Laurents’ English Blog

Alzheimer’s is spreading! 
“Why? Ironically, in fighting heart disease, cancer and other diseases, “we’re keeping people alive so they can live long enough to get Alzheimer’s disease,” explains association vice president Steve McConnell.

Indeed, when the baby boomers start to turn 65, in 2011, hope will fade. Already 5 million Americans suffer from this mind losing disease, but now, as the elder population is increasing, Alzheimer’s will become more than common. This is a 10 percent increase compare to five years ago, when the Alzheimer’s Association estimated numbers. As known, age is the biggest factor in this disease, and when the baby boomers turn 65, Alzheimer’s will, as others say, sky rocket. This is obviously a crisis because this is showing that in contrary to all of our technological advances, Alzheimer’s is getting worse. Although this article is not shown in a worldwide aspect, Alzheimer’s is a major disease, which no one knows the cure to. Alzheimer’s simply robs the victim’s memory and abilities to care for themselves and then eventually kills them. This is a crisis, as it is getting much worse and the expenses for the medical care are depriving money for other, curable illnesses. It is hard to find reasons why this progressive growth is occurring so rapidly, but people must begin to act.

Here is the actual article from cnn

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/03/19/alzheimers.ap/index.html

A sick and neurotic child, Dylan Thomas was born in Wales, in 1914. His unfortunate conditions led him led into dropping out of school at sixteen and failing most subjects… but one. Dylan excelled in English as he was also a huge fan of D.H Lawrence’s poetry. What he states fascinated him the most was not only the English and vocabulary used in Lawrence’s poems, but his amazing descriptions of a vivid and natural world. Dylan was so impressed by the complex world of poetry; he dedicated his life to writing them. As early as the age of twenty, he published his first book, Eighteen Poems and was brought to much interests to many people. Later, Thomas traveled to America for his first time in 1950 at the age of thirty five and was acclaimed as the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination. Although Dylan was disturbed as a person, he was extravagantly theatrical and was loved for that. Unfortunately, as he was an alcoholic and was known to have engaged in roaring disputes in public, he died in 1953, at the age of thirty nine. His death was caused by a typical scenario, (at that time) including alcohol overdose in a bar in New York. Today, he is till remembered as legendary figure for his astonishing poems and depth of feeling put into them.

Although there were many poems I felt were the one to choose, I felt this showed his sentimental attachment to nature, as he mentioned in his biography. It’s amazing how his poem, Fern Hill, creates a whole set of imagery for me, and does that completely subconsciously. I really like his figurative language, for example: And fire green as grass. This is an example of a metaphor

FERN HILL
Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.