Friday, March 30, 2007

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS NOT YOUR HOMEWORK FOR MONDAY. THE HOMEWORK FOR MONDAY IS THE ARTICLE AFTER THIS STORY ABOUT THE FIRST MAN IN SPACE. THIS IS THE FIRST SECTION OF A STORY BY ERNEST HEMMINGWAY. WE WILL READ IT THIS COMING WEEK. The words you will need to learn are in ALL CAPITALS. Following the passage there are questions and the list of words to learn. The entire story can be found at:

http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/hemingwaymacomber.html


It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.

“Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.

“I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.

“I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.

“I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed.

“Tell him to make three gimlets.”

The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.

“What had I ought to give them?” Macomber asked.

“A quid would be plenty,” Wilson told him. “You don’t want to spoil them.”

“Will the headman distribute it?”

“Absolutely.”

Francis Macomber had, half an hour before, been carried to his tent from the edge of the camp in TRIUMPH on the arms and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner and the porters. The gun-bearers had taken no part in the demonstration. When the native boys put him down at the door of his tent, he had shaken all their hands, received their congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the bed until his wife came in. She did not speak to him when she came in and he left the tent at once to wash his face and hands in the PORTABLE wash basin outside and go over to the dining tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the breeze and the shade.

“You’ve got your lion,” Robert Wilson said to him, “and a damned fine one too.”

Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an extremely handsome and well-kept woman of the beauty and social position which had, five years before, commanded five thousand dollars as the price of endorsing, with photographs, a beauty product which she had never used. She had been married to Francis Macomber for eleven years.

“He is a good lion, isn’t he?” Macomber said. His wife looked at him now. She looked at both these men as though she had never seen them before.

One, Wilson, the white hunter, she knew she had never truly seen before. He was about middle height with sandy hair, a stubby mustache, a very red face and extremely cold blue eyes with faint white wrinkles at the corners that grooved merrily when he smiled. He smiled at her now and she looked away from his face at the way his shoulders sloped in the loose tunic he wore with the four big CARTRIDGES held in loops where the left breast pocket should have been, at his big brown hands, his old SLACKS, his very dirty boots and back to his red face again. She noticed where the baked red of his face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his Stetson hat that hung now from one of the pegs of the tent pole.

“Well, here’s to the lion,” Robert Wilson said. He smiled at her again and, not smiling, she looked curiously at her husband.

Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did not mind that length of bone, dark, his hair cropped like an oarsman, rather thin-lipped, and was considered handsome. He was dressed in the same sort of SAFARI clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new, he was thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was good at court games, had a number of big-game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very publicly, to be a coward.

“Here’s to the lion,” he said. “I can’t ever thank you for what you did.”

Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.

“Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.

Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.

“It’s been a very strange day,” she said. “Hadn’t you ought to put your hat on even under the canvas at noon? You told me that, you know.”

“Might put it on,” said Wilson.

“You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,” she told him and smiled again.

“Drink,” said Wilson.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.”

“It’s red today,” Macomber tried a joke.

“No,” said Margaret. “It’s mine that’s red today. But Mr. Wilson’s is always red.

“Must be racial,” said Wilson. “I say, you wouldn’t like to drop my beauty as a topic, would you?”

“I’ve just started on it.”

“Let’s chuck it,” said Wilson.

“Conversation is going to be so difficult,” Margaret said.

“Don’t be silly, Margot,” her husband said.

“No difficulty,” Wilson said. “Got a damn fine lion.”

Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she was going to cry. Wilson had seen it coming for a long time and he dreaded it. Macomber was past DREADING it.

“I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said and started for her tent. She made no noise of crying but they could see that her shoulders were shaking under the rose-colored, sun-proofed shirt she wore.

QUESTIONS

Where does this story take place?

Who is Wilson? What is his job?

Who are Francis and Margot?

The author, Hemmingway, describes Margot as "an extremely handsome and well-kept woman." Why do you think Hemmingway uses the word "handsome." He did so purposefully. What is he telling us, the readers?

Margot is playing with words when she says her husband “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.” What does it mean to have a "red face"?

Why does Margot say “I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened” before she leaves to cry in her tent? What do you think has happened?


VOCABULUARY (These words will be on your test, and you should make a card for each.)

TRIUMPH
PORTABLE
CARTRIDGES
SLACKS
SAFARI
DREAD (to dread)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

THE FIRST PERSON IN SPACE

Although it took place over forty years ago, Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space is still seen as feat of breathtaking significance.

Yuri Gagarin was born on March 9 1934 in Gzhatsk, a small village about 160kms west of Moscow. He completed his studies at the Gzhatsk secondary school and began a technical apprenticeship.

At the age of 17 he moved on to an industrial training school in Saratov. It was here that he joined the local flying club and learned to fly. In 1955 he joined the Chkalovskiy Air Force training school. After graduation he served in the fighting aviation command of the North Fleet as a military pilot.

In 1959 Gagarin was one of about 3,000 candidates who applied to join the Soviet space program. After an initial screening process, 20 potential cosmonauts including Gagarin - were chosen.

On April 12, 1961, Gagarin boarded the Vostok I spaceship. The exact location of the launch site was a secret (the Soviet authorities revealed later that it was the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan). As he sat in the cramped cockpit, Gagarin was confident. When Sergei Korolev, mastermind of the Soviet space program, began the countdown, Gagarin answered: "Roger. Feeling fine, excellent spirits, ready to go."

Minutes later, Senior Lieutenant Gagarin made history. He became the first human to travel into space and the first to orbit the earth. He later recalled his impressions of what he saw: "there was a good view of the Earth which had a very distinct and a pretty blue halo. The colours blended smoothly from pale blue to blue, then dark blue to violet and absolutely black. It was a magnificent picture."

1 hour and 48 minutes after its launch the Vostok I capsule landed in the Saratov region of the USSR. Gagarin had ejected at an altitude of approximately 7 km, and landed safely by parachute. A peasant and her daughter were amazed to see a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet coming down from the sky. Gagarin later recalled, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging behind me, they backed away in fear. I told them, 'don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!'"

That day, the "ordinary" senior lieutenant became a hero of the Soviet Union and the most famous man in the world. His life changed completely. He spent the next year attending meetings, diplomatic receptions and international conferences. But he soon got tired of the adulation. His marriage suffered and he began drinking heavily. His own diary entries from the time show how keen he was to go back to the work of a cosmonaut: "I have no stronger wish than my desire to fly. A pilot should fly. Always."

At the Soviet cosmonaut base he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft and in 1967, he was selected as backup for the first Soyuz launch. Gagarin was promoted to deputy training director at the base and he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. During a routine training flight, his MiG-15 fighter jet crashed. Gagarin and his instructor were killed.

There were many rumours about the causes of the accident: the famous airman had been flying drunk, that there had been a collision with a bird, Gagarin’s inexperience, even sabotage. On the 35th anniversary of the Soviet Hero’s death new light was shed on the air crash. A secret investigation by the KGB’s counter-intelligence department concluded that a series of errors by ground staff was the cause: air traffic control had given the pilots an out-of-date weather briefing. The ground crew also failed to notice that the MiG had wing-mounted fuel tanks. The exercise the pair was performing was only supposed to be conducted in good weather and using aircraft without outboard tanks.

Gagarin lives on in several ways:

- a 40m tall monument was built at the Vostok I landing site.
- his home town is now called Gagarin.
- a crater on the far side of the moon is named after him.
- the main cosmonaut training centre is called the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre

VOCABULARY(for your test and vocabulary cards)

breathtaking (collocation: a breathtaking sight)
apprenticeship
screening
mastermind
impressions
blended
ejected
adulation
rumors (British English=rumours)
to shed light on (idiom)

QUESTIONS (please do NOT answer these in the comment section of the blog. Instead, print them and give them to me in class. Thank you.)

Who was the first man in space, and what country was he from?


What do you think the peasant and her daughter thought was happening when they saw "a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet coming down from the sky"? Why were they afraid?


Why was the first man in space called "ordinary" senior lieutenant?


Why did his marriage suffer, and why did he begin drinking heavily?


Would you like to travel to space? Why or Why not?

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Poet Valzhyna Mort Reads at USC

Come Hear Dynamic Poet Valzhyna Mort

She will read here at USC on Friday, April 6th, at 12:00 in the Welsh Humanities Office Building. The details are below. But first read her poem, BELARUSIAN ll, and think about the questions that follow it.

BELARUSIAN II

even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we spread their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl out of ruins after bombings
we didn’t know which of us was a girl or a boy
and we gorged on soil thinking we were gorging bread
and our future --- a gymnast on a thin
thread of the horizon was performing there
on the highest pitch.
bitch.


1. Would people in you culture consider this a poem? If not, what are poems like in your country?

2. Does this poem have rhyme or rhythm?

3. According to the poem, being born is like what?

4. One of the lines in the poem is, "we didn’t know which of us was a girl or a boy." What do you think the poet means by that?

5. Does this poem mean anything to you? Does it make you think or feel?

Finally, if you like this poem, you may want to hear the poet read her work. The details of her visit are below.

Location: 1st Floor Lounge in the Welsh Humanities Office Building
Date: Friday, April 6th
Time: 12noon-1pm
There will be a light lunch served. Please RSVP to Charlene Spearen at cmspeare@gwm.sc.edu, or call 777-5492.

At 24, a poet and translator, Valzhyna’s work has been translated into many European languages and published in various literary magazines and anthologies, including an Anthology of Belarusian Poetry (Sofia, 2002). Her first U.S. Book, Factory of Tears, is forthcoming by Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2008.

Valzhyna is famed throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances, which display a talent not normally associated with one so young. She is the winner of several poetry competitions in Belarus, and in 2004 she received the Crystal of Velenica Award in Slovenia, which is awarded for reading performance. Valzhyna’s first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes (2005), is startlingly assured and reveals a powerful poetic voice. She is the 2005 recipient of the Gaude Polonia stipendium. She currently lives in the United States.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Idioms for March 26 to March 30

For the meanings of the following idioms go to www.eslcafe.com and click on idioms. You will be tested on these Friday.

can't make heads or tails of something

couch potato

by the skin of one's teeth

Cut it out!

fender-bender

keep one's fingers crossed

Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS AFTER IT. FOR PICTURES AND THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE GO TO THE FOLLOWING USA TODAY WEBPAGE:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-03-27-saturn-hexagon_N.htm

Bizarre hexagon spotted on Saturn

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.
Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.

The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.

At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.

"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."

The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain, which means nobody knows exactly how long the planet's day is.

"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," Baines said.

QUESTIONS:


WHAT HAVE SCIENTISTS FOUND ON SATURN'S NORTH POLE?

WAS THIS FEATURE EVER FOUND BEFORE? IF SO, BY WHAT?

HOW BIG IS THIS FEATURE? HOW MANY EARTHS COULD FIT INSIDE IT?

WHAT DID SCIENTISTS FIND ON SATURN'S SOUTH POLE?


VOCABULARY FOR TEST:


HEXAGON
HONEYCOMB
THERMAL
IMAGERY
FREAKY
AXIS
DYNAMIC

Questions for The Road Not Taken

How do the two roads differ?

Which road does the traveler pick?

How does he feel about his choice?

How would you describe the traveler?

The Road Not Taken: Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874–1963). 1920.


The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Welcome to the EPI Readers Journal

Hello everyone,

welcome to the first posting of the EPI Readers Journal. Stay tuned for fascinating and lively content!