And the Grammy goes to..

This year’s 2008 Grammy awards opened up with a past and present performance of Alicia Keyes singing in a duet with Frank Sinatra on a screen behind her. I believe this set the theme of the 50th annual award ceremony. Another exciting past/ present performance that made history this year was R&B queen and princess Tina Turner and Beyonce Knowles singing a rendition of Turner’s hit “Proud Mary.” But the performance of Kanye West was what had everyone raving over at the awards. He had sang his hit song “Stronger” with the help of Daft Punk (who made their first televised appearance ever!) mixing in their glow suits. But Kanye had taken off his glowing glasses and vest to sing a touching song “Hey Mama” to his mother who passed away in 2007, which had most tearing up in the audience. As usual at the Grammy’s the awards go to most of the performers, so it was not a shock to see that whoever hit the stage to sing got up once again to grab an award. Yet, many were surprised to see that Amy Winehouse went home with some of the most important awards, including record of the year, best new artist and song of the year. She was not present at the actual award ceremony but she made her appearance via satellite all the way from London. Until next year!

Kindly Unspoken

Kate Voegele is a new young artist making her way into the limelight. She had begun by singing in her church choir in Cleveland, Ohio at age ten. With the influences of her father’s music around her entire life she had taken the next step in writing music of her own, inspired by a breakup. After recording these songs, her demos came into the hands of many record labels which opened up her career. She began performing at venues around her home town. This led to a signing of a record deal with Myspace Records in October 2006 which took her career to the next level. She has performed in spots such as Summerfest, SXSW, and consecutive Farm-Aid concerts. Kate was also picked to be a finalist in the New York Songwriter’s Circle, where she recieved first place out of over 4,000 applicants. . She has already made an appearance on the hit TV show One Tree Hill, on CW11. She sang the song "Kindly Unspoken" from her album 'Don't look away'. This is just one small step to her broadening musical vocation. A young artist such as Kate is someone I look up to as a girl who knew her dreams and reached them by the age of 19. She is very talented in all aspects musically and I think we will be seeing much more of Kate in the years to come.

Since U Been Gone..

Kelly Clarkson, everyone knows her as one of the only American Idols who ever made it big. Ruben who? She’s had many accomplishments; five top-ten U.S. singles, three number-one radio hits, and two top-five albums. She took home many awards for her singles off her album “Breakaway” from almost every award ceremony. There was no doubt about it that Kelly was making her dreams come true, and was the “American Idol”. But where did she disappear to? Already selling millions of copies of her first two albums, Kelly was expected to receive nothing but greatness for years to come. But everyone spoke too soon when she released her third album, written all by herself. Where she went wrong was not listening to Clive Davis’ advice on using the same producers as her hit album “Breakaway”. Since her artist independence and leaving Sony-BMG, she has done a complete 360. Kelly has gone from making millions to just a few hundred thousand an album! Her tour for her third album “My December” was soon cancelled due to no sales. The album was criticized and her own fans turned their backs on her due to the musical genre change she had made. She went from pop-rock to a more negative and dark side of music. I was one of the true fans who bought Kelly’s album and I loved every song on the CD, but that’s just my opinion. She wants to be her own person and make her own music and I completely respect her for that. She is a talented artist and deserves to be treated as one, not shunned because Clive Davis says so. Come back soon Kelly!

First Key..

Music. It’s all around us everywhere we go. Music is my passion and I could not think of anything else I would want to write about more. No, I don’t have the ability in me to play an instrument, I wish I did but some of us just aren’t that talented. Surprisingly though, I have a good voice and love to sing. I don’t sing in public, that all stopped when I was 14. I all of a sudden became shy of singing in front of people, but trust me that’s the only time I’m EVER shy (haha lets just say I’m the “outgoing” type). I have a very wide variety of music genres that I like to listen to. It just might be the only thing that I’m not picky about! In my blog I will be writing about anything and everything I find interesting in the music world today. My posts will be totally random based on my mood and what I might have listened to that day. Just wonder what the world would actually be like without music. It has a HUGE impact on everyone’s every day lives, and I first realized this when I was in junior high school my teacher asked the class a question. The question was: when do you find yourself listening to music? The list is never ending..

Bringing Facts to Life (Creative Nonfiction Paper)

Creative nonfiction is not something that can be given one exact definition. Yes, it is a genre of writing, but not just any genre. It has its own way of taking literary styles and methods to create a factual based story. Creative nonfiction can go by many names such as “The Art of Fact” or “Literary Journalism”. Some people are appalled by the name creative nonfiction because it is like calling other forms of nonfiction uncreative, but it is not that at all. It is just the latest and newest form of fact-based writing that is becoming of much interest to a large audience.
This is only my outlook on the new genre from what I have learned, but many people have their own ways of explaining creative nonfiction. “Creative nonfiction braids narrative telling with fictional and poetic techniques; Combines portraiture and self-reflection with reportage and critical analysis" (Steinberg). “It is based on actual events, characters, and places; it is written with a special concern for language; and it tends to be more informal and personal than other types of nonfiction writing" (Minot).
As for the record of creative nonfiction, although the genre itself has only recently been identified and taught as its own separate genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deep into literary history. It is told to have emerged from the New Journalism movement of the 60’s and 70’s. There is a novel that is told to have been the originator of the genre itself. This novel is called In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
I have had the opportunity to read two books this semester that are great examples of creative nonfiction. These books are All Around the Town and The Curve of Binding Energy. Personally, I was not at all interested in reading either one of these books because the topics just weren’t for me, science and old time New York history, I’ll pass. But due to the way these factual books were written, these subjects that I was not interested in before suddenly became fascinating. This is all due to the form of writing the author uses. For example, when reading a newspaper article or reading a manual, you immediately find out all the main facts. The three W’s come into play along with hard facts. But with creative nonfiction, all the important facts fall into a story line. The people become characters, the place becomes the setting and the hard facts just go into telling a true story. This makes for a factual tale that makes a dull piece of information turn into something that can be quite enjoyable.
This goes to show the main difference between journalism and creative nonfiction. Although the information is there in both forms of writing, one form is much more imaginative then the other, which intrigues readers. Creative nonfiction I feel is useful to us writing papers in college. The form of creative nonfiction is somewhat of an aid for students to write achieving papers. Just as the creative nonfiction authors grab the attention of readers with a factual story, you can also grab someone’s attention with your paper as well. The papers that are written in college do not all have to be the same informational research paper. With creative nonfiction you have that chance to take specifics and make them come to life.

How I see it. My Reaction Paper

When I took my trip to the book store to collect the books needed for my English class, the woman helping me handed me a book called “The Curve of Binding Energy”. Science equations flashed through my head and I asked her if she had handed me the wrong book, because I already picked up all of my science books. I was upset when she told me she wasn’t wrong, and it was a required book for the class. To me science is the least interesting subject out there and the fact that I had to read 300 long pages of it killed me. Just what did “The Curve of Binding Energy” have to do with my English class anyway? When the assignment was given to us to read the book over our spring break I wasn’t the happiest person in the world, but I sucked it up and began to read. Surprisingly, I became interested very quickly.The story was about a man named Theodore B. Taylor who was one of the most ingenious engineers of his time. He was technically a physicist, but ended up working at Los Alamos as a nuclear bomb designer due to failing out of Berkley in the Ph.D program. Failing out of the program in his school could have been the best thing that could have happened to Taylor, being that he began a revolution. The book continues the story of Taylor’s life and all that had to do with science. Taylor goes about warning us of just how easy it is to get the common ingredients needed to create a nuclear bomb. Plutonium is an unavoidable byproduct of a nuclear device. Once you have this ingredient, it is very simple to create an atomic bomb. I was wondering as I was reading, why was Taylor telling McPhee any information that had to do with creating a bomb? But I soon came to realize that Taylor wasn’t giving up much information at all, only things that could be found anywhere. He actually made sure to reveal just enough, but not too much information. This is something that kept me interested because I felt like I knew a small piece of a big secret that couldn’t be let out to the world. Being that Taylor was so cautious about his choice of words used in the book through interviews and other sources, we can lead on to my next subject of interest which is safeguards. This is a topic that is brought up many times in the book; how lenient the safeguard system can be with nuclear materials. This was a huge concern for Taylor. He did not care about the nuclear bombs, but the sake of the people and the worry that millions would one day get hurt because the formula would fall into the hands of the wrong person. Since Taylor’s time safeguards have definitely increased and become more efficient. I can’t believe that the fact that Uranium and Plutonium were so easy to get in that time, when people knew about its dangers. With all the fighting that Taylor did to make it well aware that safeguards are very important, I am certain that he was more then pleased when McPhee wanted to write a book about him. It was a great way to spread the word about this problem and to open the government’s eyes. Since the book was published in 1973, the government has taken many precautions in making it almost impossible for the wrong person to get their hands on these things. This makes me feel somewhat safe because in today’s day in age, security is at an all time high. What is very ironic is the fact that Taylor mentions that the World Trade Center is an easy target for these terrorist. This is a reference that was made way before the striking of the September 11th attacks. Who is to tell if the terrorists quite possibly got their idea of where to attack from this very book? I personally do not think that it was a mere coincidence, you never know, it just might be where these terrorist got the “perfect” location from. McPhee put into context everything that Taylor ever worked for. All of this information that Taylor ever wanted people to know about was published and being sold all around the country. Not only did “The Curve of Binding Energy” tell the story of a remarkably intelligent person’s life, but it also opened the eyes of the people who needed it most. The fact that people’s welfare was in danger because of something that was pushed to the side was soon a controversial topic that has had mass improvement since the publishing of this book.