Brain Flexor: Detail #2

1. Brain Flexor: Detail #2 Today’s Learning Target:  I can use well-chosen and relevant facts, definitions, details, and quotations, or other examples to develop the topic.

2. BF: Details #2 “My grandfather took me to the back of his house, to a room that my mother said was private, that she had yanked me away from when I once had tried to look. It had a bead curtain at the door and we passed through it and the beads rustled like tall grass. The room was dim, lit by candles, and it smelled of incense, and my grandfather stood me before a little shrine with flowers and a smoking incense bowl and two brass candle sticks and between them a photo of a man in a Chinese mandarin hat.” - Robert Olen Butler, “Mr. Green,” A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Voice p. 42) • The first sentence states that the room is private. The author then uses specific details to illustrate the privacy. How does this detail define and focus the privacy of the room ? • Most of the passage is filled with detail describing the room. Which detail do you think adds the most impact to the passage? Why? • Apply: Write a sentence in which you use an action to characterize the state of loneliness. Use the first sentence of this passage as a model. Then flesh-out the paragraph with more specific details for effect.

3. Quick Write Solitude or Loneliness I know people who can stay alone in their home for weeks on end, and I know people who get antsy and depressed if they have to spend one day alone. How do you feel about being alone? Would you remain alone by choice? Do you feel lonely or do you welcome the solitude? Are you bored, restless or do you find comfort in the silence and in your thoughts? What would your day be like? Do you skip a meal because you don't want to eat alone, or call a friend or find social contact on the internet? What do you do? How much time do you spend in your own company? How much of it is by choice? Ponder over this today. When we rely on other people for company, entertainment, happiness, we are giving them the control of making us happy. When we can find happiness and peace within ourselves, we are in control. Who has the reigns of your happiness?