An odd life of an inventor

According to the book Frozen in time, written by Mark Kurlansky, it shows me the life story of a peculiar person with his strange name, Clarence Birdseye. He discovers how to frozen food and does a lot to make the fridge. People can even see the brand, “Bird eye”, in the frozen area in supermarkets now. He’s odd, not just because of his name, but his asocial personality and ideas not that easy for people to support. For me, if I were in that time period, I would never think of anything about the frozen food. For something that is the most attractive for me, it’s his life story after he drops college because of having no money.

Kurlasky himself had tried many jobs such as chef, journalism, a fisherman, a dockworker and a paralegal. As a result, the character in his pen is a little bit similar as himself; Birdseye has worked as a chef and a hunter. He has 7 siblings, which makes a big family, and it makes him family has financial problems to afford him all the fees to go to college. There are so many ways for a person who doesn’t finish college to survive, but his has chosen a difficult one, go to west. As the book says, “Birdseye was not looking for financial security. He was looking for adventure. And where did you find adventure in 1909? Out west.”(Kurlansky P.21) I really like his spirit of finding adventure; it makes my blood burning and can’t wait to see his adventure story.

After he goes to west, he’s life is even different to others that go to west. Actually, the western part in America that time is so far as to survive, but he easily fits in that hard environment and starts to hunt. While other people are worried about how to get food, “Bob Birdseye wasn’t worried and went off to find dinner. He gathered field mice, chipmunks, gophers, and even a few pack rats, which he carefully skinned and gutted before wrapping them all in cheesecloth.” (Kurlansky P.24) Because of his unsatisfied on the food he hunt and the easily decay of food, his experience carry forward his business of frozen food and his invention of the freezing stuffs. These experiences and the learning of cooking are the basis that makes him have the idea of what he wants to discover.

In my perspective, this part of his life is really splendid, but I would never do what he did. Firstly, I think I need a stable job to survive in the society and my family wouldn’t really have a financial problem. Also, my family affords me a lot to make me study in a better condition, so I cannot go to the adventure in my mind and leave all my responsibilities away. Not every person is that lucky to go to a worse place but survive successfully, so I need to make myself safe enough and I cannot accept a huge failure in my life. Thus, even though I’m excited by his unusual life experience, I wouldn’t do that.

To conclude, Frozen in time is a good book that tells me a lot of historical information and some exciting stories. I wish people would read this book with a character with some odd life experience.

Citation:

Kurlansky, Mark. Frozen in Time: Clarence Birdseye's Outrageous Idea about Frozen Food. N.p.: Random House Children's, 2014. Print.

vocab

Frozen in time

P1 Peculiar beyond or deviating from the usual or expected

P5 Patented: protected by patent

P15 muskrats: beaver-like aquatic rodent of North America with dark glossy brown fur

P13 numerous amounting to a large indefinite number

P13 prominent having a quality that thrusts itself into attention

P30 tremendous extraordinarily large in size or extent or amount or power or degree

P31 epidemics a widespread outbreak of an infectious disease; many people are infected at the same time

P31 leprosy chronic granulomatous communicable disease occurring in tropical and subtropical regions; characterized by inflamed nodules beneath the skin and wasting of body parts; caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae

P 5 synthetic not of natural origin; prepared or made artificially

P37 pranks a ludicrous or grotesque act done for fun and amusement

The book and the movie

By watching the movie Opal Dream and reading the book Pobby and Dingan, I found there could be many different things happens in two different things showing the same story. Both the movie and the book are talking about the lost of Kellyanne’s imaginary friend Pobby and Dingan. Kellyanne’s family meets many big challenges and does tons of work to find Pobby and Dingan to make Kellyanne better and to help their family became a better family again. During the process of these works, the family changes a lot with love and caring. However, there are many differences have been showed by the two ways of telling this story.

First of all, the personality of the chapters changed a little by comparing the book and the movie. For example, the book said that the father is a drunker and he is a totally drunker that he drinks to lost Pobby and Dingan. However, the movie shows a closer relationship between the father and Ashmol by seeing them go to claim together. Also, the father’s much more kind in the movie than in the book because he always smiles and being nice to the whole family. Then, for the mother, she isn’t focus on her hometown that much and she seems more sensitive in the movie than in the book. However, I think those changes of personality of characters make them better and more real person in the movie.

On the other hand, the ending is different. According to the book, Kellyanne died in the last scene of the book and the opal doesn’t come back at the end of the book. However, in the movie, it doesn’t tell if Kellyanne’s died or not and it leaves reader more room to imagine by their selves. Meanwhile, the funeral holder returns the opal back to Ashmol, and this make people feel more humanity in the movie than in the book. So, I like the movie better because it gave people more hope than the book does.

To conclude, both the book and the movie are really good to read and watch, even though the book was written in a much more childish way. Actually, I highly recommend people to watch the movie by seeing more details about the emotion and plot of the story. Lastly, I think it would make people to understand more information about the author’s mind.

The story below the truth

When do people know the information of astronomy? For me, it’s many years ago, even before I went to elementary school. However, it took thousands of year to make human know the truth of the galaxy. Galileo was the first person to point the Earth is not the center of the universe to the ignorant people that time. The fall production of Galileo, which was written by the famous playwright Brecht, was talking about the life of Galileo.

According to the play, Galileo discovered the use of telescope and found out that the Earth is not the center of the universe; the Earth was just going around the Sun. Actually, it wasn’t that easy to make people, who believed in God, to believe him as well. His discovery was kind of against theories that the pope’s saying. The Earth is not the center of the universe meant that there’s no reason to stand why it’s the God created the world. It was totally against the rule of the church and even his friends cannot really support him. Lastly, he surrendered himself to the power of the church and admitted that he was wrong. According all, it’s a sad story showed that it was not that easy for people to admit the truth.

I like this play because I really like the way that it showed people’s change from the start of the story to the end. In the first few scenes of the play, when his friend thought it was too dangerous to say something against all theories in thousands of years, Galileo was saying it’s not difficult for people to get the truth, but when they saw the truth they would lastly support his idea. He was clever and proud of what he has found. Then, he thought there’s nothing can stop him to tell people the truth. However, at the end of the story, the power of the church stroke him and made he noticed the truth wasn’t the most important thing but the power. He changed a lot, and he was decadent and lost in the end. The characteristic of Galileo was changing in a excellent way and make me to have plenty of thinking. It made the story has been told in a truly attractive way.

However, I think the play was too difficult for people to understand. I’m a international student, and the play used too many difficult language which are even a lot for English country students. So, it made me feel unsatisfied with understanding the details of the story. Even though it’s not that hard to understand the story line, I cannot understand all the points it showed from the play. So, I wish it can be simpler next time and then I can understand the ideas better.

Over all, I think it’s a good play to tell the story under the truth that even a little child would know these day. Also, I highly recommend people to watch this play with the interesting plot and great acting of actors.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei, often known mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. He was born in 15 Feb 1564. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the father of modern science".

His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.

Galileo's championing of heliocentrism was controversial within his lifetime, a time when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The Roman Inquisition investigated the matter in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was false and contrary to scripture, placing works advocating the Copernican system on the index of banned books and forbidding Galileo from advocating heliocentrism. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII, thus alienating not only the Pope but also the Jesuits, both of whom had supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Holy Office, then found "vehemently suspect of heresy", was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences, in which he summarised the work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.

In class writing

In the very beginning of the book, Pobby and Dingan, there is a quote says, “The secret of an opal’s color lies not in its substance but in its absences.” In my perspective, it means something that’s missing is more important than what’s already showed.

In the book, the family was week at first. So, when Pobby and Dingan have been lost, too many things happen to the family. They are actually imaginary friends, but Kellyanne is care about them. The family lost some morality in the beginning of the book, they don’t trust each other, they doubt each other’s decision and they are so cold for each member in their family. This is what the family shows readers at the first of the book, which can imply the “substance” from the quote.

However, when Pobby and Dingan are lost, the family starts to change. The father has been caught because of finding Pobby and Dingan across Old Sid’s claim. The mother is always homesick. The brother, Ashmol is not caring. Then, for Kellyanne, she’s kind of crazy and sick. After the father has been caught and the fire burns their house, it seems like the family would be destroyed. Nevertheless, just because of these things happens, it makes Ashmol wants to change the family.

He finds the main reason why the family became so weak is the lost of Pobby and Dingan, so he asked everybody in the town to help him finding them. He wished Kellyanne would be better and not making their parents to be so worried, so he sell to opal to hold a funeral for Pobby and Dingan. Actually, in the writer’s mind, the family eventually finds the opal because they get better and care more.

By doing tons of work, Ashmol finds Pobby and Dingan, he holds a funeral, he makes the family to be warm again. That is what’s missing in the beginning of the book, which implies “absences” in the quote. It means that sometime things that are missing can do more than things that have been already had. So when the family gets what they lost before, it becomes better and the relationship between the family members are as beautiful as the mysterious opal.