Tin Kettle Inn

Dear John,

2009-11-07T19:04:00.000-08:00

I have to break up with you because you never share your feelings with me , and because you've stopped taking me to Mars. But let's keep studying together.

Your Pal.

2009-10-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

It hasn't gone to my head, but I can't stop thinking about it.

Donne of my Heart

2009-10-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

Professor Dowling says that if I ever meet a man who views love in this manner, I am to marry him straight away. Poets really know everything about life, science and sex. I've fallen for John Donne's poetry.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

This is the Guy Your Mother Always Warned You About

2009-10-19T04:41:00.000-07:00

Andrew Marvell. 1621–1678

357. To His Coy Mistress

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side	5
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.	10
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,	15
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.	20
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,	25
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:	30
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires	35
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.	40
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun	45
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Anne Frank Video

2009-10-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Anne Frank House has posted the only known footage of Anne Frank. She's looking out the window at the Wedding celebration going on beneath her.

2009-09-30T21:29:00.001-07:00

Two articles written and published. Only six more to become a correspondent. I'm not sure why I have a need to write for The Daily Targum; I hate how the articles have to be structured.

A Post!

2009-09-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

The following needs careful research and serious workshopping, but I do think it is a worthy skeleton. It's funny, I feel this narrative in my bones, and once I put my pen to paper, these words came emanating from them.

Here goes.....

Your back is flat against the ground with your legs bent into a tee-pee beneath you. You look at your ashy knees forming a horizon against the sky. The sky isn't blue, rather it's a blazing egg-white shade that seems to have sunlight dispersed throughout it so that it glares.

Your Mama doesn't like you sitting out in the sun for long periods of time; she doesn't like you sun bathing since your skin is already as black as jet which, in India, denotes that you're a member of the lower castes, a poor village woman who labors hours in the fields making dung cakes; walking seven miles back and forth to fetch water and wash clothes. You were not a member of this caste when you lived in India. Your family - you, your mama and papa - lived a comfortable life, making enough money to hire a maid to help your mama perform her household duties on select weekdays. It was an insult to your parents whenever you were mistaken for a member of a caste beneath you.

Your mama doesn't know how your skin got so dark. Your papa says it must come from your mother's side, and your mama nods in agreement when your papa is present, but when your mama comments on the pigment of your skin in your papa's absence, she always says, "must come from your father's side.

In your culture you understand that a person with lighter skin is thought to, and generally is, be a member of a higher, more prominent caste, but you also feel there are other visual cues to reveal what caste a person is really from. Although your skin is black, you never dressed like a poor villager, and this, alone, should have indicated what caste you belong to. Your mama would never understand this. She takes great care to make sure you don't get any darker.

Vanessa, your closest and dearest friend, who also lives in the condominiums, suns herself religiously every Saturday. For Vanessa, missing even one Saturday of sun bathing would be the equivalent of a devoted Roman Catholic missing mass on Sunday.

Vanessa is not only your friend, but she is your entry into a culture that is foreign to you. Having a white girl as your friend helps you associate with other white girls, and even white guys. You are an outsider in white suburbia: you're not white, that's one count against you.

You also attend Wells County's Preparatory High School - with the town's rich, posh teens and preteens - where fitting in and having friends is crucial for survival.

Next to Vanessa you look like blackness itself. Vanessa envies your dark skin and is frustrated that her skin never achieves anything darker than a cocoa creme shade.

Vanessa is white, but not pale. She has mahogany hair that frames her angular face, and big breasts she likes to accentuate in bikini tops and push-up bras. You envy her for her breasts.

She turns onto her stomach once she's done on that side. She's basted herself in so much tanning oil that you're certain her skin will be crisp like a roast chicken's.

You watch her long body sweat in the heat. Her curves are waves that want to break on the shore, but are constrained by bikini straps. When her bikini top shifts slightly, you can see the white flesh the sun never reaches. There isn't a big contrast between the shades of her skin, it's more like a butterscotch-vanilla swirl pudding where the two shades bleed into one another. You stare at your friend, in a bikini, with desire, and you wonder if your body would look as good in one. Probably not.

You're lanky and scrawny and black. All black, there's no mixture or bleeding of shades. Your hair is black. Long, black and shapeless, and it doesn't frame your face like Vanessa's frames hers. The only difference in shade your skin has is the pink flesh of your hands and the bottoms of your feet. And your eyes are a glaring white that appear to be floating in a cave.

But Vanessa and the other girls envy your deep skin. "It makes you so mysterious," Vanessa says, so how can you hate it? You have something these girls want, and it makes you feel powerful. In India, it's abhorred, unwanted, but here in America, in Wells County, it's desired. And so, you want to be black. It's your difference that helps you fit in, and this amuses you.

It's because you're exotic. You're marveled at because you come from another world, another culture that clashes with the Occident you've stepped into. You prefer the connotations your blackness bears in Wells County than those it carries in your homeland.

"Mehak, you've been out there for fifteen minutes, you're going to char if you stay out there another minute," your mama calls to you from the living room window of your condo.

You know you can't ignore her, can't pretend that you didn't hear her because you'd have to be deaf not to, and even that's debatable. Your mama doesn't just yell or bellow, but she blows like a fog horn.

"Geez, MJ, I guess you better go," Vanessa said, turning on her side and shading her eyes from the sun with her hand so she can see you.

"Yes, I should," you reply, "I'll talk to you later. How long are you going to be out here?"

"Just an hour or so. Don't want to fry."

You fold up your beach towel and walk up the hill to your condo. Your mama has left the window and has gone back to the kitchen to prepare lunch for you and your papa.

Acrostic II

2009-09-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

My mask is

A room with a view.

Shy is the face that is

Kept in disguise.

This Turned Ridiculous Very Fast

2009-09-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

To turn iPod Disk mode off:

1. Toggle the hold switch on and off

2. Press and Hold the Select and the Menu button for more than ten seconds

3. The normal selection screen should appear, your iPod is out of Disk mode.

Acrostic

2009-09-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Oh professor,

Could you please call on me?

Two days it's been since you last asked for my

Opinion on the readings.

Punctual, I always am, and never

Unprepared. I'm in the front row, first

Seat, you cannot deny my raised hand.

Introduction to My Manifesto

2009-09-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

I have never particularly thought of myself as a woman, I think I've just tried to assimilate, to become a member of a gender I don't feel connected to. I don't really think of myself as a woman or a man, but as a human. Yes, I think myself human. My emotions, desires, fears, likes, dislikes, they are all human.

Men and women are not separate species, so it's silly to deem things as being masculine or feminine. I believe that women generally have to work twice as hard as men to be taken seriously or to reach a position commonly thought to be held by a man; a woman has to prove herself. However, I do not know this first hand. While I'm aware that women can often be treated as second-class citizens, I have never felt handicapped by my sex.

Just because I've never been sexually discriminated against, that I know of, it does not mean that it doesn't happen, that feminism isn't still needed. (Though, I do prefer the term humanism because it stands for equality, period.) The women who typically feel handicapped don't just feel this way because they are women, but race and class generally factor in. Since I am a white woman, I am privileged and I've never felt that my sex matters, but I'm sure that a black woman has a very different story to tell.

I say that I am human. I'm happy with who I am, so I'm happy being a woman, but I don't want my gender to be a defining characteristic of myself. I'm interested in feminism and women's and gender studies because I believe in empowering women, in raising up an oppressed group and that women are the windows into the interior of every culture. A culture is often judged based on the treatment of its women. I also believe in feminism, what true feminism stands for: equality for men, women and children, and improving society.

2009-09-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

This picture and the foam in my coke were the highlights of my day.

They Taste Like Chick Peas

2009-09-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1920290,00.html

2009-09-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

My world is a poem,
its cultural language being
simile and metaphor.

Nothing is literal,
or taken literally:
the heart speaks,
eyes caress,
fingers unfurl

and everything is
a comparison
inside this symbolic language:
love is like candy -
it's not good for you,
but you still want it
in excess.
then after, you have
empty wrappers
and a stomach ache.

to understand the
religion, practices and
customs of my world,
you must forget your
own world,
and consider the speaker
in mine.

in the poem
the speaker is someone other
than myself,
for I am merely the author,
a voyeur to the world.

many times,
I'm the audience
or the cultural anthropologist
looking for a looking glass
so that I may see inside.

my voice is the only
real inhabitant,
only it isn't my voice,
it's the speaker's voice,
and I am not the speaker.

I hear and see
with my mouth sewn shut,
for that's the only way
we can really understand
and immerse ourselves
into other worlds,
after stepping outside
of our own.

my world is a poem,
but it's not my poem.
the poem, that, belongs
to the speaker.

Is it clear?

2009-09-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

I realize I have fallen out of the habit of reading other people's blogs. This is selfish of me, and I'm beginning to miss some of the connections I've made. Right now I only have time to really journal, but I hope to reestablish myself as a legitimate blogger again soon.

Tin Kettle Inn

Empty Nest Syndrome

2009-09-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

The business suit he layed out on his bed,
for work on Monday morning,
still lays there
empty, without form.

She didn't hang it in the closet
until the morning of his funeral,
where it's now forever lynched on a hanger,
empty, without form.

She was underwhelmed.
She couldn't help remembering October,
six years ago,
and how he made a cocoon
out of his jacket
to shield himself from the cold.

She agreed to that proposal
when she smiled at him on the street.
She couldn't help it,
for the leaves imitated him in such a way
that it brought a curve of delight to her lips,
that extended to her eyes the moment
they met his.

The moment a small something
died within her.
She does not mourn for it,
that is one refusal love has taught her.

Into the grave she stared,
up from the grave he gaped,
and one of them was gone forever,
an army minus one.

The shape of the man she knew,
who possessed her,
is already fading.
Soon the bed will be
totally empty, without form.
She'll be alone.

Pharmakon and It's Implications

2009-09-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

Pharmakon is both a poison and a remedy. It is interpreted and reinterpreted within perceivable time, causing it to have different definitions based on the way it is interpreted by the concrete individual. Vision comes from the interpretation of images, which are universals that are able to be sensed in Plato's world of the senses. There is a thin line between reality and senses, a line that the pharmakon is able to transgress because it is neither a form or universal. Pharmakon is a redoubling. It works to emit a surrogate or an image of an actual object. The danger lies in the surrogate being interpreted as the actual form by the individual because the individual is unable to sense the possibility of a property existing in more than one place at one time, a problem encountered with the pharmakon. In today's society, uban artforms such as graffiti, and skateboarding act as pharmakons because they are considered both obscene and desirable within the culture. Based on interpretation, these Forms can be viewed as either social disturbances or a form of expression and freedom. I wish to convey how these urban artforms function as pharmakons according to Plato's definition. First I will make a statement about the pharmakon, explaining how it is interpreted and presented within his work the Phaedrus, where Socrates refers to writing as pharmakon.

In the Phaedrus, Plato presents us with a conversation between Theuth, the father of writing, and The King who is considered the father of speech. Theuth presents The King with the "remedy" of writing, saying "Here, O King, is a discipline that will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories: both memory and instruction have found their remedy." To stress the power of writing, Theuth presents the pharmakon as a functioning remedy, countering the opposite meaning of "poison," and depleting the ambiguity of the word. Instead of being harmful, pharmakon is a medicine that is beneficial to the body, as it will improve memory. The King, however, reverses the presupposed effect of the pharmakon. He refuses Theuth's remedy, suggesting that he "has exhibited the reverse of the true effects of writing." (Dissemination 97) Theuth has supposedly interrupted the two opposites by trying to pass a poison off as a remedy. The King's objection to writing is that it makes one more forgetful by diminishing knowledge. The King says to Theuth that anyone who learns writing won't have to exercise their memory because they would be able to rely on the written word, "using the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves rather than, from within, their own unaided powers to call things to mind." (Phaedrus) He claims that the remedy is not one for memory, but merely for reminding, not really teaching anyone the truth but only filling them with the conceit of wisdom, the supplement to having actual wisdom.

Graffiti was born in the slums. It is believed to be a response to political conditions and the oppression of the people within the area as urban planning and architecture created barriers representing "dominant discourses and reproducing structures for control and surveillance." (Appel, Valeria) Messages, names and images were written on street signs, lights, and billboards within neighborhoods to show that their existence was acknowledged in the city. "Writers" are viewed by authority as delinquents, as they interpret graffiti to be an act of rebellion that isn't consciously tied to a particular end or movement for expression, but rather that it exists and is done out of its own gesture, serving no other purpose apart from its visibility.

A question of "space" comes into play, the space in which the graffiti, or 'tagging' as it is termed, is done. Graffiti writers believe that their work signifies public space or "democratic space" that is free to everyone. Tagging suggests that the city should either be deemed private or open for everyone to freely express themselves no matter what the form of expression may be. The city "mirrors social, economic and cultural forces in its organization and architecture." The definition of the surface on which graffiti is done actually shapes how society views graffiti. Graffiti can be interpreted as an illegal action if it is done on private space. Graffiti is the form, while its being deemed as illegal is a universal because it is a property of graffiti that defines it. The surface on which graffiti is done acts as the boundary between the form and the property. Graffiti transgresses this line because it is written on a surface without permission.

The writing physically transgresses the property of an individual, "but the property owning other, as a distinct and concrete individual, is an unknown other." It transgresses the law of ownership since the property is not that of the writers. The power of this law defines the surface's status. Property becomes private if someone enforces this law, whether it's the authorities or the property owner. This writing therefore, takes place in the absence of speech or the voice of authority which Plato advocates over writing. Plato views writing as a mimic of both memory and speech, and is therefore not true but merely a shadow of speech which encases true knowledge. The Authority, in this case, speaks this knowledge as the law is the logos that has to be abided because it speaks the truth.

Within society graffiti can also be interpreted as an art form. Tags originally became visible in the area where the graffiti writer lived, making him a local celebrity because he became recognized by everyone who saw it. The neighborhood functioned as a boundary separating the graffiti writer from the outside, dominant culture. Since graffiti is a pharmakon, it has the ability to transgress this boundary, spreading beyond the area which the writer marked as his territory. Tags spreading beyond the district boundaries meant that the writer had achieved fame and became someone as writing in surroundings unknown to the writer may make him famous, but it does not make him identifiable. Graffiti writers use public space for exposure hoping their writing becomes a public issue and a spectacle so the public will take notice. Writers redesign the alphabet in different styles, fonts, colors and sizes to make it stand out, though to the average citizen, the markings appear to be an alien language.

Graffiti writers need an audience in order to achieve fame. Members of the subculture claim it to be a celebration of the self, as many artists view their work, and they look for structures they can use as canvas. Walls are commonplace for graffiti to be found, acting as symbols of spatial introversion, contention and fortress-like constructions; it is a shared public space that is constantly "re-coded" or "re-territorialized." Writers use public space because they want to be seen. Visibility is key to become famous because vision is interpretation, whether it is seen as defacing or expression, it first has to be in the public eye, where an image can be emitted to sight.

Ownership of public space becomes a very important question. Graffiti came to be known as unauthorized public writing because it was felt that the practice obstructed social order and also worked the city budgets to full capacity as all the money had to be put towards funding workers to clean off the paint. Graffiti is often thought to "contest the semiology of the city" by challenging the values that help to preserve the status quo. Some structures are cleaned, therefore, because the ideology expressed within the messages written on the surface are threatening, making cleanliness an imperative matter. At the same time, though, cleaning the graffiti annihilates messages which transgress the more standard form of communication. While some view it as contaminating public space, others believe that graffiti recreates the space, providing alternative meanings through publicly displaying closed discourse. Jacques Derrida notes that "in this undecideability, in this non-substance and non-locality, the pharmakon places itself outside of the dialectical system and opens a labyrinth or an abyss. This does not turn pharmakon into a transcendental. It is not above the play of delay and difference, rather it is permeated by these. Pharmakon is not the name for the other, but the place where the other is evoked."

Since graffiti is illegal it transgresses a general taboo, making it heterogenous. It is excluded from the public sphere except for in places where it is thought to be somewhat socially acceptable. It is an unproductive excess because it has no utilitarian value, so the renown the writer receives comes from the risk involved. The risk emulates from reclaiming the public sphere, making it a domain for everyone's expression, but identifying graffiti as self-expression is locating the act within the idealism of there being a "concrete self." Graffiti really holds no position wihtin art, and isn't viewed in an aesthetic manner by anyone other than the subculture which produces it. This reintroduces the fact that the act of graffiti writing is a sovereign one, serving no other end than itself and "being where it should not be," rendering it "unseeable in any aesthetic particularity."

Skateboarding is a sport or recreational activity that often finds itself excluded from the public sphere and is designated to areas that have been defined as proper landscapes for skateboarding. Skateboarding isn't illegal like graffiti, but it is carefully regulated for the sake of the public domain as it is often considered a disturbance, obstructing the peace of the public. The subculture as a pharmakon actually began as one that was both feared and loathed, viewed by the public as both predator and prey. Those who interpreted skateboarders as "predators" feared them because of their hardcore punk "appearance" - their clothing and the music they listened to. At the time they were feared they were also hated because they were a minority that refused to conform to the mainstream culture of the time.

Although Skateboarders no longer constitute the minority, the activity is still regulated because it appears tough and appears to be an obstruction of peace. Areas to partake in skateboarding are hard to come by. The question of space once again comes into play, as the main objection to skateboarding is where it can be done. Private property is prohibited unless permission is granted by the owner, so to skateboard on private property would be acting in the absence of speech. A lot of public property is also prohibited to skateboarders, as signs that say "No Skateboarding" are made visible in certain areas of public domain. Skateboarding, unlike graffiti, itself is not opposed to the presence that enforces logos, it can only be so if it defies the law of the property-owning class. As a pharmakon it is not interpreted to be a poison, but perhaps only obscene.

However, because there are limited spaces available for skateboarding, finding a place to partake in it can be difficult. Skaters actually find the hunt for a desirable spot to be an intricate part of the culture. Through networking and urban exploration, skaters try to find places to skate that aren't popular. The fewer people a particular place has, the more desirable an area is for skating. The once criminal, outlaw culture has become more legitamized. Skateboarding's inclusion in the X Games, being perfected by Tony Hawk, has increased its popularity, as it is now publicized as a sport. The appearance of the culture maintains little value because it is the action that is the focus of the subculture, while clothing and music are only properties of the culture; "skateboarding is something you do, not something you wear."

Pharmakon can be interpreted to mean any of the following: remedy, poison, philter, drug, recipe, charm, medicine, substance, spell, artificial color and paint. According to Plato's Theory of the Forms, the Form always remains the same while the appearance or image that is transmitted from it is constantly changing because it flows in an uninterrupted stream from all directions at all times. The appearances of graffiti and skateboarding are properties of what it actually is, but society's interpretation of these urban artforms is often mistaken for what they actually are. The ambiguity of the activities makes them difficult to translate, since bad ambiguity is opposed to good ambiguity and vice versa. Although it remains undecidable whether these activities are "poison" or "remedy," their forms remain intact.

The Forecast

2009-09-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

Currently Speaking: Arabic
Something New: My hair color, blue-black
Currently Reading: Frankenstein
Currently Smelling: Fresh linen
Currently Listening to: The symphony of Philip Glass and outside traffic
Currently Writing: poetry
Currently Working on: My Pensa for Literary Study & my poetry anthology for submission
Currently Wishing: I gave myself time before my morning class to eat breakfast so I didn't have to push it off until 9:30 pm; hunger is a savage beast

I think this semester will be chaotic, but also splendid.

William C. Dowling: What a Guy!

2009-09-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

This is the section on cheating and plagiarism from my Principles of Literary Study's syllabus.

"For the record, then: I regard both cheating and plagiarism as utterly destructive values that sustain professors and students in the enterprise of higher learning. In my view, there is no such thing as a "small" incident of cheating - e.g., copying "just one" answer from a classmate's quiz - or plagiarism - e.g., stealing "just one" phrase or sentence from someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. It's sort of like stealing money from the wallet of a friend. If you get caught and argue that you "only" took $20 instead of $50 or $100, it's clear that you understand nothing about the nature of trust between or among friends. It isn't the amount. It's the stealing.

Rutgers has its rules about cheating. I leave those rules up to the Dean's office when I turn a student in. My rule is that I ask a student who cheats or plagiarizes to withdraw from my class, and never to take another class with me."

Dowling explains it best.

This Way or That

2009-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote two haikus this morning, and I've arranged them in various ways, but I'm not sure which variation is the most effective.

Here's what I first wrote:
blue sock, no partner
its match lost in the drier
an orphan cries without a mother

But this one feels out of sorts, so I rearranged it so that the image of the lone, blue sock was at the end of the poem:
an orphan cries without a mother
blue sock, no partner
its match lost in the drier

I like both, but I need to know which variation is the most effective, which one evokes the most feeling.

Then, there's this one:

rain at the window
familiar yet foreign
an unspoken language

Variation #1:
an unspoken language
the rain at my window
familiar yet foreign

Variation #2:
an unspoken language
so familiar yet foreign
the rain at my window

My gut isn't telling me which one is right; I can only hear it churning acid.

A Haiku for a Morning Rainstorm

2009-08-28T08:42:00.001-07:00

the round pool next door
an African drum
in the morning storm

Glimmering Thought: Religion

2009-08-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

All religion is one, separated only by cultural interpretation and practice.

Cock-a-doodle-doo, and Syrup Too

2009-08-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Aunt Portia,

I can't thank you enough for the maple syrup dispenser shaped like a rooster; truly, it is one of the better birthday presents I received.

Upon opening the present, I was overcome with so much joy that I wished we had a maple tree growing in the backyard so that I could tap the bark for delicious, thick, rich sap to flow down into the dispenser to be housed until Saturday morning when Mother usually makes pancakes. Yes, if only I had a maple tree to provide fresh maple syrup to be kept in my maple syrup rooster dispenser, but they are difficult to come by in New Jersey. (Maybe I can get a maple tree for my next birthday. It is, afterall, the big "2-1.")

So I settled for taking Log Cabin syrup, in the cabin shaped bottle, from the cabinet, and pouring that into the new, rooster-shaped maple syrup dispenser you sent me for my birthday.

Why, on the Saturday morning following my birthday, as soon as the first pancake hit the skillet, I swear I could hear the rooster crowing. He's a proud little rooster, really, and ready to serve. His chest sticks out in confidence; he's confident that he can dispense syrup like starlight.

The rooster maple syrup dispenser really enhanced our pancake eating experience. We happily passed it around the table, each of us cock-a-doodle-doing when we angled it to drop syrup out of the rooster's beak.

Yes, I'd say that the rooster is a charming addition to Saturday morning breakfast.

Thank you, Aunt Portia. Thank you for making my birthday so very special.

Sincerely,
Tin Kettle Inn

Berries

2009-08-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

I.
berry of straw
berry of blue
berry of rasp
berry of cran

each taste is luscious
each scent is perfume
each one is a treasure
waiting to be found.

juice unlocks desire,
it taps the senses:
hear it swooshing,
taste it dancing,
feel it gliding,
see it gone.

behind, left are stains:
polish on fingers,
polka-dots on shirts,
of red, mahogany and blue.

II.
oh, the berry tasted like Paris!

its juice danced on my tongue

and I swished it about like mouthwash

or a Frenchman savoring a fine wine.

something this delicious

must be a sin.

why, Eve lusted after the wrong fruit,

for berries are the real purveyors of knowledge.

Before swallowing, I whispered,

"We'll always have Paris."

Dear God

2009-08-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

http://picturespoetryprose.blogspot.com/2009/08/single-prayer.html

To whom it concerns,

I haven't decided whether there's one God or several, whether you're just some cosmic force, a breeze in the trees or the man sitting next to me on the bus. So, I don't know how to address this letter; don't want to offend. I thought, perhaps, God(s) would suffice, but maybe you aren't actually called 'God,' so 'To Whom it Concerns' seems the appropriate salutation.

You know that my prayers aren't frequent. In the past, I've sought you out only when I needed something, when things felt out of control or when I needed you to take care of someone I love. I was selfish then, and my faith was blind. I suppose I thought that prayer was all about taking, about relinquishing control. My prayers never expressed gratitude or thanks, they only asked you to take care of something for me, which was my subconscious way of freeing myself from all responsibility and casting it onto you, my scapegoat.

Looking back, many of my prayers were more like threats meant to put you in a position where it was impossible to bargain with me, to try and be the voice of reason. "If you don't make this happen, God, then I'll never believe in you again." Maybe I thought this extreme statement would make it imperative for you to answer my prayer.In my young life, I somehow confused prayers with wishes to be granted. I knew I had free will, but I also believed that God could intervene in our daily lives, that he could make things happen. It makes life easier, more beautiful, somehow, thinking that you can give me my way.

God, I wish that there weren't wars over you, only they aren't really over you, but they are about you. They're over which interpretation, which religion is right. This may be presumptuous of me, but I don't think you agree or believe in organized religion. I certainly don't think you favor a particular religion over another. No, I think you probably hang your head in sorrow when you see people battling, when you see that true faith and belief is lost, and religion has really just become political. I believe that you put humans on this Earth to find each other, to believe in each other, to have more faith in themselves than in the divine. You created humanism. Somehow, this notion, this message, got muffled.

God, I don't know whether you have divine powers, whether you're an overseer of life on Earth, but I wish people didn't place all of their faith in you, something divine. Why can't people place their faith in something ordinary, like human nature? If we all believed in the power humans have, human nature would be something extraordinary. We have the power to change things, to change the world, it's just a matter of having the strength and the faith. God, if you're out there, if you're listening, I want to thank you for human life. Please pray for us. Pray that we start to believe in each other so we can dig ourselves out of the deep ditch we've buried ourselves in.

Cheers,

Tin Kettle Inn

Dining At Tin Kettle Inn: Just Stumble in, No Reservation Required

2009-08-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

I had a sort of bon voyage party on Saturday: I'm leaving the apartment I've been subletting this week, and I wanted to say goodbye to it and host a small dinner gathering. Who knows when I'll have the apartment and opportunity to host a dinner party again? I took advantage.

It was a modest gathering of four people, who I know very well, plus Edwina, my "landlord" and roommate. The main item on the menu was oven-baked chicken breasts, on the bone because I love picking sweet, fatty meat off of the bone, but I wanted small dishes to accent it. I turned to Food Network. For an appetizer, I made mozzarella, tomato and ciabatta bread salad, and to go along with the chicken, I replicated a recipe for tomato and watermelon gazpacho that I saw on Tyler's Ultimate that morning. He seemed to just be eyeing everything, basically saying that it's "recipeless," so I knew it was the dish for me. Here's what I did:

- I cut seven thick slices of a cucumber
-I sliced 1 small tomato
-I bought precut watermelon, and used about ten generous chunks
-I probably used more cilantro than I should have, but I love Cilantro
-I cut 1/4 of a red onion
-I loaded the cucumber, tomato, watermelon, red onion, cilantro, 2-3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 1 tablespoon of Red Wine Vinegar into the blender, and let it pulse away until it was smooth and thick.
-I had it in the refrigerator for 6 hours so that it could get extremely cold.
-I garnished it with two small chunks of watermelon, feta cheese and a bit of Dill.

The response to the gazpacho was "interesting." No one liked it or hated it, they just found it interesting. I wonder if it would have tasted better if I just printed out Tyler's recipe? Oh well, I have a way to modify it. Tonight I am going to do the same thing, except I'm going to use basil instead of cilantro, and it's not going to be a gazpacho, but a sauce for pasta. I'm going to try heating the sauce and a few pieces of watermelon and tomato, and then I am going to toss cooked whole wheat pasta in the sauce pan so the sauce and pasta can marry, along with the cooked watermelon and tomatoes. Hopefully, my mom and sister will enjoy it.

The dessert I tried at the dinner party was delicious, required no baking and is definately something I will make a million times over.

Limoncello Raspberry Torte
2 cups (1 pint) raspberries, divided
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons Limoncello (Italian lemon dessert liqueur)
1 brick, 8 ounces, Neufchatel cheese, at room temperature
Shortbread cookies for serving (recommended: Walker's Shortbread Triangles)
Directions
In a small bowl, using a fork, mash 3/4 of the berries with the sugar and liqueur until fruit is broken down but still slightly chunky. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and up to overnight for flavors to meld.
When ready to serve, put the cheese on a plate with a rim. Fold the remaining whole berries into the chilled berry/liqueur mixture until combined and spoon it over the top of the cheese. Serve with a cheese knife to smear the delicious mixture on the shortbread cookies.

For a picture: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/claire-robinson/limoncello-raspberry-torte-recipe/index.html

The Old Man

2009-08-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Steel towers puff smoke
that is blown East by the same wind
that rustles through the wheat
covering the countryside.

A railroad line cuts through the fields
passing a scene of golden light
casting shadows against the wheat,
telephone wires and barns and farmhouses,
isolated from their neighbors;
a scene out of Wyeth.

The beard of an old man reveals his age
like the rings of a tree.
He's traveled a long way,
watching the wheat waving
through the window of the train for days.

The man spots a butterfly
when he gets off the train,
and he chases it into the field.
He can hardly keep up with the butterfly's
graceful flutter, as he moves in
synchronization with his cane.

The butterfly stops and tends
to the old man now and then,
until the butterfly stops at the destination,
a valley of butterflies,
millions all flapping.

They flock to the man in his
moth-eaten clothes, and they
spin his beard longer,
strand by strand,
until he is wrapped inside,
like a cocoon.

His age is undone when he emerges,
younger, youthful, a new life
but no wings.
Instead, the man is bound
to the Earth by puppet strings.

They end with him,
he knows not where they begin.
A Heaven of sorts holds him here
in the nature he once deemed unfair
because one day it would decide
it did not want him anymore.

The man, he gained the eternal youth
of the butterflies,
at the cost of being banished
from the heavens.

The Old Man

2009-08-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

An old man's beard
reveals his age
like rings of a tree.

Ancient Warrior

2009-08-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

I was left with my grandparents' ashes and the moon at the window, its light illuminating my reflection in the shards of my grandmother's, now broken, dining room mirror.

There was no rage in me, no anger boiling. I was overcome with a shrill numbness as the wind from outside began to carry my grandparents on its current, kicking some of the dust into my face as it lifted them off the ground. I neither closed my eyes nor squinted, I just allowed the dust to settle and sting beneath my eyelids. I didn't acknowledge the pain or the tears my eyes couldn't help but conjure in response to the ash being tossed into them. I couldn't acknowledge it, as all natural feeling seemed to have evaporated through my pores.

For some reason, Northinx spared me. It was just after dinner, when Grandfather, Grandmother and I usually retire to the garden room where grandmother gardens and harvests soy, squash, zuccini, broccoli, mushrooms that she uses in her cooking. The garden room has two recliners situated around a small furnace. Grandfather always came in after mixing himself a tonic of some sort - he said it was good for his ulcer - and sat in the chair nearest the small bush of berries Grandmother grew for her special desserts, so he could pick and eat them. I always settled in the recliner opposite Grandfather, and delighted in watching him try and sneak a berry behind Grandmother's back as she watered the tomatoes. Grandmother had a sixth sense though, some inner radar that propelled her to pounce like a snake at a mouse, swatting grandfather's hand as it began to close around a carefully selected berry.

On this evening, the sun sank quickly behind the hills, leaving no lingering light, which is unusual for a sunset in summer. Grandfather was silent, tending to his food in small bites, devouring his rice grain by grain. This powerful man with broad shoulders and hands capable of bending the silverware he used, normally shoveled piles of food into his mouth before Grandmother even finished setting all of the food on the table. His aloofness was enough to silence Grandmother and I, leaving us to slice our soup with spoons, trying to part the liquid like the Red Sea.
After we'd finished Grandfather hustled Grandmother and I up the stairs, telling us to hide in the linen closet.

"Esme," Grandmother turned to face Grandfather upon hearing her name, "tonight is the night I defend my daughter's honor, remember? Something I should have done all those years ago."

Grandmother closed her eyes and inhaled so deeply that her shoulders rose to her ears, then lowered her head in a shameful manner.

"You must go, take refuge upstairs inn the hallway linen closet. I will take my revenge, but I'm certain you know what the outcome will be."

Grandmother lifted her head and stared Grandfather in the eye, her face void of any expression.

"Take care of yourself, nevermind Gee, he won't harm her."

Grandfather had known Northinx wouldn't harm me, but I was terrified and confused having no idea what was happening, what was being avenged. It angered me that he would tell Grandmother to abandon me should Northinx discover us. It felt like betrayal, as though my grandparents never accepted me as their daughter.

I knew little about my mother, my grandparents' actual daughter, but Grandfather told me she was the greatest female warrior who ever lived. My mother was killed in a battle, and Grandfather vowed to never train another female warrior. Grandmother strictly forbade him from telling me stories about mother, and she tried to keep me from understanding the way of the warrior. I only watched Grandfather from afar as he exercised his warrior stamina and trained other boys.

"No, Min," Grandmother protested, "she was my daughter too. It's my honor to defend, as well."

Grandfather looked at me shrinking in on myself. "But the girl..."

"The girl will learn to be brave and courageous. Yes, she will become a warrior," Grandmother interrupted.

"Alone? He'll make her watch."

"Every warrior must witness something painful; must know numbness; must know fear; must know of the past and must feel honor towards their family. It is time."

Grandfather went to the bureau and carried back two heavy robes of burnt sienna decorated with phoenixes, their wings spun in flight, wrapping around the surface of the robes. Grandfather lifted the robe over his shoulders, then helped Grandmother lower her arms into her sleeves. They prepared for war as though I wasn't even there, as though I wasn't frozen in the corner of the room watching them cover their faces with red paint until I couldn't recognize them.

My grandparents didn't acknowledge my presence until the moment right before they died. Northinx had defeated them, had reigned the greater warrior again, as he had when he fought against my mother.

"Child, I am defending you father's honor," Northinx hissed. "A man who loved your mother deeply until she proved incapable of bearing him a son. Three daughters before you I was responsible for killing, but, you, Gee, she wanted to remain alive. She couldn't bear to lose another child. She brought you here, to your grandparents, and they watched her fight me and die. You watched them fight me without emotion, like a true warrior, and now I will leave you to watch them die."

In the flames I saw their eyes, and in the pools of their dilated pupils I found a sort of strength reflected. I saw these pupils again in the shards of the broken mirror. A deep cut spanned across my brow from falling into the broken shards. The cut began to smart, and a feeling of honor over came me, I knew who I was and what I had to do. I took my finger and spread the blood down my nose and under my eyes; I am a warrior.

http://picturespoetryprose.blogspot.com/

Practicing Writing

2009-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was looking at all of the books in my bureau, deciding which ones I should pack in case I have time for leisurely reading during the school year, when I cam across a book I must have gotten when I was in middleschool but have never actually read; it's called The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Writer by Janet E. Grant. I think it was a Christmas present from my parents.

The fact that I've never read the book proves that I've never really taken writing seriously in that I've always said I would like to be a writer, but have never been very proactive about it. To be good at writing you have to practice, and I've avoided practicing because I never wanted to find out that I'm not good enough.

Only recently have I started to take the idea of writing for a living seriously, and I feel so far behind, that there are things I should have done and should be doing; coulda, woulda, shoulda. I am still young, I'm talking like I've missed my chance, but when I find myself sitting next to a 14-year-old girl in a writing seminar who has written a 20,000 word novel, I can't help but as myself, "what have I been doing with my life?"

This book is a great starting point for young writers and even "late bloomers;" I place myself somewhere in between. The book contains quotes and advice from other young writers, which of course makes it relatable, and each chapter has exercises to be done in a writer's notebook. There are eight chapters, and the first few chapters pertain to the writer and identifying the writer's voice, while the later chapters are geared towards the writer being able to publish their work and connect with the larger writing community.

Where does your writing come from?

1.) What projects do you enjoy doing the most?

-I love organizing social justice projects to help better my community, to help issues get recognized.

-I enjoy making my own graphic narratives: writing them, drawing, cutting and pasting, coloring.

2.)Who are your favorite authors?

Billy Collins, Ayn Rand, Scott Westerfeld, Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, Junot Diaz, E. Nesbit, Alice Sebold, Flannery O'Connor, Shel Silverstein

3.) What activities do you enjoy?

Reading, Women's and Gender Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Middle Eastern Coexistence, Travel, International Relations, Philosophy, Growing up, Religion, Food

4.) What do you do well in your writing?

Quoting, wit and humor, imagery, research

5.) Industries your family work in?

Business, nursing, social work, education, communications, airline, law, fashion, PR

Haiku, To You.

2009-08-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Offer a Haiku to a Lotus:

Lotus waits in the garden
to be snipped at the neck -
its head travels the pond.

Like a bottled promise
a lotus head finds someone
waiting for word.

A haiku is very difficult to master. It's short, but within its brevity the essence of an experience is captured using imagistic language. The haiku isn't a poem that tells people how they should feel, it only presents images that allow people to feel what they want to feel. It is short because it is meant to leave space and room for the reader to take in the moment, and decide what feelings are being evoked within them. Haiku is about feeling; you're supposed to have an emotional reaction.

The haiku offers a kind of antidote to the ills of modern life, as it describes images of nature that are intuitively linked to the human condition. It's meant to emphasize the present moment, the feelings that were unearthed in the writer at a particular moment. This is one of the reasons haiku is a neglected art form, why people tend to avoid them. They often have to be written "in the moment," the precise moment an emotion is tapped, for them to have effect.

The haiku also doesn't have a huge following because of the "5-7-5" myth. It's true, haikus are difficult to write when feelings have to somehow be confined to strict standards, shrunken to fit the "5-7-5" syllable format. "5-7-5" is only a guideline, it is not imperative. A characteristic haiku has unrhymed lines totaling seventeen syllables, but it is not confined to this. If an extra "the" or "a" or "it" must be added, it is permittable to do so; writers of haikus should avoid "Tarzan-speak."

The only imperative characteristics that define a haiku are that two images images - an image of nature and an image of the human condition - are juxtaposed to evoke in the reader the experience that inspired the writer to compose the poem. A haiku, therefore, needs to emphasize a present moment without abstractions or figures of speech. Haikus are difficult because the writer has to show rather than tell. The writer only has to describe the image, and the image presented does the rest of the work.

the piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel...
--Buson
Buson's wife apparently wasn't dead when he wrote this. Imagine her surprise.

the thief
left it behind --
the moon at the window
--Ryokan
Ryokan returned home one night, to find that he was robbed and many of his remaining possessions were destroyed. He was left with nothing, but when he looked out the window, and saw the full moon and it's glory, he found himself relieved that the thief left him something.

Is it a dragonfly or a maple leaf
That settles softly down upon the water?
--Amy Lowell

A Halloween mask
floating face up in the ditch,
slowly shakes its head
--Clement Hoyt

brittle wrinkled fingers
bear knitting needles -
agile, quick, samurai swords
--Tin Kettle Inn

an old yellow dress
she wore at her wedding
hugs her, a closed fist
--Tin Kettle Inn

"where is my...?"
a pause--
it's gone with the towers
--Tin Kettle Inn
A friend of mine worked in one of the towers, and lately, she's been looking for things - a book, papers, a paper weight, a picture frame - and she always stops and remembers, that it was in her office. I imagine it's a very strange feeling that comes over her when this happens. My eyes tear up whenever she's looking for something that has turned to ash, though it doesn't seem to phase her much.

Obama
a wise dog sitting upright --
calm, poised, sniffing the wind
--Tin Kettle Inn
Yes, sometimes Obama reminds me of a wise dog, squinting to see the future and sniffing the wind. How he's proud, but not cocky.

a candle flame gutters
my voice gutters with it
until it is blown out.
--Tin Kettle Inn

A Peace Break

2009-08-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Wisdom, Peace, Gentleness.

Wisdom doesn't come with age as much as it comes with understanding. It's true that the ability to understand things tends to come with maturity, but maturation doesn't necessarily come with age, but rather, it grows with knowledge and learning. Wisdom is understanding, and understanding keeps a person open-minded.

Wisdom is important for attaining peace and gentleness. When a person is able to look at all sides of a situation and just accept and understand, instead of making snap judgments or declaring something to be right or wrong, then a person is able to find peace within themselves, and can maintain peace outside of themselves because they don't insinuate conflict by choosing sides.

In this way, a person is gentle and exudes gentleness. Gentleness toward people, toward a culture. Gentleness is tolerance, so it's understanding which therefore comes from wisdom.

2009-08-17T05:03:00.000-07:00

I think Regie looks like Joey Ramone.

I Write This Sitting in the Kitchen Sink

2009-08-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

I went home this weekend. Home is peaceful, messy and comfortable. It's not unbearably messy, it just looks lived in, especially the kitchen. The kitchen is sort of the fulcrum of socializing and gathering because a.) we love food, and someone is always eating or drinking something, and b.) the kitchen table, or peninsula, as I've always called it because one of its sides is attached to the wall. The kitchen table is for eating, working, playing Scrabble and the Quija board. (We've conjured up many a spirit in our kitchen.)

I'd say that the kitchen is always messy, or lived in. Piles of mail grow on the counters, and bags of chips and cookies and spices fall on me upon opening the cabinet doors. There are always empty glasses and mugs strategically left on the table, by the sink, the counter or on the stove. I always leave the mug I use for tea with its spoon by the stove to indicate that I will probably have another cup of tea at some point during the day, so it shouldn't go in the dishwasher. (My dad usually gets fed up by the sight of all of the glasses, and he just throws them all in the dishwasher.) Nothing pleases me as much as seeing the peninsula barren of everything except three empty water glasses by the spots of the people who used them.

The kitchen is also the brightest room in the house, as none of the windows have curtains and the two glass doors that lead to the yard filter in a lot of light. The brightness makes the kitchen welcoming, and it brings people together while the other rooms in the house isolate them.

This cucumber looks like Moses' staff.

Regie, my puppy, who has grown much since in only two months. When we got her in may, she fit in the palm of my hand.

Regie getting a little ride on our older dog, Princess. ( I didn't name her.)

I absolutely love the scent of fresh basil.

Regie knocked a glass of ice cubes on the floor; their fate was melting in the sink as opposed to cooling my drink.

It was a lovely weekend.

Kindle & Re-Kindle: or Kindle 1 & Kindle 2

2009-08-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

I have never actually held a Kindle, only glanced at it from afar as though it was an expensive pastry behind an impenetrable double-paned glass case. Yes, I have only observed other people enjoying their Kindles, so anything I say may be slightly biased. Maybe I'm jealous, I envy those who are able to use Kindle's 3G hookup with Sprint Wireless to download the digital version of Freakonomics, whenever and wherever they have a sudden urge to read. This envy, perhaps, forces me to fault the Kindle and Kindle 2, and to find arguments and articles to support my position.

Kindle seems too "Brave New World" for me. It scares me when I read that "printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence." On Amazon, the Kindle(s) receive rave reviews. People somehow feel that the Kindle enhances their reading experience. Really? Maybe I'm stuck in the stone age, although, nowadays, in the world of technology anything that was in vogue three months ago seems primitive compared to the new in vogue gadget that Amazon is pushing. (Yes, Amazon is good at selling, but how good are they at making?) But what comes after the Kindle? The Kindle 2. But what will be the new advancement, the new piece of technology that will blow everything else into oblivion? And what's so terrible about ink on paper?

Granted, I've never used the Kindle, but somehow I don't think I would find much enjoyment using the Kindle or Kindle 2 as my reading medium. I'm a very careful reader, I need to actually hold a book in my hand. If I really want to comprehend something I can't read it on a computer screen, so I usually print it out.

When I was confronted by a Kindle possessor about my skepticism, I defended my disapproval by pointing out that I am a carnal lover of books. In reading, I often destroy a book in the process, well, I break it in anyway, beginning with the binding. I need to be able to underline, dog-ear my pages and make notes in the margins. The Kindle advocate retaliated by saying that the Kindle does allow you to do all of those things with simple controls, and no book is destroyed in the process.

But it's so much more than that. Reading is about opening a library book and finding someone else's notes inside. It's about exchanging books with a friend, and being able to identify which pages and passages really struck them, as indicated by the dog-eared pages and underlined paragraphs. When a friend borrows a book from me, it comes complete with notes on page 103, a coffee stain on 226 and an important reminder scribbled on the back cover.

People seem to love the Kindle because it eliminates the aspects of reading I absolutely love, what I find makes reading a treat. On the Kindle, there is just one page - no pages to turn and, when reading outdoors, no pages for the wind to flutter. Why are people suddenly against page turning? Do they want to avoid paper cuts, do they hate when pages stick together and they have to lick their pointer finger to make it easier to turn? The wind in the pages has frustrated me when beachfront or poolside reading, but somehow I think I would miss it. It's beautiful to watch the wind turn the pages for you. (One woman on Amazon apparently wrote that library and used books have always creeped her out because she doesn't know where they've been. Okay?)

The Kindle solves irrational fears and pet peeves some people have about reading, but does it really make reading more enjoyable? Why is it destined to change writing and publishing forever?

The Kindle is a committment. It costs a fortune, but it's supposed to change a person's reading lifestyle. The idea behind it is that a person pays an arm and a leg for a Kindle, and then they find themselves sucked into a compulsive reading frenzy. The Kindle is like bringing gym clothes to work so you're compelled to actually go to the gym and workout after work, as opposed to going home to lay on the couch and watch TV. Kindle is meant to be a lifestyle choice.

In an article by Nicholson Baker, in the August 3 issue of The New Yorker, the journalist writes about his purchase of the Kindle part deux. He finds that, yes, he can read things on his Kindle, and has, but he also points out its faults and little things that make the Kindle un-enjoyable, like the little un-enjoyable things Amazon discovered about reading that they made the Kindle to correct - and not just Kindle, but Kindle 2. Baker says that the text-to-speech feature is often confused by periods and abbreviations, and also appears to be reading with a Middle-European accent.

There are also things the Kindle eliminates, such as page numbers, indexes and footnotes. Pictures, charts, diagrams and foreign characters don't translate well on the Kindle screen, if at all. After using the Kindle, Baker declared that when you buy a Kindle book, "you buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon."

The Kindle uses Topaz encoding format, which is not compatable with any other e-book reading device. Amazon must give permission before any other company's hardware can use Topaz. Kindle books can't be transferred, given away or printed.

Book making is an expensive industry, with most of the costs lying in papermaking, ink mixing and warehousing physical goods. One-hundred billion dollars can be saved each year if information becomes digital.

Major Kindlers are romance readers, readers who may be embarrassed to go an purchase a novel that has a hunky, muscular chest on the cover. The Kindle helps such reader's guilty pleasure remain secret.

I don't think I'm going to Kindle or Re-Kindle, but whether you should or not, well, that's up to you. To each his own.

Some Books Are Better Left Unread. Time is Money, Afterall.

2009-08-12T18:01:00.001-07:00

EDGE: Closing the book on a bad read - Washington Times

Shared via AddThis

Gender and the Recession as Seen Through a Biased Media Lens

2009-08-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

A post on Feministing details how the media has been highlighting the recession as it pertains to both gender and class. For instance, data from January shows that the participation of men in the workforce is declining faster than women's, so there is a greater percentage of women in the workforce.

Research also indicates that domestic violence increases with unemployment. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence claims that lack of money is a common reason for a woman to remain with her abusive partner. Domestic violence is connected with the high unemployment rate because of issues of masculinity and control. A man who is laid off from his job may find it hard to cope psychologically with the fact that he is no longer the breadwinner of his family.

Men, however, fare better when it come to re-employment. Research shows that women who were laid off and went to look for another job were employed less often than men in the same position.

The realities of layoffs can also be just as bad for women psychologically as they are for men. Women of the upper-middle class do see their job as tied to their identity. Not to mention that most media coverage focuses on families of a certain economic class with two incomes, and mix-gendered partners where the male partner earns more. Coverage completely ignores families where women are the primary breadwinner, families with lower total incomes, and even families where there's a single breadwinner.

The Moral is: Always Put The Toilet Seat Down for You Make a Fine Sandwich When Mixed With Mayo

2009-08-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Darling Daisy had to go pee, so she went, on her own, to the potty.

She Lowered her pull-ups without any help,

She climbed on the toilet to relieve herself.

Her father forgot to put the toilet seat down, and her bottom just wasn't that big and round, so she wobbled and slid trying to grab onto the lid,

But her hand hit the flush and she was gone in a wush.

Just like her goldfish she was carried out to sea, unable to swim without swimmies she went belly up

And was mistaken for tuna by the fisherman's son.

She was boiled and mashed and stuffed in a can, and bought by her mother at a grocery stand.

Daisy's parents didn't know what happened to her, they searched and they asked but no one could concur.

I Know the Moon

2009-08-10T07:28:00.001-07:00

the moon sings melancholy into the
night sky,
the words come out in
breathless gasps

ring around the moon
shine on
and light the faces of those who walk away
into the dark

you watch
until there is nothing
to watch anymore

waves crash,
they've never heard of subtlety,
but you have

your light
is dissolved into the essence
of this very enchanted evening

i do believe
as you stood alone in the sky
that i saw some sadness
real or imagined
it was there

if you were to ever
cry out in despair that no one
ever truly knew you
you would be wrong

through the haze,
the cruelity of this
duality of vision
i understood you

in those fading, now ancient seconds
someone knew you

Seaside Rendezvous

2009-08-09T16:02:00.001-07:00

Coney Island is a strange, culturally diverse place. It's a colorful part of Brooklyn, there's a lot of graffiti art, and it's so far away from the rest of New York, from the hustle and bustle of the city that it seems to be a different place entirely.

It has a carnival atmosphere and is right near the beach. I ate my chicken kabobs sitting on a blanket on the sand, watching people playing volleyball and dancing to latin music playing in the distance.

What's most impressive about Coney Island is how much of its history still remains. The Cyclone still runs, though it's no longer the most thrilling roller coaster around, and freakshows are on every corner. Inexpesive, of course. For just $5 you're able to see the elephant woman, Blockhead and a fire eater displaying their bizarre talents and anomalies.

The neighborhood of Sea Gate itself is one of the few neighborhoods in New York City where the streets are owned by the residents. The Neighborhood is cordoned off by a fence and gate houses. Today, the neighborhood is home to a large population of Jewish residents, African American, Italian American and Hispanic residents.

This strange place is a muse for many artists and songwriters. These are the lyrics to one of my favorite Franz Ferdinand songs:

Eleanor put those boots back on,

Kick the heels into the Brooklyn dirt,

I know it isn't dignified to run,But if you run,You can run to the Coney Island roller coaster,

Ride to the highest point and leap across the filthy water,

Leap until the Gulf Stream's brought you down.

I could be there when you land

So Eleanor take a Green Point three point,

Turn towards the hidden sun,

You know you look so elegant when you run,

If you run, you can run,

To that statue with the dictionary,

Climb to her fingernail and leap, yeah,

Take an atmospheric leap,

Leap and let the jet stream set you down.

Could be there when you land,

I could be there when you land,Could be there when you land

So Eleanor put those boots back on,

Put the boots back on and run, run,Come on over here,

come on over here,

Come on over here...

2009-08-08T07:39:00.001-07:00

A candle flame gutters.
Like my voice,
it tries to steady itself.
Still, it sheds some light
guttering as it burns
because being blown out
happens when it will
but it doesn't prevent the flame
from being ignited
and glowing brightly
while it can.

Patriarchy Hurts Men Too

2009-08-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

Feministing.com often has posts explaining how patriarchy hurts men as well as women. Feminism is associated only with women and women's issues because "feminine" lies in the root of the word, but men can be feminists too. Feminism is a tool to be utilized by men, as well as women, to help them realize how gender is prescribed by the patriarchal society that is also oppressive toward men and women.

Oppression of all forms, which seems to be spun from patriarchy, is inherent in society and is hard to recognize sometimes because it is rendered in a 'covert,' rather than 'overt,' manner. We're taught that gender, our gender roles and our biological sex, are deeply intertwined and one in the same. Women's and gender studies' scholars often question biology and how much of it is valid. Our gender and gender roles are like boxes that we have to stay inside of in order for society to function like it's "supposed to."

I believe that patriarchy is actually more oppressive towards men, and that women are oppressed as a result of this. A woman's box has much more elastic walls. She has more freedom and more versatility, especially today when a woman can essentially become anything she desires. Today, a woman can run for president, but if she chooses to do so, she is watched closely beneath a metaphorical microscope by a patriarchal society looking for reasons to fault her. Because of man's dominant position in society, and because he has to stay there to maintain the status quo, women have to work harder to prove themselves.

When Hillary Clinton was in the Presidential Race, everything she did that had nothing to do with politics or her ability to run the country, was scrutinized. When her tough side was exposed, everyone referred to her as an 'ice queen' or a 'bitch;' Sean Hannity (not a real journalist) actually said that he crossed his legs whenever he watched or heard Clinton speak, as though she was somehow attacking his manhood. And when she exposed her emotional side and was shown crying on camera, she was ridiculed for her emotional self and for letting it go, raising the question of whether or not a woman is too emotional to be the most powerful leader in the free world. The fact that we ask this question, that society sees something wrong with bearing one's emotions, is precisely the reason why men suffer at the hand of patriarchy in a more oppressive manner than women.

Men are forced to oppress an entire self, a self that expresses emotion, that is deemed feminine. While the identity 'woman' is open to many women - including women who are homosexuals and lesbians - the identity 'man' is much more complicated. What defines a man is very strict, and if a man does not adhere to these restrictions, he must not be a man, he must be 'queer.' A gay man seems to be separated from the category deemed "actual men" or "real men." 'Gay' becomes a derogatory term to describe a 'feminine' quality within a man. Because a man is afraid to be labeled 'gay,' femininity becomes something deragatory to them, something to be hated and feared.

In January of this year, a man in Long Island was fired because his vegetarianism was thought to be 'feminine,' and so deemed 'gay,' never mind that the man was happily married to a woman for nine years. After Ryan Pacifico's boss found out that he didn't eat meat, he did everything in his power to make Pacifico uncomfortable, such as ordering hamburgers and pepperoni pizza for weekly business lunches. When Pacifico's boss first found out that he didn't eat meat he responded, "you don't even eat steak, dude. At what point did you realize you were gay?" Pacifico's boss believed that because Pacifico is a vegetarian, he must be a 'homo' because apparently all men are supposed to eat meat and don't have a choice in the matter.

The most prevalent example of patriarchy's harmful effects on men pertains to grief - a mother and father's grief. Men and women cope with the grief of losing a child very differently, women grieve externally, while men tend to grieve internally. Women are expected to be emotional and more communicative and verbal about their grief, but a father is culturally recognized as the protector of the family, and his role is to keep the family strong and together. This is why many men feel uncomfortable discussing the death of his child, he wants to avoid it so he can better hide his emotions. A father will immerse himself in hobbies and projects to avoid grief, and he expresses a desire to have things the way they were before the tragedy, and he feels it's his responsibility to put things back in order.

It's oppressive that we don't expect a man to grieve, to express his emotions Not only that, but it seems to be culturally accepted, in many cultures, that a man would not feel the loss of his child as deeply as a mother does.

In the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, Laila's mother and father grieve the loss of their two sons in Afghanistan's war against Soviets. Laila's mother would stay in bed all day, and during the funeral she was surrounded by women, who were also mothers, to help her grieve. When Laila's father tries to comfort his wife, tries to have some role in the grieving of his sons, the women shoo him away and tell him they have everything under control. The father has no role in the grieving process. He later tells Laila that he misses his boys and loved them as much as his wife did. He desires to leave Afghanistan to begin a new life with Laila and his wife, as he reminisces about what his wife used to be like.

It's because society expects men to be a certain way, and to maintain a certain position and role within society, that women find themselves to be the victims of sexism, scrutiny and oppression. But women and feminists have to stop believing that women are the only victims of patriarchy.

2009-08-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

A plum pit placed near the table leg
I know a tree will grow there soon.
By the time its fruit is ready to be eaten
I will be an old woman by the sea.

With true love, you only want the one you love to be happy.
With a lesser kind of love
you only care for your own happiness.
That is how I know my love is true.

I used to have a heart that worked
and fully dispensed love like starlight.
No, I never had a heart that worked
quite so well.

Teen Angst and Writing

2009-08-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

I left behind my teenage years this past January when I turned twenty, but my teen angst seems to have carried over. It's still evident in much of my writing I think, although it's probably because I don't practice much.

It wasn't until this year, when I had some of my poems workshopped for a literary magazine, (in hindsight, these poems weren't very important to me, I don't recall any of them), that I realized I wasn't really expressing myself in my poems. The experience was strange. The people who were reading and critiquing my poems were doing so without knowing who actually wrote them. I had to be present for the process, my writing like meat thrown to the lions.

I wouldn't call myself cocky or say that I was even confident with what I presented to the literary board, but there was a certain strange desire writhing within me, a piece of myself looking to gain recognition. It was as if I wanted recognition as a writer but didn't know how to get it, so I threw together a conglomeration of words fixed into imagery, metaphors and similes that sounded impressive, but really meant nothing when read in context because there was no real context. My teenage poetry was nothing more than circuitous ramblings about nothing in particular.

I can't say that I'm now beginning to grasp poetry, but I am beginning to understand its rhythm, its flow, its structure. As my work was being critiqued, I realized that in my past - my rocky, emotional teenage years - I used poetry to express emotion, just allowing what was inside of me to come out noisily like a marching band. I didn't really care about the structure of a poem or making the thoughts and emotions flow coherently.

It's probably a sign of maturity, a sign of this teen angst fading, that I'm more thoughtful about my poetry or anything that I write. This year has offered me a lot of opportunities to change, and to be able to gage what's inside. Not only gage it, but come to terms with it. At the core of this is probably Women's and Gender studies, a subject matter that has mapped out gender for me and has helped me accept my womanhood, without necessarily accepting my prescribed gender role.

Women's studies is like my center, holding me in place like gravity, and from it emanates my hope to be recognized for more than just being a woman: a woman who is entitled to many roles. Inside, this feeling runs deep, as there are many selves within. I feel feminism within me, and I love it. It seeks equality and offers me peace of mind. I believe it's what's inside of me, and also what's changed.

Hamlet's Duplex by Robert Mankoff, The New Yorker, Aug.3, 2009

2009-08-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

This made me happy.

The Thief Lord

2009-08-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

The Thief Lord, Chapter 6, Pg. 53

"Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar."

"Probably not," Prosper sighed.

Church, State, and Abortion

2009-08-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

My father's devout - a devout Catholic. I find people who are overzealous when it comes to religion to be a little ridiculous. It should be about faith, but it becomes an explanation for things we don't understand and don't want to.

I know I am young. I have a difficult time making up my mind about what I want to major in, never mind how I feel about religion. I suppose I would classify myself as agnostic, not believing in organized relgion, but I'm not sure if I can even call myself that.

I don't need proof of God's existence, and sometimes I don't think humans need to find the proof. We should really just accept the fact that we're here on this Earth and not question why. Instead of trying to define what's beyond us - Heaven and Hell - we should be concerned with fellow human beings.

My father is a chair for a Right to Life committee in our area, and like all "good Catholics," he believes that abortion is a mortal sin - no exceptions. Yes, some extremists, like my father, believe there are no exceptions to this law of God's. My father refused to vote for Obama because he's pro-choice.

Abortion pertains to the circumstances, to each woman's individual situation. Just because someone is pro-choice does not mean they are pro-abortion, it just means that a person is looking at things logically.

My personal belief is that if a woman makes the decision to have intercourse, if she doesn't take the proper precautions and makes a mistake then, yes, I do believe that the woman has to take responsibility for her actions, and really should keep the baby or at least consider another alternative, such as adoption, if she doesn't think she could ever learn to love the baby.

If a woman's health is at risk, if medical professionals tell her that her body cannot possibly carry a baby to term then, yes, I believe that abortion is necessary, and that the potential life of a fetus is not worth risking the life of the woman.

I read about a nine-year-old girl in Brazil who was raped and was impregnated as a result. The girl was seventy pounds, too small to even carry the child, did not consent to having sexual intercourse since she was raped and, not to mention, she was a child herself. Obviously she had to have an abortion, and despite all of these factors, despite the girl's particular circumstance, there were outcries from the Christian Right saying that abortion is a sin and every child has a right to life. Yes, every child, including the little girl who was raped and was not physically strong enough to carry a baby. This little girl was born, but religious extremists cared only about the unborn child.

Could the rise in teenagers having sexual intercourse and the fact that girls begin menstruating at a younger age than ever before possibly contribute to an increase in abortions? Perhaps, but this isn't a reason to make abortion illegal, but rather a reason to implement sex education for kids as young as twelve, to expose them to reality as opposed to imposing sexual abstinence on them.

While abortion isn't illegal, the conditions for receiving one and the cost make it almost impossible to receive one legally, for women of low economic status, that is. Medical insurance isn't permitted to pay for an abortion unless carrying the child to full term poses a serious health risk to the woman.

The abortion can only be legally performed up to the woman's second trimester, and each day that a woman waits to have the abortion the price increases at least one-hundred dollars. A woman may be working to afford the procedure during her first trimester, only to find that by the time she has raised enough money, the price has increased significantly. A woman who has a difficult time supporting herself cannot possibly afford to support a child, or even pay for the doctor's appointments during the course of her pregnancy. What should be taken into consideration, but never is, is the kind of life the child wold actually have if it's brought into the world. A woman could place a child up for adoption, but that means placing them into a system that's in need of serious reform. Does any child deserve that life?

There just never seems to be a gray area, only extremes, only sides that people feel they have to take. Abortion is one of the many issues where sides are taken, where the people who make up these sides have a very "either you're with us or against us" attitude. Abortion is more than just a matter of believing in a child's right to life or a woman's own autonomy over her body, there are many factors that play into this issue, ones that need more thought as they are sometimes problems that need to be solved. Sometimes there are contributing factors, a big picture that needs to be taken into account.

I'm not saying that not every fetus deserves the right to grow into a baby and come into this world, I wish this could be so, but in this country we all have to realize that we are not all equal, that America is not a level playing field. We have to realize the intersectionality of oppression - race, class, gender. An upper middle-class white woman who has a good, steady salary and a decent place to live is able to afford caring for a child, and is even able to afford the abortion if she chooses to have the procedure. This woman has a choice. A lower class Black woman, who may or may not be on welfare, may work two jobs to support herself, and can barely make rent on her apartment every month. What's unfair in this situation is that this woman cannot afford to raise a child and she has to work extra hard to try and raise the money to actually have an abortion. This woman doesn't have much of a choice, does she?

Religion, the church, has a supreme and imposing presence when it comes to this issue. Despite the separation of church and state, personal religious beliefs tend to bleed into the system because religion has laws that are separate from the state and conflict. It becomes a question of whether God's word is right, or whether humans are capable of deciding what's right for them. If we put all of our trust in God, is there any room for us to trust each other or ourselves? Why does God have to decide what a woman should do with her own body? Because we're supposedly created in God's image? Well, people created in God's image also rape nine-year-old girls, leaving them to bear the consequences and the shame of their action. If a person has the autonomy to rape someone, which is essentially the stripping of a person's autonomy, then a woman should maintain the right to decide when and if she becomes a mother.

Hobo Hideout

2009-08-01T16:23:00.001-07:00

You don't really know what possessed you to go there again. It seems like decades since you had last set foot in the place, but if memory serves you correctly, it was only last summer. The place once meant a lot to you, it was a place you shared with someone you loved, someone who loved you, and you wanted to know if you had any feelings toward the place, if it still felt the same after all that has happened. You realize you need to know this because you still haven't moved on. Every once in a while, the wound still smarts.

So you stood on the top of the hill for a few moments before finding the courage to inch your way down to the creek. When you were down on the ground, you looked to the tree where you saw the bird with a broken wing, looked to the boulder in the center of the creek, the water maneuvering itself around it. You breathed deeply, listened to every sound. The memory still lingers there, but it didn't make you cry, it wasn't painful.

It will be long and hard, but you are already beginning to get better. One day the memory will become fuzzy, a sun faded image at the back of your mind. You long for this day, now. It can't come soon enough.

all of these memories i surrender
and offer them to you, my notebook.
painful recollections i want to slam shut.
love, i have loved,
now i try to live without it.
old letters burn sweetly in the air,
the fragrance of my pain, recognizable
to no one.

dangling empty swings salt the open wound,
we used to touch the sky on
sunny afternoons.
i'd close my eyes and pump my legs,
and when i opened my eyes
there we were.

porcelain hands will crack, i know,
a soft cheek will disintegrate
and a single kiss will turn to bile.

this memory lingers
like a haunting melody.

A Viking Funeral

2009-07-31T17:20:00.001-07:00

I have returned from a funeral for a goldfish. Pistachio died while Edwina was in Australia for a study abroad program. His shelf life was much longer than that of the average goldfish, living with Edwina for almost three years in a little glass bowl.

I noticed he had gone belly up a few weeks ago when I sat down to eat breakfast before heading to work. Every morning I unconsciously tap the bowl, a small gesture of good morning, and sprinkle some food into the bowl for Pistachio to dine on. Well, I had been doing it every morning since Edwina left for Australia at the end of June.

This particular morning was no different; I tapped the glass oblivious to the fact that their was no playful fish waving in the water, and I poured some food on top of his bowl. I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, so my eyes were still groggy and droopy, I was wrapped up in the rhythm of my teeth crunching toast, and the pause I made to slurp coffee.

Something compelled me to look at Pistachio. Perhaps it was after my gaze had been directed to the window that looks over the kitchen table to notice two sneakers tied together and thrown over the telephone wire. I happened to looke down at Pistachio, floating on his back, in his bowl as I was redirecting my attention back to my toast.

When I called Edwina with the horrible news, she sounded pretty upset, and she told me not to do anything with Pistachio until she got home. She was still going to be in Australia for three weeks, and I couldn't just leave him floating in the bowl, so I had to preserve him somehow. I put Pistachio in a plastic bag and placed him in the freezer next to the ice cubes, frozen pizza and ice cream.

Each day, for the past three weeks, I would forget that we ever had a goldfish, but would be reminded of Pistachio every time I opened the freezer to get an ice cube or some frozen yogurt.

Edwina got home a couple of days ago, and she was trying to decide what she should do with her dear friend. I suggested a viking funeral, and she rather liked the idea, so this morning me, Edwina and a few acquaintances who knew Pistachio, carried the corpse to a nearby park.

We gathered by the dirty creek right by the bridge, and we placed Pistachio in an empty match box with a paper sail. The match box balanced on the mouth of the creek until Edwina struck the match to ignite the sail. Once the flames caught, Edwina pushed the match box into the water, and we all stood and watched its winding journey.

No one said anything, we just raised our hands in salute.

I never thought it was possible to become so attached to a goldfish, but I have to admit that I have kind of missed greeting Pistachio every morning and tapping his bowl whenever I sit at the table.

All the goldfish I ever had never lived beyond a week. I'm impressed by Pistachio's long life.

Tire Swing

2009-07-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

Writing prompt from Pictures, Poetry and Prose.

so much depends upon black rubber

contorted into a donut filled

with a child, so small

and resilient

she swings on her stomach,

in the superman position,

with her arms and legs in the air.

her father hung the swing

to keep the old oak tree company,

and the girl spent moments idle

in the tire swing's womb,

allowing the heavy rubber to mother her.

to love and be loved.

the tree needs the swing,

the swing needs the girl,

the girl's indifferent to both.

they satisfy her tomboyish childhood years,

but they're ticked away by

the pendulum motion of the tire swing.

now the tire swing is still,

loved by the tree

and kissed by the sun.

Ingenuine is My Gender

2009-07-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

I wear my femininity like colored hair.
Gender from a bottle:
add water, apply, set timer for 10
then sit and let dry.

Gender is produced and consumed by society
in an assortment of varieties,
combinations to pick and choose

to find the one that best suits you.
If you don't like one, change it,
exchange it for another.

Though, mother says it's not natural
to change what God gave you.
Did God box us up and tell us to stay inside?

Man, he is this way,
so a woman, she must be like this.
The status quo sets this course,
deviations reject it.

The bottles we're prescribed
disconnect us somehow.
Let's mix them up, shake them up,
stir two together.
Let's concoct different colors
and a whole new outfit
to wear them with.

What's in the Reader

2009-07-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

While engrossed in The Reader, you find yourself as conflicted as Michael Berg, the story's narrator. The book offers much more insight than the film, as you are drawn into Michael's innermost thoughts while reading. The movie certainly provokes the viewer to sympathize with Hanna during the trial and throughout the duration of her prison sentence. The movie does an excellent job of convincing the viewer that Hanna is the victim of uncontrollable circumstances that forced her into her position as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp, but unlike the novel, I think the film failed to properly convey the struggle Michael encountered with trying to understand Hanna's crime while simultaneously having to condemn it. In the novel, Michael clearly states that by trying to understand Hanna's crime he is humanizing what she did, making it impossible to condemn her crime. Understanding, perhaps, isn't deserved, and to condemn the crime leaves no room for understanding.

In both mediums, the courtroom scene has the most emphasis. Both spotlight the question Hanna asks the judge during the trial, "what would you have done?" Hanna sincerely didn't know what she could have done differently, and she wanted the judge to enlighten her. This question is very important in discussing the Holocaust and bringing those convicted of Nazi war crimes to justice. "What would you have done?" It's very easy to point fingers, to blame without considering the situations, the culture and the time. The novel puts it this way, "Hanna had not decided in favor of crime. She had decided against a promotion at Siemens, and fell into a job as a guard." Hanna didn't wake up one morning and decide she wanted to contain women within inhumane conditions as they awaited transport to their deaths, she merely decided against a promotion and needed to find another job. Her decisions, her choices were all made for her own sake.

All of our decisions are made for ourselves, our families, for the good of the people we know and love without thinking about the repercussions of our actions or how other people are affected by them. Humans don't have that kind of foresight unless they are required to, if they have a position that requires them to make decisions that will benefit more people than themselves and the people they know directly. I like to cite a particular scenario from an episode of Law and Order: SVU because it's an interesting example of how the behavior and choice of a single member of a community took a heavy toll on the lives of others, even claiming the life of someone the woman who made the decision didn't even know.

The case begins as a kidnapping when a teenage mother goes to the police because her daughter disappeared. When a security camera at a hardware store reveals that the young mother purchased a shovel not long before she went to the police with the claim that her daughter was kidnapped, she was accused of murdering her daughter and burying her somewhere so it would seem like her daughter just disappeared and was never found. The SVU eventually found the little girl dead and buried in a vacant lot, but the little girl wasn't murdered, she died from contracting the measles being that she was too young to receive the vaccination. The little girl's mother only buried her in a panic, changing the case into a search for the source of a possible measles epidemic that could ensue.

The little boy who started the measles chain, that infected four and killed one child, was old enough to be vaccinated but wasn't because his mother decided to have his natural immune system fight it off, which it had. The mother saw nothing wrong. She had done research on vaccinations and the power the body has against fighting diseases, and based on this research she made a choice. Her son survived, and she didn't see herself as being responsible for the death of a little girl, she was just trying to be a "good" mother. She was arrested for murder but did get off in the end. Her actions were irresponsible on a macro level. The episode compared the actions of a "good" mother and a "bad" mother, but while the "good" mother's decision was best for her family, it was detrimental to society at large. We do have privacy and freedom of choice, but there are rules that make society function, and if these rules are disobeyed, society begins to crumble. Her decision and thinking would apply to a more spread out area where the lives of people are much more private, but it is not applicable to New York City.

However, this scenario helps surface another point made in The Reader about whether one person knows what's best for someone else. Is the law, the community at large able to define what is good for its individuals? Michael has information about Hanna that would serve to give her a lesser sentence and would disprove accusations the other defendants pinned on her. The knowledge Michael had would reveal the lifelong lie Hanna was living, it would have spread the secret Hanna went to great lengths to keep. Hanna was willing to accept the accusations made against her without defending herself because it would only expose the fact that she was illiterate. Hanna had refused a promotion at her job at Siemens because she was unable to read, and so she accepted her position as a guard where she chose prisoners to read to her "because she wanted to make their last month bearable before their inevitable dispatch to Auschwitz. And no, at the trial Hanna did not weigh exposure as an illiterate against exposure as a criminal."

Michael knew all this and he wondered if it was his responsibility to share this information with the judge. Michael had watched the trial and had seen that Hanna said things that infuriated the judge and weakened her defense; "she did not calculate and she did not maneuver. She accepted she would be called to account, and simply did not wish to endure further exposure." This compelled him to want to help her, to help the judge and the court to understand Hanna's behavior, and to also justify her behavior to himself.

Michael consulted his father - who is a philosopher - with his dilemma and presented it as a vague, hypothetical situation. His father described freedom and dignity to him in this manner, "don't you remember how furious you would get as a little boy when mamma knew better what was good for you? Even how far one can act like this with children is a real problem. It is a philosophical problem, but philosophy does not concern itself with children." The movie doesn't place a lot of emphasis on this. The father states that the extent this is taken to with children is a problem, which makes it unjustifiable when it comes to adults. A person cannot place what other people say is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves because, as the father puts it, "it was no comfort to you that your mother was always right." If Michael wanted to help Hanna, to let her know what he thought was best, he would have to talk directly to her to try and make her see it for herself. Hanna would have to have "the last word;" doing it any other way would be depriving her freedom and dignity without giving her some promise of a future.

The movie focuses on Michael's inner conflict: his need to understand Hanna's actions, but also how he can't come to terms with what she had done and that he loved her. The novel focuses on this and weaves it into a bigger concept: a second generation confronting a nazi past. It tried to analyze the question and find an answer for what the second generation should do with the knowledge of the extermination of the Jews. Michael's generation was exposed to films and literature about the concentration camps to the point that it was not longer a subject beyond imagination. Their parents had either committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen, and therefore they could say nothing to this generation.

Coming to grips with a Nazi past was not just a generational conflict because the children of this second generation didn't know if condemning their parents was enough. The Holocaust lingered in their generation - they would punish the guilty, but would continue to be "silenced by revulsion, shame and guilt."

It was this generation that wanted to know how man could practice such cruelty toward another man, and how any group of people could just take it without a fight. In the novel, Michael ventures to the site of a concentration camp to experience it firsthand. He meets a man while hitchhiking who explains that executioners don't hate the people they execute, but they execute them because it's their work. It's true that the people that hated the Jews never directly killed them; they had other people do this, but these people who carried out the physical part of the extermination had no feelings toward the Jews, and that's why it was easy to execute them; it's easy to discard something you have no emotional attachment to. The Jews, to these people, were a matter of such indifference to them that they could "kill them as easily as not." It's numbness. In literature I've read about the perpetrators of Nazi crimes, it describes how it was difficult at first, but after doing it over and over again, it just became all in a days work, and this is horrifying because we are talking about human lives.

This "numbness" is somewhat akin to the numbness that pervades the literature and other accounts of survivors of the camps. A prisoner in the camp who survives month after month becomes accustomed to seeing death, to doing whatever it takes to survive. The behavior of the prisoners becomes selfish and indifferent to others around them.

So maybe we can't judge without taking circumstances into account, but do circumstances really make a difference? It doesn't change their behavior, it doesn't make it any better or any worse. Behavior is an independent faculty. It's influenced by other things, but in the end I think it has to be judged separately, because the law was designed to punish actions. The novel states that behavior has its own sources and is your own behavior, just as your thoughts are your own thoughts, and your decisions your own decisions.

All in all, both the novel and the film examine "law" by asking, "what is it?" It questions whether it is something that is actually written and obeyed, or if it's what "must be" obeyed - written or not - in order for society to function.

2009-07-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

The skeleton stands in the far right corner of the backyard. It gapes at you whenever you catch a glimpse of it from the kitchen window. Because of age, both yours and the decrepit figure’s, it’s now rendered limbless and obsolete, but it once served a purpose in your young life.

Something inside of you died the day it was torn up, but you do not mourn for it. Years tarred and feathered your soul, made your heart hard. Only now and then, without intending to, do you catch its mocking smile.

the dangling branches of the trees that hang low about the rusted, rotting structure, mimic you in such a way that a curved shape leaves an indentation on your lips. In the wind, the branches are an accurate portrayal of your young self.

Suspended in the air, like those rainbow bubbles carefully blown from a child’s lips, you almost flipped over the bar, believing that going over and beyond the swing-set would immerse you in some magical, strange place. In the air you hoped to stay, your shadow, a cloud, as the sky became your ground. But what goes up must come down, and what comes down must grow up.

Barren of its swings, the skeleton stands in the corner, smiling at you, mocking you. Perhaps it will fertilize the ground, one day.