the modern bluestocking

This post is mostly just an excuse to use Polyvore again, but I was at Jordan Creek Mall today with my mom, dad, and a friend and I found some cool stuff. And best of all, except for the shoes, everything was on sale!

Jordan Creek Finds by modernbluestocking on Polyvore.com

My very good friend, Sarah, told me last night that PBS is currently broadcasting on Masterpiece Mystery the series Poirot. I have seen several Poirot episodes already - namely Cat Among the Pigeons and Five Little Pigs - and really enjoyed them. Due to some graphic and slightly suggestive content, though, I wouldn’t recommend them for all ages. Anywho, here’s a link to PBS.org and a page where you can view the shows that have already aired. I have to say that David Suchet (also the voice of Aslan in Focus on the Family’s Radio Theater production of the Chronicles of Narnia) acts the best Poirot that I have ever seen. He even has an egg shaped head!

my yummie breakfast

I made a parfait for breakfast today and I thought it looked really pretty. It’s proof that you can eat good looking and good tasting food while on a sugar fast. This guy has Hy-vee Nutty Nuggets, plain yogurt, whole grapes, more plain yogurt, more Nutty Nuggets, and two strawberries on top.

I recently discovered a site called Polyvore on this blog, the author of whom was inspired by this blog. I think it’s kinda cute! So, I made a collage of what I’d like my evening to look like. Below is the outfit I’ll be wearing, and once I’m free for the night, I’d like to have a friend over to drink Tazo tea and watch Libeled Lady with me on my macbook.

My plans for tonight… by modernbluestocking on Polyvore.com

After fixing my lunch today, it looked so good that I had to share it with you all!

a salad, grapes in yogurt, and some strawberries

• A salad consisting of iceberg lettuce, chopped carrots, assorted raw nuts, grilled chicken bits, whole snap peas from a local farmer’s market, chopped tomatoes from the same local farmer’s market and a dressing of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
• Halved grapes in plain yogurt from an in-Iowa dairy.
• Fresh strawberries from a local farmer’s market.

… TasteKid.

www.tastekid.com is a search engine sight with a twist. Type in a book title, author name, band name, song title, artist name, movie title, etc. and Emmy, the sight’s avatar (I don’t know what else to call her), presents you with a list of recommendations of similar books, movies, bands, and artists, stuff she’s heard about recently (recent searches), and what seems to be popular (popular searches). Next to each entry on each list is a little ? button which if clicked provides more information and (if applicable) a youtube video.

I’ve found TasteKid to be fun and easy to use and extremely helpful. Occasionally some things do go wrong, though. For example, you might get a description that doesn’t fit the title/name that you clicked on (like if the name of the band recommended to you was flower, the description might be wikipedia’s definition of the word flower instead of a description of the band). And once I got a youtube video of a modern remake of the (original) movie that had been recommended to me. But TasteKid has a sweet disclaimer at the bottom of the sight that reads: “I know I’m still making a lot of mistakes and bad recommendations, but I hope I’ll get better and better.” It’s hard to be mad at the occasional bad recommendation and mistake after that :D!

I did a couple of searches and was pretty pleased with the results. Let me share them with you:

I wanted to discover some cool-sounding indie artists. I new the sound I was going for, and the only name I could remember off the top of my head as having that sound was Taken by Trees (which I later learned was a solo project by Victoria Bergsman. I don’t know much about her, but I like her sound.) So, I typed in Taken by Trees and got among other things:

Young Galaxy (wasn’t sure if I liked them)
The Concretes (liked)
Au Revoir Simone (liked)
Azure Ray (liked)
Sunset Rubdown (wasn’t sure if I liked them)
St. Vincent (liked)
Kaki King (liked)
Caribou (wasn’t sure if I liked them)
Yael Naim (already heard her and liked her)
The Microphones (wasn’t sure if I liked them)
Tillie and the wall (liked)
Tokyo police club (wasn’t sure if I liked them)
midlake (wasn’t sure if I liked them)

Of course, I don’t know much about any of these artists / bands / groups yet. I’m planning on researching these guys and seeing if I want to buy any of their music. The ones I liked best I’ll type in and see what they give me.

Next I wanted to find some good 1930’s and 40’s movies, so I typed in Libeled Lady - the title of one of my favorite classic movies starring Mirna Loy and William Powell, two of my favorite actors from that era. These were my suggestions:

My Man Godfrey (Already seen and loved)
The Thin Man (I’ve seen one movie from The Thin Man series and liked it a lot)
Top Hat (looks promising!)
Key Largo (looks promising!)
His Girl Friday (already seen and enjoyed)
The Philidelphia Story (I want to see this one!)
Bringing Up Baby (already seen several years ago)
Roman Holiday (looks promising!)
Vertigo (already seen several years ago)

After that, I did a book search. I typed in North and South, and TasteKid immediately assumed that I meant the movie, not the book, and it gave me a long list of movies. I skipped over those and went directly to the smaller list of recommended books. These are some of them:

Wives and Daughters (already read)
Stepping heavenward (already read)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (already read)
Freckles (already read)

I did another book search hoping to input a title that TasteKid would recognize as being a book, not a movie. I typed in Jane Eyre, a much beloved gothic era romance. These were some of the recommendations I got:

Sense and Sensibility (already read)
Persuasion (already read)
Northanger Abbey (already read)
Wuthering Heights (want to read!)
Rebecca (want to read!)
Agnes Grey (want to read!)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (want to read!)
Mansfield Park (already read)
Emma (already read)
North and South (already read)
Pride and Prejudice (already read)
The Woman in White (not sure if I want to read this or not)
Little Women (already read)
The House of Mirth (not sure if I want to read this or not)
Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life (not sure if I want to read this or not)
The Phantom of the Opera (want to read!)
Shirley (want to read!)
A Little Princess (already read)
The Secret Garden (not sure if I want to read this or not)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (want to read!)
Anne of Green Gables (already read)
Wives and Daughters (already read)

I then wanted to see what would happen if I typed in an author’s name, so I picked out Agatha Christie - one of my all time favorite authors and definitely my favorite mystery author. These were some of the results:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I’ve read some of his books and enjoyed them)
Erle Stanley Gardner (hadn’t heard of him, although his wikipedia article made him look promising)
Alistair Maclean (hadn’t heard of him)
Dorothy Sayers (read some of her books and really enjoyed them)
P.G. Wodehouse (never read any of his books, but I’d like to. I have seen Jeeves and Wooster though…)
The Brontes (I’ve only read Jane Eyre by Charlotte)

Like I said earlier, I found TasteKid to be fun, enjoyable, and useful. I was surprised at how accurate many of the suggestions were as I was already familiar with a good half of them - a fact that lent credence to the rest of the suggestions. I’m looking forward to listening to, watching, and reading some of her suggestions - and possibly becoming fans of some of them once I learn more about them.

Did any of these bands/authors/books/etc. on the lists strike a chord with you? If so, I’d love to hear about it! Oh, and if you have suggestions for me, I’d value them even more than those of a (cool and charming) search engine :D.

Tonight I went back for seconds of the new Star Trek movie. I have to say, I enjoyed it more the second time around than the first time around. And I liked it plenty after the first viewing!

I like action movies - like Mission Impossible III, James Bond Quantum of Solace (disclaimer - I saw the ‘edited airplane version’ of this movie which could very well be missing objectionable content), Jurassic Park I, II, and III - but being able to sit through a movie without cringing at the thought of what might be coming next makes for a much more relaxed and mindful movie viewing experience!

Star Trek is of course an action movie, so it lacks some of the depth that I appreciate in other movies such as, oh, Sense and Sensibility :D. Nevertheless, as I watched it tonight, I picked up on some nuances which I had missed the first time I watched it. An example? When Dr. McCoy first appears he tells Kirk how his ex-wife took the whole planet [in the divorce] and all he had left was his BONES. Haha.

One thing that would have made this movie watching experience nicer would have been the absence of a certain middle aged woman sitting behind me to my left. She shrieked. She shouted. She laughed. She clapped. She screamed - LOUDLY. She gave advice to the characters on the screen. AUGH!!!!!!!

You know that feeling you get when you aren’t aware of anything except what’s happening on the screen? Well, at every suspenseful moment of the movie (and at many of the funny moments) she did something extremely distracting and that feeling went poof. My focus was broken and I was rolling my eyes or turning around to glare at her or just trying to scramble back together the pieces of what was going on on the screen. And there were even multiple messages on screen before the ‘feature presentation’ instructing the audience to be respectful and BE QUIET! I think that people who are like this particular lady should be escorted out of movies and should subscribe to Netflix. But I digress. I guess she made the movie more memorable. And I shouldn’t be too mad. After all, she was just vocalizing what everyone else was feeling and thinking…. And it was probably a really scary movie for her.

Despite the loud neighbor, I really enjoyed the movie. It maybe does not have the best plot, and the new actors certainly aren’t identical to the original actors, but for all of that, I think the movie has an appealing charm about it. I think it was clever of the writers to create a pleralla niuresve (I scrambled that as a weak ploy to keep from spoiling the plot for people who have yet to see the movie) to work within to keep from having to make their story match any of the facts from the previous tv show.

I don’t know if this movie will stand the test of time, but I am sure looking forward to going back for thirds and fourths and fifths. And maybe sixths.

Well, I’m not sure that anyone reads my blog anymore, but here I am putting something out there on the world wide web for friends and strangers alike to read.

Hopefully, all of you know that it’s summer right now :D. My senior harp recital was on Jun 6th and since then, I’ve been working exclusively on harp camp music. To put it succinctly, I have a load of stuff to work on and it’s alternately depressing and encouraging. I love working and practicing, but sometimes it seems like I’m making small headway in a mountain of work.

Last week I spent Monday through Friday at Spring Valley Bible Camp near Muscatine, Iowa cabin counseling at Camp Crosswalk. It was a blast, but it WORE ME OUT :D! I had 10 campers and one junior counselor in my cabin.

Today I decided to take a break from all of my work and make it a real summer break day. I spent the afternoon celebrating Kassandra’s birthday one day early. We shopped and ate out - we had a nice time. I got a sweet little dress from Target and some pretty cool t-shirts from American Eagle. I thought about buying this one, but thought I ought to find out if the peace symbol on the front denotes anything that I don’t actually want to support.

I friend of mine managed to get me hooked on Dr. Who this summer. I started with season 1 starring Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, and am now on season 3 or 4 starring David Tennant as the tenth Doctor. Both men make amazing Doctors. So far, I still prefer Billie Piper as Rose to Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones. But I may change my wind about that :D. I’ve also been checking out The Sarah Jane Adventures which is a related but separate series from Dr. Who. It is obviously much childish than Dr. Who, though both are aimed at children. I’ve been told that there is another related series called Torchwood that is decidedly adult in it’s content, so I’m sticking to Dr. Who and the occasional Sarah Jane Adventure.

I’m not sure if all you know yet, but I’m going to go to Coe College this coming fall. I looked around at lots of schools and lots of teachers and ended up decided that Coe was the safest bet for a good education. Since room and board is so expensive at Coe, I’ll continue to live at home and stay in my current bedroom. I moved a desk in and shoved around the rest of the furniture to make it fit, so that’s pretty cool!

Umm, I’ve started going to the gym again, which I’ve enjoyed. Not every morning or even every other morning, but more than I was.

I’m thinking about going back on a sugar fast. My last successful one was last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It lasted for over 30 days. Ever since then I’ve tried to start again and lasted from hours to a few days. The first 3 days are the worst, and I’ve not made it past day 3 yet. Hmmm, I should really get on that….

Coe College requires each incoming class to read a book, and this year’s book is The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. It’s been quite a thought provoking read and I’ve been enjoying sitting down to read it. My one hesitation in recommending it is the occasional swear word that can be found within it’s pages.

Seeing now that it’s relatively late (11:04 pm), I’m going to toddle off and head to bed. ‘Night, all!

… here is a paper I just finished for English IV. Mom wanted me to write a paper using the MLA style before I left for college and this is what I wrote:

Bethany Wheeler
10 June 2009

The Romantic Style, Washington Irving, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The 1800’s saw a change in Western philosophy and lifestyle which translated into a new form of writing now known as the Romantic style. While many authors’ works fall into this category of romanticism and therefore share many traits, they remain distinctly individual - exemplifying their particular author’s personality and taste. Two of the most famous American Romantic writers are Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. These two authors’ works provide prime examples of some of the hallmarks and ideals of the Romantic movement.
The Romantic movement began in Germany, spread to England and France, and reached America in 1820 (VanSpankeren). As said by Kathryn VanSpankeren, “The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values.” But why was this ‘Romantic spirit’ so popular? Changes in culture, politics, and religious thought, as well as economic prosperity all contributed to the popularity of Romantic literature. Regarding changes in religious thought, Anne Woodlief says, “The stern dogmas of Calvinism had been replaced by rationalistic Unitarianism and Deism… People … were looking for new spiritual roots, personally involving and meaningful, but not traditional.” In the Romantic era, “The development of the self became a major theme…The idea of “self” — which suggested selfishness to earlier generations — was redefined” (VanSpankeren). “If one’s self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering” (VanSpankeren). Moving specifically to romanticism in America, we see the effects of artistically minded authors living in a nation filled with natural beauties and wonders. Descriptions of ‘sublime’ natural phenomenon led to the development of techniques used to “evoke heightened psychological states… [to produce] feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension” (VanSpankeren). In short, the world was experiencing huge political and social upheavals, and the authors of that day responded with a brand new form of writing. Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were two of those authors.
Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, in New York City. He wrote casually from 1802 until 1818 when the family business went bankrupt. By this time, he had already gained notoriety from the publication of his A History of New York in 1809. From 1818 on, Irving wrote for a living. His writing career was boosted when he met famed Sir Walter Scot who introduced him to other famous authors such as Mary Shelly and Lord Byron. Irving published The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon in 1819 with much success in America and abroad. Some of Irving’s best known works, The Tale of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Wan Winkle, were pubished in this book. Several years later, Irving was appointed to be a diplomatic attache to the American Embassy in Madrid. He studied Spanish culture and history and used this knowledge to fuel two new books called The Conquest of Granada (1829) and The Alhambra (1832). In 1832 he returned to America, but his travels were not over. He took a trip through the American West and once again used his experiences as fodder for a new book; this one was called A Tour of the Prairies (1835). After this, Irving finally settled down and built himself a home - which he called Sunnyside - on the Hudson River just north of New York City. From 1842 to 1846 Irving once again took a job serving his country, this time as American Minister to Spain. Back in America, Irving kept writing and publishing stories and sketches, as well as a 5 volume biography of his namesake: George Washington. He continued living at Sunnyside until his death in 1859 (Washington Irving).
When Washington Irving was 22 years old, another great romantic author was born. His name was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Henry was born in 1807 to Zilpah Wadsworth (a pilgrim descendent) and Stephen Longfellow at their home in Portland, Maine. Henry was an intelligent child, and he passed the entrance examinations to Bowdoin College when he was just 14 years old. Because Henry was so young, his father had wait him a year. Henry entered Bowdoin as a sophomore in 1882 and graduated in 1825. It was during these years at college that Henry decided he wanted a career in literature. He was very pleased, therefore, when he was offered a professorship of Modern Languages at Bowdoin with the understanding that he would study abroad in preparation for his post. He accepted the job and toured overseas for 3 years. While abroad he met famous American authors one of whom was James Fenimire Cooper. After this overseas tour, Longfellow wrote a book about his travels which was modeled closely after Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book. Longfellow returned to America and took up his teaching position at Bowdoin. He soon realized that there was a deficiency of good textbooks in his field, so he wrote 6 of his own from 1830 to 1834. He stint of teaching at Bowdoin ended after 5 years when he accepted a new job offer from Harvard. He was to take up the same teaching position at Harvard that he had held at Bowdoin, and he was again to prepare by studying abroad - this time in Germany for 18 months. His wife Mary, whom he had married in 1831, died of a miscarriage while overseas. He grieved her death, but continued on with his preparations and took up his new position at Harvard. He was then 29 years old. Longfellow continued to write and publish his works while teaching, thus gaining significant notoriety. In 1843 Longfellow married Fanny Appleton, a longtime sweetheart, and in 1854 he quitted his position at Harvard. He continued to write, and his works gained the broadest appeal in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Some of his most popular works were The Courtship of Miles Standish and The Song of Hiawatha. When Longfellow was 54, his triumph was cut short when tragedy struck his family. While Fanny was attempting to melt some wax, her cotton dress caught fire and she was quickly engulfed in flames. Henry tried beat out the flames, but by the time he succeeded, Fanny had been horribly burned. She died two days later. Longfellow was haunted by memories of his wife’s death, and his writing never recovered: it became increasingly personal as he aged and lost popular its appeal. He continued to write until his own death in 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Monteiro xviii-xxv).
Both Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s works are wonderful examples of Romantic influences in literature. Romantic literature often contained majestic and sweeping descriptions of nature - Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish are no exception. Both of these stories fall under the broad category of the Romantic style, yet each also exemplifies its own author’s personal style. Washington Irving, for example, uses a broad vocabulary and very descriptive adjectives to evoke mental images in his readers. The following excerpts from Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are good examples of this:

…There is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just a murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquility. (162)

The school-house stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it (165).

It was a very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travel homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed to cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him, the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there a tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watch dog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills - but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of like occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog, form a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and turning suddenly in his bed. (185)

Contrasted to this is Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish. Instead of using descriptive words to paint word pictures, Longfellow uses metaphors to bring nature to life in his poems. In these next two excerpts, Longfellow uses metaphors to describe a sunset, a sea wind, and a sunrise:

Into the open air John Alden, perplexed and bewildered,
Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by the sea-side;
Paced up and and down the sands, and bared his head to the east-wind,
Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever within him.
Slowly as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical splendors,
Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the Apostle,
So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and sapphire,
Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets uplifted,
Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who measured the city.

“Welcome, O wind of the East!” he exclaimed in his wild exultation,
“Welcome, I wind of the East, from the caves of the misty Atlantic!
Blowing o’re fields of dulse, and measureless meadows of sea-grass,
Blowing o’er rocky wastes, and the grottoes and gardens of ocean!
Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, and wrap me
Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever within me!” (IV. 171)

Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet,
Issued the sun, the great High Priest, in his garment resplendent,
Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead,
Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates.
Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor beneath him
Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet with a laver! (IX. 182)

From this we can see that Romantic era authors such as Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were able to maintain distinct individuality while their works retained clearly romantic traits.

Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, two great authors of the Romantic movement, responded to social, economic and religious changes that occurred in their lifetimes, gleaned ideas from remarkable life experiences, and developed distinctly individual writing styles - all of which aided them in producing some of the best loved works from the Romantic era and becoming two of the 19th century’s most famous authors.

Works Cited

Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Other Writings. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 2006.

Longfellow, Henry W. The Poetical Works of Longfellow. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975.

Washington Irving. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 2006.

Monteiro, George. Introduction. The Poetical Works of Longfellow. By Henry W. Longfellow. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975.

Woodlief, Ann. “American Romanticism (or the American Renaissance) Ann Woodlief’s
Introduction.” About.com 18 Aug. 2001. 10 June 2009.

VanSpankeren, Kathryn. “An Outline of American Literature: The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets: Introduction” From Revolution to Reconstruction… And What Happened Afterwards. 28 Dec. 2006. 10 June 2009.

FYI, underlines, and indentations didn’t transfer when I copied this from Pages, so I apologize for that. You guys aren’t actually getting to see the complete MLA result here.