Ethan Kahn Introduction
Hello! My name is Ethan Hello ya'll! My name is Ethan Kahn. I'm a student-athlete here at the University of Oklahoma. If you insist on knowing what sport, I'm a gymnast. I compete for the OU men's gymnastics club team. We are 4-time national champions! Personal Photo Let's get to the stuff that has to do more with me personally though. I was born in Buffalo, New York. My family and I moved down here to Norman, Oklahoma when I was 5 years old. I have one sibling, an older brother. He goes to OU as well. My brother and I are practically opposites. He's spazzy and extroverted while I'm calm, cool-headed and more introverted. He likes cool colors like blue and purple while I tend towards warm colors like red and orange. Even our majors are quite different. He's in pre-dentistry and I'm a philosophy major. Speaking of philosophy, I love to think about, well, everything.
Hi, Ethan! I just finished reading your portfolio story and I truly enjoyed all of it. You grabbed my attention from the beginning as you sparked my curiosity for the reason behind Yosef writing the story of his son. I was a little confused why you would just change the name of Jesus and basically explain what happened in the beginning, however I noticed that you added little elements to the story to make it more realistic. I admired the part about Mary noticing odd things about Yosef. My only suggestion would be to expand on the story and make it stand out more from the story of Jesus. You are on the right track in bringing up realistic moments!
ReplyDeleteAlso! So sorry, forgot to mention this. Add the link to the comment wall in addition to the original story, that way it will be easier for people to navigate to this page.
DeleteHey Ethan! I really liked this summary of Jesus’ childhood. I hadn’t ever heard of the Infancy Gospels before, but it was very interesting! I especially liked the detail that Yeshua had to reach into the past to move the stars. It was also cool that it was from Yosef’s point of view.
ReplyDeleteI did wonder what your Storybook topic was overall. This story read more like one of your Storybook stories than an introduction to your storybook as a whole. Maybe you should talk about that in your author’s note. Obviously, your Storybook is titled International Mythology, but is there a specific aspect of international mythology that you’re trying to focus on?
Also, what if you align your text to the left margin, like you would in a normal essay or assignment? I think it would fit better with the “journal” of Yosef feel that you’ve got in your story than the center-aligned way it is now.
I think once you make it clear exactly how this story fits into your Storybook, it will be an extremely great addition! Keep up the good work!
It's a portfolio. So instead of an introduction, we're supposed to publish a collection of our stories. In that case, there's not a specific focus like there is with the storybooks. That's why I named it "International Mythology." It contains multiple stories that I wrote, all inspired from the many world mythologies we're reading about!
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DeleteHey Ethan! I loved your story. I really liked that you chose the Hebrew spellings of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph instead. It made it more first-hand and felt more accurate. Since it's stated that Yosef was not very literate, I think it'd be funny and maybe accurate if there were a few, not too many, spelling errors or grammatical errors. It would sacrifice readability though, so maybe it's not the greatest idea. I love that your images are embedded within the text of your story. The images are the ideal size so that there're still seeable but not a distraction from the story, but rather a complement. I found it interesting that Yosef had to "straighten [Yeshua's] attitude after some misconduct." Since we usually view Jesus as a perfect, flawless figure, I think it would be a good idea to elaborate on what it meant when Jesus had an attitude. Overall, it was a good story!
ReplyDeleteHi Ethan,
ReplyDeleteYour story regarding the Buddha absolutely threw me for a loop. I was completely confused until I read the author's note at the end. I liked the way in which you described the process that was undergone. The states of nothingness, non-nothingness, both, and neither were very intriguing to me. If I were to make any suggestions, I'd make one grammatical one and one stylistic one. The grammatical one refers to your first paragraph, where you said "Did they have yet...". This may be a pattern of speech that is completely fine and I'm just not aware of it, but I did have to read it a few times to make sure I wasn't missing a word. For clarity, you might use, "Had they yet to..." and I think it connects the sentence really well. But that is just a personal preference that you may or may not want to use! The stylistic one would be to maybe play around with paragraph spacing in the sections talking about dualities and states. It was a little difficult to follow at first until I got into it more, so spacing out a bit might help first time readers! I really did enjoy your story though, I've always found the aspects of Buddhism interesting and I like the way you portrayed it. Nice!
Hey Ethan!
ReplyDeleteI just read your portfolio and it was so great. I picked yours because I thought the picture on the front page was so interesting and fitting. I am a sucker for a map picture so I was instantly intrigued. I am so glad that I stumbled upon it because your stories are great. Reading stories in the first person from Joseph is something I had never experienced before. It is a very unique viewpoint and you did a great job with it. I also enjoyed your second story but it seemed a bit short. It would be cool if you would add more to it so we really got to explore Buddha’s transition. It is again something that I had not thought much about before and I doubt many other readers had either so adding more to it would definitely add to the experience. I can’t wait to read more!
Hi, Ethan! i just read your story and it is great. The Buddha is a great part. Although I am not a Buddhist, but i believe in Buddhism. This is the first time i have read about the death of a Buddha, because in my knowledge, the Buddha achieves a immortal life. One can involve in a circle of birth, death and rebirth many times to learn all the miserable and pitiful of a normal person so he or she can guide these people to get out of those miserable. When (s)he really understands thoroughly the rules of "birth, old, illness and death", and the law of "causes and effect" he will be able to enlighten the supreme power. By that time, he would become immortal.
ReplyDeleteI also has never heard about Parinibbana, so it is kind of a twist in your story. It is a very unique aspect that attract my attention.
Hi Ethan! First, I love your banner image for your portfolio. It looks really great and goes along well with your overall theme! I’ll admit, I am not sure which story I should be reading and commenting on, but I read your Buddha story. I really like stories about Buddha because I usually find them so interesting, and Buddism is such a cool concept to me. I thought that your paragraph-
ReplyDelete“Then, even those familiar dualities passed away as I transcended them. I was now "something" that neither existed nor non-existed. However, this was still not the end of duality. For this state of neither existing nor non-existing forms a greater duality with the previous state of both existing and non-existing. So, I passed beyond this state as well.”
-could be reworded as to not be so word-y. I read The Life of Buddha and I understand the point of the paragraph and why you worded it in this way, but I would just suggest taking out the first “existing nor non-existing” in the fourth sentence. But that is just a suggestion and you don’t need to take it, hah. Great story, though! I can’t wait to read more!
Hi Ethan, I enjoyed reading your story Fathering a God-Child! I like how you decided to write this story as if it is a personal testimony; a letter of sorts to a future generation. I also appreciate how you were very intentional about ensuring that the cultural elements of this story are accurate, such as “papyrus” and other things like that. I also really enjoyed how you explain/point out the difference between Divine Power and Divine Wisdom. Also, although Yeshua was divine in natural, I like how you gave him humanistic traits/desires, such as over confidence/arrogance. Your author’s note was very beneficial for figuring out your goal for the story, which I think you accomplished. Overall, I really like how you kept many of the traditional aspects of this story the same but also added new elements that did not detract from the traditional aspects. I did not note any spelling or grammatical errors.
ReplyDeleteHi Ethan! I like how a lot of your stories have some kind of religious theme to them. I have read the Monkey King unit so I was excited to see a spin off of a story I was familiar with. I think you did a great job in rewriting the story. I think your authors note does a good job of informing the readers of why you did certain things. I am glad you included the "Handsome King" part. Great job overall and congrats on being done for the semester.
ReplyDeleteHi Ethan! First off, the banner image on your home page is absolutely adorable! Your first story about Jesus was easy for me to read because I grew up going to church and know most of His stories and powers already. For some reason, Jesus performing miracles as a child reminds me of Jack-Jack from The Incredibles 2 (If you haven't seen it yet, I would highly recommend it).Your Buddha story was really neat too! It made my head hurt to think about though. Props to you for not only being able to understand that concept, but turn around and use it in your own story. The Monkey king story was pretty cool as well. The mental image of a monkey doing somersaults in space in order to teleport after what I imagined to be a golden papaya really cheered me up, so thanks for that. In the last piece, I appreciated that you had so many religions represented. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteHi Ethan! First off, I have to say that I love the idea you chose for your project. I think it is really fun and unique while still being interesting for the readers. I did read all of your stories, and I really like your writing style. I think you do a great job of explaining what is going on in your stories without adding too much detail, and I also think you do a great job of describing the characters emotions as well as the settings. I think you have a great use of dialog in all of your stories, and you make sure that the characters emotions are being represented in a good way. I really like how you were able to take all of the original stories and turn them around and make them into your own story. Overall, I think you have done a wonderful job with your project. Good luck on your finals and have a great rest of your semester!
ReplyDeleteHi Ethan,
ReplyDeleteFor starters, I must say that that your Buddha story was a little confusing to read. I'm not sure if its the context of the story or the way its worded that's confusing to me. It was just a little hard to follow but maybe that is just due to the complexity of the thought behind the story. I was however fond of the last sentences, "The only "thing" that applied was simply "I". Dis-attached from all derived expressions of the "I". As this "I", I was the Absolute All. Therefore, I had Absolutely All. Desire for anything else was no longer needed. My flame was dowsed, and I was in perfect bliss." This part of your story really holds a lot of emotion and meaning which is great! Overall, I must say that I visually enjoyed your stories and liked how you decided to take a more traditional approach to your stories.