Context presentation

My group consisted of myself, Levi of the Lost Marbles, Nate the Enigma, and Tearful Tristan. We were assigned Kane's chapter on Context, the last chapter in his book. Our story was "To Hermes" which explains the birth of Hermes which is also the birth of music. The story explains how Hermes is born being able to walk and talk and he kills a turtle to make a Lyre (handheld harp). He then steals Apollo's cattle and when he is confronted he explains that he is just a helpless baby and then he farts in order to push Apollo away. However, the smell leads him to his cattle. Then Hermes plays the Lyre for Apollo and he takes Hermes to Mt. Olympus so he can be made into a God. Nobody trusts Hermes still so they appoint him the task of being messenger between boundaries.

My group mates and I decided that since it is a story of the birth of song we should put the story into a poetic song and play instruments, even though non of us are considered musicians. Levi chose an ancient drum, Nate played the sound board on his keyboard, Tristan had some finger cymbals, and  I had a thing that I call a finger dingy thingy (pieces of metal that are tuned differently). We split the story into 4 parts and wrote each part however we wanted. This was to demonstrate how each of our backgrounds and experiences can give different contexts. We also had not put it together until we were in front of the class so that we would not feel like we needed to 'fix' anything.

"The contexts through which myth is remembered are also the contexts in which myth is reinvented by each succession of peoples" (248).

Levi started the story, then Nate, then Tristan, and Me

             To Hermes
(Levi)

Maia of Kyllene was the mother of Hermes,

Zeus came at night to her

She was clean, beautiful, and free from venereal disease,

Little did Hera know

She was asleep all alone,

While Zeus was with Maia playing Barry Manilow

Ten moons later,

A child popped out

That looked like Darth Vader,

He came out walking and talking

Shooting craps with the men,

Picked up the lyre and by noon he was rocking

Mama put him a luxurious cradle,

But he slipped from the cave

Just as soon as he was able

He saw a tortoise outside,

And said “hey nice to meetcha”

“Why don’t you come inside so the birds they don’t eatcha?”

Hermes scooped up the turtle,

And carried him inside

The turtle said to Hermes,

“That was a hell of a ride”

The tortoise thought to himself,

“What a bit of good luck”

But as Hermes grasped his neck he screamed,

“Hey man! I can’t get unstuck!”

Then he killed the poor turtle,

And scooped out his innards

Set them aside and thought,

“I’ll have them for dinner”

Then Hermes strung up the shell,

With the guts of a sheep

They smelled kinda bad,

But hey, it was cheap

Then Hermes pondered again,

Where could more mischief be had

He saw Apollo’s cows,

And began to plot something bad

The small child began to drive them around,

In a gray Cadillac so they wouldn’t be found

Then an old man spied him,

With cattle and Caddy

And said to the boy,

“I’m going and telling your daddy”

The infant replied,

“Go ahead gramps”

“I’ll beat you so bad”

“That you poop in your pants!”

(Nate)

(Tristan)

(Angela)

Then on his lyre, Hermes played

To the Gods, songs of praise

He sang of etiologies

And each Gods mythologies

Apollo’s soul was filled with awe

At Hermes songs that had no flaw

“No one holds such a gift of song

Not even the muses with which they belong

Off to Olympus, where you will find fame

I promise you this, they will know your name”

Then crafty Hermes said “take up my art

Hold on to my lyre deep in your heart

This gift will help you find glories

And help you to tell future stories”

Then Apollo touched each string at a time

Nothing sounded so pure and sublime

They sat and watched the cattle graze

And played reed pipe for many days

Off to Olympus the brothers played

The songs were heard and joy was made

Then Hermes gave Apollo the pipe of reed

Apollo said “I think this is a trick to mislead

My house I am afraid you will steal

But I am willing to make you a deal

The art of prophecy is what the sisters taught

Go to them and they will tell you a lot

But promise me you will not come near

If you agree then we are clear

So Hermes became the lord of the earth

Between boundaries his messages show worth

With the heralds staff and sandals with wings

Either luck or tricks is what he brings.

What I have Learned

Coming to a close to this class I decided to flip back through my notes and give a summary of words and terms we learned as well as suggested books and movies throughout the semester.
Mythos - Story
Polytropos - Many turns
Polymetis - Many wisdom
Mnemosyne - Memory - Mother of the Muses
Muses - Music
Loci - Location
I Am A Strange Loop - Book
Epithet - by-name
Fliteing - fight with words
Fahrenheit 451 - Book and Movie
Memory - Mneme
Recollection - Anamnesis
Ephemeral - Pass out of existance
Bosch - Artist
Dante's Inferno - Book
Logis - Logic - Speech
Cave of Forgotten Dreams - Movie
Hypnerotomachia  - Book
"In my room are many mansions"
"Magical connections lead to scientific theory"
Freytag - Linear story line
Chinese Boxes - story line used with oral traditions
Secondary Orality - shift from literacy to orality such as with images
Oedipus Rex - Book
Episodic - Series of parts or events
Iliad and Odyssey - Books
Psychopomious - Hermes the guide of souls
Man who Fell to Earth  - Movie
"Literally Literally means Letters"
Little, Big - Book
Finnegan's Wake - Book
Your Brain on Fiction - Article
Sunset Limited - Book/Movie
Petite  Madeleine  - French Pastry

Class Epithets

We were told at the beginning of the semester that we would have to learn all of our classmates epithets. I believe that I have them all and I can give a close estimate on the seating.

Levi of the Lost Marbles	Patient Parker	Sweet and Spicy Shelby	Ashley Kicker of Puppies	Breanna of the Fidgeting Whales		Rio Man Behind the Curtain
Jennifer of the Falling Waters	Tia the Crawling Ant	Grace the Epithetless			Swift Footed Seth
Atypical Angela	Megan Mother of the Muses			Jennifer the Charmed		Copious Kyle
Down the Rabbit Hole Jacky		Cameron the Terminator	Nick of the Poptarts			Tearful Tristan
	Downtown Abby	Spencer the Soft Spoken Shaker		Quentin the Inquisitor	Nate the Enigma
Walter the Ghetto Prophet	Craig the Grump	Cassidy Euterpe	Louie of the Winded Woods

Nostalgia

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.^[1] The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain, ache". It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the Early Modern period, and became an important trope in Romanticism.^[1]

In common, less clinical usage, nostalgia sometimes includes a general interest in past eras and their personalities and events, especially the "good old days," such as a sudden image, or remembrance of something from one's childhood."

When I went back home this weekend I experienced nostalgia. There was a flood of memories that filled me. There were so many experiences that I had that I wish I could share with other people.  When going into my old bedroom I see the bright pink carpet that I begged for until I was in tears at about 4 years old. The nails are still on the walls that held 5 dozen roses from my high school sweetheart. My mom tells me that we need to clean up my old room so they can make it into a guest room and I tell her that she has to do it because I have trouble getting rid of the stuff myself. My cat Milo that was born when I was a junior is still lazying around the house. He looks much older and it is a visual for the years that have pasted. The pet deer Cutie is also still around. She is fixing to have her 5th set of twins.  My dad has accumulated more pet deer. You can stand out on the deck and feed a heard of 20 that stand right on the lawn. There is a pet calf that is being bottle fed so I volunteered to do that. It reminds me of our calf Bandit that I raised and we still have. He is a large bull but is still so tame you can stand right next to him and feed and pet him. All these memories are so precious to me but I know that nobody else will understand or have the same nostalgia as I do.

Memories in animals

In one of my earlier posts from cracked.com, I found an article about animals and their memories. I decided to look for some more information on animal memories and I came across this National Geographic article that I found interesting.

 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0822_030822_tvanimalmemory.html

Scientists Rethinking Nature of Animal Memory

Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today

August 22, 2003

An elephant never forgets—or does it?

Scientists have long believed that animals do not have so-called episodic memory—the kind that allows humans to remember past events. But recent experiments with scrub jays, chimpanzees, and gorillas have led to rethinking of the nature of memory in animals. Animal memory researchers first face the challenge of communicating between species. "You can't exactly ask the animals where they were, and what they were doing, when Bambi's mother was shot," says Nicola Clayton, a professor of comparative cognition at University of Cambridge in England and a leading researcher in the field of animal memory.
Over the past six years Clayton has devised a series of ingenious experiments that seem to show that scrub jays can recall past events and use the information to plan for the future.
"We have traditionally regarded animals like machines, or automata, believing that they just have reflexes and habits," says John Pearce, a professor of psychology at Cardiff University in Wales. "Clayton's work is revolutionary because it challenges these ideas and suggests that animals have richer memories than previously thought."
Clayton chose scrub jays because she was fascinated by their food-caching behavior: They stash food to recover later. The jays adapt their caching habits to the perishability of the item, Clayton discovered. In one experiment, Clayton left out worms and peanuts for the jays to store. The birds preferred to retrieve the worms, unless a long period of time had elapsed. Then the birds went for the peanuts—a preference they presumably "remembered" from finding spoiled worms.
Mental Time Travel
One of Clayton's later experiments with the resourceful jays involved observing how they behaved when stashing food in caches that might be robbed by other birds. Jays with experience of such avian robbery were much more cautious about their stashes.
"It is as if the pilferer recognizes that its food could be stolen in the future and makes sure no one sees his cache," Clayton says. "This is the first time we have seen evidence that an animal other than a human recalled the social context of an event and adjusted its future behavior."
Psychologists say that episodic memory mediates the ability to remember—or to engage in a form of "mental time travel." The question is whether that ability is uniquely human.
"There are many beautiful examples of complex behavior that occur without higher thought or consciousness," cautions Endel Tulving, a cognitive psychologist at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care in Toronto. In his book "Elements of Episodic Memory," Tulving wrote that animals can adjust, adapt, and learn, but they cannot "travel back into the past in their own minds." But he enjoys the fact that scientists are challenging his ideas.
Neither Clayton nor Pearce are completely convinced yet that the jays have episodic memory and can replay past events in their minds like humans do. But the jay experiments have inspired similar studies in other species. Bennett Schwartz, a cognitive psychologist at Florida International University in Miami, is studying memory in a western lowland gorilla named King.  
Memory in Chimps and Gorillas
 King, a 450-pound (205-kilogram) male silverback in his 30s, communicates with caretakers via picture cards. Using the cards, he has shown that he can remember who gave him certain foods—even when his caretakers cannot remember.
Recently Schwartz and his colleagues staged events in front of King using 33 people that the gorilla had never seen before. Different individuals would do jumping jacks or "steal" a phone from King's trainer or play the guitar.
When King was asked to identify the person by activity, he was correct more than 60 percent of the time. "It's a little like targeting one person out of a police lineup," Schwartz says. He is now beginning to teach King the concept of time—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
For studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, anthropologist Charles Menzel is working with a female chimpanzee named Panzee, who uses a keyboard with more than 256 lexigrams.
Outside Panzee's enclosure, Menzel and his colleagues hid more than 30 different items, one at a time—kiwis, pineapples, rubber snakes, balloons, and paper—while Panzee was watching.
In more than 90 percent of the cases, Panzee correctly identified which type of item was hidden where, and directed her caretakers—unaware of the hiding places—to find the specified toys and fruits. Menzel points out that Panzee herself initiates the communication—significant because the act of "remembering" is spontaneous.
"Animals are using something related to episodic memory, but not necessarily the same as in humans," Menzel says. "Animal memory systems have always been underestimated—the upper limits are not really known."

Memories of Home

I am currently taking Regional Lit. and we were asked to do a poetry prompt paying off of another poem called county. I decided to post it because it came from memories that I have of my home county.

The county of enumerable sagebrush
County of gravel roads
County of broken fences
Fences always needing fixed
County of grazing cattle
County of rocky mountain oysters and Ice cold beer
After a hard day of branding
County of playful calves in the spring
And hunting for food in the winter
County of the Saturday night bonfires
And the non existent police
County of scarce traffic
And town with no stop lights
Where the highway ends
County of more bars and churches
Than of any other businesses
County where everyone knows everyone else
And no invite is needed
This I call Home.

Memory on Crack

Cracked.com is one of my favorite sites that I browse when I'm bored or procrastinating. I found some interesting articles about memory on this site. I am not sure how accurate the articles are but they are interesting and fun non the less. I will give you a brief overview of some of the articles and provide the link where you can read more.

 http://www.cracked.com/article_19518_5-seemingly-random-factors-that-control-your-memory.html
5 seemingly random factors that control your memory
5) Walking through doorways
4) Ridiculous fonts
3) Deep Voices
2) Looking at the floor
1) Hand gestures

http://www.cracked.com/article_18704_5-mind-blowing-ways-your-memory-plays-tricks-you.html
5 Mind Blowing ways your memory plays tricks on you
5) Other people can manipulate your memory with repetition
4) Your brain is half blind
3) Your brain just makes shit up
2) Your memory can be fooled by manipulated images
1) Your mood skews your memories

http://www.cracked.com/article_19583_the-6-weirdest-things-that-are-ruining-your-memory.html
6 Weirdest things that are ruining your memory
6) Advertising
5) Peer pressure
4) Google
3) Birth Control and Sex
2) Being single
1) Being fat

http://www.cracked.com/article_19535_6-animals-with-better-memories-than-you.html
6 Animals with better memories than you
6) Chimpanzees' visual memory can top yours
5) Sea Loins never forget
4) An Elephant keeps track of dozens of other elephants at one time
3) The Octopus can turbocharge its memory 
2) A cat's short-term memory is 20 times longer than yours
1) The Clark's Nutcracker is freaking amazing