True happiness is “innocence without heartbreak.”
Use the phrase in a piece of personal writing, a story, memoir, or poem.
Innocence Without Heartbreak
Category Archives: The Arch of Experience
“London Can Take It!”
Discuss the morality of destroying cities and their inhabitants during war. Focus on the blitz on London in 1940.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Can_Take_It!
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/films/london_take.htm
Spined Pig
Vandalism
Write a post in which you explore your thoughts and feelings about vandalism.
Mosaic vs. Melting Pot
Takes a side on the following: “A society deriving from a multi-cultural mosaic has distinct advantages over a society deriving from a melting pot.
A Special Day on the Assembly Line
Script a dialogue between two Ford workers in the 1920s after a special day on the assembly line, a day that included a visit from Ford himself.
A New Insight
Write a short story in which the central character is a child who gains a new insight into a parent or guardian, or in which an adult and child arrive at a mutual understanding and acceptance.
La Même Chose
Write a light-hearted post arguing the truth of the saying “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
Nursery Crimes
Select a nursery rhyme and analyze it. Write a parody of your analysis in the voice of a character from the TV Show “Big Bang Theory.”
Down Came A Blackbird and Pecked Off Her Nose!
“Let me write a nation’s songs, and I care not who writes its laws.”
Much has been written of the impact on children of mass media, with their excesses of violence and sex and their distortion of reality. The trouble may start at the parents’ knee with indoctrination through nursery rhymes.
Make a list of rhymes and stories that you remember and discuss their unpleasant overtones.
For example, did you ever think of the “four and twenty blackbirds” being baked alive?
Memoir
Write a memoir of a moment of discovery that changed your perception of yourself, of others, or of the world around you.
Urban Dialogue
Imagine you are sitting on a very crowded public city bus. The large and aggressive-seeming person next to you keeps demanding in an obnoxious was that you move over to make more room, You can’t move over and there is nowhere else to sit or stand in the bus. Write the dialogue that might take place in those circumstances.
Canadian Ritual
Write a personal essay about a guest from another country who comes into your home. Specify a typically Canadian ritual in which your guest might participate, and suggest how he or she might perceive it.
National News
Spend a week carefully observing news stories covered by the televised CBC news The National (10 or 11 p.m.) and the print daily newspaper The National Post.
Which stories were covered on TV, which significant stories were only in the newspaper? Which medium provided the deepest and most thorough coverage of particular events?
Write a post about your comparison and conclusions.
Reduce the Chance of War
Formulate a list of specific recommendations for political and social changes that might reduce the chance of war. Referring to current events in the world today evaluate the likelihood of such political and social changes coming about.
How do you know it is good?
Select two works of art(visual, musical, or literary): one that is good and one that is bad.
Explain the reasons for your judgements in a short piece of writing. Include a thumbnail, embedded clip, or snippet of each and ask your classmates to submit a comment with their own analysis and judgement.
Respond to your classmates criticism and discuss together the similarities and differences in your evaluations.
http://www.wga.hu/index1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_art
Extinct Civilizations
Write a story in which your protagonist has discovered that s/he is a rare descendent of an extinct civilization – East or West.
Ancient Egyptian
The Inca
The Maurya
The Toltec
The Mayans
The Phoenicians
The Babylonians
The Sumerian
The Aztec
The Minoans
Extra ideas for consideration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_genealogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology
Sun in the Fog
Waterloo Bridge: Sun in the Fog (1903) Claude Monet
Write a narrative in which you feature a detailed description of Waterloo Bridge: Sun in the Fog (1903) by Claude Monet.