries and thousands of people practice relentlessly are developed differently with each new student, with each new player.  

Furthermore, the colors hold no pattern which just adds to the beauty of this photo.  This art can never be reproduced, the art just happened just like music changes with each new performance.  

The point of view adds aesthetic appeal to the image.  The way the photo is taken so that the audience is peering down the keyboard in order to focus on keys and the colors they have been painted. This creates a focus on only the piano and the beauty of the scene. 

The effect of the picture is one of anticipation.  It is almost as if the audience is waiting, just as the piano is waiting, for hands to appear and begin to ske the keys, dancing up and down the keyboard and developing a melody.  The melody is different to every listener but to each the music speaks to the soul.  The music tells a story, shares a hardship, and embodies true love.  In this way, the effect on the viewer may transform from person to person, but to all the photo attempts to illustrate the beauty and majesty of music.  

Musical Training on the Child's Brain

The article, Effects of Music Training on the Child's Brain and Cognitive Development, is a scholarly article because of its publication in a scholarly, peer reviewed journal by the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.  

The article presents the case that adults who have had musical training have structural and functional differences in their brains as opposed to those adults without.  This has been discovered through studying children from the ages of five to eleven with musical training and comparing them to a control group of five to eleven year olds without musical training.  The experiment starting with children of similar ages and allowed the experimental group to undergo musical training (eventually amounting to four years) and comparing the results to children in the control group without the musical training.  The experiment would examine different parts of the brain in both groups of children and compare the differneces. These differences are apparent between those with musical training and those without and these differences carry on to the children becoming adults.  Musical training has been shown to improve fine motor skills, language, and mathematical performance. 

The article explores the case and presents the findings at multiple ages of the children through diagrams and written explanations.  Through the use of data and logos, the article presents the findings and proves the point that musical training is very important for the development of the brain and can help in many aspects of life throughout time. 

SCHLAUG, G., NORTON, A., OVERY, K. and WINNER, E. (2005), Effects of Music Training on the Child's Brain and Cognitive Development. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060: 219–230. doi: 10.1196/annals.1360.015
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1360.015/full

Life, Love, and Good Memories

"Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells things how they really are." ~Faith Hill
Country music is music is similar to a fine white wine; it is an acquired taste. Most people who adore country music and listen to it almost exclusively have acquired the love from a young age from their parents and have evolved this love into their own. However, there are those, like myself, who have acquired the taste in another fashion.
I started to seriously get into and seek out country music when I started going to a dance hall/bar just outside of my small town in high school. In our small community, this was the place to go and dance and be seen on the weekends. The town in which the dance hall was located was so small that in fact we just called it for the town name; El Maton. Looking back, this small dance hall was not exciting or even very interesting but when I was sixteen years old wearing my cute blouse, shorts, and cowboy boots, out with all my friends and dancing with my high school crushes, those El Maton nights were a dream. It was here I developed my love for the music. The more I went, the more I sought out music for my iPod and country radio stations to listen to in my car. Even now, I go attend dance halls, and although they may be bigger and better than El Maton; although, perhaps different songs, the music has not changed.
Country music reminds us of the slow living, summer days sitting on the back porch and drinking sweet tea as you watch the sunset and the lightning bugs start to come out.  The music speaks of faith in God, hard times, bravery, and remembering those we have lost. There are countless songs of love and sweet times when the world is lovely because you are with the one whom you adore, there are songs of love lost and missing the one that got away, and there are songs about fishing and drinking beer.
Country music embodies all that is good in the country, especially in the south, where there are dirt roads, tractors, fields to plow and harvest, sunshine to be embraced (along with the sweat), hard work, and long evenings. It is the music that reminds us to slow down and remember where we come from. Once discovered and embraced, it is the music that one seeks out and consumes over half (if not all) the radio presets. There are those who prefer the city life and choose a different life set to a different tune and there are those who just can not stand all of the bad vowels in the singing but to those the music speaks to, country music is the lifestyle we wish to maintain.

 

What is the Obsession?

Throughout pop culture today there is an increasing fascination about zombies.  There have been video games, television shows, horror films, books, and more.  So what is a zombie?  One common definition is: 

"the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose."

 Zombies are the "un-dead," those that have died and come back in a trance-like state.  They are not very fast but can definitely infect or kill a human and therefore are extremely dangerous especially in a "zombie apocalypse".  A so-called apocalypse would result in the entire human population becoming infected probably due to some type of human error in the form of a disease or attempted cure for a disease.  The science behind the cure would go terribly wrong and the side effects would result in most of the population becoming a zombie and hello zombie apocalypse.  
Previous to George Romero's (1968) Night of the Living Dead however, zombies were considered to be the result of voodoo or witchcraft.  In this film however, the zombies rose from the grave due to radiation from a fallen satellite. This film and the following Dawn of the Dead in 1978, started the revolution that set the stages for many of the movies and books seen today about the origin and situations of zombies. 
My brief experience with the zombie sensation include the television show The Walking Dead, the video games Black Ops 2 and Left 4 Dead, and the 2013 movie Warm Bodies.  In each of these there are different ideas of zombies, how they became infected, and how to kill them.  Moreover, the zombies have different appearances and different ways of motion.  
These experiences have sparked my curiosity for the new found obsession with the zombie.  However, this obsession with the idea that the dead may return is not new.  There have been generations of folklore about the un-dead created by voodoo and witchcraft but now the origins of zombies in the stories have been created by human error.  These ideas serve as a warning to humanity and the further search for new sciences.  Experiments and the desire for knowledge are important but some things may beyond the human capacity to control and the results may be detrimental.  They may even cause a zombie apocalypse.  The good news is our pop culture is educating us on ways to survive, hopefully they would be accurate. 



http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zombie+?s=t
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/29/oreilly-godzilla-science-technology-breakthroughs-zombies.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Conventions in Writing

In my experience, students are taught to write two kinds of papers; professional topics and personal accounts or fiction.  The papers are extremely different formats and requirements and allow for different styles of writing.
The professional papers follow a strict structure with margins and headers and footers and page numbers and works cited.  The papers are to have a structure beginning with a introductory paragraph and thesis statement, about three paragraphs elaborating on the thesis statement, and then a conclusion paragraph that reaches a more complex grasp on the topic presented in the beginning.  Certain formats such as MLA are reviewed and memorized and utilized to the minute detail.  Moreover, the content of the paper should have a voice but there should never be personal comments by the author.  Of course, the author is presenting their own opinion and idea of the facts discussed but there is never an "I think" or "in my opinion".  The writing should elaborate fully and have hard evidence to support the claims.  This type of writing is extremely useful throughout school in order to portray professionalism and improve one's grade.
The personal accounts and fictional writing has a much less rigorous structure.  These writings are less common and mostly discouraged unless specifically required.  In these papers, there a few parameter beyond length, font, and spacing and the student may use personal statements in order to characterize and emphasize the tone of the author.  The teachers expected personal thoughts and comments on the events that happen throughout these writings.
Through the use of the professional papers the student is taught to present the facts and critically analyze the texts and evidence in order to prove a point of make a statement.  The personal accounts and fictional writings inspire the student to creatively write and escape into the fantasy realms.  These styles of writing are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum and through the proficient use of both of them, the students learn how to write in almost every element in order to find their personal style of writing.  Through uncompromising structures and countless papers and personal encouragement, I have learned to complete my ideas into words and organize the words into statements effectively for my required assignments in class and in my everyday life.  With this knowledge and the confidence I learned through schooling I will be able to write in a magnitude of elements and for multitude of reasons throughout my lifetime.