February 2, 2010

Happy Groundhog Day!

Next class period, Thursday Feb 4, your rough drafts of your first major essay are due. This is a descriptive essay, culminating in all we've talked about so far. Please bring your rough drafts to class with FOUR COPIES.

Journal Prompt #5: Color

Describe a color (or colors) to a blind person. Since the person has never "seen" color, you are going to have to get more creative about the ways you go about your description. Don't worry--there is no wrong way. Write for 10 minutes.

And for fun...
Dictionary Word of the Day:

gelid\JEL-id\ , adjective;
1.Extremely cold; icy.

Cyber high-fives to anyone who can use this word in a sentence! Post in the comments...

Quotes:
The weather is gelid on a recent Thursday night--so uninviting that it's hard to imagine anyone venturing out.
-- Letta Tayler, "The Accent's on Brooklyn", Newsday, April 6, 2000

Last January a major crisis arose when the Argentine naval supply ship Bahia Paraiso foundered near an island off the Antarctic Peninsula, creating a diesel-oil spill that inflicted untold damage on the ecosystems clinging to the edges of the icy continent or swimming in its gelid seas.
-- Christopher Redman Paris, "Could anything be more terrible than this silent, windswept immensity?", Time, October 23, 1989

The house was silent, filled with a gelid, wintery hush even as lilac and dogwood leaves brushed darkly against the windowpanes.
-- Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
Origin:

Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."