December 05, 2005
Chapter 5 Response
Michael Stubbs successfully unpacks the biases surrounding different dialects and accents and begins lifting each item up into the light and re-labeling it. And in doing so he exposes the social values and stereotypes that pervade many cultures, in addition to those he examined in Britain.
I welcomed this recalibration of the linguistic yardstick. Ironically, South Africa, a British colony for many years, adopted similar educational and social values as its imperial motherland and so, growing up, I felt the full weight of the prescriptive (and rather elitist) grammar the author identifies as being behind social stereotyping.
I enjoyed Stubbs’ comment that code switching or style-shifting, as he calls it, “is not reprehensible, implying a chameleon-like fickleness, but a basic sociolinguistic fact about language use all over the world.” I felt that he was giving us permission to be ourselves in every situation when often in the past prescriptive grammars have, in seeking to maintain a constancy of self, paradoxically forced us to deny the fullness of our identity.
I thought this work was really valuable particularly in light of our other readings. It added a great deal to the ‘picture’ since Stubbs details rather alarming findings from various studies conducted in schools where teachers bias towards students’ dialects and accents can have a life-changing impact on students’ experiences.
I was saddened to think that this article, first published in 1976, is still so applicable today and I wonder how we might usher in the ultimate aim Stubbs sets forth of making “more people more tolerant of linguistic diversity.”
~ Nanette
Questions:
- The author observes that “no linguist would nowadays take this prescriptive attitude” but gives many examples of how teachers would. I wonder how we could filter this shift in attitude through the educational institution?
- The author differentiates between accent (as pronunciation) and dialect (as language variety) and speaks of how style-shifts occur in our dialect as we move between different social situations. I wonder, by the same token if it’s possible for us to be multi-accentual?
Posted by lcissavides at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
Chapter 3 Response
I appreciated the candor with which Lisa Delpit wrote No Kinda Sense. I felt a real sense of the complex issues she explained in the article by her sharing her immediate reactions and thoughts to her daughter use of Ebonics.
I thought it interesting that she mentions that outspoken African American critics of the Oakland Policy had "no knowledge of the real policy" and that the New York Times would not allow a rebuttal to the Atlanta's Black Professionals advert be printed. I wish there could be a time when the public arena did hold "fair competitions."
I was interested by Delpit's comments on page 37 about African American's concern over what those in power would think of them since they'd worked for so many years to prove themselves. I'm fascinated by dynamic in oppression where the oppressed almost have to accept the status quo and almost accept some of the ideology in order to try and escape. So even if the principles are absolute values judgements and skewed at best, sometimes you have to accept them in order to overcome them. Or perhaps not. This is what I find fascinating.
I was blown away by the concept that racism hears and doesn't only see. Delpit makes this so clear when she points out that although society may by and large feel it can see beyond skin color, "there are as yet few pockets that can 'listen beyond' language form." This was so true of my viewpoint up until I started traveling and was a foreigner in another country. This made me aware of how layered a concept like racism can be, beyond the obvious. And how it is upheld by different elitest values.
~ Nanette
Questions:
- Delpit did not question the assumption that white english is the standard dialect. I take issue with this and would want to explore that more.
- I'd enjoy spending more time examining the solutions Delpit proposes. I think they are dynamic and the principles could be applied in almost any situation where there is an "other" who is different.
Posted by lcissavides at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)
Thought on language heritage
I had a thought in class just now. We were talking about why it is that our view of our cultural heritage changes and how and why we seem to warm to them after time.
I think this is part of the identity shift immigrants experience that will happen all over the world as long as people emigrate. While the immigrants may be from different places I would vouch that they all similarly want their children to assimilate into the new culture. To embrace and benefit from all their new world has to offer and that they've, invariably, sacrificed a great deal for.
My husband's grandfather, a Cypriot Greek, emigrated to South Africa and did not teach his children Greek. Using his family, other immigrant experiences I've heard, and the comments in class as examples, I believe there is a pattern that in second and third generations immigrants rekindle an interest in the culture and language of their forebears since they are comfortable and assured of their belonging in the new culture but wish to fulfill a deeper sense of connectedness to their history and origins.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2005
An answer to Yasmin's Question
Why is language a "political instrument"?
Language is a primary source of our identity. It is the vehicle by which we remind ourselves, often in the tongue of our forebears, of our past, our experience of the here and now and our hopes and dreams for the future. Language allows us to articulate this deeply personal experience and share it with many. On the surface language common to one sector of a population is a secret code for that sector but more deeply and far more importantly it serves as irrefutable evidence to its speakers and to the broader population, that the speakers are an independent group with a separate common experience and identity. In situations where sectors of the population have had land, and civil and human rights taken from them language is a valuable asset as it is difficult to remove since it is within us. And so in any situation where we seek to communicate a political ideal, reaffirm a common understanding, and convey a message our instrument, language, becomes a political one.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)
James Baldwin Response
Baldwin’s socio-political view of language is revolutionary and recognizes, at its core, how we search for and embrace identity. I find Baldwin’s observations about this need for and achievement of temporal identity astounding as he shows its power and effect in the life of African Americans. He draws a parallel between all languages when he recognizes how language “is the most vivid and crucial key to identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”
Baldwin states that “a language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.” Prior to reading this I thought of language acquisition as inevitably being the result of an innate human ability and had not considered the “brutal necessity” of situations such as slavery and oppression where it is undeniably evident that language, as Baldwin says, “is also a political instrument, means and proof of power.”
As Baldwin described the formation of the “black church,” it occurred to me that the role of religion in the formation of a black American English identity was positive. I find that ironic against the backdrop of colonization and the role religion played in stripping indigenous peoples across the globe of their cultural identity.
Baldwin combines an uncompromising, unpretentious truth telling with an insightfully poignant revelation of life behind the color lines. In his analogy of the mirror in front of which the oppressor “has been frozen for so long” he hints at the damage done to and prison created for not only the oppressed but also for the oppressor. I am left to wonder though if we would not do well to let the mirror smash and allow one another to see the reality across the line.
~ Nanette
Questions:
- Baldwin makes the comment: “black people…created a language that permits the nation its only glimpse of reality.” Is this true and which reality does he speak of?
- Should the oppressed reveal to the oppressor that which they are and risk the “smashing of that mirror,” as Baldwin puts it, “before which he has been frozen for so long”?
- Is a language clearly based on another, a dialect of it? And why is this term viewed as patronizing by the author?
- Is the author inferring something about white Americans when he says “We, the blacks,…are not inarticulate because we are not compelled to defend a morality that we know to be a lie”?
Posted by lcissavides at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2005
Linguistic Profiling URL's
Definition and evolution of the term
Issues affecting African Americans
ABC News guessing ethnicity and race
Stanford & Baugh – Media Mentions article: housing & profiling
Baugh expanding research on linguistic profiling through new website, article
Racial identification of speech, John Baugh article
PDF of an article by Shuy in Georgetown newsletter
Online conversation about linguistic profiling
Color Lines – naming your child
~ Brenna, Brenna, Katie, Rachel, Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 12:18 PM | Comments (4)
Thesis Statement
Syntax is a primary element through which we understand the intention and mood of speech.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2005
MFA Ansel Adams Assignment
The museum is cavernous but warm, active and alive. I feel like it’s a huge creature poised above and over me, its belly littered with the treasures it has swallowed over the eons. Inside the belly of the museum the world is shut out, forgotten. The air smells still and hangs – either just cool or warm enough to be felt as you move through it. Sounds echo as if across time as well as space, in some cases seeming to come from deep within the world caught on canvas. In the corner of my eye a statue stirs and a woman stops; granite rolls to life and flesh solidifies.
I bring my personal and societal assumptions about art as an entity, about museums, about the people in the museum (the staff and the patrons who frequent it), about the artist and artwork, subject matter, medium and the manner in which it is displayed. And of course I bring myself, so I bring my perception of self, which further affects how I perceive and interact with the things I mentioned above and more.
I believe that texture and light were important to Ansel Adams in Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico (1941). He has used the fading light of day and the rising moon to heighten ones sense of the feel of the landscape through texture. The white headstones and crosses in the graveyard stand out in sharp contrast to the darkened landscape and seem connected to the white clouds and moon that stand out against the dark sky. I believe that by abstraction, Adams is using the symbolism of the headstones and crosses to represent our continued connectedness with the natural world, in life and beyond.
In Maynard Dixon (1945 about) the subject, of the same name, sits behind a screen, like that of a porch. The photograph was taken approximately a year before his death and I believe it was important to Ansel Adams that he capture the essence of both who Dixon was at the time and who he had been during his life as an artist. The sun was shining when Adams took the photograph and he uses this with the screen to create a superb effect – Dixon’s face is only visible behind the screen because it is in shadow, the screen itself visible where the sun hits it directly, therefore obscuring what is behind it. The result is that Dixon is portrayed, by what we can see of his face, as a strong man, a man who has seen many years and who has seen them as part of the natural world. However he is also – by what we can’t see behind the screen, bleached out by the sun’s rays – not completely visible to us as if not entirely present or of this world. This sense is heightened by the expression in his face. Whether Adams captured this purposefully – using this abstraction through light and screen because he knew Dixon was soon to die and already passing from this world or because he believed Dixon, a landscape artist in his own right, to be so connected to the earth that he was not entirely separate from it – we do not know. But the effect affects the mood of the photograph greatly and seems to speak an ethereal quality to its otherwise earthy, organic and unpretentious tone.
Ansel Adams was invited to a detention camp at Manzanar for Japanese Americans during the Second World War. He visited and took photographs of the Sierra Navada there between 1943 and 1945. In 1944 he took a photograph entitled Mount Williamson from Manzanar. Although this photograph is a landscape, I also think it serves as an abstract because of its subject matter and location. I don’t believe the two are in any way coincidental. The rocks in the foreground are, I believe, used in symbolic contrast to Mount Williamson in the background. Adams “believed the Japanese-Americans, a nature-loving people, must have been inspired and strengthened by the setting, which gave the people ‘a certain respite from their mood of isolation and concern for the future.’ Adams was impressed by the efforts of the inhabitants to make the camp more livable and functional by creating a Japanese garden, farms, schools, churches (Buddhist, Christian, and Shinto), a playground, and small industries.” (http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum/anseladams/details/mtwilliamson.html, accessed on November 25, 2005). I believe that in this photograph Adams is capturing and highlighting by abstraction, the mood, not only of the natural formations but of the detainees in the camp. I think the photograph represents an amazing symbolism in the rocks of strength and fortitude notwithstanding that the large boulders are dwarfed by the massive mountain in front of which they are strewn but which is softened by a heavenly stream of light symbolizing, it would seem, some hope or cessation of harshness.
Wall Writing, Hornitos, California (1960 about) is fascinating. I believe the image challenges some of our assumptions and ideas about what art is. The image is of graffiti, the writing is layered and so the different names and marks interweave and link to form a pattern. The image appeals to me because I see it as the coincidental art of many different people. I see the whole in Adams’ photograph and can see how he used light, lens and film, framed the subject matter and developed the film in a way that captures the whole and makes it art. I can also see how each individual scrawl is a piece of art in itself and how together they form an artistic whole on a wall in Hornitos that without Adams’ capturing would still be art for those who observed it.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 05:14 PM | Comments (2)
Chapter 11 Language Evolution
In spoken language I believe, relatively speaking, lexicon would be changing fastest. We adapt words and create new ones constantly to describe newly created inventions and procedures, new generations coin new words to give voice to their experience of the world and the connotations of words change constantly, albeit subtly.
Changes in pronunciation may take longer and only be obvious to us, Fromkin says (504), as dialect differences. Fromkin also points out that a speaker’s pronunciation may change without their grammar changing. In other words, while in our lifetime our common use of language may change in the manner that we speak it, our formal understanding of the language does not necessarily alter.
I believe that syntax would take the longest to change because, like our formal understanding of language, it is linked to prescribed grammar and therefore follows certain rules.
Like adults babies learn words and not sentences. They are first able to comprehend the meaning of words and then they begin to try to use these words to communicate. Baby talk is the result of their struggle to correctly pronounce these words. Once they are able to use words they are able to begin stringing them together to form sentences, their use of syntax will be encouraged and regulated informally as they copy the manner in which adults use word order to convey meaning and formally through correction from adults and teachers.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Cultural Myths
I am troubled by the cultural myth played out in both My Fair Lady and Pretty Woman. Both movies are, for their respective eras, heart stoppingly romantic and I know I often get caught up in this and forget to "read" the text and subtext of the movie in the way that our class is teaching us to do. On Wed when we watched excerpts I was struck by the signs, icons, representation etc contained in the movies and what they said about women, women's innate abilities and intelligence, the sex trade, rich men, poor people and love.
I believe and hope that through this class and our whole Simmons education we'll learn to challenge these stereotypes and see not only the truth in the myth but also the untruth.
~ Nanette
P.S. I was thinking on the train that what bother me is that we're able to "read" overt forms of racism, sexism, classism, ageism and act against them. But it's the forms that are subtle and wrapped up in things like romantisism, like these movies, that are hardest to "read." These are often the ones that we as woman perpetuate and that troubles me.
Posted by lcissavides at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2005
Conversational Style
I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor recently. Normally I'm not much of a pauser and half way through the conversation I remembered our assignment and so started pausing and stopped interjecting. The effects were immediate - he started taking his time and talked much more slowly. He paused for long intervals in the middle of a sentence seeming to ponder the very air around him. I think my neighbor enjoyed my not talking! And it definitely changed the nature of the interaction but I was just jumping up and down inside after about 2 minutes and had to excuse myself. I did enjoy the experiment though.
Nanette asked us another question awhile back that I also had the opportunity to explore recently. She asked if people of different cultures use different gestures. And shortly after that a woman, of Indian decent, approached me at the T stop to ask for directions. As she spoke she bobbed her head from side to side in a characteristically Indian fashion and I realized that we do gesture differently based on our cultural norms and that these must indeed lead to some of the stereotypes about different cultures that Nanette was discussing.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Dialect
I grew up in South Africa, in Port Elizabeth which is in the Eastern Cape province. My family's heritage and my education were all steeped in British heritage and so impacted the way I learnt to speak. I also took theatre (Speech and Drama) classes from a young age which naturally had an impact on my awareness of speech sounds. At the same time, the Eastern Cape is not, historically, an intellectual centre in the country but an industrial one and regionally its English speakers are known to have "flatter," more nazalized tones probably assimilated from working alongside speakers of other more guttural languages. I sometimes recognize these tones in my otherwise probably rather uncharacteristically "Standard (British) English" South African English accent. Now that I've been in the US for almost five years I can see a new influence on my dialect - my pronunciation of vowels is often far more relaxed/medial and I assimilate far more.
I think the concept "social group" is entirely on the right track as being the best determinant of our dialects. As social creatures we are naturally adept at immitating and our desire to identify with a particular social group will make us likely to try to talk similarly. For many people, their different social groups are all homogenous but I would pressume that with the efficiency of world travel alone, this is not the case for a growing number of people who are likely to talk differently in their different social climates with, for example, employer & colleagues, close friends, new acquaintences, customers, family, neighbors, and sporting buddies. I am very aware that my accent changes slightly depending on who I am with and for how long and to what extent I feel comfortable with the particular group or to what extent I may wish to integrate or create a positive impression. All these factors have a measurable impact on the way I portray my person verbally.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 01:11 PM | Comments (2)
November 09, 2005
Evaluation
I think Nanette and Ellen were really good at starting the class off at a level that everyone could access. Going over the elementary stuff to make sure that everyone was on the same page. And then pushing us further and starting to go beyond the comfort zone.
I've enjoyed having personal evaluation and feedback in the class particularly from Ellen and Nanette. And I've enjoyed being stimulated in terms of my writing and thinking. I'm learning a lot by process in addition to the actual subject matter (which I also thoroughly enjoy).
I've enjoyed the class participation. This class has given me an opportunity to interact with fellow students in a way that others haven't and I've appreciated that.
It is difficult to keep track of the assignments because there are various types and many with the three yet one class. It is much easier to follow having both handy-dandy dynamic whatchamagoodies on the site but would be still easier if there was one and if it listed as many of the assignments as possible - big ones and small.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
Train Tracks
I nothing know who no-one comes like a knife to steal the life of the crumpled creature
Forever got not I chance ride simply in the train sit
Death in my hand
Everything I know
Posted by lcissavides at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2005
"Live" Debate - what's real?
West Wing is crossing some interesting boundaries in television and it raises some interesting issues that relate to the material we cover in class.
They're having a "live" debate for their program tonight which I suppose means it's like theatre - one live take of a rehearsed script with a live audience but that isn't how it feels because it's being presented in a form that we normally translate as real. In the same way as the images of 9/11 seemed in a gruesome way like images from a movie because that's what we undertood such horrific images on our televisions to be - unreal.
Interestingly, the network has a "LIVE NBC NEWS" logo in the bottom right corner of the screen as they would with a real live debate. And the candidates are debating real current issues - spending & tax cuts, CAFTA, Headstart & schooling, border patrol, healthcare, medicare, prescription drug costs, AIDS in Africa, debt relief etc. And are debating along current - republican and democratic - party lines.
I can't wrap my mind around this new style. Will this affect reality? It relies heavily, surely too heavily, on the viewers literacy and ability to contextualize the material. I wonder if this will change people's opinions of the real political parties? Or is this a good way of getting folk involved in politics by really making it entertainment? Is this coming from a desire we have to explore these issues? Or is this another, new form of campaigning?
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)
Etta Joseph & John Wayne
I've just read the article and agree that it's weird as if the author is trying to prove a point by warping things - literal and figurative, real and imagined. Convention and communication became all fuzzy and unclear. I thought the style - dialogue and then third person chunks - was a clever way to further these ideas. I found it as frustrating to read as it seemed for the reporter to experience - perhaps another ploy on the part of the author.
I remember a quote that theologian Marcus Borg said was attributed to a Native American chief and it can be paraphrased as: I don't know if it happened this way but I know this to be true.
I felt the article might be getting at this.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)
bell hooks's word choice
I didn't see a suitable moment in our recent conversation in class about bell hooks's article In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life to voice a reaction I'd had to the reading and so I thought I'd blog it.
When bell hooks begins to discuss the social and political climate of America and the role and importance photography had for black people here, she repeatedly uses the word "apartheid" (pronounced uh-part-hate). For those who don't know / didn't look it up, it's an Afrikaans (language derived from Dutch and spoken in South Africa) word that describes the state-legislated segregation based on race that occurred in South Africa between about 1948 and 1991.
While I strongly believe that this word should never be allowed to die, lest we forget the atrocity, and should be used to draw attention to similar situations worldwide, I question bell hooks’s use of it in this context.
I presume that bell hooks used the word for the latter reason above – to paint a similar situation with the same brush, drawing a parallel that makes it more explicit. As a South African, though, I see this generalized calling-the-same as possibly taking away from the experience of South Africans of color.
I worry that people who understand the experience of Americans of color might, upon reading this article, equate the American experience of segregation to the experience of South Africans of color. I believe this would stereotype and grossly limit the South African experience and quash South Africans’ ability to articulate it for themselves.
I think there’s great power in realizing our sameness particularly in issues of marginalization, however, I now realize there is a danger too. Sometimes if we share a similar aspect or trait with an oppressed or marginalized group a subtle and often convenient shift can occur and we appropriate their entire experience. We can presume understanding and identify not because we know their situation but because we know ours; the danger then lying in the fact that we no longer need to listen to them because we understand their experience to be the same ours. We no longer need to go beyond ourselves because we define the other in terms of our experience. This can feel good because it reinforces our perceptions, however, it can be extremely harmful for the other because it denies them their’s and is a further marginalization as it reinterprets their experience from our perspective, not via it’s own authentic voice.
I realize that in discussing the “isms” or various oppressions of our societies it is good not to try and counter all the talk of difference with talk of sameness. I proprose to strive for a combination of and balance between the two.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 03:07 PM | Comments (2)
Kodak's new adverts
Kodak has just launched a new advertising campaign and it's FASCINATING in light of what we've been discussing in class and our museum visit. It's everything we understood them to be selling previously but now set in a gallery of all the photos ever taken! And they're go much further in their depiction of what you're really buying.
Here's a description of the TV advert from spirited.net
The advert had a photo gallery curator showing some kids around. It comes to a point in the advert when he gets to kids to stop and listen (like Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society)... it goes something like...
"Listen, can you hear it?" "Hear what?" "They're talking." "Who?" "The pictures." "The pictures are talking?" "What they saying?" "They are saying keep me, ... protect me, ... share me ... and I will live forever."
To see the full length advert visit kodak.com And click on "Explore it now!" at the bottom centre.
Here's another online review from americancopywriter.com
Kodak.com really pulls out all the stops
Everyone knows that what Kodak is really selling isn't just film or even digital imagery. It's immortality. And in their latest commercials, they're not leaving that to your imagination, they spell it right out for you. I was looking for a copy of their latest commercials and came across their microsite. It's pretty cool. And if you "take the tour" once you enter the site, you'll see the very long version of their new TV spots. I'm a sap. I admit it, the video gave me goose bumps and brought a tear to my eye - while sitting at my desk. Here's my question - as creatives, is it really that easy to get that kind of emotional response from the viewer?
I think it's facsinating what deep meanings and fears are tapped by photography and how Kodak has realized this and is capitalizing on it.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 03:05 PM | Comments (7)
Postcard Analysis
My Annie Leibovitz photograph is of Gwyneth Paltrow and her actress mother, Blythe Danner.
Studium: Gwyneth is sitting in front of her mother, both are sitting side on to the camera with their faces turned towards it. Blythe is looking directly into the camera while Gwyneth's gaze is averted downward. Gwyneth is wearing an off-white sleeveless dress, the strap is off her shoulder closest to the camera. Blythe is wearing a black polar neck with long sleeves and both her arms are around Gwyneth's waist with her hands closed over her own wrists. Gwyneth's hands are loosely held - one against her mother's and the other lying open in her lap. Both women have their hair swept back. Their bodies and heads are touching, relaxed against one another. The background is flat and neutral, textured only by the shadow of the soft, warm light in the photograph.
Punctum: I am struck by the way contrast and similarity between the elements in the photograph work together to convey mood and emotion.
Besides knowing that the two women are mother and daughter, I can infer it because their similar position, make-up and hairstyles highlight their similar facial features. From their proximity to one another I can again infer that they are very close family however they are not portrayed as being the same – their attire is very different, Gwyneth is dressed in white exposing a lot of skin, Blythe is dressed in black and showing almost none. They are opposite – two ends of a continuum – mother and daughter.
I think this photograph explores and portrays the mother-daughter bond. The closeness of their bodies, relaxed against one another speaks to me of this relationship. They know one another intimately and trust one another explicitly. Gwyneth is cushioned against Blythe, who dressed in black, seems more solid and secure. These are characteristics I would associate with my mother and mothers in general. Gwyneth is dressed in a color I would associate with youth and purity and the dress looks more frivolous than her mother’s. I get the sense from her dress and posture that Gwyneth is being plain, not standing on ceremony but just relaxing in the safety of her mother’s vigilance and care. She is not looking up and her face is completely relaxed and serene. She has not moved to put the sleeve of her dress back on her shoulder.
By contrast, Blythe looks out at the camera with her head held taking the weight of her daughter's. There is a faint awareness as she focuses on the camera but her stare is somehow blank; she is not responding as strongly to the camera as to Gwyneth whom she holds and so I’m left to feel that while acknowledged I am not part of the moment. There is also a sense of satisfaction in the slightly upturned corners of Blythe’s mouth, a sense in which she knows something or is something to the person she holds that no-one else could ever be.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)
bell hooks & Barthes Readings
I have a love affair with photographs because they can capture and show me the "perfect me" - the me I'd like to be. If they happen to capture a me who I don't want to be, I'm a little petulant and I turn away from them.
I reasoned, particularly after reading bell hooks's experiences, that this fascination comes from my recognizing from an early age that I could own a reality in photographs that might indeed be different from my own. My mother, an artist, took a series of large b&w photographs of me in early childhood that portray me as happy and my surroundings as idyllic although they where anything but. And I lost my childhood surroundings and naïveté with my mother's first divorce. I remember asking to see these photographs in subsequent years and they were one of the first things I appropriated from my mother when I was a teenager.
I thought for a time that I was interested in photography and although I am, I realized that my obsession lay in seeing myself represented in them. On the one hand I’m drawn, like others, to try achieve the perfect toothy smile and posture that accentuates thin or smooth body lines but on the other I’m fascinated by photographs in which I am unaware of the camera and captured as others see me.
Both Barthes and bell hooks are drawn to the photographs that they feel captured the essence of someone they knew and loved deeply. I think I seek to see my own essence captured – to see myself as others do and yet at the same time to try and assure myself that I am the me I wish to be seen as. I wonder if any of these are truly me or whether in 60 years time someone will go through my album and find an unassuming photograph I’d have dismissed and say “there she is!”
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 10:17 AM | Comments (1)
October 30, 2005
Eliza
Eliza is a far cry from the United Star Ship Enterprise's intelligent computer which, of course, is purely fictional.
Eliza is obviously enacting the very word and sentence structure processes we've been discussing in class. And she shows us how much we take forgranted when it comes to our own storage, retrieval and use of langugage - our average command of language is far more dynamic and advanced than hers.
Eliza has obviously been programmed to break sentences down into components - words and phrases. She then prioritizes these, recognizes certain key words and formulates a response to them. I'm not au fait with my parts of speech and so am unsure which Eliza is recognizing although she obviously recognizes more than one sentence type with different key words and yet is flummoxed by others, showing there is a limit to her knowledge.
Both her ability to recognize and form sentences is limited and rather undynamic. It is reminiscent of the wolves who only had a set number of responses they could give when recognizing certain stimuli. Eliza cannot make truly independent decisions, this is obvious in this version of an intelligent program because her recognition programming and responses are very limited.
She is also rather amusing because her responses are also stereotypically therapist-like, showing concern but in a distanced and controlled fashion.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 01:51 PM | Comments (1)
American Splendor / Harvey Pekar
Seeing the words to The Harvey Pekar Name Story was enlightening and somewhat surprising. I'd never imagined that it would actually be filled with so much action and so many different characters.
My perception of the pictures has since changed in that Harvey Pekar is no longer blank and receptive to my imagined narrative. However, I don't think it's ironic that our "words" group came up with a character whose tone and frame of reference are so similar to that of Harvey Pekar's Harvey Pekar.
When I saw the words and pictures together, I imagine a lot of what the "picture" group provided in their rendition - the action and characters that Harvey tell us about. I also imagine Harvey's voice and the feel of him - smell, the way he stands, shuffles his feet - all the things I was not given and could not see in the comic.
Seeing the movie further limited the extent to which I conjured up substantiating material to make the comic "live." I no longer had to imagine the sound of Harvey's voice, I could also see him transitioning in and out of moments and this provided me with information about his attitude, tone and state of being.
I saw the actual real Harvey Pekar for a short time on film and the thing that struck me forcebly was the principle of amplification by simiplification. In both the comic and film versions of Harvey Pekar his inner life and inner voice had been brought to the fore - his whole person was distilled into each narrative about a particular thought, topic, moment - and thus amplified, making him seem larger than life. When I saw the real Harvey Pekar I realized that we ourselves couldn't plug into this inner voice when we met/saw him on the street or in the filing department of the Hospital. I see his sharing the inner voice and life as being the most powerful thing about his comic.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
Camper's Persepolis Review
I thought it fitting stylistically, that Jennifer Camper used comic strips to review Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel. With it’s multiple characters, the review allowed Camper to voice varying opinions on graphic novels, Iran, Muslim women and Satrapi’s books, presenting counter arguments that stated her point by contradiction.
Her review became a meta-comic as she touched on the credibility struggle graphic novels are faced with in different parts of the world.
Camper shows, through her comic review, how through comics an author-artist is able to entertain subject matter simultaneously on multiple levels and because of it’s medium it is accessible to a broad cross section of people.
The review points to how Satrapi, through the telling of a very personal story, has been able, with an authentic voice, to educate readers and shed light that benefits both the reader and those the story concerns.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
East Coast Crash
While getting coffee yesterday I noted that a version of Crash set in the Northeast could have a scene in a Dunkin Donuts store.
Food or coffee rather for thought!
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 09:37 PM | Comments (3)
October 16, 2005
Gage and his behavior changes
I found some very interesting information on Phineas Gage that adds new light to our textbook and conversation. The info is from The Phineas Gage Information Page hosted by the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, Deakin University Australia, http://www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE/Pgstory.htm
The article points out that with the exception of “a very small stock additional facts about Gage” almost everything we know about him was recorded by Dr. John Martyn Harlow, who treated Gage after the accident near Cavendish, Vermont on 13 September 1848 and who examined the skull and tamping iron after exhumation in 1867. He wrote a report of his findings that he delivered to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1868 and in 1869 he published a pamphlet version of his address; unfortunately neither are held in many of the world’s libraries and thus “most of the accounts of Gage’s life after 1848 are strange mixtures of slight fact, considerable fancy, and downright fabrication.”
The article continues: “Harlow says, for example, that Phineas exhibited himself in the larger New England towns and was with Barnum’s in New York for a time. These remarks are frequently elaborated into a Gage who drifts around aimlessly and is not interested in working or, if interested, is incapable of holding a job. During the same period, Phineas is often pictured as exhibiting himself, usually as a freak, in circuses or fairgrounds around the country. Part of this fancy comes from Barnum now most often being remembered as the proprietor of a circus rather than the owner of the New York Museum to which Harlow unmistakably refers. Similarly, these stories turn Gage into a fairground freak because it is in such places that freaks are or were once seen.”
“In fact, from early in 1851 until just before he died nine years later, Gage seems to have worked at the one occupation, although in two places: in Currier’s livery stable and coach business for 1 [and a half years], and in Chile in a similar capacity for nearly seven more. There he clearly drove coaches, probably stage coaches. We know he was barely well enough to do a full day’s work on his parent’s farm until June of 1849, just well enough to travel to Boston in November of that year, and was still described in 1850 as failing in bodily powers. The maximum time he could have travelled around New England or been with Barnum’s Museum would seem to have been about a year. We know nothing about the quality of his work for Currier or when he was in Chile, or to what extent he was able to support himself.”
“Similarly, Gage’s mother told Harlow that he used to make up stories of his adventures to entertain his small nephews and nieces. This fact, together with the attribution to him of behaviours actually shown by some of the 1930’s radical resection patients, seems to be the basis for transforming Gage into an untruthful, short-tempered, psychopathic, braggart. What was written about some of the lobotomised patients is undeniably the source of the descriptions of Gage as careless or unreliable and slovenly in his personal habits, or as having less sexual drive but fewer inhibitions in talking about sex. Harlow mentions neither Gage’s sexual behaviour nor his drinking; nor is any documentation provided by any of those who have written on the matters. The prize for these kinds of fabrications must surely be shared between those accounts that endow him with sexual activity and those that turn him into a drunkard who dies in careless dissipation.”
“Now, what Harlow says may not be completely accurate, and it is clearly influenced by his medical and phrenological ideas, but it is virtually all that we have. The story Harlow tells is tragic enough. It does not need the modern undocumented and contradictory fabrications.”
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2005
Blog Critique of "Nanette's Culture"
The introduction, while perhaps giving a clear indication of how the blog is structured, is not very appealing in its content and doesn’t necessarily draw me in, as the reader. I would definitely change it.
I think my vocabulary is sufficiently varied. I have a tendency to write overly long sentences and so I would double-check this when editing the essay and might also check that my word usage is appreciable to an US audience.
The blog is clearly structured and I think I communicated the ideas well. At the time I realized I was attempting to cover a lot of material and I still question the choices I made in content. Since I am so familiar with the events in my blog it is difficult for me to know whether I’ve given them sufficient context, I certainly attempted to do so.
If I were writing this as an essay specifically for credit I would make an effort to develop a thesis statement that limited the scope of the topic from “Nanette’s Culture” to something more manageable considering the length. I think it’s rather impossible to explain your entire culture, or in the essence of your person, in one or two pages.
All told, I think the blog is a solid one with tone, content and structure, that all say something about my culture.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 06:39 PM | Comments (2)
Mimesis or Social Construction
A clear answer lies in the statement that precedes the question, namely that “representation refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us.” And in the process of creating or giving meaning we are being creative or constructing.
We make a myriad of choices each time we represent and/or interpret language and images. These choices are, by nature, subjective and although a measure of each choice can be said to be objective or denotative, a great deal of each is also connotative.
We don’t, of course, consciously consider and carefully weigh each and every choice we make. By the time we are fluent in a particular language or have learned to use a camera, for example, we would probably consider the choices we make about word/sign choice or camera angle as second nature or even somewhat random. Although, upon reflection, I think we’d all nonetheless agree that they’re still choices we make in relation to our perspective on life, both societal and individual. Even in settings where an attempt at mimesis is made there is still an aspect of social contructionism in how an individual perceives, captures and communicates their idea of reality, which would most likely have differed greatly from another’s.
Ultimately our relentless human pursuit of meaning is intrinsically linked to our continual giving of meaning. And since our giving of meaning implies choice and is dependent on our social context, it is subjective and constructionist.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 03:16 PM | Comments (2)
Epistemology
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (AskOxford.com) also has a nice definition:
The branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2005
Fromkin Chapter 3 Question 2
a) I believe it should be listed as a function word because it is different to verbs like “ask” in use, conjugation and behavior and better suited by definition to function words. Function words or grammatical morphemes are used in relation to the syntax of a sentence they are therefore more constant, skeletal if you like, and are not being added to in the way that content words are. Functions words are therefore considered to be a closed class.
Auxiliary verbs like “to be” have a grammatical function in a sentence and function alongside other verbs like “ask”. They are unlikely to be drastically changed or added to, and so I think it is correct to list auxiliary verbs under function words.
b) I believe that quantifiers are not a closed class but that they can and are being added to. I believe that “mega” might be one such addition by appropriation in recent years. In addition the popular obscenities of the day are often used in place of “very.”
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Tannen Article Thoughts
I thoroughly enjoyed the article because it took apart some of the stereotyped, and often nebulous, ways in which we don’t seem capable of getting communication “right.”
Tannen does a great job, in my opinion, of showing how much of this is has to do with cultural differences and how men and women of the same ethnic group do in fact have different language cultures or styles. She made refreshingly clear connections between these cultures and our manner of expressing and understanding or misunderstanding.
I had to laugh when she explains the way girls and boys learn conversational rituals and says of girls learning to downplay the ways in which one is better than the others that “nobody really takes such modesty literally.” This is so true! There were many other instances in which I felt she was doing a great service to the divide between the sexes.
And although the article was focused on corporate America there were many instances in which I could relate to cross-cultural differences. And some times when both as a foreigner and as a women I realized I fall outside of the norm of either one or both by virtue of my individual make-up.
This was a fascinating reading - I’m glad it was prescribed (I think everyone should have to read it!) and look forward to discussing it in class.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2005
Alfred Leslie Painting
Having read the other blogs I will leave out what I could say about denotation in particular and will endeavor to look for meaning not already mentioned.
Leslie’s work is a still life. In other words it’s an arrangement of everyday objects to which the artist wishes to draw our attention and have us view in a different light. The objects are all, I believe, from the same time period and so I don’t believe that there’s nothing unusual in that sense about them. I think the meaning lies in their mundaness.
I agree with previous bloggers that the artist is saying something about our everyday lives. Further I believe Leslie is speaking about the social constructs or realities we develop because the only “natural” thing in the painting is the moonlit scene. And, even so, it is on a television.
I am interested by the little flap that’s open on the television. These are the tuning knobs (I’m giving my age away) and it seems that someone has just changed or seeks to change the channel. I believe this alludes to a searching for what is real or natural despite how advanced and helpful our inventions and technology are. And even in that I think the artist is saying something about the fact that we seek the natural via technology.
I will stop with that point so others can make additional “new” comments. And a hint - the copy on page 88 of the textbook is much easier to see than the one on the blog.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 09:35 AM | Comments (2)
Seeing Assignment: First Draft
When, in her essay “Seeing,” Annie Dillard writes “But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness,” she is exploring how we both construct and deconstruct what we see.
Dillard is using metaphor to heighten our awareness of sight by comparing it to the way a specialist is trained by years of study and intense interest to pick out specific and detailed elements that others might never even realize exist or contain information worth examining and mounting. These are processes that would take hours of one’s time and certainly great expertise. Through this metaphor she alludes to the complexity of the things we often dismiss as mundane – a drop of water, clouds or stones. The author also, by using the idea of a specialist, plays on the idea of naïvety. Often as children we know full well our ability to construct from anything an absorbing and complex study, we are, it seems, far more aware of the innate possibility contained in every penny. Dillard pointed to this when she illustrates her childhood love of placing pennies on the sidewalk, believing them treasures that fortunate passersby would discover.
The author goes on in the quotation to use herself as a reference for the way as adults we learn to both construct and deconstruct what we see differently, as the author points out earlier in the essay, “who gets excited by a mere penny?” As adults, we separate ourselves from this naïve and visceral experience of the world; in doing so Dillard sees us as cutting ourselves off from experiencing fully the whole of life and any one part of it. She goes further to say that in doing this we numb ourselves to the awe, wonder and ultimately the joy these discoveries and explorations hold.
I believe the author is pointing to the change in visual culture over our life span and is seeking to rebirth in the reader the sense of wonder with the world. A rebirth that would lead to a desire to seek out, by making oneself open and present, in person and spirit, the experiences of the world around one.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 08:36 AM | Comments (2)
September 26, 2005
Question 3
Reading Kana would be affected by left brain damage because this side of our brain is the centre for the ability to understand, interpret and use a language built of symbols that represented syllables as Kana does. The same, left side of our brain is also responsible for our mathematical ability in addition to our comprehension of rhythm and our temporal-order judgments (Fromkin, 41). While the right-hand side of the brain is responsible for pattern matching, spatial orientation and facial recognition (Fromkin, 41), making it possible to understand a language such as Kanji where each symbol represents a word. Therefore were the right brain damaged an individuals ability to comprehend, interpret and use Kanji would be impaired.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2005
Language
What is and what is not language. Why make a distinction?
Language refers to the ability to express oneself in response to both internal and external stimuli and creatively, and is the means by which one can be understood by others who share the same language. As such we learn to recognize, understand and reproduce at will the building blocks that make meaning or that we associate with things and concepts, namely words/signs. We possess the ability to know how our language is constructed, how we string words/signs together to understand and communicate ideas and thoughts, always making new phrases and sentences depending on what we want to express.
Language is not a particular number of expressions or learnt responses that can be elicited only by stimuli either external or internal. While animals clearly communicate and display an often-unexpected ability to learn and comprehend, they do not posses language. They cannot, that we know of, take previously learnt expressions and combine them or develop them to express new ideas. They cannot learn the grammar or structure by which language is built and through which ever-changing thoughts and ideas are conveyed. There is therefore a distinction between this communication and the concept of language.
You might say that you learned a new word today, but not “I learned a new sentence today.” Why?
It is far more probable that someone would say they have learnt a new word. If indeed someone learns a whole sentence, perhaps to imitate a humorous movie character or a role model, they would still have memorized it by learning the combination of the words with which they associate certain meanings.
We associate meaning with words and thereby with sentences. We learn the rules or grammar of our language only once, after which we understand how to combine words into phrases and sentences and can do so without consciously thinking about it.
The beauty of language is that each individual chooses to combine different building blocks – words – to create sentences that express exactly what that person wishes to describe at that time. The ability to combine words into any number of sentences of any length gives us infinite possibilities especially because we are continually adding new words to our language and modifying existing ones.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2005
Optical Illusion
The optical illusion I’ve chosen can be found on the web at: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~roweis/images/optical-illusion-wheels-circles-rotating.png
I thought at first that the movement might be caused because of the colors in the wheels - I know that sets of colors stimulate our cones (color receptor cells) but I’ve since found another site that gives an explanation and also credits the originator of the “Rotating Snake,” Akiyoshi Kitaoka.
You can visit this site at: http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_rotsnake/index.html
So I’ve learnt that illusory movement happens in relation to the movement of ones eye and is not caused by color but by the luminance of the segments of the circles. The direction of the apparent movement is determined by the order of the luminance. And the strength of the illusion is related to the luminance of the background.
Apparently, Gregory & Heard (1983), were the first to describe that asymmetric luminance steps cause illusory movement.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 04:52 PM | Comments (3)
Ode to the creature on my desk
Flat but also round. Here on my island desk and at the same time far away in strange lands. Tall but also short. The Mac on my desk is filled with contradiction.
Smooth and sleek to the touch, it stands beckoning, it’s blank screen rimmed with glossy white Perspex. Its silver neck inclined toward me I run my hand across its surface, which seems neither warm nor cold. I can manipulate its screen to face up or down or to one side, staring blankly like a one-eyed creature that squats on my desk.
Its rotund body is a white ball-base with breathing holes carved in a circle like strange brail around its stiff neck. There are some other indentations – a belly button on-switch. And then my fingers roaming find a row of tentacle arms projecting jelly-like from the edge of its body. They run down out of sight into the murky depths behind my desk only to reappear in nearby places attached to odd shaped buoys. Two are round and float nearby, close to the body, each has circular indentations on the front side rimmed by a rubbery ring like a lip around a shallow crater.
Another tentacle pops into view when I roll the tide back with my keyboard drawer. On it is a long flat vitreous raft, of letters and symbols each printed black on it’s own white key, like rows of swollen seeds. There is a smaller float adrift nearby. It has a white inner body rounded to fit the inside of my hand and is coated with a thick and hard but limpid jelly. When I touch it a spark of red from somewhere deep inside reflects across it’s clear outer coating.
I trace my hands across the raft and as I press down on the letter-seeds my creature comes to life. Driven by the strange lilting melody of my fingers tap, tap-tap, the creature like an all-knowing seer, reveals that for which I long. Messages fished from bottles in the ether-ocean deliver news from around the globe. Loved ones smile back at me from warm places in the sun and from the small craters buoyed nearby in Perspex jelly, I hear familiar sounds that stir my soul. My contradiction: I am at my island desk and yet I’m far away.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 09:20 AM | Comments (17)
September 15, 2005
Nanette's Culture
I believe I predominantly have a societal culture, a familial culture and a personal culture that have all impacted and will continue impacting my being and way of life…
Societally, particularly looking back on my childhood, my culture was probably most impacted by apartheid (correctly pronounced uh-part-hate; it’s an Afrikaans word). Apartheid was a system of segregation institutionalized by a South African government, who were not fairly voted into power (even by the standards of the day), in the late 1940s. It sought to control the South African people, in particular, peoples of color who were marginalized and thereby oppressed and exploited.
Being white, this system did not discriminate against me but the impact of such a system could hardly be positive in the long-run for anyone associated with it. And so South Africans faced a huge challenge. I am proud as I consider that, on the one hand some never gave up the struggle for freedom and that, on the other, somewhere along the road both sides decided to make a change. In 1992 I was old enough to vote for the first time and did so in a national referendum that called for a democratically elected government. Two years later in 1994 while waiting in line to vote, my mother and I stood talking with an 87 year old black man who was voting for the first time. We were humbled and excited. Nelson Mandela was elected president and since then South Africa has been finding a new post-colonial future.
I am always interested to talk with others about this as I continue to examine and explore my past but I think it would have to be another conversation, perhaps over coffee.
Other things that strike me about my societal culture are that despite apartheid, I grew up in close proximity to people of different ethnic groups many of whom speak different languages and practice different religions.
Our country is culturally Christian, white South Africans having descended mainly from puritans who fled Europe much like those who came here to the United States. There was Christian prayer, scripture reading and talk of God in our schools and homes, so I grew up with a Christian worldview and a belief in a living Creator as did my mother even though she always questioned church dogma and has never settled in a congregation.
Our society is a communal one and is also strongly patriarchal which impacted my childhood particularly because my mother divorced my father when I was 4 years old. My mother’s father had died when she was 11 years old. And so combined with my estrangement from my father and paternal grandfather, my upbringing was strongly matriarchal. This is not unlike many other South Africans’ upbringings; women play a pivotal role in our culture but somehow their importance or centrality only makes our society more patriarchal as men seek to maintain or regain some type of control (or perhaps women self efface trying to give the assurance that they’re not “taking over”?)
My mother is an artist and an intelligent, independent thinker. So she has struggled to find her way in our society. I have great respect and admiration for her (also lots of love!). She’s had a huge impact on my life. She taught me to love the earth and all living things because they were created and have a purpose for being here as much as I do. She instilled in me the sense that all people are equal. She taught me to care for the earth, animals and people around me, especially those who have been discarded or hurt. She taught me as many skills as she could and instilled in me the sense that I could do anything I worked at.
All these positives (I like to think I choose to leave the negatives behind) I’ve taken from my upbringing and out of them and my developing personal worldview I’ve developed a personal culture that is sometimes very different compared to my societal and/or familial culture (for example having a gender-inclusive God). I refine this personal culture as I come into contact with others who challenge and question me or whom I admire and wish to emulate. I’m grateful therefore to have been able to travel and live in other places as it exposes me to more people of other cultures.
Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
Thoughts after reading feed
I’ve been dying to blog about feed but have been a substitue parent (for a 10 year old) for a friend who has gone down South to help out, so I’ve been pressed for time!
I thought feed was really clever. The use of metaphor is really central as it’s all about the issues we face today and yet they’ve been exaggerated to highlight them in a grotesque and yet entertaining fashion.
I found the language use really clever too. Made me feel old!
I also really appreciated the author’s ability to speak to deeper or underlying things by the tinges of violence, decay and desperation that seeped in around the pages and story. Just hints that gave you a tangible feeling like a suspicion (I hate that this software doesn’t have spell check!) that made you feel very connected / have a shared experience with the characters.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the novel too (I have to run otherwise I will be late for our class!)…
Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
Shiny new red apple bicycle
Hen and chick we set out. She was being all Geena Davis about Stuart Little. We found our plane on a runway and I was Tobey Maguire on Seabiscuit. The gun went off and we were streaking across a campus in the 70’s. I was Maria on the mountain top in the Sound of Music. Lance Armstrong with his yellow jersey on with the wind Harry Potter after the snitch in my hair. The Titanic had set sail from England. And all of a sudden she was the man in the moon and I was Ron Weasley playing Quidditch. Calvin and Hobbes on a sled. Another one bites the dust and I was Kenny at the end of a South Park episode. But I was also Kenny at the beginning of the next episode. So like Lisa Simpson now. And each time since it’s Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park.
Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 10:22 PM | Comments (1)
September 12, 2005
Display in library
I’m trying to wrap my brain around the term “graphic novels” it adds a lot more meaning to the idea of a comic book. I like it.
So I visited the display in the library last week and one book really caught my eye, I liked what I could glean of the story too. It was called “It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken” by Seth.
This morning I visited again because I wanted to read more of it (there were these recurring scenes in it of the main character feeling alone and seeing everyone in the crowd going by, alone). Anyhow, today it was gone! But another one REALLY caught my eye - Art Spiegelman’s “In the Shadow of No Towers.” What awesome imagery and mixing of different mediums / styles. I’ve since googled him and it seems he’s really big in the graphic novel world - for good reason, I think. I really like the one image about ostriches - it’s got a whole lot of people with their heads stuck in the sand.
I’d love to hear what you think of it…
Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)
My Introduction
Since we’re already into the first week of classes I feel like I have lots to say about other stuff but I thought it’d also be good to go back to the beginning and blog an introduction with the two things Ellen and Nanette asked for…
I see my husband, Steven, each day and I truly value him. Meeting him was part of a big personal revolution in my life and I’m grateful for the uprising! I’ve claimed a lot for myself in the last 7 years and Simmons is a final cornerstone in what I hope will finally make a rock-solid personal foundation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the second thing - what someone said that changed me in some way. There are many things and not all of them have been good! And I’ve been nervous about blogging because it’s so “you just put it out there” that I think I’m going to err on the fluff side of truthful!
I read an Eleanor Roosevelt quote in a magazing in a store some time back and it summed up a lot of what I’d realized (and learnt) about life: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
What a good way to end my first blog!?!
Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)