MY FAVORITE PART OF LIFE IS...

When someone first meets you, they want to know all of your favorites. Of all the symbols and traditional signs of good luck, my favorite things in life tend to make me feel lucky. I don’t mean lucky in terms of wealth. I mean lucky to be alive and to be happy. My favorite things make me optimistic and enrich my life with flavor and energy. They make me who I am and generally define me. My favorite thing to do is smile. My favorites or “my likes” are widely ranged; from a favorite number or color to the favorite things to do and people to do them with in my life. Most people have a low, usual number as their favorite. Not me! My favorite number is 85! Isn’t that strange? It was even my volleyball number when I started on the volleyball team at my high school. When the number 85 comes up, I am so excited. I would love to reach the 85; a healthy 85 year old of course. I would prefer 85 shirts, 85 pens, 85 CDs; 85 anything and I am all set and ready to go. My favorite food is mashed potatoes and chicken cutlets, though I love all foods. My favorite sport to watch is baseball and my favorite team is the New York Yankees. I am so happy when I am at a live baseball game. Although he is not on the team anymore, I love Tino Martinez. Derek Jeter is my second favorite! I love to shop for clothes and shoes. When it’s pouring rain out, I love dancing in it. My favorite flower is the lily. I like to sing as loud as possible and dance as if no one is watching. I love snow left untouched, when seasons first change and waking up without an alarm clock. My birthday and holiday seasons are my favorite time of year. I love candy, sunshine, foreign languages, sad and funny movies. My favorite place in the world, other than being surrounded by loved ones and at home, is Walt Disney World. I love feeling like a kid. And I absolutely love my friends and family! MY FAVORITE PART OF LIFE IS LIVING IT =)

My name is Janine Josephine Cavallo. I am 19 years old and I was born on February 5th. I am writing this blog for my English course and my semester of my freshman year is coming to an end. In an effort to have 22 blogs for the course requirement, I was searching high and low as to what my last two entries would consist of. In terms of luck and researching facts, these next two blogs will be slightly different. I decided my perspective of luck runs hand in hand with my likes and dislikes in life. To end my blog on a happy note, I decided to write my dislikes first. Ever have something you hate more than anything in the entire world; something that disgusts you beyond belief? I hate FEET among anything else and I hate when people do not wear socks. I wear a lot of open toed shoes so in that case, my feet must be done with a pedicure. I hate when people look at my feet and I especially hate if anyone touches my feet or me with theirs. I hate coffee and most vegetables. I hate being lied to! I hate fighting over unnecessary things and nightmares. I hate cloudy days and the drizzling rain. I hate pain, needles and doctors. I hate feeling too tall the losing people I care about. I don’t like to fly; even though I often am forced to or heights. I rarely like to use the elevator. I hate being afraid and having nightmares. The thought of dying alone or god forbid losing my child before me are two fears of mine as well. On a lighter note, my next entry will be more optimistic and uplifting.

Two Halves of a Whole

How do yo know he or she is your true love? How do you know it is meant to be? Is the second half to make your heart whole? I believe in true love...Those who believe in Astrology tend to believe in all its aspects. They like to read their horoscopes, their general traits of their sign and even the compatibilities between his or her sign and the sign of their loved one. Compatibility relies on the sun signs. What is a sun sign? According to astrology.com… “Originally referred to as your star sign, your Sun sign represents the sign of the Zodiac that the Sun was in at the time of your birth. The Sun rules willpower and ego. It is the core of your potential and uniqueness as an individual; who you are and what you are about. Your Sun sign represents the main direction and focus you want your life to take and your determination to accomplish what you set out to do. It represents your personal honesty and integrity, your ability to command respect and authority and your capacity to impress and influence others.” In that instance, the sun signs of you and the person you love may have a large dependence on how the relationship works out. My sign is Aquarius. I have a few love interests or crushes if you will, so I decided to choose one of the signs and post the compatibility score I got. His birthday is on April 20th and he falls under the sign of the Pisces. “When Aquarius and Pisces join together in a love match, there is much compassion and creation. These partners are idealistic as individuals as well as they are together. Pisces flows with their dream-like surroundings, and Aquarius is constantly coming up with new inventions and ways of doing things. This relationship digs deep for the truth of the matter at hand, and both partners are always looking for solutions to problems. They both tend to be introspective. Aquarius can often be quick to judge those who don't share their vision, while Pisces is often too compassionate, even for those who don't necessarily deserve it. Aquarius and Pisces make very good friends as well as excellent lovers. Problems are rare, but sometimes Aquarius can be too intellectual and aloof for Pisces, and Pisces may at times be too self-sacrificing and gullible for the Aquarian taste. Whenever Aquarius comes up with a new idea -- as they so often do -- Pisces is eager to understand it on an intuitive level. This duo creates a complementary relationship deep in intellectual and emotional resources....” To read more, go to astrology.com and check out your own compatibility tests.

Luck Symbols

"Health I bring you, Happiness too, Wealth herein, And all for you." Everyone knows of the signs of bad luck and the differences among countries. However, few know the symbols and signs of luck. A rabbit's foot is one symbol of luck. R. E. Shay said "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." In terms of symbols and signs of good fortune and luck, it depends on an individual's personal beliefs. In a few words, to each his own. Perhaps the most universally recognized and well known of the symbols is the horseshoe. An upright used horseshoe placed at the top right corner of the door frame is said to bring good luck into the home. The nut of the Rudraksh tree can be found in parts of Indonesia, the Himalayas and Malaysia. The beads represent one part of the divine Hindu trinity, Lord Shiva. While being worn close to an individual, lucky charm lockets take the form of many luck symbols. Three keys worn together on a key ring are said to unlock the doors to wealth, health and love. The nut of an oak tree carried the gift of youth to the individual who carries it. The journey of the soul to the other realm is represented in the form of feathers and feathers is the ancient charm for good luck. The renewal of life is symbolized by the jewerly worn of an ancient Egyptian amulet. A bat is a symbol of good fortune in the east. Four leaf and three leaf clovers also are widely recognized symbols of good luck.

Fortune Cookie

After eating Wonton soup and crackers or whatever you prefer in your Chinese food meal, you look around for the FORTUNE COOKIE. Everyone knows that the pick of the cookie is at random and any of the fortunes you receive are by luck of the draw. In spite of this, that’s not to say that we don’t look into the fortune and try and find its meaning. We try and put its significance to our own recent life experiences or our hopes for the near future. But… did you ever wonder who came up with the ideas of a fortune cookie? Who decided that they should put a tiny fortune telling inside the “crispy, bow-shaped sugar cookies served in restaurants as the finale of a Chinese meal?” Americans would automatically give credit to the Chinese. That is not the case however. One legend of the fortune cookie was introduced in the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the idea pirated by a local Chinese restauranteur. A Japanese American heritage is said that the cookie is a descendent of the sembet; a flat, round, rice cracker. The Chinese believe the fortune cookie is a modern Chinese American interpretation of the moon cake. Legends proclaim that moon cakes were used in the fourteenth century as a means of critical communication. Soldiers communicated strategies by stuffing messages into moon cakes. The concept of message-stuffed pastry has supposedly endured through ages and now uses fortunes within. Perhaps the most plausible and conceivable story dates back to 1918 when David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Co., invented the fortune cookie as a sweet treat and encouraging word for unemployed men who gathered on the streets. Today, fortune cookies are mass produced and widely distributed; the fortune cookie is exported to China and Hong Kong with fortunes written in English. Most popular in the United States, the cookies continue to lift spirits with promises of great success, hope, love and harmony, and of course; good fortune.

My Favorite Book

Off on another tangent to luck, I wanted to write about my favorite book. The books I have enjoyed have greatly impacted my outlooks on life. This in a metaphorical sense has "brought me luck." I always enjoyed reading but it had to be of my personal interests. There were many books in school that seemed to take an eternity to get through because of the dull topics or lack of descriptions and details. I would read and reread sentences and pages over and over again because I could not get into the books. There was one book that I was required to read in my senior year of high school that I remember enjoying the most. Khaled Hosseini, the author of the Kite Runner, strives to help Americans and those in forty-two other countries by using language that is understood to describe the feelings of men and women, poor and wealthy, and weak and strong in Afghanistan across three periods in history. His details throughout the book allowed my interest to be caught and kept. The tale is vividly descriptive and, although it is a fictitious novel, the authentic political events paint almost reality-based stories. I could not put the book down. The narrator of The Kite Runner is Amir. He starts off the novel with a foreshadowing of what is to come yet he is speaking of the past. “I looked up at those twin kites. I thought about Hassan. I thought about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today.” We are taken on an adventurous journey full of twists and turns through his life from the time he is twelve years old and then twenty-six years later when he “has a chance to be good again.” The Kite Runner is set in Kabul, Afghanistan and holds the story in the peaceful days of the monarchy before General Khan was overthrown in 1973 and in America after Baba and Amir fled the country. The Kite Runner surrounds the tales of two boys, Amir and Hassan, and the friendship, brotherhood and family evolved between two class systems and worlds. “…Then he would remind us that there is a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break. Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name. Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975-and all the followed-was already laid in those first words…” One is the son of a wealthy merchant in Kabul and the other, his servant. The rape of Hassan and Amir’s sin to not save his friend becomes the focal point to all the sequences that follow. Afghanistan is changed internally and externally. In The Kite Runner, Amir says after returning back to his home twenty six years later “I stood outside the gates of my father’s house, feeling like a stranger. I remembered things that mattered not at all now and yet had seemed so important then. Most of the poplar trees had been chopped down-the trees Hassan and I used to climb to shine our mirrors into the neighbor’s homes. The Wall of Ailing Corn was still there, though I saw no corn, ailing or otherwise. The lawn was dotted by patches of dirt where nothing grew at all…The house itself is far from the sprawling white mansion I remembered from my childhood. It looked smaller. The roof sagged and the plaster cracked. The windows were broken and the paint, once sparkling white, had faded to ghostly gray and eroded in parts. Like so much else in Kabul, my father’s house was the picture of fallen splendor.” Afghanistan was changed and destroyed in every way possible by the Taliban control, even in a physical approach. Aristotle would name how we feel when reading The Kite Runner as catharses. USA Today says “…Hosseini’s writings make our hearts ache, our stomachs clench and our emotions reel…” Through his bewitching narrative, the struggle of life is captured and we feel one with each of the characters. Our sense of empathy, sympathy and love goes out to them all. Both books are intimate accounts of love and friendship and we are shown the reality of a culture unlike our own. To read about another culture's sufferings and substantial differences with my own, it was an eye-opener and greatly influenced my acceptances and opinions on other religions, cultures and countries.

Literature Genre

On a slight tangent, we were allowed to post our definitions of creative nonfiction. This has nothing to do with my topic on luck but I want to post it anyways. My favorite genre to read is fiction. I would rather read a fictional tale that incorporates nonfictional events than to read an autobiography or a mystery book. Here is my definition . . .
A genre is a type of literature or writing style. Some of the genres we have been most exposed to include Fiction, Nonfiction, Mystery, and Tragedy. When we are trying to understand a work in literature, it is easier retained in our memories when we have a better comprehension of the writing style it is written in. Every genre has a unique and individual flare. The components and literary elements included allow for a further success of a novel in its particular genre. One genre that many have attempted to term a general consensus of what it is composed of is Creative Nonfiction.
Within this genre, literary elements and techniques are combined with legitimate truths and are given to the readers in a different approach. Facts, based on prior knowledge and research, are merged with literary elements in this style of writing in order to let the pages come alive. Some literary elements that are featured in creative nonfiction and are used to add essence to straightforward facts include plot, setting, mood, irony, characterization as well as others. This genre is a more interesting way of providing real facts without seeming to allow the book to drag on. It also seems to be giving an appeal that lures the readers in and forces them to be urged to continue to the following page. Creative nonfiction gives a sense of suspense and anticipation to a nonfiction piece of literature. The critical point of creative nonfiction is to establish a clear, vivid differentiation between it and both fiction and nonfiction. Creative Nonfiction writers present the information with the tools used in fictional stories while upholding their loyalty to the actual facts.
Creative Nonfiction was not the original title to this writing technique. In fact, this term was not established until 1983 by Lee Gutkind at a meeting established by the National Endowment of the Arts in an effort to name it. Gutkind was “a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, a mid-life father and a literary whipping boy” and what 1997 Vanity Fair magazine declared as the “the Godfather” behind the creative nonfiction movement—an indisputable force whose efforts have helped make the genre the fastest growing in the publishing industry.” According to the Creative Nonfiction website, the definition of creative nonfiction lies right within its title. This is perhaps why a title like essay, journalism or literary journalism could not credit this approach in literature any justice. The site established primarily to the genre itself describes it as “‘creative nonfiction’ precisely describes what the form is all about. The word “creative” refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.”
Two of the works in literature that we covered in this semester fall under the genre of creative nonfiction. Both The Curve of Binding Energy, written by John McPhee, and All Around the Town, written by Herbert Asbury, portray a narrative rather than a timeline or retelling of the events in history. McPhee writes about the life and career of theoretical physicist and scientist, Theodore B. Taylor, who was responsible for scientific inventions regarding nuclear energy. Asbury writes about the riots, murder, scandal and pandemonium in Manhattan, New York City. Both novels combine research with experience in an effort to add flavor to the events.
What makes the genre stand out among the rest and gives it originality is the lacking of limitations to a single specific structure or writing form in literature. Well written creative nonfiction takes information, facts, events and ideas that might seem uninteresting when first looked at and crafts them into a fascinating and riveting tale. A genre can have a plethora or surplus of definitions in an effort to better understand the novels that fall under its category. From Writing Creative Nonfiction, by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard, Creative Nonfiction can only be described with “"It's very literariness distinguishes this writing from deadline reportage, daily journalism, academic criticism, and critical biography. It is storytelling of a very high order through the revelation of character and the suspense of plot, the subtle braiding of themes, rhythms and resonance, memory and imaginative research, precise and original language.”