Salvation

I loved the flow of the story in this piece. In the first few paragraphs, the reader is led to believe that we are witnessing the experience of the religious conversion of the author. As the essay moves on, we come to realize that Langston Hughes never did see Jesus that day, as he believed he would. I can really relate to the disappoint and dillusionment and guilt felt by Hughes in this piece, as he comes to realize that the Jesus described by his peers might not exist, and that to be accepted by his family, he would have to lie. I'm left feeling sad for Hughes, who, because of the ridiculous expectations he received from his church, may have never got a chance to experience something that would have been important to him.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I loved David Sedaris's piece of writing, "Me Talk Pretty One Day". His writing is descriptive and vivid, and the situation he describes is one I could  relate to.You can almost physically feel that familiar nervous anxiety about school, and we can really empathize with his fear of this nameless, monstrous teacher. I think at some point we've all had a teacher from h*ll, and his colorful description of his whole experience makes it seem like you're sitting in a desk  right next to him.  

I love the authors expressive writing about his first day; we can really feel his anxiety and intimidation when he meets his future classmates. They are well dressed, appear to speak excellent French, and are young -- causing David to feel, in his own words, “Like Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.” I haven't the foggiest clue who “Pa Kettle” is, or why his being trapped behind the scenes of a fashion show would be an awkward situation, but I get the feeling that my lack of knowledge might very well be a calculated and intentional phenomenon. I doubt David’s fellow students would have understood the analogy, either... I think this painfully outdated funny is used by the author as a humorous reminder to the audience of his age, and I love the “interactive nature” of this writing trick -- I’m left confused by this (clearly) “old guy” and his apparently meaningless joke, but an older reader may understand it completely, and may experience a mutual understanding with the author, knowing how it feels to make references that fly right over a younger persons head.

David Sedaris’s humor goes to good use in this piece, but his writing still retains, up until the last couple of paragraphs, an anxious, miserable, almost dark feeling. We can feel, along with David, an increasing hopelessness and sense of insecurity as the class goes on. This miserableness not only exists in his class, but pervades in everyday aspects of his life as mundane as buying coffee and answering the telephone. And it gets even darker. He compares class with his teacher to “spending time with a wild animal”, and it isn't long before we are informed of an incident of her committing actual violence against one of her students (albeit accidentally). 

In one scene as sad as it is humorous, (and from which this piece derives its name), David and his fellow students converse in the hallway using their barely intelligible French, and the author doesn't bother offering a polished translation. “Sometimes me cry alone at night.” Geez. Rough stuff. “That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty.” This broken, engrish interpretation of bad French, plus his use of nonsense words for some of the teachers words not understood, is fantastic. It makes it possible to get inside the ears of the author -- an essential effect in this story. David Sedaris’s entire work is an exercise in transporting the reader to his experience and his place, and he does this masterfully.

At the end of this passage, David finally begins to understand what his brutal teacher is saying, and is triumphant -- this means he can finally begin to truly learn, and his teacher's curses become like music to his ears. I don't know how the story ends, but I think its pretty safe to assume that he does eventually learn French, and I also think that today, far from hating his old teacher, he feels nothing but gratitude towards her. After all, in my experience anyway, the teachers who I have most feared very often turned out to be the ones through whom I ended up learning the most.

Ravens

Ravens Are One Of The Few Bird Species That Do Not Migrate South In The Winter, by Michio Hoshino

When we went to the Museum of the North, it took a while for me to find something I felt like writing about. The Place to Go Listen was interesting, but I don't think I could have really been able to appreciate its atmosphere with it being as crowded as it was that day. And I felt that the natural history exhibits didn't quite lend themselves to this particular assignment. 

I was recommended beforehand to look for pieces by Hoshino, and when I finally found them I wasn't disappointed. All of his photographs were wonderful, but one in particular that caught my eye was the piece entitled "Ravens Are One Of The Few Bird Species That Do Not Migrate South In The Winter". I liked this photograph, appreciating the soft, quiet, contemplative atmosphere of the ravens patiently sitting out a snowfall. I like to think there is something like a narrative embedded in this image. But I wouldn't use the term "embedded narrative" to describe the meaning this image might have. Rather, I think the artist responsible understood that any unaltered image of nature will take on different meaning, depending on who views it. I believe this is why he chose such an odd name for this piece - it's an invitation for the viewer to contemplate it freely, and appreciate it as one would appreciate any one of nature's sights. That, I think, might be one of the major themes in all of Hoshino's work: an invitation to the audience to experience the beauty and power of nature, as he did on his many excursions into the wilds of Alaska. 

When I look at this photograph, I see a group of ravens hanging out on some broken trees, and I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I see a raven, I get the impression of a bird with a very lofty opinion of itself, an opinion perhaps not entirely unwarranted. These ravens in the picture are no different; they exhibit an air of indifference to the winter cold, and are proud of their toughness and their cleverness required to survive in the winter. They've been through many winters before, and this one's no different. They seem to be very pragmatic about their situation - uncomplaining, their crafty scavengers minds are confident that there will always be freebies to be had, even though they may be few and far between during this time of year, and they are willing to sit around and wait -  always confident that their fabled intelligence and ingenuity will see them through again and again.

Place

What is place? Why does it affect some people so powerfully? Why might
we sometimes grow attached to a certain place, as though it were a
friend? Here are a few of my recent experiences with "place".

"The exterior world"
When the class went outside to visit the first place on the list, I
decided to split off from the group, and search for a place of my own.
It took a few days to find someplace I felt was worth writing about,
but it was worth the wait. The place I chose was the loop out in front
of the Riechardt building, overlooking Fairbanks. It was early
afternoon, maybe one-thirty or two, and I just finished class and was
walking back to the dorms, when I decided to stop for a bit and enjoy
the view. It was perfectly clear and brilliantly sunny out, with that
kind of afternoon sun whose painful intensity makes your eyes water if
you don't squint. The brightness was complemented by the coldness of
the air, producing that special kind of bright, crispness so unique to
the Alaskan spring. And of course, there was the view. The Alaskan
range could be seen very clearly that day through the haze given off
by the city, and, as always, it's scale and vastness gave the
impression of an inpenatratable wall separating the crush of
industrial civilazation from the wilderness. Another interesting thing
to see from the overlooking hill were the dozens, maybe hundreds of
small, puffy white pillars of steam and smoke drifting up from the
city below. It was as though the machinery and industry of Fairbanks
could just barely cope with the intensity of the environment, and
gasping for life, coughed up great clouds of steam into the icy air.
I like this place. I've been there a couple times before, and each
time the view has been new, and different, and beautiful. It's one of
the best places in Fairbanks to see the Alaskan range, and it's just a
quick walk away from the dorms. A nice place to stare and think about
things. Of course, it's not the most comfortable place to take in a
view; the benches there are caked with snow, and standing still in the
cold gets old fast, no matter how pretty the vista. Still, it's a
place that people can go to and take in a great view of Fairbanks.

"The interior world"
For our observation of an interior place, we went to the wood center.
The wood center is a big place, with a freakishly high ceiling. You
can do pretty much anything here - get food or coffee, play pool, ping
pong, go bowling, or play the arcade. Or you might take part in those
public events or lectures that always seem to be happening. And, of
course, you can take advantage, as we all have, of it's most useful
feature- it's convenient location between the dorms and the Gruening
building. On cold mornings, the wood center becomes a blessedly
warm sanctuary, and provides a mercifull short break from the cold
when your going to your morning classes. For me, the wood center feels
like the social center of the campus - everyone comes here to do some
thing or another on a pretty regular basis.

"My place"
For my place, after lots of thought and no stunning ideas, I chose the
red route shuttle. It's pretty mundane, I guess, but it was a special
place for me on the day I settled on choosing it for my personal place
subject. We've probably all been on the shuttle, and we all know what
a great alternative it is to freezing your face off. And if you've
ever gone inside one on an especially cold day, you know how warm
they're kept. Well, that day was especially cold, and the day had been
especially long, and that bus was SO warm... I could have ridden it
forever. It was such a relief after a hard day to just sit there in
the back seat, going home, finally free to just sit in the warm and
let my mind rest. It's  not exactly a grand ocean view or a sweeping
mountain vista, but it was a nice, restful place, and at that moment,
I don't think I would have preferred to be anywhere else.

"What is home?"
For me, home can be anywhere In the world, just so long as you're
surrounded by people that care about you.