AF: Roger Ebert and his wife, Chaz

Value of Life

Now that football season has come to a close for our team I have reached a questionable milestone in my life. All my life I have played football and, quite frankly am no way ready to give it up. The question is will i be able to continue to play it in college on a scholarship? Will i continue to keep in good contact with my brothers? What am I supposed to do now!? Well i know im going to continue to work hard in school. Now that season is over I can focus more in school but, that lingering feeling of emptiness will be there; until maybe December. Playing at the next level would be a great honor. Right now with football gone I'm questioning the Value ofLife. Not talking suicide or anything but it hurts. Its the only thing I know outside of school. Playing football is my life and, if its all over whats my Value on the Earth until I find my career. Its a rugged stepping stone but everything will work out for the better I'm sure of it.

AF: TEDYouth

Kids, read this, and look at the bottom where it says,

Not able to make it to TEDYouth in person? Totally fine. The event will be webcast on Saturday, November 16, from 11am to 6pm CDT. Or find a TEDxYouthDay event near you. They are happening all over the world, in the 48-hour period surrounding TEDYouth.

Value of Life

The value of life is something important that we must realize we should do. When I think about valuing life its more about appreciating and thinking about how valuable life is to you right now whether you know it or not. It makes me sad that sometimes there's people that just take advantage of life and don't appreciate the little things that come our way. I've met little kids in the hospital that have cancer and they would tell me 'I would love to be in your shoes or be out there in the world walking, laughing at the little things, and just make my life fun".Its different when you hear that one person telling you value your life or to appreciate the little things. The hard part is actually thinking and acting towards it. People out there in this world will kill to be in your shoes or just be in your life for 1 day. People just need to value everything that comes there way. Whether it will be a little kiss on the check by your mom or brother or something that makes you smile.People shouldn't take advantage of their life because life is more important than you may think.You gatta notice the little things.Life is a precious thing that we must value and notice in life. Life is.good in many ways. Some things that make life good is the way thr leaves blow through the tress, the way that special someone can make you smile, the way your brother or sister can say something so dorky that will make you giggle a little bit, those friends you look forward to seeing the next day, those dates to the mall, the christmas atmosphere, the way everyone hugs eachother during new years and yelling "HAPPY NEW YEARRRRR!!!!!",and those days you  just want to stay home under the warm blankets and watch movies. Just all the little thing that we go through in life that we dont sit down and realize how life is good and valuable.

Life Gives You Struggles

LIFE LIFE LIFE!! :( In life you will have that short or long period of time where its just the worst part of your life.Hamlets background states that he went through a lot because his own father got murdered by his own uncle. People in life go through the most worst stuff in life that they have to somehow go through. I feel that sometimes stuff happen because to make you a better and stronger person in life. Right now in class we are focusing on values of life. I feel that people should value life whether it is bad or good because people don't get to have you do. Sometimes in life you need a little bump on the road because how do you expect to become stronger or know how to handle a rough or bad situation when it come your way. I think that people that are struggling or that is in a rough situation to take a deep breath and remember and the end of it all it will only make you a better person and it will all  be better at the end of it. Don't ever think that your not the only one and saying "why me, why me?' because everyone will go through something whether we like it or not.There will be struggles in life about anything you can think of. So don'y ever think that you are the only one in life that is going through the rough times. Life just sucks that way but its for the best

AF: What's good?

The Orange
—Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment.  It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.

"Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" by Chris Jones ... Intro

For the 281st time in the last ten months, Roger Ebert is sitting down to watch a movie in the Lake Street Screening Room, on the sixteenth floor of what used to pass for a skyscraper in the Loop. Ebert’s been coming to it for nearly thirty years, along with the rest of Chicago’s increasingly venerable collection of movie critics. More than a dozen of them are here this afternoon, sitting together in the dark. Some of them look as though they plan on camping out, with their coats, blankets, lunches, and laptops spread out on the seats around them.

The critics might watch three or four movies in a single day, and they have rules and rituals along with their lunches to make it through. The small, fabric-walled room has forty-nine purple seats in it; Ebert always occupies the aisle seat in the last row, closest to the door. His wife, Chaz, in her capacity as vice-president of the Ebert Company, sits two seats over, closer to the middle, next to a little table. She’s sitting there now, drinking from a tall paper cup. Michael Phillips, Ebert’s bearded, bespectacled replacement on At the Movies, is on the other side of the room, one row down. The guy who used to write under the name Capone for Ain’t It Cool News leans against the far wall. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Peter Sobczynski, dressed in black, are down front.

“Too close for me,” Ebert writes in his small spiral notebook.

Today, Ebert’s decided he has the time and energy to watch only one film, Pedro Almodóvar’s new Spanish-language movie, Broken Embraces. It stars Penélope Cruz. Steve Kraus, the house projectionist, is busy pulling seven reels out of a cardboard box and threading them through twin Simplex projectors.

Unlike the others, Ebert, sixty-seven, hasn’t brought much survival gear with him: a small bottle of Evian moisturizing spray with a pink cap; some Kleenex; his spiral notebook and a blue fine-tip pen. He’s wearing jeans that are falling off him at the waist, a pair of New Balance sneakers, and a blue cardigan zipped up over the bandages around his neck. His seat is worn soft and reclines a little, which he likes. He likes, too, for the seat in front of him to remain empty, so that he can prop his left foot onto its armrest; otherwise his back and shoulders 

can’t take the strain of a feature-length sitting anymore.

The lights go down. Kraus starts the movie. Subtitles run along the bottom of the screen. The movie is about a film director, Harry Caine, who has lost his sight. Caine reads and makes love by touch, and he writes and edits his films by sound. “Films have to be finished, even if you do it blindly,” someone in the movie says. It’s a quirky, complex, beautiful little film, and Ebert loves it. He radiates kid joy. Throughout the screening, he takes excited notes—references to other movies, snatches of dialogue, meditations on Almodóvar’s symbolism and his use of the color red. Ebert scribbles constantly, his pen digging into page after page, and then he tears the pages out of his notebook and drops them to the floor around him. Maybe twenty or thirty times, the sound of paper being torn from a spiral rises from the aisle seat in the last row.

The lights come back on. Ebert stays in his chair, savoring, surrounded by his notes. It looks as though he’s sitting on top of a cloud of paper. He watches the credits, lifts himself up, and kicks his notes into a small pile with his feet. He slowly bends down to pick them up and walks with Chaz back out to the elevators. They hold hands, but they don’t say anything to each other. They spend a lot of time like that.

Just reading that introduction of "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" by Chris Jones, you would have never guessed that Roger looked like that man in the picture. It is not until the body paragraphs that you start to realize he could not talk. It gives a few hints in the intro about Roger having a disability...but not enough to know what he looked like. He is a man who has certain habits that cannot get away from him, such as the worn out seat, and even the way he and his wife react with each other after a movie review. Same routines. I believe that kid joy in paragraph 6 means that he lets go all of his burdens during that movie and just stays happy and filled with hope. It just amazes me about how strong he is.