I was instructed my professer that on the first day of class (next Tuesday) to bring something to read aloud--no shorter than 20 seconds and no longer than 1.5 minutes. I don't want to do a poem.....seeing how I just finished all those poetry performances (and I know this is a poetry forum), but thought you astute folks might have a bright idea for me.
read the list of ingredients from a snack or drink in a dramatic fashion....should go over very well
How about your favorite recipe?
pam
All joking aside, the Gettysburg Address is a brilliant piece of writing. It's high on my list of things to memorize someday. Here's the whole thing.
==================
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Nov. 19, 1863
If you care to be philosophical, Desiderata, or anything by Kahil Gibrahan would be good.
If you care to be humorous, Mark Twain has some great short stories.
There are some great 1 to 2 minute stories here:
[www.nursefriendly.com] />
Les
do you put the emphasis on the "of, by and for" or on the "people"
just curious
and as much as it pains me....I am required to say...
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is 723 Main Street Gettysburg PA
You could read a good letter, from some anthology of letters. Here's a short one, penned by the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) to a princess who was having an affair with her husband. Mansfield knew of the affair and tolerated it, but there were some things she was not prepared to tolerate.
Dear Princess Bibesco,
I am afraid you must stop writing these little love letters to my husband while he and I live together. It is one of the things which is not done in our world.
You are very young. Won't you ask your husband to explain to to you the impossibility of such a situation.
Please do not make me have to write to you again. I do not like scolding people and I simply hate having to teach them manners.
Yours sincerely,
Katherine Mansfield
Does anyone read Dave Berry's syndicated column? It is pirnted in my local newspaper (The South Bend Tribune) every Sunday. I think he is hilarious and often times ridiculous, but I was thinking of reading one of his columns. My husband doesn't see what is so funny, but I usually laugh out loud hysterically when I read his columns.
[www.davebarry.com]
Dave barry is quite humorous...too bad it didnt translate well to TV with that NightCourt guy
For a similar assignment (somewhere around 1978), I read a column by Isaac Asimov that appeared in TV Guide. Barry (or some other columnist) should work.
pam
I think that Barry is funny enough- it's the Three Stooges that I can't understand.
Moe is their leader !
"I have seen the future, and it's Fine"
(motto of the Larry Fine Society)
"woo woo woo woo"
Jerome "Curly" Howard
Try reading the first 18 lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with Middle English pronunciation.
I don't get that people don't get the three stooges, what's not to get?
what's not to get?
Thinking that 3 adult males poking each other in the eyes and slapping each other is somehow humorous. Some people, though I'm certainly not one of them, fail to see the humor in slapstick. Perhaps their thinking is "man, that's gotta hurt".
Pam?
Les
I agree with Pam. I don't think they're funny. I think people will say the same about guy who played in Dumb and Dumber (can't remember his name). I don't think he's funny either.
What exactly does a "Middle English" pronunciation sound like?
Their first short for Columbia is all in rhyme....most people have never seen that one.....my wife thought it was all slapping and poking until she saw that one and has appreciated them ever since.
Their first 10 or so shorts are the best written...(Disorder in the Court, where Curly calls the judge "judgey-wudgey" and does the "take off your hat...raise your right hand and swear" routine)...though there are occasional moments even in the "Shemps"
(thinking that the initials T.H. stand for Thomas Hedison or Teddy Hoosevelt, for example)
But as you may have surmised from my posts.....it think that people saying "doody" is funny so hey, what can I say?
Yes, that's pretty much it- it just seems mean. I also don't like 'reality' TV shows for much the same reason.
pam
I have an intense dislike for "Reality" TV shows.
I feel put upon just watching the commercials for them.
TALIA ASKED: "What exactly does a "Middle English" pronunciation sound like?"
Talia, there are (obviously) no recordings of Middle English spoken by Middle Englishmen, but there is a scholarly consensus that it was spoken in a leisurely rhythm with rolling R's and gutteral H's and soft T's -- a little bit like a strong Scottish burr.
This web page has links to recordings of Chaucer passages read by several different readers:
[academics.vmi.edu]
I see, thanks MarionNYC
I too, dislike Reality....people are pathetic, that's about what it amounts to.
This class is awful by the way! Only 6 weeks long and have to do an oral interpretation each day.
By the time it's done, you'll never have stage fright again!
pam