Blogs

I have some reflection on the exercise that we took turn to read our Sunday online post in the class today. A lot of us did pictures last week, and we didn’t have a chance to look at them but listened to excerpted words. Nevertheless, I found many of those words very visual and vivid. I felt I saw the objects that were described by listening to the words - the spinning leaves and the deep far sky… And they left me such a deep impression, which I don’t think would have been achieved by reading those words. Because when we read, alphabets are what we first see, and it requires a second process of creating a visual impression. Moreover, I don’t think it is only language (the descriptive words that are being used) that is contributing to deepening an image in my mind. I could not have seen those images if I haven’t experienced them myself. For example I wasn’t able to see the circus rehearsal so vividly because I wasn’t there. My brief reflections are 1) it helps to  grasp a literal idea if I move my eyes off the text from time to time; 2) in this case languages served to record one’s own experience and evoke other’s similar experience and it is more effective if the reader/listener have similar experience.

I found much of what I've read about Alliance and Visions in "Offending Women" to be problematic, but, in both cases, I think what has struck me the most is the idea that motherhood is a reward for good behavior, that the women who are part of these "communities" don't deserve to interact with or parent their children until an overseer tells them so. I think what hits me hardest here is the idea that, once you are marked as an "offender" you are then also branded to be an unfit parent, two labels which don't necessarily go hand in hand. Is it not keeping these women from a full recovery to keep them away from their children, or to tell them that they are not fully able to fulfill a responsibility that they have to their child(ren)? It killed me to read that the women went into the bathroom for hours at a time to calm their child down, to have precious few moments where they could be the mothers that they wanted to be, without the intrusion of administrators. They obviously were not perfect parents (but who is?), but to stop these women in a program with "Mothers" in the title from truly filling that role seems cruel to me. 

I'm a member of a Facebook group for my grade school and someone posted this link to a blog discussing "groundbreaking research on how spending time in nature affects the human brain." Just thought I would share!

It took me three tries to get to my spot today. I sat in the Pembroke arch, watching the rain, waiting for it to let up. Every time I would think the rain had stopped, I would venture tentatively out, hand first and body second. It wasn’t raining heavily, but I had intended to draw. I was determined to find the exact moment in which the rain would pause, allowing me to carry through with my plan. I wanted to defy the rain.

 Finally, after at least fifteen minutes, I realized there was no way I was going to win against the rain. I sat dejectedly on a plastic bag in my spot, feeling rather lost. What now? Is this where the narrative of “man vs nature” emerges? We make plans, but ultimately the rain is a reminder of how little can go according to that plan.

Chief Yellow Lark

"Oh Great Spirit - whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me. I am a man before You, one of Your many children - I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Made my hands respect the things You have made, my ears sharp to hear Your voice. Make me wise, so that I may know the things you have taught my people - the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock."

This clip is from the 1979 documentary, The Secret Life of Plants, directed by Walton Green. I don’t know how I feel about this particular clip (his ideas get more crazy towards the end), but if there is any validity to it, it’s fascinating .

I’m having a hard time getting out of my brain. Call me self-centered, but I have always found that the best way for me to understand something is to apply it to my own experiences. It’s not that I’m not noticing things at my site today- I am. I’ve observed how the colors of the growth around me look duller in the rain. And how browns and oranges are starting to intermingle with greens. I notice the flock of birds that I’ve startled while walking to my spot. But today my mind keeps coming back to one idea.

We talked last class about the possibility that trees are sentient beings. And why not? What if plants can feel things? Can trees communicate? In the most basic chemical way, yes, many can. A forest of Aspen trees is completely connected by hundreds of miles of underground runners. Certain kinds of mushrooms are also one organism, connected underground. Do plants feel emotions like people do? Can they empathize? Do they desire things? I wonder if scientists will ever figure this out. This topic is captivating to me and I would love to learn more about it. 

Unethical?

This is a video that Dan and I watched together while reading though Right To Be Hostile. It's a "Crazy prison riot".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWbxSZ2Nxw

We invite you to consider what this does to people's perceptions of prisoners? And contemplate what goes through our mind when we see a headline that includes the words "prison riot".

http://www.udel.edu/ihrc/conference/earthperfect/

...the cartoon Alison Bechdel drew on the blackboard in the English House lecture hall,
during her Q&A session last Thursday:

among HSBurke -- “Showing each other our cracks and admitting that we don’t have it all together is, in my opinion, something our group needed. Thank you for your honesty--

Michaela --I'm grateful that… you all don't "have it all together" in the way I feared--that everyone else had some intstruction manual for getting through life that I just never picked up on--

and Sara --I think most students at Bryn Mawr feel that everyone else around them is doing better then them… I realized last semester that everyone else felt exactly as I did- behind… like everyone else was flourishing but them. I began to wonder, in this environment that is supposed to be so empowering, why so many students felt so helpless and inadequate…maybe …we are constantly measuring ourselves up to impossible standards; grades that we have imagined for the people that seem to be flourishing --->