Charlie

My roommate asked me to do this painting for her. It is a picture of her horse Charlie. She gave me a picture of the horse and I copied it pretty closely except for the sky. I based the sky on a picture I took up in the Wind Rivers over the summer. At first I was afraid that I would be really bored painting this picture, it isn't very action packed by any means, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I think it probably helped that it was a pretty small painting. I think it's a 12 by 12 inches. I think it turned out decent.

Valentine's Day

This week we had Valentine's Day. Obviously. I don't know why but this year it seemed a bigger deal then normal. I know many people, especially single people do not like Valentine's Day even calling it Singles Awareness Day (SAD). And then others insist that it should be a day of Love AND friendship.  Now, granted I'm single, I understand why celebrating love when you don't really see it present in your own life can create emotions of longing, unhappiness, etc. The thing is, I think that ignoring the point of the holiday is unfair, or maybe just stupid. I didn't do any research on the origins of Valentines Day, but it doesn't matter because in our current culture the point is to celebrate romantic love, and why not? Why deny the fact. So what if you aren't in a relationship? So what if you are? Why can't Valentine's Day be about celebrating all the love filled relationships in your life. It's a good time to see the examples of others and to be grateful for that. So thanks Mom and Dad, for your good, stable, honest, close relationship. And for the examples of my siblings and their spouses, and for random couples I've met, and for my Bishop and his wife, and for Darcy and Elizabeth, and President and Sister Hinkley. I look forward to love in my own life.

Consuming and Creating: Part 3: Output Theory

When I first posted about Consuming and Creating I never thought it would grow into multiple posts, but I just keep returning to the idea. Last semester I took a linguistics class and we discussed different theories about learning language. One of the most interesting was developed by Merrill Swain called the Output Theory. Building on other theories before her, she distinguished between input and output in language acquisition. Input is reading and listening activities, where output activities are writing and speaking based. Her theory emphasizes that students that provide output learn much faster then those who only receive input. In other words people who are using their new skills to create and interact are far more productive then those who only consume. This is very apparent in other types of activities too, you can't learn to sing just only by listening, or paint, or play soccer, only by watching others. It just doesn't work like that. We have to participate in life to actually live.