Grief and a Headhunter's Rage, Rosaldo
The familiar setting is that of an ethnographer studying a culture's beliefs and rituals. This essay focuses on the ritual of headhunting.
Rosaldo makes a strong point against traditional ways that ethnographers typically study a culture.
"Many studies focus on visibly bounded arenas where one can observe formal and repetitive events, such as ceremonies, rituals, and games." (595)
On grieving..."Note that all the instances Wilson witnesses or hears about happen outside the circubscribed sphere of romal ritual...The work of grieving, probably universally, occurs both within obligatory ritual acts and in more everyday setting where people find themselves alone or with close kin." (596)
Rosaldo feels that in only looking at the ritual surrounding an event, such as death, one loses the chance for deeper understanding.
"In attempting to grasp the clutural force of rage and other powerful emotional states, both formal ritual and the informal practices of everday life provide crucial insight. Thus cultural descriptions shouls seek out force as well as thickness, and they should extend fro well-definedrituals to myriad less circumscribed practices." (597)
Rosaldo, as an ethnographer, attempted to approach the understanding of the ritual ofheadhunting using classical anthropological techniques. However, it was only through his own personal experiences of grief, that he was able to comprehend the headhunting. Although ethnographers are typically knowledgable and fluent in the culture they are attempting to understand, that they are limited by perspective and experience.
It is not typical for an ethnographer to resort to personal experience to bring about understanding. In anthropological circles, Rosaldo has not remained the unattached observer. He has now drawn on personal experience, and thus risks ridicule from those he seeks to influence.
"My use of personal experience serves as a vehicle for making the quality and intensity of the rage in Ilongot grief more readily accessible to readers than certain more detached modes of compostition. At the sames, time, by invoking personal experience as an analytical category one risks easy dismissal." (594)
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Haylee: Seq 7 Assn 5
What is the author saying that is experimental?
Anzaldua speaks of her cultural heritage mixing history and mythology. She makes bold statements about violence, feminity, religion.
"My family, like most Chicanos, did not practice Roman Catholicism but a folk Catholicism with many pagan elements." (p.65)
"The male-dominated Azteca-Mexica culture drove the powerful female deities undergound by giving them monstorous attributes and by substituting male deities in their place, thus splitting the female Self and the female deities." (p.65)
"Thus the Aztec nation fell not because malinali (la Chingada) interpreted for and slept with Cortes, but because the ruling elite had subverted the solidarity between men and women and between noble and commoner." (71)
"The Catholic and protestant religions encourage fear and distrust of life and of the body; they encourage a split between the body and the spirit and totally ignore the soul; they encourage us to kill off parts of ourselves." (p.74)
Anzaldua says "The whole thing has had a mind of its own, escaping me and insisting on puttion together the pieces of its own puzzle with minimal direction from my will."
She approaches is as if it took her by surprise. She is writing about being in a cultural purgatory; not American, not Mexican, or Spanish; being separated from her language. She combines poetry with history with personal story. She is angry and the audience is not necessarily her friend. While many authors tend to try to connect with the audience, Anzaldua writes wholly from her own perspective, many times alienating a reader; but nevertheless, needing to tell her story her way. It can be uncomfortable to read and try to relate to her. It can be offensive or aggressive. She is a wisewoman, a confused girl, an angry feminist. She writes many times in a different language, without interpreting; combining English with Chicano Spanish.
I think this essay is a very effective as far as it shows the weaving of history and myth. The tough truths to tell. The first time I read through this essay, I felt like I was being insulted. The more and more I turned back to it, I found elements of myself rising to the top.
Anzaldua speaks of her cultural heritage mixing history and mythology. She makes bold statements about violence, feminity, religion.
"My family, like most Chicanos, did not practice Roman Catholicism but a folk Catholicism with many pagan elements." (p.65)
"The male-dominated Azteca-Mexica culture drove the powerful female deities undergound by giving them monstorous attributes and by substituting male deities in their place, thus splitting the female Self and the female deities." (p.65)
"Thus the Aztec nation fell not because malinali (la Chingada) interpreted for and slept with Cortes, but because the ruling elite had subverted the solidarity between men and women and between noble and commoner." (71)
"The Catholic and protestant religions encourage fear and distrust of life and of the body; they encourage a split between the body and the spirit and totally ignore the soul; they encourage us to kill off parts of ourselves." (p.74)
Anzaldua says "The whole thing has had a mind of its own, escaping me and insisting on puttion together the pieces of its own puzzle with minimal direction from my will."
She approaches is as if it took her by surprise. She is writing about being in a cultural purgatory; not American, not Mexican, or Spanish; being separated from her language. She combines poetry with history with personal story. She is angry and the audience is not necessarily her friend. While many authors tend to try to connect with the audience, Anzaldua writes wholly from her own perspective, many times alienating a reader; but nevertheless, needing to tell her story her way. It can be uncomfortable to read and try to relate to her. It can be offensive or aggressive. She is a wisewoman, a confused girl, an angry feminist. She writes many times in a different language, without interpreting; combining English with Chicano Spanish.
I think this essay is a very effective as far as it shows the weaving of history and myth. The tough truths to tell. The first time I read through this essay, I felt like I was being insulted. The more and more I turned back to it, I found elements of myself rising to the top.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sequence 7 Assignment 6
Baudrillard's Utopia Achieved
Is he serious? Yes, his style is “defiant” and “fanciful” at times, but I think he firmly believes what he is saying. The biography uses the phrase “childlike glee” to describe how he feels about his discoveries.
Why would a writer write like this? The shock factor and the reversal of his role make it so that he can avoid many of the roadblocks that would appear from going at this straight forward.
What is being explored or rejected? Well America is explored, physically and theoretically. He tends to make radical statements that reject our history and any depth that we may have.
What does this writing do? If you let it his writing will anger you. He is very confrontational and contrarian he goes against what should be said.
What barriers are overcome? I think he overcomes the barrier of the audience, we are the topic and yet not the audience and the audience is not the topic and yet not the victor either. Though we are left out of the ‘we’ we are still held on a pedestal, tainted though it may be, for those who read this.
What are the advantages? It offers a different perspective than what I’m certain most Americans can see. He has the advantage of distance.
What are the pleasures? Its kind of fun to hear the French attitude directed at the French and the rest of Europe, in that part we do kind of get to sneak into the audience for a moment and say “yeah take that”. It is also pleasurable to be taken along on the journey of how we may appear to others, what there is to envy. I would have thought that Europe with all of its history, cuisine, wines, and heaven only knows what all would be far above envy especially of the barbarian bastard offspring of their own country.
What are the problems? He uses such radical generalizations that he not only alienates his target audience, but he subjects his specimen to a not only the barrage of tiny slings and arrows, but occasionally a slap in the face.
“The Indians’ territory is today marked off in reservations, the equivalent of the galleries in which America stocks its Rembrandts and Renoirs.” Pg 110
“Octavio Paz is right when he says that America was created in the hope of escaping from history” pg 113
“And we shall never enjoy the same freedom--not the formal freedom we take for granted, but the concrete, flexible functional, active freedom we see at work in American institutions and in the head of each citizen.” Pg113
"The freedom of bodily movement which this possession of space gives them easily compensates for the blandness of their features and character. Vulgar but ‘easy’.” Pg 122
“We merely imitate them, parody them with a fifty year time lag, and we are not even successful at that.” Pg 111
“You only have to see a French family settling in on a California beach to feel the abominable weight of our culture.” Pg 121
Is he serious? Yes, his style is “defiant” and “fanciful” at times, but I think he firmly believes what he is saying. The biography uses the phrase “childlike glee” to describe how he feels about his discoveries.
Why would a writer write like this? The shock factor and the reversal of his role make it so that he can avoid many of the roadblocks that would appear from going at this straight forward.
What is being explored or rejected? Well America is explored, physically and theoretically. He tends to make radical statements that reject our history and any depth that we may have.
What does this writing do? If you let it his writing will anger you. He is very confrontational and contrarian he goes against what should be said.
What barriers are overcome? I think he overcomes the barrier of the audience, we are the topic and yet not the audience and the audience is not the topic and yet not the victor either. Though we are left out of the ‘we’ we are still held on a pedestal, tainted though it may be, for those who read this.
What are the advantages? It offers a different perspective than what I’m certain most Americans can see. He has the advantage of distance.
What are the pleasures? Its kind of fun to hear the French attitude directed at the French and the rest of Europe, in that part we do kind of get to sneak into the audience for a moment and say “yeah take that”. It is also pleasurable to be taken along on the journey of how we may appear to others, what there is to envy. I would have thought that Europe with all of its history, cuisine, wines, and heaven only knows what all would be far above envy especially of the barbarian bastard offspring of their own country.
What are the problems? He uses such radical generalizations that he not only alienates his target audience, but he subjects his specimen to a not only the barrage of tiny slings and arrows, but occasionally a slap in the face.
“The Indians’ territory is today marked off in reservations, the equivalent of the galleries in which America stocks its Rembrandts and Renoirs.” Pg 110
“Octavio Paz is right when he says that America was created in the hope of escaping from history” pg 113
“And we shall never enjoy the same freedom--not the formal freedom we take for granted, but the concrete, flexible functional, active freedom we see at work in American institutions and in the head of each citizen.” Pg113
"The freedom of bodily movement which this possession of space gives them easily compensates for the blandness of their features and character. Vulgar but ‘easy’.” Pg 122
“We merely imitate them, parody them with a fifty year time lag, and we are not even successful at that.” Pg 111
“You only have to see a French family settling in on a California beach to feel the abominable weight of our culture.” Pg 121
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Haylee: Sequence 7 Assn. 1:Answers
Our Secret by Susan Griffin
In this essay, Susan Griffin takes a look at a person that most people would label immediately as evil. In her research of Heinrich Himmler, she searches for answers to the question as to how he developed into the kind of person who could commit atrocities. She looks at what influenced him, and how in turn, he influenced the lives of others. She reflects on her own life, and how it has been influenced by these events, and other people who lived before and after them. She looks for similarities and common themes. Throughout her essay, she switches themes; whether it's cells, rockets, artists, her own family, or historical data about HH. She doesn't specifically state her reasoning for structuring her essay this way, and, as readers, we are forced to find the connection in these topics. However, she does supply statements that let us know what journey she is on, and what her purpose for writing is. But none of it seems blatantly pursuasive, other than in her own feelings about what her research has led her to believe.
Griffin asks us to look deeper at something ugly and uncomfortable. She asks us to think about influence; how it affected one person, and many people.
Here, Susan Griffin tell us that she is not going to simply transmit information to us; that there is more to reading and writing than to simply state an idea or theory or story, and use arguments and facts to support this story or idea.
Griffin's style is experimental for a couple of reasons. Firstly, she does not just state a thesis or argument and then use facts to support it. She begins her essay with a short piece of information about cells. She then gives us a fragment of a memory from someone. Her next sentence is regarding missiles. This patterns continues for awhile, including introducing Heinrich Himmler; historical facts and personal wonderings; leaving the reader to ponder how all of these things are related. In this way, we as readers, are taken on the journey of finding answers with her. We are forced to find, through her varied themes, our own interpretation of how things influence one another. We are sort of forced into the process with her. There are times when she speaks in first person, and times when she writes in third person.
I feel that Griffin is very successful not only in using these different themes, that do seem interconnected, but using them in a way that forces the reader to engage in the search with her. The essay is not jumbled or unreadable; the themes, however different, have a pattern and flow that work toward a gathering of information, and they seem to symbolize a journey to tell a story that is complicated.
In this essay, Susan Griffin takes a look at a person that most people would label immediately as evil. In her research of Heinrich Himmler, she searches for answers to the question as to how he developed into the kind of person who could commit atrocities. She looks at what influenced him, and how in turn, he influenced the lives of others. She reflects on her own life, and how it has been influenced by these events, and other people who lived before and after them. She looks for similarities and common themes. Throughout her essay, she switches themes; whether it's cells, rockets, artists, her own family, or historical data about HH. She doesn't specifically state her reasoning for structuring her essay this way, and, as readers, we are forced to find the connection in these topics. However, she does supply statements that let us know what journey she is on, and what her purpose for writing is. But none of it seems blatantly pursuasive, other than in her own feelings about what her research has led her to believe.
Griffin asks us to look deeper at something ugly and uncomfortable. She asks us to think about influence; how it affected one person, and many people.
- "I have come to believe that every life bears in some way on every other." (p332)
- "...is one ever really free of the fate of others? I was born in 1943, in the midst of this war. And I sense now that my life is still bound up with the lives of those who lived and died in this time." (p. 314)
- "....hoping to find a door into the mind of this man, even as his character first forms so that I might learn how it is he becomes himself." (p. 315)
- "...she traces the origins of this violence to childhood. of course there cannot be one answer to such a monumental riddle, nor does any event in history have a single cause. Rather a field exists...Each life is influenced and it in turn becomes an influence...Childhood experience is just one element in the determining field." (317)
- "What then occurs if the soul in its small beginnings is forced to take on a secret life?...He harbors his secrets in fear and guilt, confessing them to no one until in time the voice of his father chastising him becomes his own." (319)
Here, Susan Griffin tell us that she is not going to simply transmit information to us; that there is more to reading and writing than to simply state an idea or theory or story, and use arguments and facts to support this story or idea.
Griffin's style is experimental for a couple of reasons. Firstly, she does not just state a thesis or argument and then use facts to support it. She begins her essay with a short piece of information about cells. She then gives us a fragment of a memory from someone. Her next sentence is regarding missiles. This patterns continues for awhile, including introducing Heinrich Himmler; historical facts and personal wonderings; leaving the reader to ponder how all of these things are related. In this way, we as readers, are taken on the journey of finding answers with her. We are forced to find, through her varied themes, our own interpretation of how things influence one another. We are sort of forced into the process with her. There are times when she speaks in first person, and times when she writes in third person.
I feel that Griffin is very successful not only in using these different themes, that do seem interconnected, but using them in a way that forces the reader to engage in the search with her. The essay is not jumbled or unreadable; the themes, however different, have a pattern and flow that work toward a gathering of information, and they seem to symbolize a journey to tell a story that is complicated.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Hey Guys
Below are the notes and plan, as I understood, from class tonight. Please review and let me know if I got it all down correctly, and make adjustments as needed.
Thanks! I'm glad I get to work with you!
Haylee
Thanks! I'm glad I get to work with you!
Haylee
Notes from Class Thursday: Game Plan
Nov. 15th we will turn in our assignments in a group portfolio.
Nov. 8th
Sequence 7: "This sequence offers you opportunities to work with selections that are striking both for what they have to say, and for the ways they use writing. In each case the writer is experiementing, pushing against or stepping outside of conventional ways of writing and thinking."
Nov. 8th
- We will bring all of our assignments (Essays and notes from both Seq. 7 & 8)
- Haylee & Melissa will bring hole punchers and binder options.
- We will finalize our notes, and form our presentation based off of our notes and answers from the questions below, from each assignment.
- We will go to the library and create a power point presentation, highlighting important quotes or ideas (Jordan will instruct how we do this technologically)
Assignments:
Haylee: Seq. 7, Assn. 5 & Seq. 8, Assn. 3
DaLynn: Seq. 8, Assn. 2 & 4
Melissa: Seq. 7, Assn. 6 & Seq. 8 Assn. 5
Jordan: Seq. 7, Assn. 7 & Seq. 8 Assn. 1
Focus for presentation:Sequence 7: "This sequence offers you opportunities to work with selections that are striking both for what they have to say, and for the ways they use writing. In each case the writer is experiementing, pushing against or stepping outside of conventional ways of writing and thinking."
For your assignments in both sections, answer the questions thorougly, using quotes or specific examples when possible:
- What is the author saying that is unconventional, or striking?
- How is their style or form of writing experiemental or unconventional? (What is the style or format they use, and how is it different from the norm?)
- Was it convincing? Was it effective?
Sequence 8: "...think about familiar settings or experiences through the work of writers who have had a significant effect on contemporary thought....draw some conclusions about the potential and consequences of this kind of intellectual apprenticeship."
- What is the familiar setting (topic)?
- What is the significant effect on contemporary thought?
- What are the pros and cons of being an expert in the field? (What is the field?)
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sequence 7 Assignment 4
"Our Time"
First I have to say that I did really like this essay, but this assignment is mentally hard for me. I am supposed to be studying in hopes of writing an essay in the same style. The problem I am having is that, in all actuality, I could write it in exactly the same way. Let me explain that a little. It says to use his topic ( Brother, neighborhoods) as an example you are free to use these but you can choose whatever topic you want. Well while reading this I think of my brother and while reading this assignment that is the first and so far only thing to come to mind. My Brother has a past, he is not in jail, but has been and my mother has told me things about him at different times in my life. I mean really I could write something really close to this and just as true. So my dilemma is: Do I stick with the same idea and the first thought or do I risk over analyzing to make it something more?
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Sequence Seven, Assignment 1
Hey Guys, Im just putting some notes out here regarding this essay. I'll tighten it up and hand them out in class next week, as well as bring my essay. Any comments are appreciated.
Our Secret, by Susan Griffin
The reason this essay is notable is because:
Our Secret, by Susan Griffin
The reason this essay is notable is because:
- She is using an experimental style.
- She does not start the essay with a thesis, and work her way through providing examples to support it.
"To tell a story, or to hear a story told, is not a simple transmission of
information." (p.339)
She is telling us that stories are complicated...both in the telling and hearing.
She uses a complicated style in this essay, that manages to flow well, in order to connect seemingly unrelated topics.
She does make specific arguments, and tells us her purpose throughout the essay. Although there seem to be many different things going on, we can see what she is trying to do...she sort of takes us on the journey with her.
- "I have come to believe that every life bears in some way on every other." (p332)
- "...is one ever really free of the fate of others? I was born in 1943, in the midst of this war. And I sense now that my life is still bound up with the lives of those wyo lived and died in this time." (p. 314)
- "....hoping to find a door into the mind of this man, even as his character first forms so that I might learn how it is he becomes himself." (p. 315)
- "...she traces the origins of this violence to childhood. of course there cannot be one answer to such a monumental riddle, nor does any event in history have a single cause. Rather a field exists...Each life is influenced and it in turn becomes an influence...Childhood experience is just one element in the determining field." (317)
- "What then occurs if the soul in its small beginnings is forced to take on a secret life?...He harbors his secrets in fear and guilt, confessing them to no one until in time the voice of his father chastising him becomes his own." (319)
The main theme seems to be the interconnectedness of things. Influence. In regards to Himmler, asking what influenced him, and in turn, how did he influence. And instead of just writing about it, she actually crafts or pieces together topics that seem unrelated, but prove her point. She doesn't specifically tell us why she is writing about cells and rockets, but allows us to think about it and try and make some sort of connection. She doesn't spell out what she is doing.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
second draft
So I decided that I hated that essay so I wrote a new one, not much better but bringing it to class tonight.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Essay
K here it is very rough draft and all feedback is welcome. This started out as two and became one with some copy paste action so there may be some repetition sorry. I will do my best over the next week I don't know how successful I will be with a wedding and a time change thrown in thanks guys and see you in Oct
Family
Mom, dad, big brother, little sister, aunts, and uncles this used to be a typical family setup. Now we have the two moms and two dads setup or maybe a live in “uncle” depending on how your family deals with that situation. My particular situation was the one that comes in between when the parents marry, don’t make it, and suddenly you have two families or in my case something closer to 1 1/4. I have three brothers: Rich who is about 15 years older than me, Kelly who is probably17, or so, years older than me, and Kirk who is 22 years older than me. Rich was the only one who lived at home when I was starting school or since I can remember.
I have a tape that my brother Rich made when I was three and I’m talking about all the people in my family and I say “ Mom and Ritchie and Kirk and Kelly and Robin and …Kirk” Robin is my dad. That kind of demonstrates where he fit in. I guess that hearing my brother and my mom talk about him as Robin just sunk in. I got over it, but that just kind of epitomizes to me how non existent my relationship with him was at that time. There is another point I must make here, while I have never thought of my brothers as half siblings, in reality that is what they are. Not one of them shares a father with me. I did have a full brother but he died of SIDS so on one side of my family tree I am the only living child.
My parents tended to not get a long for more than brief periods of time. I guess it makes sense; they are as different as two people can really be. They say opposites attract, but in this case they tend to combust shortly after. My mom can pinch a penny till Lincoln cries, she raised me on her own and I never was denied anything that I needed and most of what I wanted. Then there’s my dad, he has a very interesting job, one that comes with no benefits, no stability, and often no income. He is a scrapper- one who buys, cleans, and sells scrap metal. It is heavy, hard, dirty work with long hours and I don’t know many people who could do it especially for as long as he has.
When the two of my parents get together, boy howdy, there is just no telling how that will go. My mom is an alcoholic, I don’t say this in a mean way, she just is she knows this and has been sober for years, that is not the issue. To me when she was drinking she was very nice, but to my dad things tended not to go that well. For example, she hit him with a two-by-four once and broke his glasses. None of what is said is meant to give the wrong impression about either of them; they are both very wonderful loving people who, in the wrong circumstances, get a little out of hand. The point is that, while drinking certainly didn’t help the issue, she tends to have volatile feelings towards him after a time.
My dad in his line of work needs certain things out of his vehicles. It has to be a truck it has to be big and it has to run at least when he buys it… wait no scratch the last one it could be dead and he would still buy it. So, he buys these trucks and they are not meant to be pretty and it isn’t like he has the income for a pretty truck anyway so they are ugly and loud. Usually a diesel or smells like it should be, covered in more oil than paint and the inside, after a matter of days if not hours looks just as bad. They always break down which we have come to count on. There were times in my life when we would get a call or whatever and know that dad was coming. My dad runs on his own time and if it weren’t for bad luck he would have none at all. We all know this but it can get to a body after a while. I think that is the main issue my mother has with him. I think it’s the main issue he has with himself. As I mentioned before he runs on his own time, we call it Sexton Time. This usually allows for a blown gasket, a blown tire, a complete mechanical breakdown, the load not getting turned in on time, or him hurting himself. So Sexton Time could delay the arrival from a few hours to a month because in the time that one event cleared up the next would hit causing, if you will, Sexton Time squared. I remember being so sad once when he didn’t show that I just cried in a huddled mass on my bed and asked myself why my daddy didn’t want me. Isn’t that a pathetic mental image? That wasn’t the issue; it never was I just needed a moment to be selfish.
The greatest part though, about his utterly horrific trucks, was that when he did make it, even if he was late, you knew it. I would hear him clear from the stop sign at the end of our street and go running outside. He would pull in the driveway and I would run over to him and he would kiss me on the top of the head and carry me back in the house.
He still kisses me on top of the head, it sounds cute, doesn’t it? A kiss on the head, but it really is another degree of our separation. We don’t really hug; I don’t kiss his head or even his cheek that’s just our thing. Now that I’m taller when he is getting ready to leave he says “head “and I tip my head forward so he can kiss it. I actually really like it, I’m not a real touchy person and neither is he so it’s a really intimate thing for us because it is so individual.
When he did finally make it, it was often to take me and mom with him on a trip to the coast. The only benefit to dad’s chosen profession was that it often required trips to Oregon. We took trips to the coast throughout my childhood always in some big beat up old truck. Sometimes it would break down along the way, but dad could always fix it, so long as no one wanted to fix it after him. He was the jerry-rigging king and could make anything work for a while, but no one else ever had a chance after that point, just ask my first car.
Taking the scenic route to Oregon was one of the best family trips I remember. My mom and my dad were getting along (for the moment) and it was awesome. We stopped at almost all the waterfalls along the way. I have pictures of me way on the far side of a pond at the base of a waterfall. Even though they were “business” trips, this one in particular I remember being very casual, I think it was in the summer so there wasn’t a rush to get back to school. We were the closest thing to a family that we had ever come. There were other trips and other times spent together, holidays and the like, but that trip was just so damn happy and American.
Once we got to whatever town was at the end of the day, or the end of the road, and after the negotiations for scraps had been made, we found a hotel room. This room, for me, was what every childhood fantasy was about, basically no rules. I got to jump on the bed, take a shower with little tiny bars of soap and shampoo bottles that I could take with me. Then I got to watch TV until the pizza got there and then we all ate pizza in bed and watched a lame movie, best tradition ever by the way.
I love my dad. I have no real issues with him. At this point in this essay that might sound odd. I don’t blame him for his lifestyle and I don’t blame him for not being able to change it. I honestly don’t think that he has a choice anymore. I think at this point in his life there is no alternative though I wish there were. He is physically worn down at this point, all those years of heaving iron and throwing ballast and being one of the more clumsily blessed he is not holding up well, but even if he wanted to I don’t think he could get into the 9to 5 grind. At the present he is living with his mother and two dogs in her house in Inkom ID. I think if he had it in him to become a regular commuting, trading time for money member of society he would have done it to not live with his mother anymore. He loves her they just have a very poor system of communication that leads to yelling, not angry yelling really, she is going deaf and taking him with her.
We (me and my husband) lived in their basement for a few months while we were finding a place. I loved it; I loved getting to see him, to know without a doubt that he would show up because that is where he slept. I think that is it, I think I just figured out the real reason I liked it there, I knew he would make it. After all what other selling points did it have, we lived in a musky basement that we basically had to rake out to live in; their dogs hate me and bark constantly the floor creaked so we always heard them, and the entire thing smelled like dog pee because the little brown one has diabetes and can’t help but pee on the floor. But… my dad was there, he was there and he would be home and if we set up a plan it would work out. We all walked down to the bar and played pool and pinball about once a week, we had dinner together sometimes, I would make him come down and play computer games with me, I had a dad.
After all the things that have happened and all the trips and all the disappointment I still have a dad, I always have, and always will. It may be my temperament or the fact that he kind of strikes you as the abused stray dog whimpering in a rain storm type, but I can’t be mad at him. The fact that I had to move into my Grandmas basement to get a real functioning relationship with him doesn’t dampen it at all because that’s just how it is. My husband gets so upset at all of this and can’t figure why I am OK with this just the way it is, I don’t think dad can really figure it out either but he’s grateful. We needed alcohol assistance to get to the bottom of that one but we did talk about it and whether or not it makes sense it is what it is.
Family
Mom, dad, big brother, little sister, aunts, and uncles this used to be a typical family setup. Now we have the two moms and two dads setup or maybe a live in “uncle” depending on how your family deals with that situation. My particular situation was the one that comes in between when the parents marry, don’t make it, and suddenly you have two families or in my case something closer to 1 1/4. I have three brothers: Rich who is about 15 years older than me, Kelly who is probably17, or so, years older than me, and Kirk who is 22 years older than me. Rich was the only one who lived at home when I was starting school or since I can remember.
I have a tape that my brother Rich made when I was three and I’m talking about all the people in my family and I say “ Mom and Ritchie and Kirk and Kelly and Robin and …Kirk” Robin is my dad. That kind of demonstrates where he fit in. I guess that hearing my brother and my mom talk about him as Robin just sunk in. I got over it, but that just kind of epitomizes to me how non existent my relationship with him was at that time. There is another point I must make here, while I have never thought of my brothers as half siblings, in reality that is what they are. Not one of them shares a father with me. I did have a full brother but he died of SIDS so on one side of my family tree I am the only living child.
My parents tended to not get a long for more than brief periods of time. I guess it makes sense; they are as different as two people can really be. They say opposites attract, but in this case they tend to combust shortly after. My mom can pinch a penny till Lincoln cries, she raised me on her own and I never was denied anything that I needed and most of what I wanted. Then there’s my dad, he has a very interesting job, one that comes with no benefits, no stability, and often no income. He is a scrapper- one who buys, cleans, and sells scrap metal. It is heavy, hard, dirty work with long hours and I don’t know many people who could do it especially for as long as he has.
When the two of my parents get together, boy howdy, there is just no telling how that will go. My mom is an alcoholic, I don’t say this in a mean way, she just is she knows this and has been sober for years, that is not the issue. To me when she was drinking she was very nice, but to my dad things tended not to go that well. For example, she hit him with a two-by-four once and broke his glasses. None of what is said is meant to give the wrong impression about either of them; they are both very wonderful loving people who, in the wrong circumstances, get a little out of hand. The point is that, while drinking certainly didn’t help the issue, she tends to have volatile feelings towards him after a time.
My dad in his line of work needs certain things out of his vehicles. It has to be a truck it has to be big and it has to run at least when he buys it… wait no scratch the last one it could be dead and he would still buy it. So, he buys these trucks and they are not meant to be pretty and it isn’t like he has the income for a pretty truck anyway so they are ugly and loud. Usually a diesel or smells like it should be, covered in more oil than paint and the inside, after a matter of days if not hours looks just as bad. They always break down which we have come to count on. There were times in my life when we would get a call or whatever and know that dad was coming. My dad runs on his own time and if it weren’t for bad luck he would have none at all. We all know this but it can get to a body after a while. I think that is the main issue my mother has with him. I think it’s the main issue he has with himself. As I mentioned before he runs on his own time, we call it Sexton Time. This usually allows for a blown gasket, a blown tire, a complete mechanical breakdown, the load not getting turned in on time, or him hurting himself. So Sexton Time could delay the arrival from a few hours to a month because in the time that one event cleared up the next would hit causing, if you will, Sexton Time squared. I remember being so sad once when he didn’t show that I just cried in a huddled mass on my bed and asked myself why my daddy didn’t want me. Isn’t that a pathetic mental image? That wasn’t the issue; it never was I just needed a moment to be selfish.
The greatest part though, about his utterly horrific trucks, was that when he did make it, even if he was late, you knew it. I would hear him clear from the stop sign at the end of our street and go running outside. He would pull in the driveway and I would run over to him and he would kiss me on the top of the head and carry me back in the house.
He still kisses me on top of the head, it sounds cute, doesn’t it? A kiss on the head, but it really is another degree of our separation. We don’t really hug; I don’t kiss his head or even his cheek that’s just our thing. Now that I’m taller when he is getting ready to leave he says “head “and I tip my head forward so he can kiss it. I actually really like it, I’m not a real touchy person and neither is he so it’s a really intimate thing for us because it is so individual.
When he did finally make it, it was often to take me and mom with him on a trip to the coast. The only benefit to dad’s chosen profession was that it often required trips to Oregon. We took trips to the coast throughout my childhood always in some big beat up old truck. Sometimes it would break down along the way, but dad could always fix it, so long as no one wanted to fix it after him. He was the jerry-rigging king and could make anything work for a while, but no one else ever had a chance after that point, just ask my first car.
Taking the scenic route to Oregon was one of the best family trips I remember. My mom and my dad were getting along (for the moment) and it was awesome. We stopped at almost all the waterfalls along the way. I have pictures of me way on the far side of a pond at the base of a waterfall. Even though they were “business” trips, this one in particular I remember being very casual, I think it was in the summer so there wasn’t a rush to get back to school. We were the closest thing to a family that we had ever come. There were other trips and other times spent together, holidays and the like, but that trip was just so damn happy and American.
Once we got to whatever town was at the end of the day, or the end of the road, and after the negotiations for scraps had been made, we found a hotel room. This room, for me, was what every childhood fantasy was about, basically no rules. I got to jump on the bed, take a shower with little tiny bars of soap and shampoo bottles that I could take with me. Then I got to watch TV until the pizza got there and then we all ate pizza in bed and watched a lame movie, best tradition ever by the way.
I love my dad. I have no real issues with him. At this point in this essay that might sound odd. I don’t blame him for his lifestyle and I don’t blame him for not being able to change it. I honestly don’t think that he has a choice anymore. I think at this point in his life there is no alternative though I wish there were. He is physically worn down at this point, all those years of heaving iron and throwing ballast and being one of the more clumsily blessed he is not holding up well, but even if he wanted to I don’t think he could get into the 9to 5 grind. At the present he is living with his mother and two dogs in her house in Inkom ID. I think if he had it in him to become a regular commuting, trading time for money member of society he would have done it to not live with his mother anymore. He loves her they just have a very poor system of communication that leads to yelling, not angry yelling really, she is going deaf and taking him with her.
We (me and my husband) lived in their basement for a few months while we were finding a place. I loved it; I loved getting to see him, to know without a doubt that he would show up because that is where he slept. I think that is it, I think I just figured out the real reason I liked it there, I knew he would make it. After all what other selling points did it have, we lived in a musky basement that we basically had to rake out to live in; their dogs hate me and bark constantly the floor creaked so we always heard them, and the entire thing smelled like dog pee because the little brown one has diabetes and can’t help but pee on the floor. But… my dad was there, he was there and he would be home and if we set up a plan it would work out. We all walked down to the bar and played pool and pinball about once a week, we had dinner together sometimes, I would make him come down and play computer games with me, I had a dad.
After all the things that have happened and all the trips and all the disappointment I still have a dad, I always have, and always will. It may be my temperament or the fact that he kind of strikes you as the abused stray dog whimpering in a rain storm type, but I can’t be mad at him. The fact that I had to move into my Grandmas basement to get a real functioning relationship with him doesn’t dampen it at all because that’s just how it is. My husband gets so upset at all of this and can’t figure why I am OK with this just the way it is, I don’t think dad can really figure it out either but he’s grateful. We needed alcohol assistance to get to the bottom of that one but we did talk about it and whether or not it makes sense it is what it is.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Questions: Adams & Anzaldua
Compare Adams' notions of the 'Virgin' (in "The Dynamo and the Virgin") and the 'American Woman' (in "Vis Inertiae") with Anzaldua's concept of the 'Virgin/whore' dichotomy (in "Entering the Serpent").
Questions: Anzaldua Argument
In "For Waging War Is My Cosmic Duty, " what is Anzaldua's argument? What makes her argument effective or ineffective?
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
"The Education of Henry Adams"
2. The analogy of the manikin...I think what is being said here is that education needs to be held accountable...that it can be flawed, or disappointing, or ineffective and may need to be "tailored" to the meet the requirements of the student. Also that the ego can be flawed, and may need altering to appreciate the education provided, or the drive to seek out the knowledge elsewhere. Regarding this volume in particular, Adams seems to say that he is using it to challenge young men to think of their college years in a new light, different from that of their fathers.
One question the Preface answers for me, is why Henry Adams is writing these pieces. It doesn't seem he is recollecting anything pleasant...It is apparently intended to serve, in part, as a "working model for high education....what part of education has...turned out to be useful, and what not." (p.31)
Haylee
3. I read the sentence, "Until the Great Exposition of 1900 closed its doors..." to mean that Adams was desperate for knowledge, meaning, experience, and for something great; something grand. The author seems to be speaking sympathetically, and not making fun. Other sentences that seem to support this:
"...but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force..." (p. 42)
"Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force." (p. 43)
"Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to find out what he meant." (p. 44)
"...he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new."
Haylee
4. The constant self-criticism; the deeply ingrained co-dependent behavior of denying her own needs to please others; the white-knuckled fear of taking risks that lead to an unfulfilling career, and the willingness to settle for a relationship that lacked passion; the need for control, acceptence, security, sameness--these are all common characteristics of the woman who may seem compassionate, familial, or settled-down in her twenties, but by her thirties, is simmering, threatening to boil over; burning her past away, leaving angry, red blisters in her wake as she tries to become something better before she evaporates. This was the illusion, that she was content.
This sort of repetitive string of descriptions seems to serve to allow an idea to sink in as you're reading. The writer is making an important point, one that she really wants the reader to spend time thinking about, and seems to have quite a bit to say about it. I really like reading and writing this type of sentence pattern. When I'm reading, it makes me focus in more closely, and when I'm writing, it seems to give me freedom to get around to my point and get a lot of information in.
Haylee
One question the Preface answers for me, is why Henry Adams is writing these pieces. It doesn't seem he is recollecting anything pleasant...It is apparently intended to serve, in part, as a "working model for high education....what part of education has...turned out to be useful, and what not." (p.31)
Haylee
3. I read the sentence, "Until the Great Exposition of 1900 closed its doors..." to mean that Adams was desperate for knowledge, meaning, experience, and for something great; something grand. The author seems to be speaking sympathetically, and not making fun. Other sentences that seem to support this:
"...but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force..." (p. 42)
"Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force." (p. 43)
"Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to find out what he meant." (p. 44)
"...he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new."
Haylee
4. The constant self-criticism; the deeply ingrained co-dependent behavior of denying her own needs to please others; the white-knuckled fear of taking risks that lead to an unfulfilling career, and the willingness to settle for a relationship that lacked passion; the need for control, acceptence, security, sameness--these are all common characteristics of the woman who may seem compassionate, familial, or settled-down in her twenties, but by her thirties, is simmering, threatening to boil over; burning her past away, leaving angry, red blisters in her wake as she tries to become something better before she evaporates. This was the illusion, that she was content.
This sort of repetitive string of descriptions seems to serve to allow an idea to sink in as you're reading. The writer is making an important point, one that she really wants the reader to spend time thinking about, and seems to have quite a bit to say about it. I really like reading and writing this type of sentence pattern. When I'm reading, it makes me focus in more closely, and when I'm writing, it seems to give me freedom to get around to my point and get a lot of information in.
Haylee
"The Education of Henry Adams"
1. I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to play out, and it looks like I'm the first to post...so I'm just going to take a stab at answering some of the questions.
Useful and representative examples of where the writer, Adams, establishes his distance from the character, Henry Adams:
p. 39 "So Henry Adams, well aware that he could not succeed as a scholar..."
p. 46 "...For such a temper, Adams was not the best companion..."
p. 33 "The Class of 1858, to which Henry Adams belonged...."
p. 39 "...and Henry Adams went on writing. No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits."
My impression is that the author establishes more distance from the character when he is critical or negative about himself, which is quite a lot. He seems quite a negative person, never really enthusiastic. It seems even more distant when he refers to himself with his full name, Henry Adams, instead of just Adams. There are times, when using just Adams, that it seems he could just say I .
Useful and representative examples of where the writer, Adams, establishes his distance from the character, Henry Adams:
p. 39 "So Henry Adams, well aware that he could not succeed as a scholar..."
p. 46 "...For such a temper, Adams was not the best companion..."
p. 33 "The Class of 1858, to which Henry Adams belonged...."
p. 39 "...and Henry Adams went on writing. No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits."
My impression is that the author establishes more distance from the character when he is critical or negative about himself, which is quite a lot. He seems quite a negative person, never really enthusiastic. It seems even more distant when he refers to himself with his full name, Henry Adams, instead of just Adams. There are times, when using just Adams, that it seems he could just say I .
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