What hemisphere do you live in?

If you haven’t heard about Jill Bolte Taylor and her talk about her experiences with her own stroke, this is something to watch.

I wanted to share it to you because I thought that it was cool, but I also wanted to send it to you because I wonder if artists and authors see things like this.  I wonder if the varying shades of difference between people relates back to what hemisphere of your brain you spend more time in. What do you guys think?  What is it that allows someone to use words to describe the images they see emerge like Susan Glaspell explained happened to her while she was writing Trifles.

Just a little pondering for a Thursday night!  See you all tomorrow.

Avoiding just getting….

This morning, I found a blog posting by one of my favorite bloggers, Christine Kane. She also happens to be an amazing singer/songwriter. But, I feel that her blog is a place of eternal wisdom and inspiration. Today, she wrote about the difference between “getting” and “creating,” and I wanted to touch base with you a little about what she said before we push forward towards the final project for the semester.

The basic breakdown of her post today was that we live in a world full of talking about what you “get” instead of what you create. You get the classes you want instead of creating the perfect schedule. Getting is an idea that we talk about all the time in our lives. And, as she explains, it is very easy in our culture to fall into the “getting” mode of living. But, what she really does in this short passage is help you consider what it would be like if you could create your world. What would your day-to-day life look like if you were creating instead of just getting things done? I know mine would completely change.

We are about to move into the roughest part of the semester. You are going to have more to do than feels comfortable, and it is easy to fall into the get-it-done attitude that plagues us all at this time of year. But, how different would the energy around this place feel if we all took a creating mentality instead. It is from this mindset that I would like you to think about the final project in this course. I created this project for you as a way for you to show me what you have learned this semester in both a more academic way and as a creative outlet.

What I am here to tell you now is that you can create the experience you want out of this class and the final project. This may be a hard concept to grasp, as it is not the popular way to do things right now. You might believe that it is too touchy feely for you if you are just in get-it-done mode already, but even if just for a moment, consider the possibility. Instead of me focusing on the work involved with getting things back to you and you concentrating on just getting things turned in, I would like to instead as a group decide that we are going to focus on what we can create together.

It is from this place that I think that you can show me what you have learned in this course the best, as literature is really all about creating. If any of this resonates for you, then just imagine what the rest of your classes would look like if you decided that your college experience was about more than getting the right job or getting the right degree. What if you came here because you wanted to create the opportunity to learn for yourself? Or, what if you are working here to create new possibilities in your life after you graduate? What would that decision unlock for you?

A smattering of useful information….

There are a few things that I have been meaning to post about over the last few days, so I thought that I would just include them all here, in one easy-to-find place.

• Last week, we read “Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” and I read you a little bit of Sherman Alexie’s essay, “i hated tonto (still do).” I wanted you to have the full version if you are interested, so here is the link.

• I also had something to share with you for “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. There was a photo essay done by Time Magazine about the things that current soldiers are carrying. And, I thought that you might be interested. If so, you can check it out here.

• And finally, tomorrow in class we are going to talk about creative non-fiction with the two stories you are reading. And, I wanted you to have some background information about this type of writing. Everyone did such a good job talking in class though that we didn’t have time to cover it, so I thought that I would point you here, so you can read a little bit more about it before class tomorrow.

Okay, now I feel better! See you all tomorrow!

The Question of Native Pollinators

Last week, when I went to the Allison Wallace’s reading from her book, A Keeper of Bees: Notes on Hive and Home, I found myself in another moment of great connection between literature and our world that I thought that I would share with you. Also note that there will be a few more posts this weekend as I get some of the things together that elaborate on the stories we read this week.

There is something happening to bees in our country that people aren’t really paying attention to. And, Allison Wallace talked a little about it in her discussion of keeping bees. The phenomenon is called colony collapse disorder. And, while you can read more about it here, from my brief understanding what it means is that the bees in our country are dying, and we aren’t really sure why. Bee keepers, usually at more industrial size bee keeping facilities, are finding hives that all the adult worker bees have left and are assumed dead. This is what you may have heard about in the news a little while back about the concern as to whether or not cell phone towers were killing bees, which they have ruled out as a possibility. However, there is still a large concern about the fact that our bees are dying in this country.

Wallace was nice enough to explain that the significance of this disorder is that something like every third bite of your food is there because it was pollinated by the bees. The basic idea is that if we don’t have bees that fly from flower to flower collecting pollen and spreading the love, then we won’t have the means to pollinate our crops in the way that we have been doing up to this point. One of the possible problems that is causing colony collapse disorder might be the insecticides that we use to kill other colony insects, like termites. I didn’t know that the way these insecticides work is that the individual insect is put in contact with a gas that causes them to become disoriented, and they can’t find their way back to the colony. When this happens, they die, as they can’t live without the colony. Well, bees work the same way. So, it is possible that they are being exposed to these chemicals.

While Wallace was talking about all of this information with relationship to the bees in this country, someone in the audience asked if it was such a bad thing that they were going to die off, as bees are not native to this country (something else I didn’t know before I went to this reading). They apparently were brought over on some of the first boats from Europe. And, there are some groups that wonder if it would be such a bad thing to return to the native species of this continent.

Where I had my ah-ha moment with all of this was with the way that Wallace answered this question. She explained that our methods and practices have eliminate some of our own native pollinators, and those species don’t exist anymore. And, as a result, these “natives” wouldn’t be able to do the job of the honey bee. And, besides, honey bees are flexible and resilient. Large hives can be moved in on fork lifts to a field in need of pollination, and the hive can be moved again once it is time to spray the field or their work is done. Their flexibility is very useful to the way we do business.

As she was explaining all of this, I couldn’t help but think about the way some people and groups in this country want to get rid of our own pollinators. In this current political climate and since 9/11, as a country we have talked a lot about whether or not “illegal” immigrants should be deported. And, I can’t help but wonder if we are in the same position that Wallace was talking about with the bees.

It doesn’t seem that we can depend on each other or “our” off spring to do the work needed to run this country anymore. And, what will happen if we send such a vital part of our work force “home”? This proposition that those that have worked along side us for so long with the same goals and hopes of improved circumstance should some how be separated and deported seems as improbable and highly unreasonable a response as questioning whether or not we should be happy that the honey bees in our country are dying off because they shouldn’t be here either. At what point does sweat equity kick in? At what point does the work that someone or something does count for something?

It was an awesome moment of insight for me in a seemingly unlikely place, which is one of the reasons I so enjoy literature! What insights are you having while you are exploring the texts of our class?

I am so bummed…

I am so bummed that I forgot to remind you about Dunya Mikhail coming to speak until today.  I wish that some of you had been able to make it, but I thought that I would share some of what she talked about for those interested.  She read quite a few of her poems to a very packed crowd.  Lots diversity represented in the audience, which was really nice to see.

She shared a few personal things about her writing process and some stories that inspired her to write some of her poems, which were all particularly interesting to be able to hear straight from the author.  However, the story she told about how she figured out what poetry was in a high school Biology class was by far my favorite part of her talk because we not only got a glimpse to what she thinks poetry is, but we also got to hear more about the Iraqi school system.  So, I am going to paraphrase the story that she told us.

She started by explaining that in Iraq the classrooms are focused on lecturing starting in elementary schools.  Students are expected to listen to the teachers and take notes, so by the time they move through school, they have taken tons of notes.  She explained that when she was in high school in Biology, one day the teacher was explaining the amoeba.   She liked the amoeba because she wasn’t very good at Biology, and she had trouble drawing the way that things were supposed to look.  So, she liked the amoeba because it was one cell, it could be drawn in any shape, and it only had two parts: an eye and a foot.

She went on to say that this was the moment that she realized what poetry was.  In her eyes, poetry is just like that amoeba.  It can take any form, or be drawn in any way.  And, it needs to have two parts.  An eye to witness, and a foot to leave traces.

It was an extremely profound statement, as you can imagine.  And, what a wonderful description of poetry.  I think that this statement refers back to what we discussed in class perfectly about how each poet writes poetry for their own reasons and in their own way.  Very cool stuff!

Well, there is another reading next week by Allison Wallace, so I hope that you can make it!  If it was half as good as Dunya was today, you will be in for a treat!

Talking about “The Lottery”

I had a good time in class today with all of you talking about “The Lottery.” I am always fascinated by the response that everyone has to that story. You all did a good job talking about it, and I hope that this is a good sign for the rest of the week.

I was looking on YouTube today for representations of the story. And, I found the video below. I thought that you might get a kick out of it. This is definitely the type of interpretation that you might able to put together for the final project in the class.

Video of “A Rose For Emily”

Just wanted to share something I found on YouTube. I think that this is probably a more professional take on the story, but I thought you might like to see a visual rendering of the story as well. I have a few more videos I have found about things we have already read, and I will try to post them throughout the semester. Some of them are very similar to the types of things I was thinking you might be able to do for your transformation project due at the end of the semester.

Row, row, row your boat….

Do you remember when you were a kid in music class, and one group would start singing a song, and then someone else would start, and by the time you were done, you had a room full of awesome voices all singing confidently at their own pace?  Well, that is what is happening here.  I have started a blog to talk about what I see happening in our class and with our literature.  I hope to use this space to talk to you all about the class and to comment on your journal entries and blog posts about what we are reading to help make a connection throughout what all of you are talking about individually.  And, just like in music class, I hope that we end up with a stronger sound by the time we are done at the end of the semester.  After all, that is just what this class is about.  Finding a way to listen to more voices.

I have had a chance to read through most of your first sets of journal entries.  And, I was really happy with what I saw overall.  Everyone has started off with a really strong voice (sorry, I am totally not trying to kill the metaphor).  And, I hope to pick up on what you are all already talking about the strengthen the conversation about what we are reading.  50 minutes three times a week doesn’t really give some of this literature justice.

So, I will be posting here from time to time about what I see happening throughout the class and more about what we are reading as well.  I will also try to remember to post an announcement letting you know that there is a new blog post to read as well, so you can pop over if you are interested.