What Most Interested Me about Clarence Birdseye

Clarence Birdseye had a very interesting life story. The thing about his life that is most interesting to me is that he never seemed afraid to do anything. He was very smart, but he had to leave college because he did not have enough money after his father had some money problems. Maybe he could have worked and saved some money, so that he could go back and finish college. His father was a lawyer, so people may have expected him to want to become one too. He did other things with his life.

Clarence thought that he had a funny name, so he changed it to Bob. At Amherst, “His fellow classmates called him Bugs because he was forever examining some bug or rodent in the countryside.” (Mark Kurlansky. “Frozen in Time.”, page 39). He was not able to finish college, but he kept his interest in science. He always seemed to find ways to make money. One winter after he had gone out west, he made $600 trading fur.

Bob went to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and went with a team to Montana to learn about and fight the disease Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Since he loved to hunt, this made being in Montana a good time for him. One of his jobs when he was working to find out what caused the disease was to kill animals and collect ticks. He killed many kinds of animals.

However, Bob was exempt from the new restrictions, free to kill as he saw fit in the effort to collect a wide range of ticks and find a cure for spotted fever. Thrilled, he shot and trapped gophers, chipmunks, pine squirrels, woodchucks, ground squirrels, wood rats, snowshoe rabbits, cottontail rabbits, several species of mice, flying squirrels, badgers, weasels, muskrats, and bats. He also killed the large and dangerous brown bears, mountain sheep, coyotes, both mule and white-tailed deer, and elk. Most of what he killed he shot, but he also set traps. In the process he collected 4,495 ticks and killed 717 wild animals, though his goal was to get 1,000. (Kurlansky, pages 68-69)

After he finished working on the Rocky Mountain spotted fever project, he moved to Labrador, where it was very cold. Bob seemed to be fine wherever he was and would eat just about anything. He loved the winters in Labrador and found ways to use science to make money. He started a business trapping silver foxes and shipping them to America for breeding. When he got married, he even took his wife back to Labrador. It was while he was in Labrador that he realized that the secret to frozen food tasting like fresh food was that it had to be frozen very fast.

Frozen in Time – Vocabulary Words

1.     Peers (page 9): a person who is equal to another in abilities, qualifications, age, background, and social status. (dictionary.com)

2.     Gelatin (page 11): a nearly transparent, faintly yellow, odorless, and almost tasteless glutinous substance obtained by boiling in water the ligaments, bones, skin, etc., of animals, and forming the basis of jellies, glues, and the like. (dictionary.com)

3.     Styrofoam (page 11): Styrofoam is a type of polystyrene (a type of plastic) foam that's light yet strong. It’s often used to make take-out coffee cups and packing materials. (vocabulary.com)

4.     Sawdust (page 13): fine particles of wood made by sawing wood. (vocabulary.com)

5.     Incandescent light bulb (page 15): electric lamp consisting of a transparent or translucent glass housing containing a wire filament (usually tungsten) that emits light when heated by electricity. (vocabulary.com)

6.     Rayon (page 17): An artificial fiber that is similar to silk

7.     Barbed wire (page 17): a wire or strand of wires having small pieces of sharply pointed wire twisted around it at short intervals, used chiefly for fencing in livestock, keeping out trespassers, etc. (dictionary.com)

8.     Entrepreneur (page 18): a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. (dictionary.com)

9.     Patent (page 19): he exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a certain number of years. (dictionary.com)

1.      Malaria (page 20): (a disease transmitted by mosquitoes. (dictionary.com)

Compare the book Pobby and Dingan with the Movie called Opal Dream

Both the book “Pobby and Dingan” and the movie “Opal Dream” were very good. I read the book and watched the movie two times. Between the two, I liked the book better.

             The story in the movie moved faster than it did in the book. It was too fast.  When I was watching the first part of the movie and saw Kellyanne playing with Pobby and Dingan, I would think about when I was reading the book and how the book talked about her friends. When I was reading the book, Kellyanne playing with her imaginary friends seemed different, but not crazy. It seemed like when some people play with their stuffed animal friends. In the movie, she looked a little crazy playing with her friends. The book did not make her seem crazy like she seemed in the movie.

              Also, in the book, Ashmol changing how he felt about Pobby and Dingan was slower. He started to worry about his sister and how he felt about Pobby and Dingan started to change. In the book, the change seemed to happen very fast. I liked the way that it happened in the book better.

              I liked it how in the book, Ashmol went around planning the funeral for Pobby and Dingan. I liked that the book talked about how he went to see Mr. Dan Dunkley about having a funeral, then he went to talk to the preacher, and then he talked to Humph about making invitations to the funeral. Ashmol put the invitations all over the town. In the movie, Ashmol invited people to the funeral at the end of his father’s trial and the man on the radio was talking about the funeral.

              The end of the book was better than the end of the movie too. In the movie, Ashmol was nice to say good things about Pobby and Dingan, but I thought that what the preacher said in the book was better. I liked that in the movie, we did not know that Kellyanne died and was buried with Pobby and Dingan, but both the book and the movie were sad at the end.

Blog #8 The Life of Galileo - Review

The play was about a very important person in science. Galileo discovered many things in science and invented the telescope, but he had a hard life. He was poor, and people did not agree with some of the things that he found out. Many people seemed to think that he was crazy.

            This is a hard story to tell in a play, but the play was very good. I liked the person who played Galileo. He is a very good actor. He made me feel like he was angry because people would not believe him about what he had found in science. The clothes worn during the play were good, but I don’t know how people dressed during that time in history. There were times when I could not understand what the actors were saying, because they were talking too fast.

I think that the people from the Church were very bad because they would not even look at what Galileo had found. They just said that he was wrong because what he had found did not agree with what the Church believed. After he got into trouble with the Church, he was arrested. Later, he died. After a while, the Church had to tell people that Galileo had been right.

I would recommend people see the play, but they should read about Galileo first. Reading about Galileo will help you understand what is going on in the play.

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht, the German poet and playwright was born on February 10, 1989 and died on August 14, 1956. His name when he was born was Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht. He lived in Bavaria (part of Germany), where he was born, until 1924. He studied medicine and worked in an army hospital. He wrote his first play, “Baal”, in 1923.

He became a Communist because he did not like how things had become after the end of World War I. There were some high social classes that had more money and thought that they were better than regular people.  Since he was a Communist, it was not good for him to be in Germany at that time. He left Germany and lived in Scandinavia, then in the United States. In Germany, his books were burned, and he lost his citizenship. He stayed in the United States until 1947, then he went back to Europe.

After writing his first play in 1923, he continued to write, wherever he was. He wrote many plays and poems. He also did some movies. In 1943, he wrote the play, "The Life of Galileo".