Beginning of Beneficial Blogging

Blogging has become a popular medium of self-expression and I have a feeling that its popularity is just beginning. The invention of blogging is a positive tool to all writers because it gives authors the benefit of unlimited space, a broader audience, and the ability to receive feedback. Similarly, a successful blog can be equally as useful to readers because readers now have a chance to interact with readings, the ability to click on links related to the chosen subject matter, and the chance to save money because most blogs are free to access.  Blogs provide the ability for authors to place sound clips, video clips, and animations near their writing. I feel that this is revolutionary because these modes of art could not be placed on paper or written with ink. Also, blogs are easier to keep up to date in comparison to books and other printed publications. Even newspapers that come out daily can’t be edited by the minute once they are printed because they are permanent rather than digital. However, I feel that a downside of blogging is that it can cause an overloud of information and the vase amount of writings on the Internet may dilute the importance of what authors are saying. Nowadays everyone can be a writer and it is difficult to make money off of blogs since there are so many available with easy access. Specifically, blogs are important to the field of work that I may be interested in. I am hoping to get involved with the fashion industry and there are so many fashion blogs available that help readers to keep up to date on the latest trends. Blogs have changed the world of fashion and have made some writers famous for their opinions on clothing and how to wear certain articles. Blogs are great mediums for displaying fashion because they can link readers to online shopping websites, provide video clips of runway shows, and allow for a plethora of pictures from ads and magazines. 

The Green Leaf Group

The company I was assigned is the Green Leaf Book Group. The company specializes in helping independent authors and small presses to keep the rights to their work as they compete with the major publishing companies. A man named Clint Greenleaf started the company in 1997 from above his parents’ garage in Cleveland, OH.  Greenleaf was an accountant at Deloitte but he decided to write a book and this kick started his interest in publishing. His book was called Attention to Detail: A Gentleman’s Guide to Appearance. He became known as a helpful resource to help authors though the confusing publishing process. After publishing about forty different books, Greenleaf opened an office in San Francisco but soon moved to Austin Texas. They began to attract authors from major publishing companies because Green Leaf Book Group was known for providing an alternative for restrictive traditional publishing arrangements. He is able to compete with the bigger companies because of his unique designs, positive marketing talents, and ability to find talented authors. He has helped work on titles like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The company’s current revenue is about eight million dollars. Their three-year growth revenue is 66 percent and they were ranked number 44 for the top media companies on the Inc. 5000 list. In 2010 the company only had twenty-nine employees.

The Green Leaf Book Group is responding to the digital world by taking advantage of the Internet to grow and market their business. The company posts their latest titles and authors on their website and users can have the option to buy the publication from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or IndieBound. This opens up a wide range of possibilities because all three websites sell digital copies of the books that can be downloaded straight from the website. In addition, they provide information on their site about how to successfully complete online marketing. They describe how to choose a URL address, register domains, use hosting services, format websites, and more.  Lastly, the company keeps up a very extensive blog called the Big Bad Book Blog. This blog connects to their twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and LinkedIn. It provides tons of information about their company, helps authors know how to publish their books, and provides links to other helpful websites. The Green Leaf Group is responding very positively to the changing technology and I think it helps that they started when technology was becoming popular. Lastly, technology helps the company to get more clients because they accept book submissions online which encourages more authors to submit their titles.

Hi i'm Mariel

My name is Mariel Rae Rothman and I am a sophomore at the Univerisity of Maryland. I transferred here from Bucknell University because I was interested in being near a major city and craved a bigger school. I love playing tennis, hanging out with my family and friends, cooking, shopping, and exploring new cities and towns. I discussed in my ELMS post that I use technology everyday and that it plays a large role in my life. I am hoping to use technology when I graduate as a part of my job because I am interested in how technology changes life for the better. I am hoping to graduate with a business degree and in order to enhance my resume and my experience I have been busy improving my technology skills. I combined my interest in business with my love for fashion when I was a social media intern for a fashion company. I tweeted and posted on Facebook for a new fashion company (The company’s website is www.asodamisi.com) Being a social media intern combined my interest in fashion with my interest in social media and marketing. In addition, I just received a new internship at the University of Maryland with the Marketing Department. I start tomorrow and my boss told me that technology will play a big role in my job. I will be calling clients, inputting data into spreadsheets, and tweeting about the upcoming Maryland Day.

I have many questions about mass communication that I look forward to covering this semester. I hope to learn more about how technology will change in the future and how it affects the economy. I understand how it affects people my age but I am not clear about its affects on the broader world. I am interested in seeing if the statistics about technology changes as we take the class because technology is always changing and becoming more popular.

I Will Never Stop Traveling

        I lay in my bed at night with my eyes closed picturing places I have not yet been. I lay in my bed dreaming of future adventures, eccentric mouth watering food, and shopping in unfamiliar territories. I long for that rush of happiness and curiosity that creeps over me when I arrive at a new and exciting destination for the first time. Whether its abroad with a group of teenagers, through an educational institution, or with my loveable family, one of my favorite things to do is travel. My travels contribute to who I am today, affecting my every day discussions, outlook on life, and general global perspective. I have traveled in the past yet I will continue to travel to new and unseen places for pleasure, education, and to create memories that will last forever.

            I travel to find pleasure. The smell of a brick-oven pizza topped bubbling fresh mozzarella cheese in a quaint restaurant in Italy makes me happy. Riding a camel in the desert followed by snorkeling in Eilat makes me feel accomplished. Getting waited on in a well-decorated bed and breakfast makes me feel special. Lying on warm sand while sipping a piña colada makes me feel relaxed. Therefore, I find different kinds of pleasure in a wide array of places, people, objects, and activities. I feel very fortunate that I have the ability to travel solely for pleasure purposes. As we learned in class, many people to not have the economic capabilities to travel for pleasure and some are forced to travel only for unwanted purposes like natural disasters, job relocation, or to escape various dangerous situations.

            Education is a huge reason for why I choose to travel. For instance, I have traveled to learn more about my religion by visiting Israel. My time in Israel taught me the history of my people, many Hebrew words, and more about the Israeli-Palistinian conflict. Also, I travel to educate myself on other cultures and ways of living. Travel teaches me to appriciate other ways of dress, cooking, and speaking. There is a certain form of education that cannot be taught in a classroom or from reading a book. The only way to learn this certain form of education is to travel and experience how others live and think. Traveling taught me that education expands beyond math equations, proper grammar, and scientific experiments. I plan to travel abroad and study at a foreign university and acclimate myself into a country’s way of life, learning a long the entire way.

            The worse part about travel is when it comes to an end.  I may have that picture of my family posed at the Eiffel tower, a pair of fancy leather gloves from Italy, a bracelet placed on my hand at the Western Wall, and a bottle of fresh maple syrup from Canada to remind me of my past travels. However, physical objects only last so long before they are lost, thrown away, or of no use to me. The memories will become stories I can bring up when out with my friends, laugh at around the dinner table, write about in essays for class, and describe to future employers to show-off my broadened global perspective. It is the memoires that will last forever.

All in all, I will continue to travel for pleasure, education, and to create memories. This Border Crossings class taught me how to appreciate my personal travel experience and how to analyze the true meaning of crossing borders. The world is a huge, unknown, and mysterious place and my goal is to cross as many borders as I can, traveling to create memories of joy and knowledge that will last a lifetime. 

An Entertaining Ride on a Bumpy Road to the Coming of Age

Walter Salles’ Motorcycle Diaries is a story of a young medical student named Ernesto and his friend Alberto Granado’s travels on a rickety old motorcycle to experience Ernesto's coming of age as they explore countries, as they travel throughout South America in the early 1950s. Unlike most of the other travelers they meet throughout their journey that are traveling due to hardships, the boys are traveling mainly for fun and adventure, leading to both good and bad times. Unlike Alberto, Ernesto’s compassion for others becomes evident when he begins feeling sorry for those who are diseased, out of work, or without a life’s purpose. For instance, Ernesto gives his last fifteen dollars to a communist couple who were forced to leave their child in search for work yet he gets ridiculed for his kind action by Alberto who wished to use the fifteen dollars to pay off a prostitute. The journey of Ernesto is based off of the true story of Che Guevara who traveled across South America as a young man, learning about the world and developing ideals that would help shape him into the powerful man that he became.

Firstly, I must say that Walter Salles did a fantastic job depicting Ernesto in such a way that his personality and looks charm almost anybody watching Motorcycle Diaries. The audience constantly wants him to survive his harsh asthma attacks, successfully cure sick patients, and fall in love with any women he meets. Although Ernesto wins the hearts of most, the specific audience that chose to watch Motorcycle diaries for historical knowledge of Che Guevara may not find Ernesto’s character quite as pleasing. Salles designed the movie to be more entertaining (which was successfully accomplished) than historically accurate and detailed. He depicted Ernesto with mainly positive characteristics to draw in his audience, leaving out Che Guevara’s political aspirations and complicated view of the world. Therefore, I would not recommend watching Motorcycle Diaries as a way of learning about Che Guevara’s coming of age but rather for entertainment purposes only. If one wishes to learn the details and accurate story of Che Guevara’s travels then I recommend reading "Notes de Viaje" written by Che Guevara himself and watching Motorcycle Diaries for pure enjoyment sake.

The movie’s focus on leprosy and the respect doctors were given in the 1950s added a whole other dimension to the movie. As a person who was not born during that time period, I found it interesting to see the development of medicine now from how it was back then. Parallel to the development of medicine, viewers also witness the development of Ernesto’s outlook on life throughout the movie. He begins as a romantic boy full of idealism and slowly turns into a man who is aware of what is going on around him both socially and politically.

Personally, I am looking forwarding to joining Ernesto and Alberto on their adventure many times again in the future. Motorcycle Diaries is the type of movie that can be enjoyed multiple times because it uses subtitles, causing people (whose first language is not Spanish) to pay close attention to reading the subtitles rather than the intriguing scenery and superb acting.

A Hero's Irony, Analyzed

          Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps narrates the story of a unique hero struggling to find happiness by gallivanting with women other than his wife, returning to his love of music, and transitioning from city to rural living. The author incorporates many literary techniques to encourage his readers to connect with the main character. For instance, he does not mention the names of the character’s locations in hope that his readers will be able to relate better, picturing the narrator in a location they are knowledgeable about. One important literary technique Carpentier introduces is irony through the narrator’s wish of having a baby with Rosario yet returning home to pregnant Ruth, his wife that he no longer loves and through the narrator’s rediscovered desire to write music in a wild setting yet there is no purpose or proper writing materials for the extent of his imagination.

The narrator develops a husband and wife relationship with a native named Rosario. She is a woman that he meets during his travels. Disregarding his marriage, “for the first time [he] felt the longing to caress a child”, birthed by Rosario, “to hold it in my arms, and watch its knees bend over my arm, and see it suck its fingers” (230). Readers discover the irony behind his statement once he returns home by plane to his actual wife who informs him that she is, “going to be a mother” (242). Readers understand the narrator’s negative view of Ruth’s pregnancy when he says, “there was no doubt that my situation was now worse, from a moral point of view, with this matter of pregnancy” (243). He “asked her if it was true that she was pregnant” (249) in hope that it was not the truth because he wishes to divorce Ruth to eventually marry and build a family with Rosario. Although “the pregnancy turned out to be a false alarm” (256), this ironic situation magnifies the narrator’s secret life involving women other than his wife and that fact that he never feels satisfied for a long period of time with the same woman.

Another instance in the novel where Carpentier incorporates irony is though the narrator’s decision to begin writing music in the wild setting yet right when his ideas fully develop his imagination become limited by the lack of paper. Prior to running into the Curator, the narrator felt that nobody “could make a living today from the study of primitive musical instruments” (21). Therefore, while he was in the city he distanced himself from the study of music for so long that when he “tried to take refuge in bibliographical references” he learned that his knowledge was so out of date that “specialists had already disregarded them” (21). He decided to rediscover his desire to study music in a rural setting that does not even have paper and ink while; ironically, he used to live in a city that had all the proper materials to write at his exposure and an audience who would appreciate his musical research. Prior to traveling to the rural setting, the narrator “became engulfed in the senseless activities that made [him] forget [his] composing” (214) but it was the sounds of the “river inhabited by monsters” (216), the howling of the medicine man, and the actions of the captives that caused his musical idea of Threnody to grow. However, both Frey Pedro and Adelantado tried to convince him that there was no need for his musical writings in the rural setting, offering Marco’s guitar as a replacement.

Overall, the author includes irony in his writing through the narrator’s wish of having a baby with Rosario yet returning home to pregnant Ruth and through the narrator’s rediscovered desire to write music in a wild setting yet he does not have proper writing materials, giving the main character more depth and interest to readers. Irony is an underlying theme that can be discovered after analyzing the narrator’s setting, thoughts, and observations in The Lost Steps.

Happiness is Out there Just Waiting to Be Found

According to Eric Weiner, the author of a book called The Geography of Bliss, eight out of ten Americans think about their happiness at least once a week and I admit that I am one of those Americans that reflects on my happiness daily. The formula for happiness is comprised of various aspects for all different types of people and for some location is an important factor when considering overall happiness. Weiner feels that location and happiness are connected and in his book he is on a search for the happiest country in the world. He comes across interesting research and facts when visiting the World Database of Happiness in the Netherlands. Although Weiner was skeptical and negative about what the country would be like prior to visiting, he usually left the country with positive feelings and a much clearer understanding of the word happiness. Overall, I would rank my happiness on a scale of one to ten as an eight and the factors that contribute to my happiness are my location, family, and friends.

            I live in the United States and my location contributes to both my happiness and unhappiness. The United States constitution allows for the freedom of speech and religion, allowing me to become a unique individual. I feel that the diverse population that makes up the United States makes Americans more content because they can express their opinions without being judged or harassed by the government. Also because America is “the wealthiest country in the world” (Weiner 310), basic survival is not an issue for the average American. According to Weiner, once a person’s basic needs are met their happiness will only increase slightly even if material prosperity increases dramatically. I think material wealth has replaced human connection in the United States because now people buy high tech computers and other devices, leaving no time for one on one in person discussion. It amazes me that some parents try to make up for time not spent with their children by purchasing them new gifts like a video game or iPod. In contrast, a person living in Bhutan would never turn to material objects in search of happiness because they believe in a simple way of living. Although I dislike the excess material wealth in America, I would prefer to live with all of my luxuries like organic coffee beans rather than settle for instant coffee in Bhutan. This example relates to when Weiner said,  “One man’s paradise can be another’s hell, and the converse holds true as well” (314).

            In addition to location, my family back home in New Jersey creates a safe haven for me to fall back on in times of distress. My parents support me in everything I dream of doing, struggle to do, and excel in completing. For example, my dad attended every soccer game I ever played in and he was always the loudest person cheering on the sidelines whether I scored a goal or just passed the ball. Weiner states, “since 1960, the divorce rate doubled” (310) in the United States and I feel fortunate that I do not have to deal with tension between my parents. Also, I believe that being healthy plays a big role in happiness because in most instances the cause of sickness is out of human control. Lastly, my friends make me laugh and keep me company. I call them to discuss my problems, silly stories, or current events. I agree with Weiner when he stated that Cubans tend to be happy even in poor conditions because they care greatly about their family and friends, forming a tight knit community.

Overall, I would consider myself as part of the 84% of Americans that describe themselves as “very” or “pretty” happy because of my patriotic spirit towards my location and the support and love from my family and friends. Whether it is clean toilets, drugs, five star hotels, or sandy beaches that make a person happy, happiness is out there just waiting to be found.