What the Garden Means to Me

     This was my second trip to the arboretum this year and in the garden and I liked it just as much the second time as the first. I run around campus often and am looking for new places to run all the time and someone suggested I run through the arboretum and I happily took their advice. I love nature just because of the fact that I run. Checking out a new route of a run is one of my favorite things. I love looking around at all of the trees and flowers and whatever else around. My favorite place to run is definitely the woods, actually. So when I found this garden, needless to say, I was pretty excited. It isn't huge and has a lot of turns so it isn't really ideal to run through. I do, however, love running past it or walking through it all of the time. I think the garden and the entire arboretum are one of if not my favorite places on campus. I just think it makes everything more interesting to be surrounded by a beautiful place like that. Whether it be running, walking, or even having an english class on a monday morning. All that being said, you can likely guess that I will definitely be there again. I will almost definitely be by there on runs again and might even stop by just to walk around if I ever need to relax and just have some quiet in this busy environment. I'm not really sure if my friends would find the garden as interesting as I do, but I would love to go over there with my floor or anyone else if they were interested. Good company is only made better by an awesome environment. It made me happy to be there mostly because it reminded me of Cross Country season last year with all my friends. Since it instantly made me think of running, it reminded me of all the good times I had with my friends when I saw all of the flowers and many different plants growing throughout the garden. As simple as it was it brought me back to a completely different time or place. It felt like I was crossing the finish line at the Catholic League championships again my senior year of high school. I could see the hills I was running up and hear the crowd cheering as I crossed the finish line. It was so strange of a feeling how it brought me back to a completely different place in mind. Even though gardens and running don't really go together on a normal basis, but to me nature and running will always be linked together. So in a way, the garden will always be linked to the happy memories of my cross country season and my senior year all together. This will always be a happy place on campus for me. Hopefully I will have many more trips to the garden in my years at open at Penn State.

Palmer Museum Visit

   
Almost immediately when I walked into one the first rooms of the Palmer Museum, this painting caught my attention. At first I liked the painting so much that I didn’t even write down its name. It was the first painting I'd seen, and I had never been to an art museum before in my life. I naturally assumed I would like many of the paintings at least as much as this one if not more. But as I walked through the rest of the first and the second floor, I was not as taken with the other paintings. Each one of them was brilliant but did not hold my attention like this one did. The reason being that, with no explanation of the painting and little to go on, there were endless possibilities of what it could mean. It was clearly a religious figure standing over a severed head, but what did it mean and who was San Gennaro? Was he a corrupt pope, or was his friend beheaded in front of him? The thoughts running through my head were endless so I wanted to know more.

This work of art is San Gennaro by Louis Finson (1580-1617). I now know it is a painting of San Gennaro, otherwise known as St. Janaurius. San Gennaro was the Bishop of Naples from the late third to early fourth century. His feast day is a large celebration every year in Naples, along with the liquefying of his blood which supposedly happens three times a year and is thought to be a sign of him watching over the city. He is loved and revered by the people of Naples even to this day.

The picture depicts the martyred saint with a gruesome look upon his face, standing over a severed head. This could be interpreted as at least a few different things because not to mention that San Gennaro himself was beheaded but many other Catholics at the time were being persecuted for their beliefs, including some of his own personal friends. The story behind the painting is interesting because it is a very bizarre scene with absolutely no explanation. If you don’t know the reason behind it, then it could have many different meanings. The painting itself is interesting if nothing else because of the contrast of colors. A completely black background with the bright colors of San Gennaro's robes and the color of the head lying on the table are complete opposites of the background. It almost gives off the illusion of a three dimensional picture. Like the picture itself is jumping out from the backdrop. However, a picture of a work of art on a computer screen cannot really show all that it has to offer, so I highly suggest to anyone that gets a chance to go see it to make a trip to Penn States Palmer museum.

The Reasons Behind the Blog

Template: I chose an open road for my templalte because this blog is the begining of a new class as we start a new year here at Penn State. We have no clue where this year will take us or where we'll end up at the finish of our time here at Penn State. We have all been thrown into what will be considered a crutial year, here at Penn State and anything could happen.

Title: I chose my title, We Are: The Arts, to really hit on the point that we are not just a football school and we don't spend all of our time partying either. Penn State is to be taken seriously and not seen as one giant fraternity. People may see us as a place for football and partying which happens to be associated with a university, but we are much more then that.

Color: The color is pretty much the same reason as the template. With the light blue blending in with the colors of the summer sky, it reminds us that there are no limits on what this year can hold. Trying to play off the old cliché "The sky's the limit" I wanted my blog to be a reminded that we can do anything with this year, and there is no telling what this university can do, united as one.

Font: I chose Verdana because it was bold and caught my eye, and thats what I want my blog to do to the readers. When they are scrolling through their constant stream of information, I need something that will make them stop at my blog instead any of the other countless sites on the web.

Sharing: I have a gadget on my blog that allows you to follow the blog by email.  This will help get my blog out to people who don't have time to log onto the web everyday and check the actual site.

Links: I have a list of "Important Links" at the bottom of my page where you can find anything i may want to share while writing this blog. For now they will be dispalyed at once at the bottom of the screen, but as the number of links grow, only a select few may be shown at a time.

About Me: I wrote a short description of myself, basically just so you know the basics about who I am. I think people will get to know me better through my blog then they could get to know me through a paragraph or two I write describing myself.

Overview: After all is said and done, I would say for someone who knows nothing about computers at all, I did a pretty good job creating my blog. At first i had difficulty navigating the site but after a very short amount of time, it became fairly simple.