My Memory Theatre

My memory theater to remember my 50 ski resorts is my house. I have divided the ski hills up by which state they are located in and have made different rooms in my house the different states. Then I have found objects in my house, such as art, furniture or appliances that I feel fit well with the names of the different resorts. For example: my stove top is Angel Fire, and my oven is Mt. Baker. Also a big ceramic pot I have on top of our TV is Mammoth. I have taken pictures of my different "states", and you will notice all of the white pieces of paper stuck all over my house.. My sister is also forced to learn the 50, because she has to look at them every day too! Here are the photos of my house and my memory theater.

This first image is my bedroom. For my memory theater it includes the states of WY and MT because I have lived in these places most recently so I felt as though I was closest to them, hence, I get to sleep with them every night.

I made my "office" area the east coast. I felt like the curtains that hang down are like fog and when I lived there it was almost always cloudy out! So the states located here are Maine, VT and NH.

I chose to add Oregon, Washington and Some of Utah to my kitchen. Mainly because I felt the appliances were very fitting to some of the names.

In my living room I have some weird artwork that my mom gave me, so I made this room California. For example of the paintings is red, so I made it June because summers in MT are usually very hot.

My last image is also of the living room. I had a cool piece of art that I found to be very calming so I made it heavenly. Also, I know this may be politically incorrect, but I have a cool Native American bag that I got from my grandmother, so I put Squaw Mt over that.

lack of memory

After taking a walk with my dog this morning my sister pointed out the large black cloud of smoke that everyone in Bozeman was talking about by nine this morning. We drove over to that side of town to see what was on fire and realized that it was one of the buildings on main street. I used to work just a block away from the accident, and even though we could see what block the fire was on, I could not figure out what was being burned! This bothered me because I had driven past that block every day for three years on my way to work and still could not remember what buisnesses were in that location! (I obviousely need to work on my memory theatre.) I began by trying to remember what was directly next to my place of work, then the next business over, and so forth.. however, it was not until I saw the pictures that my memory returned and I realized what had been destroyed. This 'blank' I had this morning regarding my lack of memory skills made me realize just how important it is to keep a picture of images in your mind along with all of the information it stores. I hope that Bozeman has a fast recovery, that the people who lost their jobs will be able to find work in this economic crisis, and that the injured/missing persons have a fast recovery.

Connections amongst Classes

After reading some of the other blogs the other day I saw that one student felt as though all of his classes were somewhat connected with one another. After reading it I realized that I completely agree.. All of the teachers make references to books we are reading in our other classes and some even speak about the same topics. In my Eng. 440 class with Prof. Coffey, we just finished reading a Finnish book called the Kalevala. The Kalevala is a collection of many poems that were traditionally performed orally with a kaleva (string instrument) played in the background. Because this book is strongly related to oral traditions, our professor has given us another background on what an oral tradition is and how the Finnish people use oral traditions to pass down their stories and history though these songs performed with the kaleva. Another thing we discussed in this class was flyting, which I found interesting because I had never really gotten into the real meaning of flighting before this semester. Proffesor Coffey's definition of flyting was along the lines of out charming, out singing, facing off or who has the most magic, (as flighting was shown in the Kalevala.) In the Kalevala the example we dicussed as far as flighting is concerned was the debate between the owl and the nightengale, and the two birds we battling to see who was the most powerfull on the stage. This example is similar to all the flighting examples we talked about in our class. When two rappers go at it, arent they just battling to see who is the most powerfull on the stage as well? So as far as saying that all our classes are connected, I can somewhat agree. While all of my classes are not connected with one another, every once in a while teachers discuss similar topics which make class more interesting when you are able to compare and contrast the professors different ideas regarding the same topics.