Zooming In

December 16, 2005

Final Evaluation

Like Christina, my two favorite parts of the class were definitely the doing my final project and watching Crash and writing my analysis on it. I had a lot of fun working on my own final project and also seeing what everyone else had done. I was surprised at some of the other projects that i saw and how personal they were, everyone did such a great job! A skill that I developed in this class was being able to look at something (whether it be a painting or a piece of grass) and really see and examine it. I can now take something apart in a way that I couldn't before. I can describe something in much more detail and analyze some of the tiniest and seemingly most unimportant things. My goal for the future is to try to see things as Annie Dillard wrote about seeing. I want to take more time to look at the little things and life and try to be less focused on just the big picture.

Posted by lcismardin at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

Response to James Baldwin's article

There were a few points that James Baldwin made in the NYT article that I found interesting. Some of them I agree with and some of them I do not agree with. Baldwin writes in his article, "The brutal truth is that the bulk of the white people in America never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes". I don't know when this article was written becaue times have certainly changed over the last one hundred years and maybe I am a bit prejudiced since I myself am white, but I do not agree with this statement. I think Baldwin is taking a totally prejudices standpoint on this issue and I believe that especailly in recent years, Americans, black and white alike, have been just as interested in educating black people as they have been in educating white people.

It seems to be the standard in this country that everyone should be educated, no matter where they come from and what their background, race, religion, or financial situation is. I know this has changed a lot since the civil rights movement, but at least while I have been alive, this had always seemed to be the policy. I know I don't know everything there is to know on thip topic, but I think that Baldwin is taking a very strong standpoint on it and he gives absolutely no credit to the other side and I just do not agree with how he states his thoughts on this.

Another point that Baldwin brought up in this article was that black culture has had a very significant on the vocablulary and language that we use in this country. White people as well as black people talk about jazz and about the Beat Generation. I agree with what Baldwin is saying when he is explaining that without black culture, Americans would speak totally differently and who knows what that would sound like. However, I think he also presents this argument in a very harsh tone and I don't know if this was his intent, but it seems to me like he is poking fun at white Americans for not knowing where the word "Jazz" and some other phrases we use really came from.

Baldwin writes that "a people in the center of the Western world, and in the midst of so hostile a population, has not endured and transcended by means of what is patronizingly called a 'dialect'". He goes on to say that this is a lie and that black people are in trouble because supposedly white people do not realize that their "dialect" is actually a langugae. I understand why Baldwin is upset about this and why he is so adament about "Black English" being called a language, but I don't think that all Americans catoragize it as a dialect. In fact, I am sure most people don't even think about it, black and white people alike. Who is to say what is and what isn't a langauge or a dialect anyway? Is a Southern dialect a seperate language?

Baldwin has some very solid points, but I think they come from a bias that is too strong. He never looks at the other side of the argument and is harsh and cruel with his words. Maybe I would not think this if I came from the black culture, but I think that even if I did, I would still find this article to be a little harsh.

5 Questions

-What happened to cause Baldwin to take such a strong stance on this issue?

-If the slaves that were forced over from Africa were able to speak the same language, would slavery really not have lasted as long?

-When was this article written and published?

-Why does Baldwin think our country has "managed to learn so little"?

-Does Balwdin think that other dialects of English should be considered languages, or just "Black English"?

Posted by lcismardin at 07:03 PM | Comments (1)

Answer to Rachel's Question

To answer Rachel's question about what the world would be like if everyone spoke proper English all the time and if there was so variety between dialect, I think the world would be a very boring place in comparison to what it is today. There would be no slang which would eliminate many jokes, and there would be no variety between regions of the county in terms of dialect. I think one of the most fun and interesting parts of visiting another place in the United States is being able to hear and and experience dialects of English that are different from what I speak. Also, we use so many slang words today that a huge chunk of our language would be gone and we would bot be able to communicate so of the phrases that we can now. "Proper" English seems stuffy and boring, and I think it is much better to have a variety of dialects and accents and vocabulary.

Posted by lcismardin at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 5-Some Basic Sociolinguistics Concepts

Comments

-It is so interesting to see how dialects are so different from each other and that when they are different enough, they can actually affect a child's performance in school

-I don't understand what is so awful about saying "sort of", I say it all the time

-It is amazing that langauges could exist with only 200-300 words, I can't even imagine only having a few hundred words to choose from

-I didn't know that languages existed that did not have writing systems

-It is a good thing that linguists agree that no language is superior to or inferior to any other language, but it would be even better if everyone could agree on this.

Questions

-What exactly is "Standard English"? (there are too many definitions!)

-How much can a person's language impact their personality?

-If linguists have decided that no language is either superior or inferior to another language, than why do people have so many thoughts about some languages and dialects being better than others?

-What makes one dialect more aesthetically pleasing than another one?

-Why is there even a term "standard english"? How can there be standard english if no one ven really speaks it?

Posted by lcismardin at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 3-No Kinda Sense

Comments

-It is amazing to see the effects of how children react to situations involving their own race vs. situations involving different races (Maya flourished when she was in a school were almost all the children were African-American)

-Code-switching seems like a very useful thing to be able to do and it's interesting to see how quickly children are able to learn how to do it

-I never knew that Ebonics was rule-based like standard dialect

-I also don't agree with the statement "Say it right or don't say it at all", I have never heard any teachers say that and I would think it would be more beneficial to help the students learn how to speak and encourage them rather them punishing them and telling them what they are doing is wrong and that they should just not speak at all

-I think the whole hairdressing idea is really cool, but I don't know if it's a good idea to focus completely on that in a regular school, it seems better for a cosmotology school either during or after high school.

Questions

-Where did all these different "codes" come from?

-What does the author think about the whole "Ebonics Debate"?

-Where did the word "ebonics" come from?

-For what and how is ethnomathematics used?

-Do children at predominantly African-American schools learn more about African their history and where they come from?

Posted by lcismardin at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

My Thanksgiving

I hope everybody had as nice a Thanksgiving as I did. After dinner last Thursday, my cousin Andrea and I were talking with out grandmother about the history of all her jewelry (I don't really remember why we were having this conversation but I'm sure there must have been some reason...) and I love my grandmother to death, she really is the sweetest lady, but neither my cousin or I could get a word in during the conversation. When my grandmother calls, my mom is usually on the phone with her for hours, literally. My grandmother LOVES to talk and it can be very hard to say something to her while she is talking. I suspect she finds the shortest pauses between sentences to be awkward and so she tends to keep talking in order to fill in what she considers to be awkward pauses. I think this is weird because my greandmother used to babysit me all the time when I was growing up, yet somehow I developed a very different conversational style than her. I tend to leave longer pauses than she does and I talk less than half the amount she does at family gathering. But I love her none the less!

Posted by lcismardin at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

thesis statement

There seem to be a number of problems with both of these papers as well as the credibility of the disorder.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

chapter 11

I think the easiest one of these things to change is lexicon. We have already experienced changes in lexicon in our lifetimes, as we saw with the homwork on slang. Our vocabulary is changing all the time and it seems to spread much faster then pronunciation or syntax. I think that pronunciation is the next easiest thing to change. We have seen differences in pronunciation with respect to dialect and even though it probably takes awhile to change from region to region, I think it is easier than trying to change syntax, the actual rules of a language. People are going to be much more likely to go along with a change in pronunciation then they are with a change in ther rules of how we speak. It seems a child's lexicon will change first. They will learn "real" words after they have begun to communicate with "baby talk". A baby's babble stems from real words, but they must babble first before they can learn the words themselves. Young children often pronounce words incorrectly, one of the most common seems to be "spaghetti". However, their pronunciation changes as the get older and learn what they real way to pronounce words is, in respect to their specific dialect. Syntax seems to be the last thing children learn. They can say single words or simple sentences that we can undertsand but that are not grammatically correct before they can speak in grammatical sentences.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2005

Today's Class

I really enjoyed today's class, I though we had a lot of good discussions about idealogies and how deeply they are engrained into our society as well as our personal beings. I guess I have never really thought about it before, but there are so many stories and movies that portray women who seem to have great lives with a great job and a good salary, a nice house, ect., but who are not happy because they do not have a husband or a boyfriend. It is sad to realize that many single women are not happy because they believe they need a man and to find love in order to be complete and happy. I know it is hard, but I think people need to realize that this is not true and that we can be just as sucessful in life (or perhaps even more so) without a man as we can be with one.

Posted by lcismardin at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2005

The Three Faces of Eve

When Zaya, Jessica, and I watched this movie to do our character analyzation, we were surprised at how easy it was to see the differences between the three "characters". Even though the three different personalities were all played by the same woman, we could almost always tell by the first movement or sound she made which personality she was switching into. The music that was used in the film also played a big part in differentiating between the three different personalities because each time a new personality came out, the music changed to fit that personality's characteristics. The actress also displayed her body in very different ways depending on which personality she was at the time...she wore different clothes, she held herself differently, she walked differently, she spoke in a different voice, she wore her hair differently, and she even talked about different things. I think the actress did a really great job because it was so easy to tell which personality she was trying to play without hearing the name of the personality.

Posted by lcismardin at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

Rachel at Bartol

Tonight at Bartol Rachel really "zoomed in" on her ice cream.

Posted by lcismardin at 07:10 PM | Comments (3)

November 14, 2005

MFA assignment

1. The entrance to the museum was busy with chattering people, but once we entered the Ansel Adams exhibit, everything seemed to stop and stand still. I felt like I was in a library and needed to be as silent as possible while moving throughout the rooms filled with pictures. I actually felt a little out of place because I saw many people staring at the same photograph for a long time, while I only looked most of the photographs for a few seconds or sometimes a few minutes at most. I felt crowded in the exhibit because there were so many people, but at the same time it was relaxing. Once I had quickly moved through the first two rooms where it was difficult to see because of all the people, I felt much calmer and more able to spend time looking closer at the pictures. Even though I didn’t spend as long as most people, it was still much nicer in the rooms at the end where there were less people and I was able to focus on a certain picture without feeling like I was in someone’s way.

2.Coming into the museum, I was not expecting to be as impressed by the photographs as I actually was. I am no artist and I cannot paint to save my life, but I do know how to use a camera, so I was wondering how different Adams’ pictures could be from something that I could take. This was the first photography exhibit I have ever been to and as soon as I walked in I could see the art in his photographs. They were so beautiful and the angles were so different from anything I could ever have produced. I had expected to just see some black and white photographs that I couldn’t pick out any meaning from, but when I actually got there, I thought I really could see the meaning in some of Adams’ photographs.

3.One of Adams’ photographs that I would describe as a landscape would be Early Morning, Merced River Canyon, Yosemite National Park, 1950. I think that Ansel Adams was trying to show us “nature at its best” in this photograph because everything seems so calm and serene and uninterrupted. The trees and the river seem so peaceful and I can almost hear the water gurgling along past the tress and the rocks. This image of nature seems completely untouched by man and I think Adams’ was trying to show us how pure everything in this place was. It almost seems like this place was his secret, his place that no one else in the world knew existed. There were many other photos from this canyon, so I think Adams’ must have really loved what he found here and wanted to eventually share his “secret place” that he had found with the world because it was just too beautiful to be kept a secret anymore.

4.One of Ansel Adams’ photographs that I would describe as a portrait would be Self-Portrait, Monument Valley, Utah, 1958. This was one of the most unusual photographs that I saw in the exhibit, and it truly seemed to be unique from all the other portraits, because this was in fact, a portrait of Adams himself. The photograph displays what could be described as an “anonymous shadow” because without the title of the image, we would not be aware that this was a self-portrait. We cannot see his face and there is no clue that this is him, except for the shape and the outline of his body. The shadow looks like it is resting against torn paper, not like a normal photograph. This “paper” seems to be lightning, Adams’ shadow is almost above this lightning, overlooking everything that is happening in this picture. Adams’ could be said to look like God in this picture, with his hand raised high in the air, signaling to us that he has power over what is happening, including nature and the incoming storm. Adams is representing the landscape that is present here and the storm that seems fast approaching. I think he shows abstraction in the lighting bolts because they are much more textured than everything else in the image and I can’t tell if they are actually part of the photograph or if he put them in after. They don’t seem to be perfect images of what I know to be lightning bolts, they seem to be more abstract than the rest of the picture. I think Adams is showing symbolism by placing himself in the photograph because the way he is standing looks like a symbol of God and God’s power.

5.One of Ansel Adams’ photographs that I would describe as abstract would be Remains of an Old Square Piano, Lundy, California, 1939. I think that Adams wanted to show us that there was a period of time that had passed. He represented this past time with the broken piano that was once used by someone, but is no longer needed because it just sits in the corner, broken into more that one piece. I think this piano also symbolizes a lost dream. Maybe the person that used to play this piano had a dream of becoming a famous pianist, but now there is no hope of that dream coming true for some reason and this is shown by the completely broken and useless piano. This piano can longer be used to achieve the dream of becoming a pianist. This whole photograph looks abstract to me because I had to really look at it to see what it was. I did not know at first that it was a piano. I had to look at all the pieces and then put them together to see the image of the piano.

6.My favorite photograph by Ansel Adams was White House Rain, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1941. This image really speaks to me because I have had a personal experience with the subject that Adams used for this photograph. I have been to this place where the picture was taken and I have seen for myself the Native American dwellings in the side of the canyon that are shown in this image. I was able to compare how I saw this image for myself with how it was shot by Ansel Adams and I was able to see how he saw something that I had actually seen myself. I even have my own photographs of this place so it will be interesting to be able to compare my pictures to this picture that Adams took the next time I go home.

Posted by lcismardin at 03:58 PM | Comments (2)

November 13, 2005

Conversation Style

I have been trying to notice how people talk and how long the pauses are between sentences, but I haven't been able to notice much because it seems like my two roommates leave about the same amount of space that I do. One of my roommates is from Haverhill and the other is from Swamscott, so they are both native to Massachusettes and I am from Southern New Hampshire, very close to the Massachusettes border. All three of us seem to leave about the same amount of space between our sentences, which is good because we do not often interrupt each other. I know that I probably speak a lot faster than someone who is from the South or the West because that is the reputation that New Englanders have, and I have noticed that when my family has visited our friends who are from Louisiana. Personally, I feel like I leave pretty long pauses between sentences because I hate to interrupt people, but I am sure that our friends from Louisiana do not think I leave long pauses at all, but actually leave very short pauses.

Posted by lcismardin at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

My Dialect

Both of my parents grew up in South Portland, Maine. I was also born in Maine and lived in Gorham, Maine for the first five years of my life. Obviously, this is where I learned to speak. When I was five, I moved to Rye, New Hampshire, which is a very small town on the seacoast, next to the small city of Portsmouth. My parents both have very strong Maine accents, especially my mom. I always make fun of her when she says "chowda", or "caa", or "baathroom". In addition to tkaing out the "r" where it belongs, she also adds "r"s where they don't belong, like in idea, she will say "idear". I remember that I used to do that too, and I thought that was how you said in until one day someone pointed out to me what I was doing. I have been careful since then to try to say "idea" instead of "idear", but I know I still slip up once in awhile by accident. Other than that I don't think I have a very stong Maine accent since I have mostly grown up in Southern New Hamphshire, but I can definitely tell when I hear one since my entire family (especially my mom and grandmother) have very stong accents. I do say "wicked", but I can't think of any other words that I use that I know are not used in other parts of the country. I don't think that people from New Hampshire have very stong accents because I have never heard of a "New Hampshire" accent before, but maybe that is just because that is where I live. I am pretty much right in the middle between Boston and Maine, so I think that people from my area on the Seacoast have a mix of Boston and Maine accents.

I definitely think that social groups influence dialects. I know that I speak differently to my friends that to my grandparents for instance. I speak much faster when I am talking to my friends and I am not very careful about what I say around them, but when I am with my grandparents or other older relatives, I find myself talking much slower and leaving longer pauses in between sentences. I think that growing up in different social groups leads to differences in vocabulary and accent, "surfer dude" and "urban youth" dialects are very good example of this. I did not grow up in either one of these social groupings, so I do not use some of the slang words they use and I do not have the same accents as them.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2005

Mid-Semster Evaluation

Three things that have helped me to learn in this class are:

1)not being numerically graded-I am a person who stresses out so much about my grades and this has enbaled me to concentrate more on the assignment and what I am supposed to be doing instead of what my actual grade is going to be

2)the WA-is is really nice to have someone whose job it is to read my paper and correct any miskates I might not have noticed and who is able to give me suggestions about what I might do to improve the structure of our paper

3)going over the hoomework on Mondays before handing it in-I have found some of the assignments really difficult and it is so much better to go over the homework before we hand it in while I still remember what the assignment is than to have it corrected and then handed back to us a week later

One thing that has not helped me in class:

1)I think the classes are a little too long...I know this really can't be helped but sometimes I just find it very difficult to sit and listen for two hours.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:07 AM | Comments (25)

November 07, 2005

screen door

peering through before i leave

my world is tiny squares and an aging metal frame

peeling blue paint and a rusty spring

squeaking back and forth

between inside and out

it will not keep my secrets

especially at night, when all it silent

it slowly moves foward

slicing through the cold night air

i have been released,

freedom!

SLAM!

shit

Posted by lcismardin at 10:06 PM | Comments (1)

November 06, 2005

Ansel Adams

I thought the Ansel Adams exhibit was really great. Although I have been to many museums before, I don't think I have ever been to an exhibit like that. All of the photographs were really wonderful, and many of them I could have spent much longer looking at. It was really cool to see some of his photographs from places I have been. I have seen some of those places before for myself, but now I know what Ansel Adams saw when he was there. Even though I know perfectly well how to use a camera, I could never have taken any of those pictures. I thought they were truly works of art, each one capturing the thoughts and ideas of the artist and exactly what he wanted us to see. I am so glad we were able to experience that exhibit and I wouldn't be surpised to find myself back there, maybe showing my family the next time they come to Boston.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2005

Ways of Seeing-Berger

I thought it was really interesting how in this essay John Berger wrote about how what we see is a choice we make. I have never thought about this before, but it's true. There is so much around us to look at and see, but what we actually do see, we choose to see. We can't always take in everything because there is often too much to look at everything, so we have to make an active choice about what to see. He also brought up how we can never just see one thing. I tried to only look at one object or one image, but it is impossible. We have to look at multiple things at the same time and see how the relate to each other and how they work together to make our world and everything that we see.

Another point that John Berger brought up in this essay that I found very intersting was that now famous painting are able to travel to us, so that we do not have to travel to them. Paintings and images are so easily available to us, we can see them anytime we want, either on tv or on the internet. If what we want to see isn't on tv when we want to see it, we can always go on the internet and there we can see pretty much anything we can imagine. This makes it so much easier for us to see paintings, we don't have to travel to the different countrie where they are kept. If we had to do that, we would never get to see most works of art. I can't imagine not knowing what the Mona Lisa looks like just because I have never seen it in person.

Posted by lcismardin at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2005

Harvey Pekar

I was part of the group that had to draw the pictures by looking at the words. When we got together to start our comnic, we went through each section together and wrote down what was going to be in each panel. We all put in our ideas and we worked off of everyone's ideas to create something that we could all imagine being on the page. It was easier when it came time to draw the pictures to do it this way because we already had everything that we were going to draw organized on a piece of paper. We also all brainstormed together to come up with what we though Harvey Pekar looked like and we gave him some specific characteristics that we could keep constant in each panel of the comic. Even though I have seen the Harvey in the comic and the actor playing Harvey in the movie, and even the real Harvey himself, I still like our group's perception of what "Harvey" looks like better. I think we picked up on some of the real person's characteristics because we knew that he was somewhat of an awkward person, but we did not know how cynical he really was. It was weird to see the actor playing Harvey in the movie, but I think he did a really good job. I could imagine this character from only knowing the words given to us in the comic. The real Harvey was not what I was expecting at all. I didn't even realize that was him until it was mentioned to us that he was the real Harvey and the Harvey Pekar who actually wrote the comics. I think this whole assignment was pretty cool because each group was able to come up with something legeitimate that could really fit with what they were given, either just the pictures or just the words. Working with my group was really fun too and I am glad I was in the group who had to draw the pictures. Once we got the hang of what we were supposed to do, it was really fun to come up with our own Harvey and draw the story we were given.

Posted by lcismardin at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Making Memories

I love to take pictures with my digital camera, so I could really relate to this article by Amy Harmon. Having the technology to be able to see the pictures we have just taken is really amazing and I love to be able to do that, but like Amy Harmon said, I think that it sometimes does take away from having an experience. When you are at a party or on vacation it is very nice to be able to take pictures to document what happened, but it is so tempting to continuously go back and look at those pictures you have just taken. This can really get in the way of the actual experience and fun you should be having. I don't want to go on vacation and spend the whole time looking at pictures from the day, hour, or even minute before. That is what the time after the vacation is for, not the time while you are actually there. However, I admit it, I always want to look at the pictures I have just taken because I know that they are there and that I can see them if I want so if they did not come out perfrectly, I can take them again.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

Frances McDormand

The photgraph that I chose to analyze is called "Frances McDormand" and it was taken in New York City by Annie Leibovitz.

This photograph is a black and white photograph and it shows a middle-aged woman with short, dark hair walking alone through a path in a park. The background of the trees and the path and the lightposts along the path are not quite in focus. We can tell that it is fall because the branches of the trees are bare and the leaves have all fallen on the ground around the trees. The weather must be cold because the woman is wearing a long coat with fur around the neck and six big buttons on it. She is also wearing gloves on her hands. In contrast to the background, the woman can be seen very clearly and is in perfect focus. However, this woman does not look happpy, but instead seems to be quite distressed about something.

I think this woman looks like she does not want her photograph to be taken. She looks a little bit angry and she is looking right at the camera, giving the photographer a look that says to me, "what are you doing?". The woman is walking alone in this photograph so she seems to like to be by herself sometimes to allow her some time to think without interruption. Because she is walking alone is the park, I get the sense that this is a very independent woman who likes to do things for herself. She does not want men to do things for her. She is a very strong and capable woman, and she seems like she would be just as satisfied without a man as most women would be with a man.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Eliza

I found Eliza to be very frustrating to talk to. She never answered any of the questions I asked her and she kept repeating, "are you sure?" and "we were discussing you not me". I think that everytime I typed a sentence with the word "you in it", she would respond with the same thing except she substituted the word "me" for you, or she said, "we were discussing you not me". Eliza was only able to respond to what I typed by taking key words that I had already said and turning those words into a question, I never got a real response from Eliza, I got mostly questions. Another thing I noticed was that whenever I typed the word "no", she would respond with, "you are quite negative", because she "saw" the word no. I was SO frustrated while trying to talk to this program!

Posted by lcismardin at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

POL Ch. 4

It is amazing how much the invention and popularity of photography changed visual art. Painting and sculpting have been around for centuries, much longer than photography, but photography seems to have had a bigger impact on art than most social movements and other importnant events. When people realized that we could take pictures of things and have an exact replication of what we saw, art started to become much more about realism. Nobody wanted to be left behind, or feel stuck in the "old way" of doing things, people wanted art to be "real". We don't see as many impressionist paintings anymore, most of the art that came about during the invention of photography seems to be very realistic, almost like an actual photograph. I am glad, however, that things did not stay this way and that we now have new kinds of art such as abstract art and dadaism.

Posted by lcismardin at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2005

Susan Sontag-On Photography

I found a lot of what Susan Sontag wrote about in this essay to be true in my own life. Sontag wrote about how when people are on vacation (especially Germans, Japanese, and Americans) they make a "friendly imitation of work" by bringing their cameras with them everywhere and take pictures of every single thing that they like or that seems different to them. This gives you a lot of memories to remember your trip by, but it takes some of the fun out of actually experiencing what you are seeing (unless you live for photography). Taking pcitures can almost be like a chore when you feel like you have to take pictures of every single thing that you see and I think sometimes it makes vacations less fun, even though they will be more fun to remember afterwards. I know I am guilty of this though, because everytime I go somewhere I feel like I have to take pictures of everything I see. I wish that when I went on vacation, I could just take someone with me who could take all the pictures so that I could have the full experience while I was there, but then also have the memories when I came home.

Posted by lcismardin at 09:29 PM | Comments (1)

Review of Persepolis 2

I thought this review of Perepolis 2 by Jennifer Camper was really great. After I finished reading Persepolis, I already knew that I wanted to read the second book because the first one leaves you hanging and with a lot of question. This review just wants to make me read Persepolis 2 even more. I never thought that I would enjoy reading a graphic novel, especially one about Iran, which before now I didn't know much about, but reading Persepolis was so interesting and actually fun that I would definitely be open to reading more graphic novels.

This review of Persepolis 2 gives us some information about what happened to Marji after the end of the first book, but it doesn't give everything away. I liked how the two women were shown talking about the style that Marjane Satrapi used while writing Persepolis because I was thinking the some of the same things while I was reading the first book. I really liked Persepolis and this review made me even more excited to read Persepolis 2!

Posted by lcismardin at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2005

Lunch with Rachel

I was eating lunch at Bartol today with Rachel, and I remembered that I hadn't blogged yet about hand gestures, so I watched Rachel to see if I noticed any. I had never noticed it before, but Rachel is a very expressive person. She used deitic gestures ofen because we were talking about Brookline ave and she was showing me where it was(without realizing it) using gestures whenever she mentioned "Brookline Ave". She also used cohesive gestures to string together related sentences and ideas. Once I stared noticing these gestures, I couldn't stop seeing them which was so weird because I had such a hard time trying to remember to watch for them before. I think because we are so used to seeing people gesture that it just become natural and something that we don't even notice. While watching Rachel, I noticed a pattern that we also saw in class on the computer program, she seems to gesture more when she was using big or important words, or at the beginning or the end of a sentence.

Posted by lcismardin at 05:14 PM | Comments (1)

Lucky Cow

The comic that I have chosen to analyze is “Lucky Cow” by Mark Pett. This comic contains four panels, and it uses action to action transition as well as moment to moment transition. There is no spoken or narrative text in this comic, and it can be completely understood just by looking at the pictures, which makes it picture specific. Although this comic has multiple panels, it is very obvious that it happens in only a matter of seconds. We can tell that the pictures we see represent the different stages of a character falling down. In this first panel, we see an awkward looking young man putting up a “Caution” sign because he is about to mop a floor. This “Caution” sign is very familiar to us and we recognize the figure of the falling man pictured on the sign. We can tell the young man featured in the comic is whistling because his lips are shaped in a circle and they are sticking out from his face. In the second panel, we see the young man beginning to slip on the water he was putting on the floor. We know that his is slipping because of the slanted position of his body and because of the zip ribbons near his feet that show us his feet are coming off the ground. His arms are also outstretched as if ready to catch himself when he hits the floor and he has a surprised look on his face that includes widened eyes and an open mouth. In the third panel, we see the man lying flat on the floor on his back with his feet up in the air. We can tell that he has just hit the floor because there are zip ribbons all around the body representing the impact his body had just made with the floor. We also see that his lips are parted and his teeth are gritted, which is a sign of pain. In the fourth and last panel, we see a little swirl above the man’s head which shows us that his head hurts and he feels dizzy from hitting his head. His feet are now flat on the floor with the rest of his body and there is another man’s arms and face coming from the implied space outside the panel wall. We see this new character putting out a new “Caution” sign that we are not familiar with. On this sign we see a picture of the young man who has just fallen, with the same swirl coming out of his head that symbolizes pain, as well as the original character in the background. This sign is the whole joke because it is warning us that there is a man lying on the floor as well as that the floor is wet.

Posted by lcismardin at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Persepolis

I started reading Persepolis yesterday and I really love it so far! This is the first graphic novel that I have ever read and so far I am enjoying it. I think the pictures add so much to the story, even though the story itself is very interesting. I have never read about the Islamic Revlution before and have also neer studied it in school so everything in this book is completely new to me. Now that I have begun reading about the war with Iraq, I can't believe that this is something I have never realyy heard about before. Persepolis is still entertaining to read, even though it is about somehing so serious and devastating. I am so glad we have to read this book!

Posted by lcismardin at 11:54 AM | Comments (2)

October 06, 2005

Comics Readings

I really enjoyed the comics readings we had to do, especially the one in the book. I think that words are so much more powerful when there are pictures to illustrate what they mean. The images in the comics take away any confusion the reader might be having and enhance the entire experience. I must admit, I enjoyed reading kids books to the family of young boys I babysat last summer because of the pictures. Sometimes I would read them the words on the page, but then we would spend a few minutes talking about the picutres that they saw and what they thought those pictures meant. Sometimes the kids got more from the pictures than they got from the words. I think reading a graphic novel will be really interesting because I have never actually read one before, and it will be a nice break from the books we used to reading that are just words.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:05 AM | Comments (389)

October 05, 2005

Tannen article

When I first looked at the Tannen article online, I did not expect to enjoy it just because it seemed so long. But I ended up actually liking it. Everything that Tannen brought up made so much sense because we have seen it all before, I just never took much notice of these things. It is true that women and men are very different, but I never thought of how different they were when they spoke. Different things are expected out of men and women, and it seems like women are expected to be less self confident in how they act and what they say. I know that I am not very confident when I speak up in class or even when I am talking one on one with someone who is older, more experiences, or superior to me. I always thought I was just shy, but it's interesting to think that some of this could have to do with the way I interacted with others as a child and how girls are brought up differently than boys are.

There seemed to be a lot in this article that I could relate to, especially the part about men not wanting to stop and sk for directions. We have all heard this before, and most of us have witnessed this. Men do not want to be put in a situation where they are seem as vulnerable or insuperior. However, women it seems have no problem stopping to ask for directions because they expect to be put in situations where they are vulnerable or insuperior, because that is the way it has always been. This is a sad thing to think about, because I don't want to be looked at as vulnerable for the rest of my life. I wish Tannen had explained some ways in which women could overcome what was expected of them and how they could learn to speak an act in a way that has the same effect (at least in the workplace) as men do.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:15 AM | Comments (1)

October 04, 2005

Mimesis or Social Construction?

I think we mimesis, or images and language, to represent the world around us. As people, one of the most important things we have is our language, and without that, we would have no way of communicating things to each other. We are always trying to imitate the world by using our language and talking about it, or showing what we see by using images. We try to imitate what we see and what we hear on the street. We dress like people we admire and we talk like everyone else around us. We are constantly using both images and language to show and represent the world we live in. If we couldn't use language or images to communicate what we see, what would we do?

Posted by lcismardin at 08:21 PM | Comments (1)

October 01, 2005

Morphology

I think that having morphological modifications in a language makes the language much more flexible and open to new words. Since we are able to create different words from one root word by adding morphemes to it, we are able to create more new words than a language that didn’t have morphemes. I know sometimes I make up my own words by using a root word and a morpheme that doesn’t usually go with the root word. If I can’t find a word that I want, sometimes I can add “ish” or another morpheme to a word to create my own word. Morphemes give our language more variety, but I don’t think they make it easier to learn, because if I wasn’t fluent in English, I might get confused when someone added on to a root word and I wasn’t familiar with what the addition meant. There are so many prefixes and suffixes that I think it would be hard for someone who isn’t a native speaker of English to memorize them all.

Posted by lcismardin at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)

Seeing-First Draft

“Unfortunately, nature is a very much now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. This is a quote from Annie Dillard’s “Seeing” that can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning. Dillard writes about the miracles of nature that happen in the blink of an eye. A fish jumping out of the water, a deer disappearing behind a tree, she tells us that we must watch for these things and keep our eyes open. If we close them for even a second, we could miss some of nature’s greatest gifts to us. However, the meaning of this quote goes beyond just the syntactical elements that are written on the page.

Life happens so quickly, and we tend to miss many important things everyday because we are too busy to see what is around us. Like with nature, we need to take the time to really look at the things around us and notice what is going on. If you don’t take the time to notice life more carefully, you could miss out on some of the greatest things that ever happened to you. In other words, life could be said to be a very much now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair and this semantic meaning is just as important, if not more important, then the syntactical one about taking the time to notice nature.

Really seeing something is a hard thing to do. It takes time and patience, but trying to practice seeing could give you a very valuable skill. Take the time to really look at something and enjoy it, because it could be gone before you know it. Life is full of surprises waiting to be discovered. Annie Dillard writes about her childhood pastime of hiding pennies under the roots of trees for an unsuspecting passerby to find and pick up. You wouldn’t want to be that person who briefly notices the penny, but then after realizing it could have been the one coin he needed to complete his collection, goes back to pick it up and finds that it is already gone.

Posted by lcismardin at 03:27 PM | Comments (2)

September 29, 2005

Picture Analysis

When I saw this painting, for some reason I though of those old Coca-Cola ads from the fifties and sixties. This painting seems like it could be a representation of part of a family living room from forty or fifty years ago. The red sneakers could belong to the son and the blue jelly shoes could belong to the daughter. The telephone, which is central to their every day lives is also in the picture, as well as the broom, which is also an important object in a home. The family seems to be a bit disorganized, since everything is laying on or around the tv, but that also shows me that this can be a place where they all come together and are able to spend some time together (even though that time is spent in front of a television screen). The tv is sitting in what looks like a dark corner, but there is a lot of light in front of the tv, which seems to emphasize it's importance in this family's lives. I can imagine them all sitting on front of the tv together at night watching the news, or some other program which they might all enjoy. The objects here (the shoes, the telephone, the broom, and even the plate), seem to symbolize and be a metonymy for family. Family is the word that comes to mind when I see all of these things, especially because they are centered around the tv.

Posted by lcismardin at 03:14 PM | Comments (2)

September 28, 2005

Genie

After we googled Genie in class the other day, I was so intrigued by what I found that I went online later in the day to find out more. I went to the website feralchildren.com and found many more stories of children who had been made to live in isolation as well as children who had been raised by animals (one of them was a boy who was raised by gazelles and was caught by an army jeep while running 50 kph!). All of the children that lived in isolation since they were young never learned to talk, even after they were discovered, just like Genine. I also found out that many children who were lost in the wild and lived there in isolation for many years actually lost the ability that they once had to talk. Some of them could also no longer even laugh or cry. I think the whole idea of the critical period is so interesting, even after seeing the movie of Genie and reading all these stories, it is still strange to me to think that we cannot learn language after we have passed a certain age. It is hard to imagine that our brains could change so much in such a short period of time (compared to a normal lifespan). Language is so important that I don't know why our brain does not allow it to learn it after we have passed the critical period. I was especially suprised to see that children who had once been able to talk had completely lost that ability after having lived alone for a number of years. How can we loose the ability to do something that is so incredibly important in our everyday lives? I found the story of Genie and of these other children so interesting, I would encourage everyone to go to the feral children website and read some more stories of children similar to Genie.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2005

Brain and Language Question 3

In Japanese, kana is sound based like English is and there are symbols that correspond to syllables. Kanji is ideographic and each symbol corresponds to a word. Damage to the left hemisphere would impair someone's ability to read kana because the left hemisphere of the brain is the "verbal hemisphere" and is where we process sounds that we hear. Someone with damage to this part of their brain probably would not be able to put together the sounds that they saw on the paper since kana is made up of syllables. Damage to the right hemisphere of the brain would impair someone's ability to read kanji because the right side of our brain specializes in mathematics, logic, facial recognition, and drawing. This is the more visual side of our brain and if since kanji is made up of pictures, someone with damage to this side of the brain might not be able to put a symbol together with an actual picture of an object.

Posted by lcismardin at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

Intro to Practices of Looking

The introduction to this book was all about how our culture is shifting from oral to visual. It's amazing that our generation is here to experience this change from one extreme to the other. We seen to be caught somewhere in between, because as the introduction talked about,our education has for the most part focused on the written and the oral part of society.

I know in high school, I was never given the opportunity to take any kind of media based class that would help us to learn about what our society is becoming. The visual media seems to be taking over the written media, and we never learn a thing about it, even though it is something that impacts our everyday lives. We are surrounded by visual images and we see them everywhere we go. Of course books and the newspaper and even radio are still very important, but I think it would be beneficial to today's students if more classes were dedicated to the visual aspects of our culture, especially at the high school and college level.

Posted by lcismardin at 02:01 PM | Comments (2)

"Seeing" (Annie Dillard)

For the most part, I liked this essay by Annie Dillard, but like Brenna mentioned, I too thought it became boring at some points and I had to really work to pay attention to what I was reading. It probably would have made it easier to read and also more interesting if the essay had been a bit shorter without quite so much description. I think Dillard has a very good point, most of us never really "see" what we are looking at. I know that most of the time, I don't take the time to really see what is around me. I thought the section about the book that Dillard head read, Space andLight, by Marius von Senden, was the most appealing part of the whole essay. It was informative as well as captivating to read. I didn't expect so many people who were once blind to wish that they still were blind. Sight is such an amazing thing and I am so greatful to have it. Having always been able to see, I can never imagine having to live without it, let along wanting to live without it. I would have thought that everyone who was given sight would have been amazed at the world and would never have wanted to go back to having to live without the gift of sight.

Posted by lcismardin at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

Optical Illusion

http://eyetricks.com/0101.htm

In this optical illusion there is one big square made up of smaller, black cubes that are separated by gray lines. At each point where the gray lines intersect, there are small dots. The dots appear to be a mix of both black and white, but when you try to count the white dots, they turn black, and when you try to count the black dots, they turn white. Everytime you look at a dot, it changes its color.

There were a lot of really cool optical illusions on this website, but I like this one the best because i can't find a way to explain it. How is it possible that the dots change colors when you try to focus on them? I have no idea.

There is one more optical illusion that I really like on this website. The URL for this one is: http://eyetricks.com/0601.htm When I first looked at this one, I saw the letter E standing off the page, but if you try to focus your eyes a different way, the E dissapears and all you can see is three crooked, black lines.

Posted by lcismardin at 05:39 PM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2005

What is language?

Language could be said to be the most important things that we have as human beings. Language allows us basic communication with each other as well as "more cultural" activities such as reading and writing. Without language, who knows what the world would be like? It would most certainly be a place of misunderstanding and unnecessary violence..if we still existed at all. All animals have ways of communicating with each other, and although ours seems to be more complex, it still serves the same basic function: to be able to communicate with each other. Language is also grammar and sentences and rules, but I think the most important thing about it is that it gives us some way to understand each other and be able to relate to one another.

You are much more likely to learn a new word than you are to learn an entire new sentence. A word is simply that, just one word, but a sentence consists of multiple words. People don't usually learn new sentences, they learn new words that enable them to create their own new sentences. I think people are learning new words everywhere they go, because language is all around you, on tv, the newspaper, the radio...it is so easy to see a new word that you don't know and learn what it means, but when are you ever going to see an entire sentence of words you don't know?

Posted by lcismardin at 03:15 PM | Comments (1)

September 13, 2005

Pointe Shoes

King Tut putting on his crown for the first time, standing tall. I felt like a musician performing his first piece in front of an audience, a spider in my shower and a young child on Christmas morning. Fossils being discovered, millions of years later and fireworks going off, one by one, all leading up to the grand finale. Snow White in front of the mirror, a baby’s first time standing on her own two feet. It felt like Jesus on the cross, but he was sacrificing himself for his people. Cinderella putting her foot into the glass slipper, and I had found my Prince Charming.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:47 AM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2005

germ-X

The small, plastic container sits in front of me on my desk. Always ready in case I need it. The bottle is just the right size to fit in my hand, curved like the body of a snowman with broad, proud shoulders. The tiny string of air bubbles in the middle of the fluid that fills the bottle is so small that they are barely visible, like tiny fish eggs. The liquid inside is clear like water fresh from the spring, and I wouldn’t even know it was there if it weren’t for the miniature bubbles inside and the larger one that sits at the top of the container.

I like to turn the bottle over and watch the large air bubble at the top flip over and float to the bottom which is now the top. Sometimes the bubble becomes long and thin when I turn the bottle over, but sometimes it stays fat and round.

I can grip the cap of the bottle because it is bumpy and textured and does not slip away from my fingers. When I pull back the cap of the bottle, it makes a popping noise, like rice krispies do when they are immersed in milk. The scent of alcohol and lemons wafts from the small, circular hole inside the cap and lightly stings the inside of my nose when the aroma reaches me. The smell of the liquid is of the perfect intensity, I know that it’s strong enough to do the job it’s supposed to do, but not strong enough to make me turn away whenever the bottle is opened.

After I open the cap, I tip it upside down and let two or three small beads of the solution slip into my open hand. The drops feel cool on my warm skin and as they run down the lines of my palms the clean trails they leave behind are visible. My germ-X hand sanitizer, so familiar and reliable, just like the best friend who got me addicted to it. The distinctive scent has instilled in me memories of Jess, the girl who kept this hand sanitizer in both her locker and backpack last year, and made sure she had it everywhere she went. I would always go to her if I ever needed to wash my hands because she was sure to have it with her. I see the face of my friend whenever I use the solution, and it always makes me feel comforted and like she’s a little closer to me, even though in reality she is far away.

Posted by lcismardin at 11:01 PM | Comments (2)

What is my culture?

I have never really thought about what my culture is so this is a hard question to answer. I wouldn’t define my culture by what countries I am descended from because my family has never visited any of these countries or even celebrated any holidays from them. My mom’s side of the family is mostly Irish and English with some Scottish and Welsh mixed in, but I don’t even know where I come from on my dad’s side because he is adopted and we don’t know who his birth parents are. I have always been a practicing Catholic, but I wouldn’t define my culture by that either because honestly, I don’t usually go to church unless I have to.

I feel like my culture is more the town I come from and how my life has been influenced by friends and family. I come from Rye, a small ocean side town in New Hampshire. In the summer, the beach is filled with tourists, but for the most part, it’s one of those small, quiet towns where everyone knows everyone else as well as everyone else’s business. I grew up with my friends by my side every step of the way. We all played on the town soccer and basketball teams together, and we all attended “My Town” parades and town Easter egg hunts every year until we were in junior high. After that, there was nothing to do except hang out at the beach.

I have so many close friends from Rye because there just weren’t many people there and it was hard to branch out because there were so few ways to get to know new people and new cultures. That’s one of the reasons why my family decided to host exchange students. We ended up having three, one from Germany, one from France, and one from Taiwan. That turned out to be an excellent way to share our way of life with people who were totally different from us. I think having that experience really broadened my own culture as well as learning about some different ones, because I was forced to show other people what my life was like and how I lived on a day-to-day basis.

My “dance culture” is something that is also very prominent in my life. I have been dancing nearly my entire life and I have spent so much time at the studio with the same people that we have become life family to each other. My friends from ballet and I have struggled though so many hard times together, not in class or rehearsals, but also in dealing with the breakup of our first company and the destruction of our second. It’s a long story that I won’t get into here, but having spent so much of my life in the same place doing the same thing, I really feel that my dancing is an important part of my individual culture.

Posted by lcismardin at 10:55 PM | Comments (2)

September 08, 2005

Ode to an Orange

First of all, can I just say how intimidated I am by this class? I hope I am really up for the challenge of being in the honors program. I have never though of myself as a very strong writer, so now that I know much this class revovles around writing, I am very nervous about how well I am going to be able to do.

When I was reading Ode to an Orange, it actually made me feel a little strange. I'm not sure how much i like descriptive writing like this. At first it was interesting, but the description seemed to go on for too long and it just became painstaking to read. I remember thinking, "when is this going to be over?". I guess i need something more fast paced for me to enjoy. I can apreciate the style of writing that Woiwode used for this essay, but I guess it's just not my favorite to read.

Posted by lcismardin at 07:37 PM | Comments (4)

September 07, 2005

hi

df'pkba eptjhIj

Posted by lcismardin at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)