Smoke Signals

Prompt 1: Of all of the texts we've read (or watched, counting Smoke Signals) which is the text that will stick with you the most? Why? What will you take away from this text?

I believe that Smoke Signals will stick with me the most from this quarter. Not only am I a very visual person--meaning i remember more when I can visually see something--but I felt that the movie had a lot of significant meaning. I really enjoyed the character portrayals of both Victor and Thomas. They are so different in their mannerisms, dress, and personality, yet they are still set apart from the rest of their world because of their culture. This is shown through the scene where they are sitting on the bus, and talking to the women who says she was in the Olympics, and also when the two men would not move from their seat on the bus. Wherever Thomas and Victor went, they were seen as Indians, not as two distinct individuals with different personalities.

I also really enjoyed the story in general, and how the flashbacks and storytelling was so vivid and real. Both of these aspects really made me feel like I knew the characters on a personal level, and I wanted to learn more about them. This movie was a great representation of culture, traditions, and beliefs, and I loved seeing that conveyed through film.

Jancie Gould

I really enjoyed hearing some of the poems from her books. They were very personal and sort of a gateway to her life and her experiences as well. They were in all different subjects, such as her life experiences or even just the nature of places she has been or seen. I liked the way she explained to us the messages behind the poems or the events that lead up to her writing the poem. Its really good to get an insight into the writers motivation and see what inspired her to write the poem and Janice gave us that experience when she explained to us things that were happening in her life at the time that she was writing her poetry. overall, I enjoyed it...

Interview with N. Scott Momaday

Prompt: "If you could conduct an interview with any of the writers we have encountered this quarter, who would you interview? Why? What would you ask him or her?"

I would really be interested in listening to N. Scott Momaday. Would he be as crazy all over the place in conversation as in his writing? I would like to ask for his clarification on his essay, "The Man Made of Words". I might ask, "have you ever experienced something like this, and is that why you chose to write this?" (with the underlying question being, "Mr. Momaday, have you ever smoked something?") I do not mean to take anything away from his work, but I am merely curious as to how one comes about writing such strange and complex pieces without loosing focus in the actual act of writing.

So now I ask, what would YOU want to know about his work, his writing style, or what inspired him?

Week 6 Prompt

Sorry Everyone! I posted this on May 7th, but did not post it in the right spot! I posted it under my name instead of Blog 5.

Prompt 2: What Makes A Story

Ernest Hemingway's six worded "short story" certainly constitutes a story in my opinion. A story can be described as anything with a character, plot, theme, and setting. An even though Hemingway's six worded story may not have all these things in context, it does in spirit. When one reads these six words, opinions are formed. One interprets the story according to their own experiences. These experiences come from memories, and I believe memories are equivalent to short stories. They have meaning, and most certainly involve people, or characters, and have some sort of theme or plot. These six simple words that Hemingway has put together requires the reader to interpret in their own way, and produce their own personal meaning to the story.

When author's write short stories, they give the reader all of the information that they need. However these six words require the reader to do the work themselves. The reader can create their own story that connects to them on a personal level, or even just an enjoyable one. There is not simply one meaning that the story can convey, but many. That is the great thing about the simple six words that Hemingway has created.

I am definitely no writer, but I have created two of my own short stories that may have more than one meaning or ending, depending on who is reading them. I hope you enjoy them, and that they somehow inspire you to think about, remember, or to create your own short story. Please feel free to share it after reading!

I've given you everything. You're welcome.

Two doors open: pick one only.

Janice Gould's Visit

I was really excited about Janice Gould's visit to our class, and was looking forward to hearing a poet speak about their experiences. I had never heard a poet read their work in real-time, and I was excited to be able to hear a poem read the way they meant it to be read.

I was definitely surprised at how "real" Janice Gould seemed to be. She was so straightforward about her work, and was not shy to share it to complete stranger. She was asked a questions regarding the source of her poetry, and she politely replied that all of her poems were based off of her own life experiences. I had always assumed that much of poetry was meant to be fictional, so it was refreshing to hear poetry that came directly from the writer's own life.

I also was surprised to hear about how difficult is was for Janice Gould to sometimes keep her poetry written in a particular structure. Before she spoke, I did not even realize that her poetry followed a structure; in fact I was going to ask her a question regarding the way she positioned lines in her poems, and why she chose to do them in such a sporadic way. I had no idea that these were actually considered to be "correct" ways. It fascinated me.

I think what surprised me most was Janice's mannerisms. She seems like such a quiet woman, and spoke with such a soft and sweet tone; however he poems are full of passion and strength. She says that her poems are the ways that she expresses her emotions, and I definitely came away from class believing her and every word of poetry that she read.

With Six Words

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." was the six word short story that Ernest Hemingway wrote. This constitutes to a story and people can interpret it any way they want. With only six words, you can have a beginning, middle and end. A six word story gets to straight to the main point and people interpret it depending on their personal perspectives and views about different subjects. My personal interpretation of this story was that someone was selling baby shoes because they did not have any used of it especially since it was never worn. Then I also thought about maybe a baby did not fit the shoes therefore the shoes were being sold. This shows that short stories allow multiply meanings for the person reading it which allows them to be curious to what the real story is actually about.

The little things make me smile.

We are ready, the journey begins.

Self-representation in Photography

After browsing through all the photos, I found the photo of Terri-Lynn Swain most striking. This photo seems to portray a native individual living in big city. The first thing you see is her native clothing and the big buildings behind her representing an urbanized city. This seems to symbolize that she values her culture and it is important to her indicating that although she lives in a different society, her roots still are shape her identity. Living in an urban area has not weakened her native culture, she strongly shows that by the way she looks.

Another aspect of this photo is her body language. The woman stands with great confidence like a leader based on the look on her face and her hands to her hips. She seems to be standing proud to be a Native individual wearing her traditional clothing and being in a civilized society. By standing with courage and confidence, she is not facing the city but is looking away from it. Her eyes are looking up towards something perhaps the woman is looking into the direction of a rural area by imagining her roots.

An interesting feature about this photo is that the image of the woman is clearly shown whereas the background of the city is a little blurry. This can represent the importance of the woman and her clothing. The city is probably seen as not important to look at. By taking the photograph this way, the woman stands out and is shown being proud of who she is.

Week 4, "Birth of A Colt"

Paraphrasing a poem...
(Prompt 1)

Birth of A Colt
By Linda Hogan

When we reach the field
She is still eating
The heads of yellow flowers
And pollen has turned her whiskers
Gold. Lady,
Her stomach bulges out,
The ribs have grown wide.
We wait, our bare feet dangling
In the horse trough,
Warm water
Where goldfish brush
Our smooth ankles.
We wait
While the liquid breaks
Down Lady’s dark legs
And that slick wet colt
Like a black tadpole
Darts out
Beginning at once
To sprout legs.
She licks it to its feet,
The membrane still there,
Red,
Transparent
The sun coming up shines through,
The sky turns bright with morning
And the land
With pollen blowing off the corn,
Land that will always own us,
Everywhere it is red.

REWRITE:
We go to the field
Lady is still eating, her nose is yellow from the plants
Her stomach is large
We wait with our feet in the water trough
Goldfish are in the trough
Parturition begins, we see legs first
The mare cleans her colt
It is now morning
Pollen is blowing off the corn
Everything looks red (because its dawn)

This poem was not particularly difficult to figure out what was really going on… it was fairly straight forward. A mare gives birth to a foal. However, towards the end of the poem there is something symbolic going on. Something that seems significant to me is the repetition of pollen; why does it appear at the beginning and the close of the poem? There is also the repetition of the color red. Initially red makes me imagine bold, passionate emotions, or something sinful even. But in this poem, where the color red is placed, I get the sense of “rebirth”. Red is associated with the birth of the colt and the beginning of a new day. Yellow is another color that comes to my mind as I read through this poem. I don’t have a particular emotion that I associate with yellow, other than happiness or cheerfulness maybe. In this sense, I would say that yellow images help bring the poem to life, or help the reader get a good image of what’s going on in the poem. I don’t see a deep hidden meaning to the use of yellow images in this particular poem.

As it Was In the Beginning Response

I found this reading very interesting. First, because the father allowed his native daughter to go to the missionary school, even though her mother disagreed with it. Second, because of the hypocritical events that occurred in the story as well. Ester's identity was completely stolen when she entered into a world and culture that was not her own. Her beliefs, faith and comfort was placed in St. Paul, who ended up betraying her and killing her spirit. I found it very hypocritical of St. Paul to try to convert Esther to his religion and his ways, however, when it came down to his nephew wanting to marry Esther, his attitude towards her changed. St. Paul was who she looked up to, and who she placed all her trust in when she had to leave and go to the mission school, and he betrayed her with his attitude towards the native people.

He even referred to Esther as a serpent, which is kinda symbolic because when I think of a serpent it takes me back to Adam and Eve in the bible. The Serpent was satan and he got Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and she gave some to Adam, which lead to their downfall. Within this story, I see St. Paul as the serpent and also Esther in some was as well. However, mainly St. Paul because he talked his nephew out of marrying Esther, the woman for who he loved dearly, and he wanted him to marry someone who was of his kind and not a girl who had native blood.

The ending of this story shocked me, because I didn't think that Esther will kill Laurence because he listen to his uncle. However, I understood where Esther was coming from emotionally and this lead to her killing Laurence. She didn't want him to marry the other girl because she was in love with him and if she couldn't have him, then no one else could.

At the end of the story, I also found it very interesting that when they discovered Laurence's death they referred to her as a native who killed him and not as a women who was emotionally hurt my the things St. Paul's words and Laurence's decision to forget about her.

Cracking The Maya Code, Week 3 Post 1

"At the beginning of the film “Cracking the Maya Code,” the narrator poses a question: "Imagine explorers arriving to find our cities deserted. All of our books have perished in some unknown catastrophe. All that is left to speak for us are the written words we have carved in stone. The travelers could not make sense of our script. But if they could would they comprehend who we were?"


Consider this scenario with respect to the carved stones that appear in our society today—the Vietnam Memorial, Mt. Rushmore, the Lincoln memorial, artwork on campus, etc. Imagine that only a small handful of important books had survived, hidden away alongside these carved stones. How would our monuments and books speak for us? If they could understand our writing system, would future explorers be able to understand who we were?"

With only our written language and no one to speak it, it would be very difficult and near impossible to make any sense of our alphabet. Letters and numbers appear everywhere and are applied to every aspect of our lives. We do not use pictographic symbols or characters, which like the Mayan culture, in some instances assisted in the deciphering of their written language.

If these hypothetical explorers had been able to figure out our language, the question is then about our culture "would they comprehend who we were?". What were our values? Were we religious? Were we diverse or all the same? What did we eat?

With only the strongest of monuments left standing, would they be sufficient in detailing our society? I say no. A significant part of our society is our language and communication. Though everything is now written down, or typed, I still believe that oral history is a very important part of American society. We are also a very visual nation with the new age of booming technological advances. Our society in general is extremely fast paced with even the most basic elements: food, travel, education, etc.

However, I also think that our monuments would paint a fairly decent picture of some of what we value. For example, the war memorials clearly depict scenes of battle and carry a sense of respect and brotherhood. Presidential monuments are clearly respectful of the men that are carved inside of them (although I wonder if something such as the Lincoln memorial wouldn't give the wrong impression that we worshipped him as a god or something, architecturally the building does looks similar to temples in Greece).