The Rabbit that Helped End a War

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On June 6th, 1944, American paratroopers stormed Normandy, France to spearhead the D-Day invasion to ultimately drive the German forces out of France during World War II. After jumping, the paratroopers held their ground before beach-landing troops arrived with reinforcements. Several battles took place, including one within a field aside a French country road. After both sides had formed a skirmish line, prepared to fight, a jackrabbit became startled and began running between the two lines. Both sides began to fire at the rabbit, trying to strike him, yet after many attempts, the rabbit remained unharmed and darted safely into the bushes. Hearing the continuous gunshots from afar, the German defenders of Baupte assumed that they were outnumbered, allowing the pair of unsupported paratroop companies to easily overtake them.

After hearing Dr. Donald Olson, of Texas State University speak of his travels to Normandy, France to study the victories that took place during World War II, and speaking with my freshmen roommate who accompanied Dr. Olson on his study abroad, I became interested in the subject and have chosen to pursue it for my history painting. I have chosen to focus on a true story that involves a jackrabbit helping the American troops win a battle and ultimately, helping them drive the Germans out of France during World War II. I have found imagery of World War II soldiers along with references of running jackrabbits from the Internet that I can use to compile a dynamic composition.

This painting’s composition will be simple, yet powerful. By abstracting the rabbit’s form to a minimalistic, pale silhouette surrounded by a drastically different background, the rabbit will remain the focal point in a haunting way. The background will be composed of random, sporadic lines and marks in order to convey not only the random, quick movements of the animal himself, but also the frantic, rushed gunshots of the soldiers firing at him. This random barrage of marks will also convey the chaotic theme of war and the constant panic of being preyed upon. This composition will most importantly highlight the rabbit’s presence in the piece to focus on his major impact in the war through such a small, minor role.

While painting this painting, I will choose to paint with quick, energetic, and activated brushstrokes to highlight the fast energy of the jackrabbit and the boisterous clamor of the soldiers and their gunshots. As for colors, I will choose to use solemn, neutral tones in the background and pale tones within the jackrabbit. By using lighter colors on the hare, he will be highlighted as a heroic figure that brought hope to the war. All of these choices will help illustrate this historic event in a way that will highlight my positive thoughts.

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Dallas Chaos II: Media Circus

On the morning of November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, infamous for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was to be transferred to an armored truck; yet, Oswald never made it to the vehicle. Surrounded by crowds of news reporters, cameramen, and photographers, Jack Ruby was virtually unseen as he stepped forward, drew a Colt Cobra .38 pistol, and murdered Oswald with a fatal shot. “The Shot Seen ‘Round the World” was instantaneously covered by the media, scarring the event into the public’s memory.

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Cliché Clichés

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Everyone’s heard the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but there are a few instances when this phrase is no longer true. Some pictures have been seen so many times that they no longer have a voice, no longer tell a story, and can no longer share a thousand words. When found in art, these images hold little value as they remain stagnant and unchanged. Read more

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I Love Summer!

This semester is almost over and Summer is about to start! I love Summer!

Summer is my favorite season for a variety of reasons: it’s my birthday season, it’s warm, there’s no school, and there’s so many possibilities!

This Summer, I’m going to be studying abroad in Italy, through the program ARTIS, which is very exciting! I can’t wait for Summer to start! I’m so excited!

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Mother Nature, Make Up Your Mind!

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Right now, it’s that awkward time of year where the mornings and evenings are extremely cold and windy, yet the middle of the day is warm and humid.

Every morning that I wake up, I have no idea what to wear. Mother Nature, make up your mind already! Do you want it to be cold or warm? Just pick one!

But please pick warm…I don’t like cold weather.

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I’m Red and I Hurt

Photo by Susan Hanson

Photo by Susan Hanson

Last weekend my Nature & the Quest for Meaning class had a camping trip in Medina, Texas.

We spent a few hours at the river and I wore a tank top but forgot to put on some sunscreen.

Let’s just say that aloe vera is my best friend right now.

<< #37 | Nature & the Quest for Meaning | #39 >>

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Picnic in the Park

Photo by Susan Hanson

Photo by Susan Hanson

A few weeks ago, my Nature & the Quest for Meaning had a picnic during class at the Crook Park next to the San Marcos Nature Center and across the street from Herbert’s Taco Hut. That’s the same park that the Terry Scholars have adopted and that we keep clean on a regular basis through the Adopt-a-Spot program!

It’s a really lovely park and there’s an area that’s kind of hidden with picnic tables and a cool-looking bridge. There’s also a tree swing that you could use to swing into the river.

It was a pretty nice break from regular class.

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Flying Mammals Visit Texas State

Photo by Susan Hanson

Photo by Susan Hanson

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Written by Mark Twain | Illustrated by Raymond Sheppard

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Written by Mark Twain | Illustrated by Raymond Sheppard

A few days ago, Dianne Odegard came to my Nature & the Quest for Meaning class to represent Bat Conversation International from batcon.org and present about bats and the many myths that surround them.

Diane began her presentation with an informative PowerPoint presentation. She showed an impressive amount of varieties of bats, with more in Texas, with 33 species, than anywhere else in the United States. The smallest kind of bat is the “bumblebee” bat and the largest is a “flying fox,” or fruit bat, with an impressive 7-foot wingspan.

That’s longer than I am tall!

She also showed bats in the media, including in literature such as Mark Twain’s biography illustrating Huck and Becky running from bats in the forest. She explained that Mark Twain had lived near a bat cave and was very fond of the animal so he incorporated it into his work.

She explained just about everything about bats including their reproduction. Bats are the slowest-reproducing mammals for their size and only give birth to about two or four pups at a time. Usually though, a bat will only have a single pup. Although bats will swarm together in caves, mothers only allow their own pup to feed from themselves and can recognize their pup from its distinct cry and smell.

Because of the long amount of time it takes a bat to have a single pup, it’s surprising that there’s so many of them!

After presenting the Powerpoint presentation, Diane asked us all to write bat haikus in groups of two. We partnered up and wrote some bat poetry. After we shared a few of our words aloud, she asked us to email them to our professor so that she could post them on the Bat Conversation International Website.

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Skyrim Animal Resources

Skyrim Cover

If you don’t know by now, my favorite video game of all time right now is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the PC, Xbox360, and Playstation 3. I personally play Skyrim on the Xbox360 as I don’t own a Playstation3 and don’t care for playing video games on the computer. I am such a fan of the Elder Scrolls video games because of their attention to detail and attempts to create realistic, thriving, natural worlds.

Skyrim is an open-world role-playing fantasy game, which hits many of my favorite things about video games. I love role-playing video games, fantasy games, and games with lots of exploration and open worlds. Skyrim is a massive open world that allows its players to explore to their heart’s content and do whatever they please. While there are plots to delve into and goals to complete, the speed is left completely to the player and all barriers are down, allowing the player to go anywhere at any time and do anything. So many times I find myself simply exploring the countryside and scaling mountains just to enjoy the scenery and see what’s out there.

One of my favorite things about Skyrim is the vast amount of wildlife found roaming the open lands and the realism involved with them. The Elder Scrolls team tries to create believable worlds within their video games, so they spend the time to create a working ecosystem complete with prey and predators. When exploring the lands, you’ll come across deer grazing in the woods, elk venturing the tundra, and bears hunting them down. The animals live their own lives and make sense in the space around them. Not only can you see these animals and simply spend time with them or follow them around, you can also chase and hunt them down, ride them, fight alongside them, battle them, skin their fur, eat their meat, wear their hides, collect their claws, cook them in a stew, and mash their teeth into a powder to use in potions, and that’s only the beginning of what you can do!

The Elder Scrolls series always aims to create living, breathing, believable worlds filled with lore and history, so they allow the player to do almost anything they can imagine. This wide array of possibilities really helps bring the world of Skyrim to life and helps add believability to the animals and wildlife. The animals are not just computer models running about, but can actually help or hinder the player in his adventures. All of this realistic interaction really helps make Skyrim an enjoyable experience full of life and realism.

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Zoomology

Zoomology is a game of wildlife recognition that I created that educates others in zoology through the use of zoomed-in photos and close-ups of animals, such as magnified images of their eyes, feathers, scales, or fur. Through this entertaining, yet educational game, children, students, and people of all ages can test their knowledge of wildlife identification and in the process learn something new. This game not only allows people to enjoy learning more about nature, but also creates a bond between animals and people. People are generally much less afraid and are usually more attracted to the familiar, drawing toward that which they know. When one is able to identify the species of animals that live in his environment, he is more likely to enjoy the environment and wish to preserve it. He has a much closer bond with the nature and life around him and will treasure it more than one who does not know the animals by name. Zoomology is a game that treasures the ability to identify animals in an attempt to bring to attention the threat of losing endangered species, to help those threatened species regain their numbers, and overall, educate the public about zoology and increase their knowledge of wildlife.

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My Fox, Rome

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My love of foxes started when I was about 9 or 10 years old and my grandmother on my mother’s side won me a fox stuffed animal from the arcade at Sea World, San Antonio. I don’t know what it was about that stuffed animal, but he quickly became my favorite. I can’t say exactly when the fox became my favorite animal, but it was because of that stuffed animal that foxes were brought to my attention and shortly afterwards, I deemed them my favorite. I know for sure that they were my favorite animal by the time I was 12 years old.

After foxes were classified as my favorite animal I began collecting fox stuffed animals as I am a huge collector of stuffed animals and love the plush creatures. I only collected fox stuffed animals that I actually liked, and because it’s difficult to find a fox stuffed animal in the first place, I didn’t have that many.

In recent years, I’ve been desperately looking for a realistic life-size fox stuffed animal. It’s all I’ve been asking for for past Christmases and birhtdays, yet as each one passed, I never got one. As my birthday of 2012 passed and I again, did not receive a fox stuffed animal, I opened the Internet and typed in something along the lines of “realistic fox stuffed animal” into DeviantART, a website for artists. I figured that if I couldn’t find an already-made fox stuffed animal, perhaps I could find an artist that could make one for me.

As the searches came up, I wasn’t aware that my life was about to be changed.

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Letters to a Young Poet

"Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke, Translation by M. D. Herter Norton

“Then draw to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.” Letter One, 16

Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke’s life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them.

“For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself.” Letter One, 17

“After all this it is not hard to understand how I determined in that very hour to send my poetic attempts to Rainer Maria Rilke and to ask him for his opinion. Not yet twenty and close on the threshold of a profession which I felt to be entirely contrary to my inclinations, I hoped to find understanding, if in any one, in the poet who had written Mir zur Feier. And without having intended to do so at all, I found myself writing a covering letter in which I unreservedly laid bare my heart as never before and never since to any second human being.” -Franz Xaver Kappus, Berlin, June 1929, Introduction, 12

“If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you…” Letter Four, 27

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