the last post

Well, I would like to say that I have something crazy exciting to say for the last post of the project, but I dont. The status of the project is that I have just completed the biography on Gabito, as he was known by his grandparents. I guess it's vocab time now...wooo!!! Today is unfolding into quite the exciting day, wouldn't you say?

Who Knew Garcia Marquez's dad had previous LTL's before he met his wife?

Today I learned about Garcia Marquez's life on themodernword.com which also happens to be the site i found last night. Go figure. So, i started to read about his life (while listening to what Nora calls my "hippie music" but what in reality is just a little Umphrey's Mcgee...Nora just doesn't know music I guess)when I discovered that I had run out of time to go get my car's taillight fixed (I had to be at the place by 5 and it was too late) so i had to call the place and reschedule for tomorrow. Then I got back to reading about Marquez, who probably didn't worry too much about broken taillights when he was born in Colombia, as he happened to be born in 1928 (though his parents claim it was 1927...imagine never knowing how old you are?) which was the year of the banana massacres. So seeing as people were being murdered near his town when he was born, broken taillights must have been very arbitrary to him. Not that he had a car, but you get the point. Anyway, it is pretty interesting that Love in the Time of Cholera happens to parallel the relationship of his parents (his mom was in love with his dad because his dad sent her all these crazy love letters, but his grandpa didnt approve for a long time because his dad had 4 illegit. children...no wonder Marquez had a thing about writing about LTL's) Fastforward like, a long time, and Marquez is living in NYC with his family, and then they move to Mexico City and are denied entrance to the USA until 1971. Rude, right? Thank God for Bill Clinton lifting his travel restriction to the US so he can come back here without these crazy visas. As of 2001 when this bio i read was written, he was/is still alive with lots of houses all over the place (except for in the USA) although he is suffering from cancer. I guess now I just need to go turn all this information I just learned into an essay. Long story short, taillights and Nora's dislike for "hippie music" is pretty irrelevent compared to things in the life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (aka Gabito).

by the way

so i just got the portal to work again because for some reason it wouldnt open when i was writing about my website, so i will add that

Bias: the modern word does not seem to have any bias, as it is all strictly information on the author, and the publishers and professors on the board of this network are not out to get me to buy anything or smoke or something like the websites we saw the other day.

Scholastic? Well yeah, I would say that the info provided in this site is very scholastic. I mean, it's all very intelligent-sounding information.

Okay, so yes, I would still use this website.

Website Evaluation and What I did 12-6

I would use this website I found on Gabriel Garcia Marquez (my new choice of author) because it does seem pretty credible. It is part of themodernword.com which is this big network of all sorts of information about authors, including Marquez. There is a whole page that includes background information on all of the authors of the site. One of the site authors is even the director of science curriculum for the Kaplan learning services that tutors kids for standardized testing. Apparently the modern word has a board of professionals who are publishers, professors, or librarians, again, seems like the author is pretty credible. There is all sorts of information about Marquez, all of which is written for people like us doing research on authors. It is easy to understand, but not written for small children. The links within the site work and go to functional places as well. Whats more, the biographical information on Marquez is cited, and recently dated (the timeline on Marquez's life is dated 2003). Overall, it seems like a source I'd be more than willing to use.

Today, on December 6th, I learned that the project I had planned to do was not possible. The author, so-called 'Lopez-Ortega' doesn't really exist, at least not publicly. Way to find the two short stories that don't have an author, right? So I looked around and chose two short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am working on connecting the two. So far, it seems like they both are about wanting something so much that you make up an untrue reality, not caring how your false reality can affect others. I'm still working on the exact way I am going to connect them, but at least there's a start.

trouble

After spending about 45 minutes trying to find information on my author, who I have come to find is NOT the Ortega everyone knows of, his name is actually Antonio López-Ortega, I still have yet to find a website with any biographical information. Most of my time was taken up realizing that there is an accent over the O in Lopez, so I had to redo the searching. Unfortunatly, that didn't work. He isn't listed on the Gale Group Literary Resource Center or anything, and google only comes up with prices for his full collection of short stories or with current events regarding someone with his name (maybe even him) and his involvement in some crazy politics. I don't think he is very popular with politicians, especially Dick Cheney these days. But I wouldn't know, as all of the websites are in spanish and the only ones that translate to english either say Dick Cheney does not like him or are trying to sell his collections. Therefore, I am not sure what to do, if I have to go find a new author and new stories or not, because I really like the two stories I found of his. They are in the Vintage Book of Latin American Stories from "Naturalezas Menores". I tried searching for the title of the collection, the title of the short stories, and his name. The only site I could find that looked like it may be an interview with him or biographical information is in spanish. I am going to keep looking or ask you tomorrow what I should do, but for now, here is my blog. It's the best I can do.

December 4th, 2006-Blog 1

Today I looked through a collection of short stories. I read one titled Canoe, but didn't really find anything very exciting about it. Then I found two stories by Ortega that I am thinking about using for my project. They are both pretty contemporary, and both follow a person in love with someone that is unreachable.

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