First Draft-Brave New World in The Tempest

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

O brave new world,

 That has such people in't!” –Miranda, Act V Scene I, The Tempest, Shakespeare

            The Tempest is Shakespeare’s most original play. This quote is one of the most famous and shows how full of wonder and hope the main female protagonist is as she faces new people and challenges. Why is she so full of hope? Should she be afraid of what is unknown and unfamiliar? Shakespeare shows how people in his time dealt with the “Brave New Worlds” of his day and of the few ways to cope with it: Dominate it or Embrace it. In the end, a combination of both of them seems to be the best way to handle oneself when faced with new lands and new opportunities.

Dominate It.

            While Domination is a sub-theme explored by many in the play, none know it better than Prospero and Caliban. Caliban’s mother ruled a mysterious island until Prospero showed up. Caliban said

“This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in't, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile”-Act I, Scene 2.

Prospero had freed Caliban from the tyranny of Sycorax who was a witch. He taught Caliban an education and Caliban returned this education in kind. However, he was not fully enthralled with Prospero’s rule either.

“Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have”

This disdain for his master leads Caliban to another two men who are ambitious about the island to which they have arrived: Trinculo and Stephano. Now in order to understand this new world to which they have encountered, they frequently refer back to their old one in order to bring understanding to it. Caliban’s encounter with these men was new for him and them.

Old World Vs. New World

“A strange fish! Were I in England now,

as once I was, and had but this fish painted,

not a holiday fool there but would give a piece

of silver: there would this monster make a

man; … this is no fish,

but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a

thunderbolt” .-Trinculo, Act II, Scene II.

In seeking out these new lands there seems to be a give and take about how much of the old world you must bring with you. In Trinculo’s and Stephano’s case, they bring all of the old world with them and share it with Caliban. Clothes, liquor, and titles abound with these three and they go about the island. Prospero brought a small part of the old world with him: his books.

Prospero’s story is about how he lost his dukedom due to his obsession with reading. We see as the audience how he could have avoided his fate had he just left his study and not left sole power to his brother. As Prospero then is banished to this new isle, he brings with him his books and learning and shows how what failed in the old world could be adapted to the new one.

Embrace it

Part of the allure of the island is this new freedom that all experience. All the rules and regulations that existed before can be thrown out the window. Gonzalo in trying to help alleviate Alonso’s pain, imagines the island if he were to be king on it. Instead of a typical kingship Gonzalo imagines a society with “No sovereignty” (Act II, Scene I).

Conclusion

Notes: I am missing a conclusion. I intend to cite The Tempest and the Introduction part of our eBook in its discussion of Shakspeare’s reading of travel journal’s and their influence on Shakespeare’s perception of the new world. I also intend to show how Prospero’s attempt to educate Caliban fails but his attempt to exact vengeance at the end of the play is successful. The point I’m arguing is that Shakspeare shows us that we need to conquer new worlds and try new methods of thinking to grow out of our old world. I’m also missing secondary sources to strengthen my argument. So far this is just representative of my close reading and keeping in mind our past class discussion.

Questions: Would my mentioning of Shakspeare’s travel journal readings be relevant to the argument I’m making?

You can see the structure my chapter is forming here in this rough first draft, is the organization good?

Is my argument sound? Does it highlight the theme adequately?

I intend to include more quotes and give better commentary in arguing the bigger thesis claim.I will include Ferdinand and Miranda’s admiration of eachother among the other quotes and points I brought up in my Notes section. Should I include other quotes to strengthen my argument?

Is the picture good? I have another one with a sunset on an island mountain. These are public domain pictures. Should I cite where I got the photos too?

Thank You Fellow Classmates and Professor For helping me understand this play better and explore the six themes of our eBook. I'm getting more excited about it. 

Digital Era Themes

I have a few concrete ideas and practices and more general questions at this point. To my fellow classmates: please comment and share your opinion to let me know if you get my meaning or if I’m off in my line of thinking with connecting the 6 themes to today.

Here is a list of digital era practices/concepts that I think fit well within the 6 themes we are using to explore the Renaissance:

1. Ad Fontes

We continually search for “original” content in our digital realm. Whether they be originally done songs or skits on YouTube or essays and blogs from a variety of people through a variety of mediums: Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. Apart from just consuming “original” content, we are also still propagating the print tradition in our digital tradition. Such as we discussed in class. I believe there are also examples of people looking at original works (be it in print, archeological excavations, indexing, or otherwise) and learning from them and translating them in our digital age.

2. Brave New Worlds

In our opportunity for connecting with other people regardless of distance, we are in a sense destroying the “New World”. In our discussion of The Tempest the island is a magical place that is apart and different from where we live. I believe that people living in our time and age who go from day to day remaining ignorant of the world around them have this magical image in their heads of normal places. A few examples would be a romantic notion of Hawaii, Canada, Jamaica, and all of Europe. The interconnectedness of the web helps educate us and discover that we share more in common than what we have in differences with our fellow man. Very much like how the characters in Shakespeare’s play looked to colonize the new worlds before them, we our conquering ours in the pursuit of getting to know one another either personally as we live together or through our communications on the web.

3. What a Piece of Work is Man

In exploring our new worlds, we find our fellow man and we ask the questions of good and evil within ourselves. The internet shows us the very brightest of mankind with stories, pictures, and videos of loved ones, hope, courage in the face of adversity and anything you can attribute to good. There is also the flip side to that as we traverse the underbelly and decide whether this device of communication will be a boon to us or our downfall. In Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and blogs we can see how some people put thought into what they are saying and how raw human emotion may bypass that thinking and lead to regrettable actions and hurtful words/messages.

4. Plough Boys and Bibles

In the discussion about religion and its merits we have every option to explore. I saw a video the other day of how a Muslim interpreted the Koran to have faith in Christ and convert to Christianity. I see a countless list of items resulting from a google search for the question, “Why Christianity is Evil”. The world we live in is much the same in that we love and adhere to our traditions passed to us by our parents or other authority figures. Our courage to question the sources and use that to either prove or disprove what works for us is our key for enlightenment. Who’s to say we won’t have a modern day Luther who questions our status quo for typical Facebook posts and challenges us to strive for a higher purpose?

5. Typographia Conservatrix

The written word is man’s treasure for passing knowledge on. As mentioned before, our digital age allows us new ways to use the internet as a tool and we don’t have to adhere to the same limitations as the paper and pen dictate. Yet there will always be residual. Our texting habits show an ease of communication. But at what cost? Is our language doomed to delve backwards into common colloquialisms/abbreviations or is this the way forward to how we can better connect with each other? We see how links over the years become dead and we lose precious information that can feasibly last forever on our digital disks. Perhaps the eBook will become the new standard for how the majority of people will read as those of us who grew up in the “Printed Age” die out.

6. Sprezzatura

The court culture of the Renaissance sported an actual court and with it a court culture/ideal. Tying well with Humanism, these ideals called for what the privileged of the world had to offer their fellow man. In today’s era we continually talk about how great America is. Questions of our ideals and how we deal with other nations range from the politically correct to an attitude of colonialism. Rather than talk about how we as a nation should act, I feel how we approach day to day life is a reflection of Sprezzatura. Our practices of dressing up for the job interview, service projects, helping others come to my mind when I think of our own Sprezzatura that we practice today. The discussion of our nation’s education system and whether or not art, music, and the humanities should still be taught is in debate when weighed against more technical, “useful” subjects.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

There are several concepts in The Tempest that fit in our theme of “Brave New World”: There is the setting of an undiscovered island in which the entire play occurs, there’s the history of the island and its many rulers, the concept of other-worldliness/spectacle from all groups of characters in the play, and pure wonder.

Isaac Lyman in his Brave New World post put it best, “Shakespeare writes a play set in Cyprus: no magic. Shakespeare writes a play set in Messina: no magic. Shakespeare writes a play set on a Mediterranean island: magic. (?)” This new world that Shakespeare and his fellow countrymen had learned of had this magic to it because of it being unknown. All reports about the new world came from stories from the Captains and crew of ships that had made the journey. As we discussed in class, a few details of these stories may have been exaggerated due to human error and the natural state of storytelling.

In the play Act V scene I has the best example of the wonder and other-worldliness experienced by all groups of the play. Miranda says, “O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't!” She says this in response for seeing the whole group of people that had been in the shipwreck. They react in kind to her by Alonso asking Ferdinand, “What is this maid with whom thou wast at play? Your eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours: Is she the goddess that hath sever'd us, And brought us thus together?” Of course not all new encounters were all in good terms. Caliban as he meets Trinculo and Stephano is at first a confused scene. It ends somewhat well when Caliban gets a drink and trades his current master for another.

The island had been ruled first by Sycorax Caliban’s mother. She was defeated by Prospero and he rules the island. In the play the idea of gaining new dominions and freedom is presented at several lengths. Prospero’s own banishment was the result of this ambition by his brother. The kings own followers think of thoughts of killing the king himself in order to gain land back home. Stephano gains a vision of being ruler when Caliban suggests to him to kill Prospero. Even in a moment when Gonzalo is trying to console Alonso, he imagines a Utopia on the island with him as ruler.

Despite all the wonder and imagination of dominion that the newcomers to this island portray. There is always an idea of home that is apart from the island. Stephano when he meets Caliban even remarks how if they were in London how things would be different.

Works Cited

Mabillard, Amanda. "Miranda" Shakespeare Online. 2000. 27/September/2015< http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/horatiochar.html >.

Lyman, Isaac. “Barbaric (read: brave), Ancient (read: new) Islands (read: worlds)” Website Blog. eRenaissance project blog. Gideon. September 8, 2015. Web. September 27, 2015.

King Of Kings: The CEO

In today’s American society the closest thing we have to a king would be the CEO. He is a private individual, with extraordinary power, money, and influence. His decisions determine the daily lives of those around him and those very far away. He is on top of the social pyramid and delegates decisions to others in order to manage his business. I see here a connection to the old Renaissance under the theme of Sprezzatura or Courting Culture. Sarah Carpenter in her online piece The Sixteenth Century wrote of a particular party that King Henry VIII put on “The actual festivities did not simply accompany or celebrate a political event but were recognised as politically significant in themselves. The Milanese ambassador, who wrote home explaining the various European implications of the treaty, carefully pointed out in letters to his lord and to colleagues that: the festivities and triumphs and the sumpteous apparatus with which this most powerful king has entertained the French ambassadors has surpassed all the splendours of modern or ancient kings.”

            During that time it was a political show of force to be a good host and to achieve honors. The Court system of the day was a very complicated one. How I like to think about it is a comparison of our own day and time. When business dealings are done internationally, its good manners for the representatives of the company to recognize and respect the cultural and spiritual traditions of the country to which they are visiting and to adhere to their standards of conducting business. In our own college books we have tips on how we could better represent ourselves and the company by exercising proper preparation and research in order for the business visit to be a success. All this is a “court system” that is practiced by American corporations and companies in order to gain favor and conduct business.

            One does not need to read very much about the courting practices of the Renaissance to see there was a good deal of lavish spending on what most would consider a genuine waste. However, when the rules of the game have been laid out in a political landscape you need to play the game well. My only question is do we today need to follow in the lavish footsteps of our ancestors? Or do we show the world a new way to conduct our affairs?

Works Cited

Carpenter, Sarah. "The Sixteenth Century Court Audience: Performers and Spectators." Sarah Carpenter. Http://web.archive.org, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.

ABC-Teaching Yourself To Read

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,

   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. –Sonnet 11

            Shakespeare said it best, copies should be made. "Typographia conservatrix" or Printing's cultural impression during the Renaissance could not be stressed enough. We have the Bible being printed, classical works being kept and preserved by studious monks, and Shakespeare to name a few highly influential works that have shaped our history. With the advent of the word press the mass production of literary works was possible…but who would read it?

            Looking at the example of Shakespeare, he obtained his education from the Stratford grammar school. His years of attendance are estimated to have occurred in 1575 to 1579 (Mabillard). This school had been chartered by King Edward VI. The political and social turmoil of the times made the need for public education more apparent and with more printed works being made available it was more desired for. A question I had with my research here was to determine how the literacy rate moved during this decorated time of history.

            Not everyone was as lucky as Shakespeare. Literacy depended largely on your class and geographical location. If you were rich and lived in the city, chances were that you were literate. In an online resource, Diane Jakacki wrote, “Unlike modern-day interpretations, literacy in this time period implied an ability to read, not write, English. As Protestant religions expanded, they placed importance on direct reading and devotion of the Bible and other religious texts as a moral duty. Historians face a dilemma in accurately analyzing literacy rates, and insight into this is still in its primitive stages. Professor David Cressy took an interesting approach to the material by evaluating public documents such as court documents, marriage licenses, and wills to define literacy rates in his book Literacy and the Social Order. Englishmen lacking the ability to read signed these with a signature mark instead of their actual name.”

            While today we are working mostly on conjecture, it can be seen that a shift in the political and economic atmosphere changed society and the necessity of reading rose. Further work done on this subject was done by Charles Scribner's Sons in an online article which says, “Many factors contributed to the growth of literacy during the Renaissance. Books became

more widely available, and the number of schools, universities, and libraries increased. In

addition, it became increasingly common to use vernacular languages, rather than Latin,

for business and legal purposes.” They would continue to say how it was political and economic changes that would have had a larger effect on the printed word rather than religious or humanistic purposes, though they acknowledge that both of these provided the teaching and curriculum for the guidance of literature for future generations.

            If you couldn’t attend these schools and were in the poorer classes, self-teaching was the way to go. As previously stated, the Reformation created several sects of religions. Several of them encouraged their members to have their children educated to become literate so as to be better followers of the word. Though my research into this subject is in the preliminary stages at best, I’m astounded at how much literacy spread as it did. My imagination takes me to a world of the dark ages where the common folk just listened to their priests and listened to the well-voiced street preachers of the day and were entertained. At the end of the day, there is much to be said about how the success of the written word is indebted to the other themes of the renaissance such as Ad Fontes, Bible influence, and Humanism.

Works Cited

Shakespeare. "Shakespeare's Sonnets." Sonnet 11. Oxquarry Books Ltd, 2001. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. <http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/11>.

Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare's Education and Childhood. Shakespeare Online. 12 Sept. 2000. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/shakespeareeducation.html >.

Jakacki, Diane. "Literacy in England (1575-1625)." London City Comedy. Diane Jakacki, 7 Aug. 2011. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. <http://iron.lmc.gatech.edu/classes/djakacki3/jakackiwikif11/index.php/Literacy_in_England_(1575-1625)>.

Scribner, Charles. "Literacy." (n.d.): n. pag. Http://www.philiplaberge.com. Visual Education Corporation, 2004. Web. 20 Sept. 2015. <http://www.philiplaberge.com/FamilyHistory/LaBergeInfo/Literacy.pdf>.

For King and Country

            Reading about the Reformation strengthened my opinion on how there were several interconnected events that came together for this religious rebellion to come to be. As mentioned in class there was a plague, wars, peasant rebellions, and Petrarch coined the phrase the “Dark Ages.”

            

            Out of this mess the Renaissance was a flower in the mud. With the advent of the printing press, all that was needed was the material for it. Katie Bowman in her blog does an excellent job explaining and researching the preacher climate of the time and how that was a popular form of entertainment/religious worship. So the material was there and as a result of the plague, there was no shortage of unused clothing that could be broken down and used to make the actual paper. Hence we see the machinery of literacy turn and pick up speed.

            Along with sermons came bibles. Among the many were the Vulgate bible (Latin), Wycliffe (New Testament Middle English), Tyndale (English), The Great Bible (based on Tyndale’s work after the king killed him), The Geneva Bible, The Bishop’s Bible, and the King James version. This list represents a history of martyrs and brave men wanting to make the bible more accessible to the public.

            I attribute two things to the success of the Reformation: King Henry’s divorce with Catherine and the Catholic church’s approach to change. Skip Knox wrote: “In July 1529, pressed by the emperor, Clement finally revoked the case to Rome. This now brought the business to a crisis, for if the case were heard at Rome, Henry's petition would surely be denied and then he would be stuck with Catherine... The question, then, was how and on what legal basis to defy the pope. He could do so openly and simply suffer excommunication, as other English kings had done, but this was a desperate course made doubly risky in that it would leave the door open for the religious radicals.”

            Even the King had to think twice before he decided ultimately to sever ties with the Catholic church and approve the divorce himself. Here we see a beginning of a division of church and state. Sure the King is still head of the church and there isn’t any difference from one tyrant to the other, but it set a precedent and allowed for the future of more translations of the bible. It was during this time that The Great Bible was being translated/released. The Catholic Church approach to change was the same, assert authority, keep tradition, avoid death for the church leaders at any cost. Hence, any prior reformations were either met with an accusation of heresy or they were absorbed into the church. This hard headedness would lead to an inability to meet the needs of changing times.

            The plague, death, and drastic changes in the socio-political atmosphere of the era is the driving force as to why the Reformation happened and succeeded.

Works Cited

Knox, Skip. "The Reformation." HWC, in England. Boise State University, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

The Paragon of Animals

            Where did humanism start in the renaissance? My research pointed me to the introduction of Greek and Roman literature that became more well-known and widespread during the 15^th to 16^th century. Petrarch is named the “father of humanism” by many scholars. This title for example appears in a review for Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance. He is significant because he was the first of many scholars who did the necessary work of transcribing and reading the great works and discussing them with his contemporaries. This thought of humans being good is a bit obvious to me in our time and day. Inequality is bad, every American deserves their god given rights, every human being should be given an equal chance at their right to live.

            In the Renaissance, this thought of human right and place in the world was different to the prevailing thought of the day, which was that God came first and that all men by nature are sinful and require a redemption. Steven Kreis in his online lectures describes that a normal Renaissance man “lived, as it were, between two worlds. The world of the medieval Christian matrix, in which the significance of every phenomenon was ultimately determined through uniform points of view [or] he had not yet found in a system of scientific concepts and social principles stability and security for his life. In other words, Renaissance man may indeed have found himself suspended between faith and reason.” I would not go far as to say that Humanism is anti-religious, but for that time and age, questioning what your priest was saying and supplanting it with your own ideas was a novel concept. Ironic that this “revolutionary” take on life was gleaned off reading books several centuries older. If the Renaissance man had to choose between science and faith, that may well be true of the modern day man as well.

            Some of our most humanistic writings in America came during the early 19^th century. The transcendentalists attempted to logically explain their transcendental views and opinions while walking the line between the absolute ideal and the scientific reality of our world. Men of this group were Johann Fichte, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe. Another man who would be considered outside this category would be Joseph Smith. But we see in his “King Follett Sermon” a claim that is distinctly humanistic, “ We say that God himself is a self-existing being…It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles…” Though Joseph Smith is not considered one of the great writers, the idea he expresses is on the mind of all the other writers of his time. I don’t provide an answer to the question, but wish to point out that this question holds relevance in our day and can help us understand our place here on this earth. Today in our Post-Modern literature we see several authors and intellectuals still struggling with the same questions that were coming up in the Renaissance.

Works Cited

Kreis, Steven. "Renaissance Humanism." Www.historyguide.org. Steven Kreis, 13 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. <http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html>.

Smith, Joseph. "The King Follett Sermon." The King Follett Sermon - Ensign Apr. 1971 - Ensign. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4 Apr. 1971. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.

Exploring New World's and making them Old

In the Norton Anthology introduction of Michel de Montaigne in his Of Cannibals we read, “Contrary to popular conceptions, although it was a period of expanding intellectual and geographical horizons, the Renaissance was, on the whole, a profoundly intolerant age.” This notion is a surprising one to me and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Every empire at the time was searching for Brave New World’s but only in the name of wealth and colonialism. New people and worlds were destroyed rather than explored. In Shakespeare’s Tempest the character of Caliban comes to my mind. We are presented with a monster and we are left with that label. However, I would always find myself pitying Caliban. He was a native of the island and was for all intents and purposes, enslaved by the newcomers to his island. Thinking about our own day and age, I would like to believe that we are more open minded and better off in our own modern day renaissance than those of the old. However there are events happening today that I feel are relevant to this topic.

In our American society we have a large collection of people of different races, beliefs, and creeds. Are we just as intolerant as people before us? On the news the Charlestown Massacre shows us the ugly face of racism still plaguing our society. The only actions I perceived to have been taken after this event were friends and families of those affected were drawn together and the rest of the state moved to remove a flag. Zeba Blay of the Huffington Post wrote, “The people of Charleston rejoiced after South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag at the state capitol, and rightly so… Yet it's important to remember that this gesture, while significant, does not fix the underlying issue: deep-seated, institutional hatred and inequality.” I don’t claim to have the answers on how to fix racism and hatred in America. I only wish to bring forth the idea that the old renaissance and our modern age renaissance should try to be different in that while one explored new worlds and destroyed them, the other should explore them, embrace them, and seek mutual understanding.

Works Cited

Blay, Zeba. "Taking Down The Confederate Flag Won't 'Solve' Racism." The Huffington    Post. 

      TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 July 2015. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

     <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/23/confederate-flag-racism_n_7647194.html>.

Connell, Eileen. "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The 16th Century: Topic 2: Texts

      and Contexts." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The 16th Century: Topic 2:

      Texts and Contexts. Norton and Company, n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

Petrarch Blog-A tradition of tradition

Petrarch’s use of a “letter” to communicate with his fictional heroes is a clever method to both express his admiration for and sincerest questions to his models. My understanding of the theme Ad Fontes is simply its definition: Looking back to the sources. In Petrarch’s letter to Homer he illustrates Ad Fontes brilliantly by congratulating Homer on having so many imitators and that he himself (Petrarch) also hopes to have succeeded in creating enough good literature to inspire his own imitators. His hope also is that those same imitators will surpass him and will continue a tradition of improving imitation.

            In Petrarch’s letters there is this theme of tradition or Ad Fontes is repeated. Its importance was especially impressed upon me when reading the letter to Cicero and seeing Petrarch lament the fact his generation had lost original work by Cicero. This lack of original sources means to Petrarch that his generation and all after him are unable to continue their striving effort at improving upon what has been laid before. This point is further strengthened in Petrarch’s letter concerning the scarcity of copyists. Petrarch was eager to read the great works of Greek and Roman nationality but there were not sufficient means to translate their works and share them. He then underwent the work himself and worked tirelessly at it. He was inspired to learn in his copying of Cicero's work that his hero Cicero also participated in the copyist profession. Seeing Petrarch and Cicero both in their respective era’s giving priority to Ad Fontes is truly remarkable and gives me a sense of responsibility to give more priority to the great works of literature I have available to me today.

Jake Hawkins, Man of Action

     Hello! My name is Jacob Hawkins and I'm the guy with the JayQuellin' shirt. I love movies, television shows, and having a good laugh. I'm an English Major at BYU and will graduate at the end of this school year.

     My experience with Renaissance literature is chiefly with Shakespeare. I love his plays and poems and feel there is a strong presence of  inherent truth that still resounds with readers and play audiences today as they did back then. I also have a basic understanding of the great Italian artists of the time and am amazed at the test of time those masters have withstood.

     I have no experience with eBooks but am not against the idea of it. I agree that we are in the midst of a Renaissance of sorts but have not really thought about what kind it is and what it really means. I look forward to contributing more to this blog as the class continues on.