Blog #11

Rives: Performance poet, multimedia artist

Storyteller and poet Rives is the star of the new special "Ironic Iconic America." A regular on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, he's the co-host of the upcoming TEDActive simulcast event in Palm Springs. Offstage, Rives designs and writes pop-up books.

Watch the three performances by Rives and discuss which one you liked the best and why.  Hopefully you are making more of a distinction between language and the art of language, and as such, appreciate what modern writers are now doing with poetry and essays.

Respond to me by Friday, Nov. 4th.
Respond to two other classmates by Monday, Nov. 7th

1.) Slam Poem Link: "Mockingbirds"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_remixes_ted2006.html

2.) Slam Poem Link: "If I Controlled the Internet"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_controls_the_internet.html

3.) Definition Essay/Poem (?) Link: "4 in the Morning"

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

While viewing these videos is far more enjoyable than reading them, if for some reason you cannot access these videos on your computer or if you want to read the printed copy, then all three are posted below.


1.) Slam Poem:

"Mockingbirds" by Rives

Mockingbirds are badass.

They are. Mockingbirds -- that's Mimus polyglottos -- are the emcees of the animal kingdom.

They listen and mimic and remix what they like. They rock the mic outside my window every morning. I can hear them sing the sounds of the car alarms like they were songs of spring. I mean, if you can talk it, a mockingbird can squawk it. So check it, I'm going to catch mockingbirds. I'm going to trap mockingbirds all across the nation and put them gently into mason jars like mockingbird Molotov cocktails.

Yeah. And as I drive through a neighborhood, say, where people got-a-lotta, I'll take a mockingbird I caught in a neighborhood where folks ain't got nada and just let it go, you know. Up goes the bird, out come the words, "Juanito, Juanito, viente a comer mi hijo!" Oh, I'm going to be the Johnny Appleseed of sound.

Cruising random city streets, rocking a drop-top Cadillac with a big backseat, packing like 13 brown paper Walmart bags full of loaded mockingbirds, and I'll get everybody.

I'll get the nitwit on the network news saying, "We'll be back in a moment with more on the crisis." I'll get some asshole at a watering hole asking what brand the ice is. I'll get that lady at the laundromat who always seems to know what being nice is. I'll get your postman making dinner plans. I'll get the last time you lied. I'll get, "Baby, just give me the frickin' TV guide." I'll get a lonely, little sentence with real error in it, "Yeah, I guess I could come inside, but only for a minute."

I'll get an ESL class in Chinatown learning, "It's Raining, It's Pouring." I'll put a mockingbird on a late-night train just to get an old man snoring. I'll get your ex-lover telling someone else, "Good morning." I'll get everyone's good mornings. I don't care how you make them. Aloha. Konichiwa. Shalom. Ah-Salam Alaikum. Everybody means everybody, means everybody here. And so maybe I'll build a gilded cage. I'll line the bottom with old notebook pages. Inside it, I will place a mockingbird for -- short explanation, hippie parents.

What does a violin have to do with technology? Where in the world is this world heading? On one end, gold bars -- on the other, an entire planet. We are 12 billion light years from the edge. That's a guess. Space is length and breadth continued indefinitely, but you cannot buy a ticket to travel commercially to space in America because countries are beginning to eat like us, live like us and die like us. You might want to avert your gaze, because that is a newt about to regenerate its limb, and shaking hands spreads more germs than kissing. There's about 10 million phage per job. It's a very strange world inside a nanotube. Women can talk, black men ski, white men build strong buildings, we build strong suns. The surface of the Earth is absolutely riddled with holes, and here we are, right in the middle.

It is the voice of life that calls us to come and learn. When all the little mockingbirds fly away, they're going to sound like the last four days. I will get uptown gurus, downtown teachers, broke-ass artists and dealers, and Filipino preachers, leaf blowers, bartenders, boob-job doctors, hooligans, garbage men, your local Congressmen in the spotlight, guys in the overhead helicopters. Everybody gets heard. Everybody gets this one, honest mockingbird as a witness. And I'm on this. I'm on this until the whole thing spreads, with chat rooms and copycats and moms maybe tucking kids into bed singing, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, wait for the man with the mockingbird."

Yeah. And then come the news crews, and the man-in-the-street interviews, letters to the editor. Everybody asking, just who is responsible for this citywide, nationwide mockingbird cacophony and somebody finally is going to tip the City Council of Monterey, California off to me, and they'll offer me a key to the city. A gold-plated, oversized key to the city and that is all I need, because if I get that, I can unlock the air. I'll listen for what's missing, and I'll put it there.

Thank you, TED.

2.) Slam Poem

“If I Controlled the Internet” by Rives

I wrote this poem after hearing a pretty well-known actress tell a very well-known interviewer on television, "I'm really getting into the Internet lately. I just wish it were more organized." So -- (Laughter) if I controlled the Internet, you could auction your broken heart on eBay, take the money, go to Amazon, buy a phonebook for a country you've never been to, call folks at random until you find someone who flirts really well in a foreign language.

If I were in charge of the Internet, you could Mapquest your lover's mood swings. Hang a left at cranky, right at preoccupied, U-turn on silent treatment, all the way back to tongue kissing and good love, and you could navigate and understand every emotional intersection. Some days, I'm as shallow as a baking pan, but I still stretch miles in all directions. If I owned the Internet, Napster, Monster and Friendster.com would be one big website. That way you could listen to cool music while you pretend to look for a job and you're really just chatting with your pals.

Heck, if I ran the web, you could email dead people.

They would not email you back -- (Laughter) but you'd get an automated reply.

Their name in your inbox -- (Laughter) it's all you wanted anyway. And a message saying, "Hey, it's me. I miss you.

Listen, you'll see being dead is dandy. Now you go back to raising kids and waging peace and craving candy." If I designed the Internet, childhood.com would be a loop of a boy in an orchard, with a ski pole for a sword, trashcan lid for a shield, shouting, "I am the emperor of oranges. I am the emperor of oranges. I am the emperor of oranges." Now follow me, OK?

Grandma.com would be a recipe for biscuits and spit-bath instructions. One, two, three. That links with hotdiggitydog.com. That is my grandfather. They take you to gruff-ex-cop-on-his-fourth-marriage.dad. He forms an attachment to kind-of-ditzy-but-still-sends-ginger-snaps-for-Christmas.mom, who downloads the boy in the orchard, the emperor of oranges, who grows up to be me -- the guy who usually goes too far. So if I were emperor of the Internet, I guess I'd still be mortal, huh? But at that point, I would probably already have the lowest possible mortgage and the most enlarged possible penis -- (Laughter) so I would outlaw spam on my first day in office. I wouldn't need it. I'd be like some kind of Internet genius, and me, I'd like to upgrade to deity and maybe just like that -- pop -- I'd go wireless.

Huh? Maybe Google would hire this. I could zip through your servers and firewalls like a virus until the World Wide Web is as wise, as wild and as organized as I think a modern-day miracle/oracle can get, but, ooh-eee, you want to bet just how whack and un-PC your Mac or PC is going to be when I'm rocking hot shit, hot shot god.net? I guess it's just like life. It is not a question of if you can. It's, do ya? We can interfere with the interface. We can make "You've got Hallelujah" the national anthem of cyberspace every lucky time we log on. You don't say a prayer. You don't write a psalm. You don't chant an om. You send one blessed email to whoever you're thinking of at dah da la dat da dah da la dat dot com.

Thank you, TED.

3.) Definition Essay/Poem (?) (even I'm not sure what to call this)

“4 In the Morning” by Rives

This is a recent comic strip from the Los Angeles Times. The punch line? "On the other hand, I don't have to get up at four every single morning to milk my Labrador." This is a recent cover of New York Magazine. Best hospitals where doctors say they would go for cancer treatment, births, strokes, heart disease, hip replacements, 4 a.m. emergencies. And this is a song medley I put together --

Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become some sort of meme or shorthand? It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour.

A time for inconveniences, mishaps, yearnings. A time for plotting to whack the chief of police, like in this classic scene from "The Godfather." Coppola's script describes these guys as "exhausted in shirt sleeves. It is four in the morning."

A time for even grimmer stuff than that, like autopsies and embalmings in Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits." After the breathtaking green-haired Rosa is murdered, the doctors preserve her with unguents and morticians' paste. They worked until four o'clock

A time for even grimmer stuff than that, like in last April's New Yorker magazine, this short fiction piece by Martin Amis starts out, "On September 11, 2001, he opened his eyes at 4 a.m. in Portland, Maine, and Mohamed Atta's last day began." For a time that I find to be the most placid and uneventful hour of the day, four in the morning sure gets an awful lot of bad press -- across a lot of different media from a lot of big names. And it made me suspicious. I figured, surely some of the most creative artistic minds in the world, really, aren't all defaulting back to this one easy trope like they invented it, right? Could it be there is something more going on here? Something deliberate, something secret, and who got the four in the morning bad rap ball rolling anyway? I say, this guy -- Alberto Giacometti, shown here with some of his sculptures on the Swiss 100 franc note. He did it with this famous piece from the New York Museum of Modern Art. Its title -- "The Palace at Four in the Morning -- 1932. Not just the earliest cryptic reference to four in the morning I can find. I believe that this so-called first surrealist sculpture may provide an incredible key to virtually every artistic depiction of four in the morning to follow it. I call this The Giacometti Code, a TED exclusive. No, feel free to follow along on your Blackberries or your iPhones if you've got them.

It works a little something like -- this is a recent Google search for four in the morning. Results vary, of course. This is pretty typical. The top 10 results yield you four hits for Faron Young's song, "It's Four in the Morning," three hits for Judi Dench's film, "Four in the Morning," one hit for Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Four in the Morning." But what, you may ask, do a Polish poet, a British Dame, a country music hall of famer all have in common besides this totally excellent Google ranking?

Well, let's start with Faron Young -- who was born, incidentally, in 1932.

In 1996, he shot himself in the head on December ninth -- which incidentally is Judi Dench's birthday.

But he didn't die on Dench's birthday. He languished until the following afternoon when he finally succumbed to a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 64 -- which, incidentally, is how old Alberto Giacometti was when he died.

Where was Wislawa Szymborska during all this? She has the world's most absolutely watertight alibi. On that very day, December 10, 1996 while Mr. Four in the Morning, Faron Young, was giving up the ghost in Nashville, Tennessee, Ms. Four in the Morning -- or one of them anyway -- Wislawa Szymborska was in Stockholm, Sweden, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. 100 years to the day after the death of Alfred Nobel himself. Coincidence? No, it's creepy.

Coincidence to me has a much simpler magic. That's like me telling you, "Hey, you know the Nobel Prize was established in 1901, which coincidentally is the same year Alberto Giacometti was born?" No, not everything fits so tidily into the paradigm, but that does not mean there's not something going on at the highest possible levels. In fact there are people in this room who may not want me to show you this clip we're about to see.

Video: We have a tennis court, a swimming pool, a screening room -- You mean if I want pork chops, even in the middle of the night, your guy'll fry them up?

Sure, that's what he's paid for. Now do you need towels, laundry, maids?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- let me see if I got this straight. It is Christmas Day, 4 a.m. There's a rumble in my stomach.

Homer, please.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me see if I got this straight, Matt.

When Homer Simpson needs to imagine the most remote possible moment of not just the clock, but the whole freaking calendar, he comes up with 0400 on the birthday of the Baby Jesus. And no, I don't know how it works into the whole puzzling scheme of things, but obviously, I know a coded message when I see one.

I said, I know a coded message when I see one. And folks, you can buy a copy of Bill Clinton's "My Life" from the bookstore here at TED. Parse it cover to cover for whatever hidden references you want. Or you can go to the Random House website where there is this excerpt. And how far down into it you figure we'll have to scroll to get to the golden ticket? Would you believe, about a dozen paragraphs? This is page 474 on your paperbacks, if you're following along: "Though it was getting better, I still wasn't satisfied with the inaugural address. My speechwriters must have been tearing their hair out because as we worked between one and four in the morning on Inauguration Day, I was still changing it."

Sure you were, because you've prepared your entire life for this historic quadrennial event that just sort of sneaks up on you. And then -- three paragraphs later we get this little beauty: "We went back to Blair House to look at the speech for the last time. It had gotten a lot better since 4 a.m." Well, how could it have? By his own writing, this man was either asleep, at a prayer meeting with Al and Tipper or learning how to launch a nuclear missile out of a suitcase. What happens to American presidents at 0400 on inauguration day? What happened to William Jefferson Clinton? We might not ever know. And I noticed, he's not exactly around here today to face any tough questions.

It could get awkward, right? I mean, after all, this whole business happened on his watch. But if he were here -- he might remind us, as he does in the wrap-up to his fine autobiography, that on this day, Bill Clinton began a journey -- a journey that saw him go on to become the first Democrat president elected to two consecutive terms in decades. In generations. The first since this man, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began his own unprecedented journey way back at his own first election, way back in a simpler time, way back in 1932 -- the year Alberto Giacometti made "The Palace at Four in the Morning." The year, let's remember, that this voice, now departed, first came a-cryin' into this big old crazy world of ours.

Blog #10

Last week's blog was a little depressing so I wanted to share some poetry by Billy Collins, who enjoys poking fun at people and life.

Billy Collins (born William James Collins March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.^[1] He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the New York Times.
Over the years, the U.S. magazine Poetry has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (Wikipedia).

 

Please read or watch the following poem, "Litany" by Billy Collins.  But if you can, I recommend watching Billy Collins perform his poem on the YouTube Video.  Before he reads the poem, he shares with the viewers some of information about the poem.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY

Litany 

                    by Billy Collins

  You are the bread and the knife,

The crystal goblet and the wine...

-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker,

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman's tea cup.

But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife,

not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

Billy Collins is making fun of something.  What do you think it is?  You might want to Google the reference within the poem "-Jacques Crickillon" in order to make sense of the rest of the poem.

Use some of the phrases from the poem to explain what you think the poem is about.  Hint:  It might help to watch the video if you cannot answer this question.

No need to comment back to another person's comment this week.  I hope that you just enjoy the poem(s).  But please comment back to me by Sunday, October, 23rd.

Want to read more of Billy Collins' poems.  Then click on the link below and it will take you to a website that has a recording of the poem "Workshop."  This poem makes fun of student writers who are peer editing each other's poem.  Very funny stuff.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19755

Workshop    

by Billy Collins 

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.

It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now

so immediately the poem has my attention,

like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,

the way they establish this mode of self-pointing

that runs through the whole poem

and tells us that words are food thrown down

on the ground for other words to eat.

I can almost taste the tail of the snake

in its own mouth,

if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,

which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,

but other times seems standoffish,

professorial in the worst sense of the word

like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.

But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,

especially the fourth one.

I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges

which gives me a very clear picture.

And I really like how this drawbridge operator

just appears out of the blue

with his feet up on the iron railing

and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—

a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

Maybe it’s just me,

but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.

I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?

And what’s an obbligato of snow?

Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,

and maybe this is just me,

is the way the scene keeps shifting around.

First, we’re in this big aerodrome

and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,

which makes me think this could be a dream.

Then he takes us into his garden,

the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,

though that’s nice, the coiling hose,

but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.

The rain and the mint green light,

that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?

Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?

There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here

is really two poems, or three, or four,

or possibly none.

But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.

This is where the poem wins me back,

especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.

I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,

but I still love the details he uses

when he’s describing where he lives.

The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,

the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,

the spool of thread for a table.

I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work

night after night collecting all these things

while the people in the house were fast asleep,

and that gives me a very strong feeling,

a very powerful sense of something.

But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.

Maybe that was just me.

Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

Blog #9

The Lost Generation

By Kiersten W., Mason, OH

Oh why have we settled in the unquiet darkness,
where the noise of the silence overwhelms our hearts?
And we fall apart –
the sun sets and it rises –
we make shapes of ourselves no one can see.
Oh why are we lost in these tears
if we’ve forgotten how to cry?
If absence makes the heart grow fonder
can we hold on much longer?
We are burning in a drought of faith,
unnoticing as the stars are earnestly shining,
desperately bleeding light.
Oh how ironically hopeless
is every star’s forgotten fight,
for we are just uselessly drowning
under the weight,
under the honesty of the unspoken.
Oh the noise of the silence overwhelms our hearts.
I believe we are skillfully crafted
inexplicable accidents,
and our hero– the potter –
is too late.

http://teenink.com/poetry/all/article/25352/The-Lost-Generation/ on 7/28/2011.

Sometimes poetry is not about whether we understand it, but how it makes us feel.  Discuss briefly your feelings about the poem by answering the three questions below.  Your Response is Due Friday, October 14th.  Then respond to what two other students said by Monday, October, 17th.
1.) When you read this poem, how did it make you feel?  What words or phrases did the speaker say that triggered those emotions?
2.) Did you see any logic or reasoning behind why the poet feels that the "potter is too late?"  And what connection might the poet be trying to make by using the title "The Lost Generation?"
3.)  And for your own knowledge, the poet is a teen writer and I found the poem posted on an online teen journal.  So, now that you know that the poem reflects someone from your generation, does the speaker of the poem give you more of a reason to reflect on their writing?  If so, why?  If not, then why not?

By answering and reflecting on the above questions, you are utilizing Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle.  Extra Credit: What do you think that Ethos, Logos, and Pathos means?  You may Google the terms or just guess.

Blog #8

   

Prepositions: What are They?

Here Are Enough Prepositions to Drive You Crazy!

Now Click on the link below and read a selection of student authored poems that begin each line of poetry using a preposition.  Because this last week's grammar lesson is about prepositions, your assignment is to write a Preposition Poem and then post it by Friday, September 30th and Respond to two other classmates about their poems by Sunday, October 2nd.

Preposition Poems to Read
http://home.earthlink.net/~jesmith/Prep.poems.html

List of Common Prepostions and an Explanation About Prepositions
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/preposition.htm

Assignment:  Worth 10 Points
Write a poem using a preposition as the first word that begins each line of your poem.  The poem must tell a story or has some kind of theme.  Length of poem is to your discretion.  As a rule of thumb, write until the poem feels complete.

5 Points EXTRA CREDIT to those students who post their poem with a picture or video.

Hint:  Google tinypic website and use this site in order to create a link to a personal photo.  Make sure that you copy/paste the link intended for blogs.

Or find a photo directly online and copy/paste the link associated with the photo.  You may have to select "Full Size Image" in order to copy/paste directly from the web.
Poem is due by Friday, September 30th.
Response to two of your classmates in which you discuss their poem is due by October 2nd.  No credit given if all you say is, "I really like your poem."  So highlight something about the poem's theme or imagery or rhyme scheme if it has one.

Have Fun!!

Blog #7

Localism Overload

By Good. Food. Stories. Contributor | February 17, 2010 |

The Good. Food. Stories. team is extra-pleased to present today’s guest post from Jessie Knadler, a former Manhattan magazine writer and editor who now lives in rural Virginia with her husband, 30-odd chickens, two rambunctious dogs, and a host of farm equipment. Her adventures as a city girl attempting country living are chronicled on her “awesome blog” (her words and our feelings exactly) Rurally Screwed. We’re eagerly awaiting her canning-focused cookbook with co-author Kelly Geary that will be published by Rodale in Spring 2011.

When I first moved from Manhattan to rural Virginia four years ago, I assumed I was saying goodbye to the foodie fascism that had taken hold of the city. I took it as a given I’d never have to overhear two Brooklyn yoga moms prattle on about the virtues of free-range eggs for little Dexter and Elliot or listen to well-meaning friends pester waiters with questions like, “Is this beef really grass-fed?” I was fed up with thinking I too had to define myself by what I ate.

If only I was a little more organic, a little more free-range, steel-cut, Meyer lemon-eating, blah-blah-blah, I’d somehow be a better person. To me, the pursuit of dietary asceticism seemed like just another form of subtle social stratification, right up there with carrying the right handbag, only somehow less shallow, more “real.”

So I was excited at the prospect of moving somewhere where people, I assumed, still ate Slim Jims and where cocktail party food centered around Philadelphia cream cheese in various guises. I thought the most probing food question I’d encounter here was “Does the chicken fried steak come with brown or white gravy?”

Well, this is what happens when a pampered urbanite moves to the middle of nowhere—you quickly realize how provincial and ignorant you really are. Organic piety, I’ve since realized, extends to small-town America as well, to conservative communities where the rebel flag still proudly flies and where 30-somethings don’t think much about living in a cabin or a yurt.

In fact, dietary hysteria is actually worse here than in places like Park Slope or Berkeley because people in my small southern community tend to lead less frenzied lives—there’s less pressure to get your kid into the “right” school, the cost of living is pretty cheap, and people generally live closer to the land since much of the local economy revolves around agriculture and construction.

Rewarding career opportunities, especially for women, are somewhat limited, so a lot of moms end up making the procurement of food—organic, locally grown food—their primary occupation. And some take it to an almost fetishistic degree.

(This chick is now an egg-laying machine)

Here’s one recent example: A couple of months ago, I attended a lunch for which I brought each guest a carton of eggs. (My husband and I have a flock of 30 chickens.) When one of the guests who was refusing to let her five-year-old even eat a Hershey’s Kiss because they’re “poison”—saw my carton of eggs, she hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let me look at them.” She opened the carton, eyeballed the eggs and, in a distinctly withering tone, said, “On second thought, I don’t need any.”

I was offended. I had no idea why she refused my eggs. My flock is clean, they free-range over eight acres, they eat bugs and grass and grubs. I wondered, were my eggs not white enough? Did she refuse them because the carton was Styrofoam and not more eco-friendly cardboard? Or was it because she knew my husband and I supplement our chickens’ diet with—shudder—commercial feed from the farmer’s co-op?

The incident illustrated that food snobbery is not limited to the upwardly mobile in coastal cities, but also to people who live in cabins in the woods. It’s everywhere. There’s no getting away from it. It’s an entrenched part of the national conversation and I keep waiting for the day when it will all kind of go away, like the rollerblade craze of the early ’90s.

This is not to suggest that food awareness—knowing where your food comes from—isn’t important. Every time you turn around, there’s another study linking processed food to obesity, ADD, asthma… the list keeps growing. And the way animals in factory farms are raised is unconscionable at best. It is precisely because I am concerned with these matters that I now have two freezers stocked with three deer, shot for us by our rifle-toting neighbor, plus half a pig and half a cow (both locally raised and butchered, natch.)

(Even deep-friend Twinkies are not off limits from time to time.)

I have a huge garden and can my weight in fruits and vegetables like a deranged pioneering lunatic in the warmer months. My husband brews his own beer. We churn our own ice cream. We bought chickens so we wouldn’t have to eat the watery, jaundiced specimens that pass for eggs at the grocery store.

I’m about as homestead-y as you can get without owning a carpet beater, but I try not to look down my nose about it because the truth is, I still occasionally eat Funyuns. I sometimes eat fried mozzarella sticks dunked in Sysco marinara sauce. I snack on Milk Duds and processed crackers and hoover up the remaining flavor dust residue from my husband’s Roy Rogers French fries.

Even I spotted the food nazi who refused my eggs—the same one who won’t eat ice cream down at the local ice cream parlor because it’s “too full of fillers”—inhaling a plate of chili cheese fries down at the drive-in a few months prior! I’m no Michael Pollan, but I’m pretty sure the cheese on those fries didn’t come from a cow up the road, but a pump. In my mind, that made her refusal of my eggs more a rebuke of me than it was a stand for organically pure ovum. Which is to say, I probably won’t be inviting her to my next potluck.

So this is my gentle plea for 2010: Can we all please stop talking about localism and organic food now? Everyone’s a locavore anymore. (Or those that want to be anyway.) We get it. The eggs are free-range. The meat in the freezer is from a farmer down the road. The fish is sustainably caught. Understood. Here’s a gold star.

I welcome the day when we can all just sit down to the table and take it as a given that what we’re eating is good wholesome, nutritious food without feeling the urge to itemize the sourcing of each dish. You know, sort of like they do in Europe. Besides, odds are, somewhere along the line a Dorito will probably pass your lips.

Answer the following question with a brief paragraph:

1.) What is the point that Jessie Knadler is trying to make within her essay?

2.) Now, in another brief paragraph, identify a particular food or food issue that is exclusive to Kauai and explain why it is exclusive to Kauai.( This should take only 2 or 3 sentences)  Once you indentify that food, then bullet a quick list of things you associate with that food or food issue.

Post your response to me by Friday, September 16th.

Respond to two other classmates about their food item by Sunday, September 18th.

Blog #6

Let's Start Thinking About Our Connection to Food

http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso.html

Click on the link above and watch Reporter Jennifer 8. Lee talk about her hunt for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes while exploring the hidden spots where these two cultures have (so tastily) combined to form a new cuisine.

As you view the video, note the many myths she reveals about Chinese food.  What surprised you the most?  Write a brief comment about that myth in a small paragraph. 

Then, on a different note, write another paragraph about one of your favorite foods.  Next week we are going to begin a series of several writing assignments that will lead to the creation of a cookbook full of recipes connected to personal narratives.  Hopefully by December we are all going to become little "Foodies" where each of us will share and celebrate that one special food that holds our fondest memories.  Yum-Yum!

Your Response to me is due by Friday, September 9th.  Then please comment to two other classmates regarding their response by Sunday, September 11th.

This assignment is worth 6 points.

Blog #5

Happiness

Wayne Coyne - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

As heard on NPR’s Morning Edition, February 26, 2007    http://thisibelieve.org/essay/24791/

 

You can read the essay below or listen to the essay by clicking on the link above.

 Wayne Coyne is a singer and guitarist for The Flaming Lips, an indie-rock band he founded. Coyne believes happiness isn’t a cosmic coincidence, but something we have the power to make within ourselves.

Creating Our Own Happiness

I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside, and I thought, “Life is good.”

Now this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like they came from a thrift store. They weren’t wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because I’d been there.

This couple seemed to be doing their best to keep warm. They were huddled together and I thought to myself, “Oh, those poor people in that punishing wind.”

But then I saw their faces. Yes, they were huddling, but they were also laughing. They looked to be sharing a good joke, and, suddenly, instead of pitying them, I envied them. I thought, “Huh, what’s so funny?” They didn’t seem to notice the wind. They weren’t worried about their clothes. They weren’t looking at my car thinking, “I wish I had that.”

You know how a single moment can feel like an hour? Well, in that moment, I realized I had assumed this couple needed my pity, but they didn’t. I assumed things were all bad for them, but they weren’t and I understood we all have the power to make moments of happiness happen.

Now maybe that’s easy for me to say. I feel lucky to have fans around the world, a house with a roof, and a wife who puts up with me. But I must say I felt this way even when I was working at Long John Silver’s. I worked there for eleven years as a fry cook. When you work at a place that long, you see teenagers coming in on their first dates; then they’re married; then they’re bringing in their kids. You witness whole sections of people’s lives.

In the beginning it seemed like a dead-end job. But at least I had a job. And frankly, it was easy. After two weeks, I knew all I needed to know, and it freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about what my life could become. The first year I worked there, we got robbed. I lay on the floor; I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I stood a chance. But everything turned out all right. A lot of people look at life as a series of miserable tasks but after that, I didn’t.

I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we’re actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for, or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I believe.

Wayne Coyne is singer and guitarist for the Grammy Award-winning rock band, The Flaming Lips. He wrote and directed “Christmas on Mars," a science-fiction film featuring the group. Coyne and his wife, Michelle, a photographer, live in Oklahoma City.

Now read this next essay from This I Believe website and be thinking about what the two essays have in common or how they are different in terms of happiness.

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/8865/   (There is no audio for this essay)

By Aaron - Huntington, West Virginia   (high school author)

Entered on December 2, 2005

                                       Happiness is a Choice

When we are young children, one of the first lessons we are taught is to “play fair”. We are taught to share and treat others as we would like to be treated, “The Golden Rule”. We then expect that if we treat others fairly, we will be treated fairly. As we mature we discover that regardless how fair we treat people, life is not fair. As we confront issues in our lives and realize things are not always just, it is important to have a positive attitude and choose to be happy. While social unjust should not be endured, physical impairments must be accepted to be overcome.

In some way I feel that life has been rather unfair to me from the beginning. I was born with an extreme visually impairment. I use a long cane to travel and read Braille as my preferred school medium. The print textbook for my math class is only one book, while the Braille version is fifty-one bulky volumes. I learned early in my education that I might have to work harder than the other students in certain areas. I tend to have more homework, so when other students are playing video games and watching television, I am doing homework. For years I would complain, “It’s not fair!” to my mother to which she would reply, “Well Aaron–.Life isn’t fair”. Throughout my life I have found this to be true at times, and have accepted it as a fact and moved past it.

I have made the choice to be happy in my life. Although I have much school work to complete, I am able to go to school with my friends and live at home instead of being sent to a school for the blind eight hours away. Instead of looking at the things in my life that get me down, I try to focus on the blessings God has given me. I have been blessed with an excellent memory ability which has aided me in remembering vast amounts of information for my school work. Support from my immediate and extended family as well as friends, teachers, and organizations have been more than one can fathom.

I believe that being happy is a choice you make. I was on the wrestling team at my middle school for three years. Instead of focusing on the fact that I never won a match for the first two years, I enjoyed being part of the team and participating in a sport like the other students. Currently I’m on my high school swim team and perform with the High School Jazz band.

Everyone has times in their lives that are not fair. A broken family, an ill parent, or too little money may make life seem unfair. Having a positive attitude and being thankful for the blessings you are given is the key to being happy. Life is not perfect for anyone. It is only in dealing with the “unfairness” of our lives that enriches the life we live. Sometimes we are the bug, something we are the windshield. Life cannot be perfect. If it were perfect, there would be nothing to live for.

 Respond by Sunday, Sept. 4th. to me where you compare and/or contrast the two essays above IN PARAGRAPH FORMAT.  Then in another paragraph, state your beliefs about happiness. 

1.) Make sure to include at least one direct quote. 

2.) Make sure to reference both of the authors by name when you discuss their views.

Please note that your first paragraph response is not if you agree or disagree with either author.  Your response is to find those things that are similar or different between the two essays.  After you compare the two authors, then you can discuss your feelings on the topic of happiness in a separate paragraph.

This response should be two very well developed paragraphs.  Remember to use transition words and to lead in before you write a direct quote.  Never start a sentence with a direct quote.

This time you do not need to respond to two classmates:>)