Prompt #1
This morning I woke and had some coffee. Next I put on my
socks and clothing and ate some Cheerios. I like Cheerios. My class
is most likely doing the same things that I’m doing, but later. I don’t
think that Michael gets up until the first bell rings. I would love to
sleep longer, but my job means getting to school on time and
cleaning the room, preparing the lessons for the day, having another
cup of coffee, and organizing Daphne’s desk. Daphne is really not
messy, but she needs me to clean her stuff up once in a while (just
kidding).
Have you ever gone to a dog park? I have a dog park across the
street from my house and I often wonder if humans have parks that
resemble a dog’s. Maybe human gyms are like dog parks. Maybe at
the gym dogs wonder what in the world we could possibly enjoy
about working out. Of course we don’t sniff each other’s
hindquarters, but certainly we do other stuff that is really quite
ridiculous to dogs.
Prompt #2
While the missionaries taught the Indians, the soldiers
took possession of the land, guarding it by building presidios
(or military fortresses). The few other settlers who came to
California cleared the land for planting and began building
towns and ranches.
The Spanish government estimated that it would take
roughly 10 years to train the Indians in Spanish work
methods and religion. The mission lands would then be
released to the Indians for them to operate on their own.
The land would belong to Spain, and the Indians would
become tax-paying Spanish citizens. The Spanish called this
process secularization. Once secularization took place, the
friars would move to a new location and start a new mission.
Prompt #3
Fray Junipero Serra was the first president of the Alta
California missions. He was born in Majorca, Spain, on
November 24, 1713 and spent some years teaching philosophy.
He knew that he wanted to spread his faith, so he later moved
to New Spain and was put in charge of five missions in Baja
California. When he was 55 years old, Serra was chosen by the
Roman Catholic Church to head the Alta California missions.
His first task was to found two missions in southern Alta
California. He established one in San Diego and another in
Monterey, more than 450 miles to the north. Though he was
not actually present for the founding ceremony at Mission San
Francisco de Asis, as mission president Serra was credited with
its founding. He died on August 28, 1784, at Mission San
Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo (near Monterey), where he
Prompt #4
In 1810, residents of New Spain began a war to gain their
independence from the Spanish government. This war went on for 11
years. During this time, the people living at the missions were required
to work harder to supply food and clothing to the Spanish soldiers. In
1821, the people of New Spain gained their independence from Spain
and formed a new nation called Mexico. As a result of this upheaval,
the missions in Alta California fell under the authority of this new
government.
The Mexican government was not happy with the state of the
missions. Some officials thought that the Indians living at the missions
were being treated like slaves. Others saw the richness of the mission
lands and wanted to take them so they could become wealthy. In
August 1833, the Mexican government finally decided to secularize the
missions. However, secularization did not occur as the Spanish had
planned it. Rather then turning the mission land and property over to
the converted Indians, the Mexican government’s Secularization Laws of
1833 gave control of the mission property to the Mexican government.
By James Steinberg, Union Tribune (Jan. 11, 2007)
Sooner or later, the illegal riprap will have to go, or else beachfront
homeowners will need the city’s blessing to leave the stuff in Place. But
either way, ocean levels will continue to rise and winter storms will
continue to pound the shoreline, and the rock barriers won’t do much
to prevent sand from being washed out to sea.
“The retention of sand is a very complex issue, and it is not solved by
riprap,” Councilman David Druker told the City Council on Monday, as
he and Councilman Henry Abarbanel called for a review of the
resources required to enforce the city’s beach overlay zone ordinance.
Approved by Del Mar’s voters in 1988, the beach overlay zone
ordinance -- commonly called BOZO, for short -- was a response to
beachfront property owners who built private erosion barriers on the
city’s public beaches from 29th Street south to 17th Street, and area
called North Beach.
Some homeowners voluntarily removed the barriers from public
property in the early 1990’s. The city also took legal action to enforce
the measure, and even billed property owners for the cost of hiring a
contractor to remove the encroachments.
Prompt 6
Michelangelo was the great colossus of art. The Italians speak of
his “terribilita,” his awesomeness, and certainly one feels awed
standing before the “Pieta,” the masterwork of his youth. It floats
there, serenely above us, and we feel so small and yet, also, so great,
because looking at it we magnify our own selves. I am struck by the
deep loneliness of these figures: Mary like a mountain beautiful and
grieving; her son like a great river flowing down her side. They are
both isolated, the dead son and the living mother, yet they are so
intimately united because they belong to one another.
Michelangelo was a lonely man, a man of enormous and
tempestuous passions, who lost his mother when he was very young.
He lived in a family of men, an irascible old father and squabbling
brothers, and one feels that he was always unconsciously seeking for
what he shows us here, this beautiful young mother. He was once
asked why he had made Mary so young, and he said that “she was
too beautiful ever to grow old” that is the remark of a man who has
lost his mother young.
Prompt 7
The uncanny power of German art is seen at it’s deepest and
most characteristic in Germany’s greatest artist, Durer. This is a
portrait he painted two years before he died a superb depiction of
his friend Hieronymus Holzschuher, one of the most influential men
in Augsburg, a major politician and wealthy aristocrat. Holzschuher
could only have become a friend of an artist because Durer had
built up the status of his profession and laid a proud claim to its
human significance.
What makes this portrait both so great and so Germanic its that
Durer is interested not only in what Holzschuher looked like but
also in what he actually was like. He sought not the facts alone but
the truth behind them. We get an impression of an entire and
distinctive personality. It was a family portrait, cherished for
generations by his descendants (which explains the perfect state of
preservation:the Holzschuher family kept it covered by a protective
panel). The sitter clearly had precisely this strong prow of a nose, a
firm yet kindly mouth and eyes of pale brilliance.
Prompt 8
Holbein is not a typical “German artist” without disrespect we
could call him ‘a german who got away’. He went to Switzerland as
a teenager and then moved on to England, later becoming Court
Painter for Henry VIII. Holbein’s work, so smoothly perfect, is in
many ways more international than national. He does not have the
German interest in inwardness. What concerns him is not the
nature of Gisze’s deepest self but the nature of his personal world.
We are, as it were, going through the keyhole and being asked to
guess what kind of man he is.
It is not a difficult question. There are many clues, not least a
placard giving his name and age” he is thirty-four. There is even an
envelope addressed to him at the Steelyard in London, so we know
he is a Hanseatic merchant, with the tools of his trade all around
him in his neat, green office. We can see the weighing machines, the
books, the boxes, the seals, the ledgers, the petty cash, all he needs
for his correspondence. His sleeves, with their cascade of glittering
satin, tell us that he is a wealthy young merchant.
You are presumably looking at the back of this book, or
the end of THE END. The end of THE END is the best place
to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the
beginning of the beginning of the THE END to the end of the
end of THE END, you will arrive at the end of the end of your
rope.
This book is the last in A Series of Unfortunate Events,
and even if you braved the previous twelve volumes, you
probably can't stand such unpleasantries as a fearsome storm,
a suspicious beverage, a herd of wild sheep, an enormous bird
cage, and a truly haunting secret about the Baudelaire parents.
It has been my solemn occupation to complete the
history of the Baudelaire orphans, and at last I am finished.
You likely have some other occupation so if I were you I
would drop this book at once, so THE END does not finish
you.