Vocab 3/15/10

Bourgeoisie –

--A person belonging to the middle class.
--In Marxist theory, a member of the property-owning class.


Proletariat –

--The class of wage earners, esp. those who earn their living by manual labor or who are dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the working class.
--(In Marxist theory) the class of workers, esp. industrial wage earners, who do not possess capital or property and must sell their labor to survive.
--The lowest or poorest class of people, possessing no property, esp. in ancient Rome.


Stop-loss –

--Designed or planned to prevent continued loss, as a customer's order to a broker to sell a stock if its price declines to a specific amount.

Elucidate –

--To make lucid or clear; throw light upon; explain.


Elusive –

--Eluding clear perception or complete mental grasp; hard to express or define: an elusive concept.
--Cleverly or skillfully evasive:


Profligate –

--Utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute.
Recklessly prodigal or extravagant.

Chasm –

--A yawning fissure or deep cleft in the earth's surface; gorge.
--A breach or wide fissure in a wall or other structure.
--A marked interruption of continuity.


Fulminate –

--To explode with a loud noise; detonate.
--To issue a thunderous verbal attack.

Ostentatious –

--Characterized by or given to pretentious or conspicuous show in an attempt to impress others.

Obfuscate –

--To confuse, bewilder, or stupefy.
--To make obscure or unclear: to obfuscate a problem with extraneous information.
--To darken.

Vocab 2/22/10

Subtle - In the famous painting by Leonardo DaVinci, Mona Lisa, the person pictured has a very subtle smile.

Aggravate – I had just gotten home from a long day at work, and I wasn’t about to let the neighbors’ kids aggravate me.




Discreet – he was very discreet in his words when I asked him where he was last night.


Vehement – people characterized Tiger Woods as having a vehement desire to win.


Blatant – I made a blatant mistake on my math test today.

Barder and the Flying Turban: Sonny Takes a Risk

Students were asked to respond to this picture in a creative writing excercise. The picture is supposed to make it appear as though the kid and dog are flying. It was given that the dog's name was Barder.











Sonny Takes a Risk

It was a hot day, probably the hottest since he could remember. Then again, Sonny couldn’t remember that far back; he was only 3 after all. He walked through the thick redwood doors of The South Hill Pre-School, where he spent most of his days with the guys.

“Hey! Sonny!” they cheered as he walked in.

He wasn’t the best racer, but he kept up with Buddy, Sam, and the rest of the big dogs. But Sonny had always been the easiest to like. The game was called “Double D” – short for “Doggy Derby” – and all the guys were in to it. It was basically horse racing, but with dogs. Sonny walked smoothly towards the usual corner of the playground that the guys hang around when they aren’t racing. He felt a new sort of swagger today, and he had a very good reason for it.

Sonny put his thumb and first finger into his mouth and blew a piercing whistle through the suffocating air of the late spring afternoon. A few seconds later, Sonny’s brand new racer had appeared from the shed in the playground, where all the dogs were kept. She was magnificent. She was golden-brown with mysterious black flecks. She was built for speed.

“Daaaaaaamn nice ride! What’s her name?” one of the youngster’s asked.

“Well you fellas ought to know that you can’t name a racer like this before her first race. And I’ve got a good feeling about today.”

But, a few hours before the race was scheduled to start, that confidence Sonny felt earlier had disappeared along with the sun and its penetrating heat. Sonny decided he needed something to give him an edge against Sam, who had been on fire, winning 6 of the last 8 races. He knew just the thing.

“Hey guys, where’s Sonny going?”

“Looks like he’s walking over behind the bathrooms.”

“Uh oh, you know what this means?”

“He’s going for the box.”

Behind the bathrooms was a door, with a dark room inside, that held a dog that had belonged to Johnny Walker (a legendary racer), back in the 40’s. He had no name, and he had gone rouge. The dog was protecting a treasure that was said to give you any power you wish, should you be able to steal it. No boy had entered that room and come out alive. Sonny was going for it. “Well, he’s a gonner.”

Sure enough, a long twenty minutes later, Sonny came out, shirt torn, bleeding, exhausted, wearing an orange turban. The guys were awestruck.

“What power did you get?!” they all asked.

Sonny wouldn’t say.

The race began that warm night, and as soon as the whistle blew, everyone figured out Sonny’s new power. He flew his dog toward the finish line with such speed, that all the other racers stopped to watch, despite the hefty second-place prize they were racing for. Nobody had a chance against Sonny and his flying dog.

Sonny became a superstar. He was known in pre-school’s all over the country. All the guys decided that he needed to make his own “baseball card” for Double D. They would sell them to other pre-school’s in the neighborhood, using Sonny’s flying dog to deliver them. This is the picture that he used. He is now a multi-billionaire and lives a few blocks from Bill Gates on his modest mansion on Lake Washington. He still has his now legendary racer, Barder.

Writing in Reverse: Leo the Bookie

Above is one of the many pictures taken by Bill Sullivan as a part of a project called “Bill Sullivan’s Turnstile Photography Project.” Sullivan took pictures of complete strangers passing through a New York City subway turnstile, and noticed how interesting the results were, noting the different facial expressions and objects that were carried by people. As a part of Elika Dadsetan’s Government class at High Tech High International, each student chose a stranger in one of Sullivan’s pictures and was asked to write a narrative fiction about their day.

Leo the Bookie

For the few who knew him well, he was “Lucky Leo”, or just “Lucky”. For the rest, he was Leo Colucci, the bookie. But no matter what anyone knew him by, he was the man.

Leo woke up this morning, as he does every morning, at 5:15 am. On this particular morning, his penthouse apartment was a brisk 55 degrees. He didn’t mind the cold. As always, the first thing Leo did this morning was get a copy of the New York Times Sports section – he was a bookie, after all. He left his building, walked four blocks south, and three blocks east.

“Morning Ray. What do we have today?” he asked a very short and plump man working the news stand.

“Lots of action in college ball, Pitt fell apart again. And I’m sure you know about the football games,” he responded. Ray never turned away from his work, because he knew Leo had arrived at the usual time.

“Actually I don’t,” Leo said. Leo didn’t watch sports on television much. He was always busy with his “second” job during the evenings.

“Well you’ll read about ‘em anyways,” said Ray.

Leo began walking back towards his building as he started skimming the scores from the day before. He whipped his notepad out to check the bets he had taken. He was surprised at well he did. He let out a grunt of approval.

Leo’s apartment was located directly above an Irish pub. He was very good friends with the owner, Mr. O’Malley. O’Malley had a back room where he let Leo do his business work for the day. Leo couldn’t be comfortable sitting in his apartment all day long.

Leo’s second job was working in the pub during the night, so it worked out well that his “office” was in the back room. Now, Leo wasn’t a bartender, but his role in the pub was nearly as important. He was a hustler. Most months, he made more money taking bets on sports than he did hustling. But every once in a while, a fool would walk into the pub with a swagger and a full head of steam that weren’t exactly adored by the regulars, and Leo would rack up his earnings. Leo knew pool and poker, of course. But where he really got his victims was in proposition bets, or “Prop Bets.”

Once the clock struck 8:00 pm, he left his office.

“Hey Leo!” everyone shouted, most of them with heavy Irish accents.

Leo nodded towards the crowd and walked straight out the door. Tonight, he couldn’t deal with the pinheads whose wallets would normally suffer from his evil tricks. He had other plans.

He was on his way to visit his mother. Normally, Leo would walk anywhere he needed to go, even if it was all the way across the Bronx, but Leo refused to be late. He took the subway.