From the Midwest and Around the World

Note: This is a review at first, but afterwards it turns into a rant about societies ills...as I see them...so read on with caution!    The other night, I was able to finally see the summer movie "The Great Gatsby." Over the summer, I had read the book so as to better measure the accuracy of the film interpretation. I really appreciated and enjoyed Baz Luhrmann's modern/20's era hybrid. The film had the style, music, morals, and dance of the '20s...while also integrating the music, dance, and morals of the contemporary '10s.     However, are these two eras (separated by nearly a century) really that different? In this post, I want to examine the aspects of the movie that overlap and identify that the two decades are, in fact, the same. The social battles may not be the same, but the thought behind them is very much the same.    First of all, music. In the '20s, a lot of the young people's music that was new at that time was considered very cru...

     Only two classes on the beautiful Wednesday...Religion and Japanese (both classes taught by representatives of the Asian continent). In Religion (Prophets), I found to my dismay that I had to manually copy perhaps 100+ pages (after the tenth copy, they all blur together) of articles that would be supplementary reading in addition to the text. A bit of my heart died with each fallen tree...and I now have a deeper understanding of "The Giving Tree." Despite this paper-wasting, the professor seems demanding (in a good way), funny (in a healthily irreverent way), and easy to understand (wonderful images and metaphors). Hopefully the rest of the semester will represent what the first day showed.      I am in fourth year college Japanese (at Calvin, it is JAPN-311). In comparison to last year, there is more of an emphasis on individual learning. While we learn grammar and vocab as a class, we also have individual "themes" on which we will work through durin...