Blog #3

Dear Mr. Jacob Jankowski,
What was going through your head when you decided to run away to the circus? I know that your mom and dad just died in a car accident and that no one understands how you feel right now, but why would you get on that train? I suppose it must have been a spur of the moment thing- jumping on to a train speeding by just when you're thinking about getting away from your life and the real world. Does that mean that it is okay to leave behind everyone that loves you, like Catherine, your long time girlfriend, without telling them where you are going let alone saying goodbye? Not to mention circus life is hard and scary a lot of the time. If you say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time, you could get badly beaten up. Three people have already told this to you and you have not even been at the circus for a day. Despite all of this, you stay. Thoughts of home and Catherine and your life pre-circus never even cross your mind. I understand that you need to just be away from everything for a little while, but how long is a little while? How long are you going to keep Catherine worrying about where you are and what happened to you? I hope you can figure out how much damage you are causing soon because I know I would like to know where you are if I was Catherine. Good luck to you,
Sarah

Blog #2

This week, I read the first two chapters of Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. This book is about a man named Jacob Jankowski. Jacob is old- so old in fact that he is not sure how old he is. He lives in a nursing home, but seems to wish he didn't have to and could support himself. One day when Joseph McGuinty sits across from Jacob at dinner, he claims that he carried water for the elephants in the circus when he was younger. Jacob doesn't believe him and they get into an argument. Then, the reader is taken back in time to when Jacob was twenty-three and a student at Cornell. When Jacob finds that both his parents have died in a car accident, he runs away and finds himself on a circus train.
"Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops you back. It makes you ache and muddies your head" (12). This quote comes when Jacob is sitting in his room, pondering how he is treated at the nursing home. It is obvious that Jacob despises being old and senile. He makes a very good note about how life works, though. All through your "young" years, you are struggling to find who you are and what you want to be. All the twists and turns of life startle you and it takes a while until you get back in your grove again after an accident. When you are older though, life's unexpected mishaps fail to surprise you and it is finally possible to live contently. That is when you become too old to do anything but sit in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. This insight may be what the whole book is about; life is unfair because once you can figure it out, you're too old to care.

Blog #1

This week, I read an article about how the brain creates all of our emotions. This article called Sad Brain, Happy Brain was from Newsweek and was written by Michael Craig Miller. "Neuroscientists consider it settled that the mind arises from the cooperation of billions of interconnected cells that, individually, are no smarter than an amoebae" (53). It is amazing how emotions, simple like sadness and happiness, or complex like jealousy and love, are all created by a bunch of individual brain cells working together. What is even more amazing is that complex emotions, for example jealousy and love, only use certain parts of the brain, while simpler emotions, like being happy or sad, use over 70 different parts. One thing I found esecially interesting about this article was how the brain recognizes harmful situations and sends fear through your body. The brain analyses the environment and registers emotional significance and sends the body the proper response. The fear system works really fast; you don't even need to know whats going on to have fear. If a car swerves into your lane, you would be afraid of it before the visual brain has chance to see what is going on. I found that to be very interesting; even when you don't know what is happening consciously, your brain does. This must be an instinct we humans have had from the beginning of time to help us survive. I really enjoyed reading this article and learning about how our brains work because it is very interesting to me to learn more about myself and how our bodies work.

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