Shanna 5/1/08 I Tell You Now

I Tell You Now is a book of autobiographical stories and poetry by Native American authors. This book is packed full of potential hooks for papers on wilderness, land management, or Native Americans in general. My favorite poem is by David Wishart, a professor of Native American studies at the University of California. I used one of his lines as the hook of my paper:
"In a place where / it used to be / always spring / now one tells the seasons / by smog reports." This line spoke loudly to me, poetically depicting the destruction of lands which use to be beautiful homes to so many Native Americans, not to mention sanctuaries for the expression of their religions. Another poems describes the poverty of a Native family. It takes the viewpoint of the author as a child who does not realize then how deprived his family is, and how hard his father worked to find employment so that he could support them. From the mouths of those who have experienced the impact of relocation first hand, this book really hits home. It made me realize the hellish state some Native reservations are in. This is not a history book, or a book written by a white person studying Native Americans. It is their stories written by their own hands. The most impressive part of all is that a good portion of the writers are professors or accomplished writers. The fact that they somehow rose above the treacherous conditions they describe speaks wonders of their resiliency, determination, and work ethic.

Shanna 5/1/08 Twain's Life on the Mississippi

This semester I read an incredible book called Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. Twain is my favorite author so my opinion might be biased but it's still an amazing book. Twain recounts his boyhood growing up on the Mississippi river, interning for a steamboat pilot, becoming a pilot himself, and finally, taking one last boat ride down the big river to see how it changed, reflect, and write this book. As a boy, interning for steamboat pilots was intimidating and overwhelming at times. He was astounded at the tremendous amount of knowledge steamboat pilots had to store in their minds to chart a safe course down the river. Later on he describes being a steamboat pilot as the freest enterprise in the world, even freer than being a writer. A writer must conform to the editor's pen, revising, and revising. A steamboat pilot however, has the freedom to lay back, put his feet up, and let the crew do all the work. A steamboat pilot is really what we would think of as the captain. The captain is the person who owns the steamboat and he hires a pilot to actually run the boat and haul the shipment. Pilots set their own standards and salaries, and sometimes, when the river froze and they couldn't run the route, the captains would pay them to stay in a hotel near the port and wait until the river thawed. Steamboat pilots created what Twain described as the tightest monopoly the world has ever seen. Their trade was one that took a lifetime to master, and not just anyone could be a pilot. A young person who didn't know the river by heart with all of its bends, depths, and obstacles ran the risk of wrecking the ship and killing everyone on board, which happened often. It was a very risky venture, and the captains wanted experienced pilots who could guarantee the shipment would arrive at its destination. Twain describes the death of the mighty steamboat industry with the invention of trains and the construction of railroads. Steamboats were no longer needed because trains could move more at a faster rate, and for less money. And so the old trade died along with anyone who could navigate the unpredictable river.
Throughout the book Twain chases various rabbits, including the story of Murrel's gang. While another popular gang at that time was Jessie James and the Younger gang, it consisted of seven or so members, while Murrel's gang had hundreds. It was a violent gang that would promise slaves money if they ran away from their masters. The gang would resell the slave, give him a cut of the cash, and the slave would do this 3 or 4 times before being sent to the free states with money in his pockets. This was not the outcome for most. The participating slaves would, for the most part, be robbed, murdered, dumped in the big river, and never thought of by Murrel or any of his minions again. I'll stop rambling, but I highly recommend this book. It contains many interesting stories like this one, and recounts the life of, in my opinion, the greatest American author.

Shanna 5/1/08 Outside reading Don Quijote

I enjoyed reading Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes because I could relate to his craziness. Quijote was made famous, but also kind of ostracized by his community. That is a familiar feeling to me sometimes. I do not live on campus so I don't know that many people, and I feel estranged from the large portion of CNU students living on campus. When Don Quijote and Dancho meet Marcella she explicit says she does not wish to be hounded by men following her, after which DQ and Sancho follow her into the forest. Marcella left society and took to the woods for reasons of her own. Her independence and fascination with the forest made her an outsider. For some reason men seemed to be drawn to this, all of them wishing they could tame her and win her free heart. It is not an uncommon theme in literature for the estranged or exhiled to take to the wilderness, much like the Israelites fled Egypt to wander in the wilderness of the dessert. DQ and Sancho meet someone crazier than Quijote himself on their journey. Cardenio is raving mad due to the loss of his beloved. Cardenio fits the trend of crazy people being forest dwellers because DQ finds him in the perilous Sierra Moreno mountains. After they meet DQ decides to do penance for Dulcinea in the mountains because they offered perfect seclusion and a harsh environment beffitting one who wishes to punish himself. In this context, wilderness can certainly be seen as a place of liminality, as Dr. Redick would say, because DQ further involves himself in new conquests of madness and ludicrousy. The wilderness surroundings only work to deepen his insanity.

Shanna 5/1/08 Lion's Bridge

Our class trip to Lion's Bridge was fun, even though I wasn't feeling good that day. My favorite part was probably the ducks (gotta love ducks), especially the fat, white one I called Donald. I have lived in Yorktown for twenty years and that was the first time I had ever been to the park at the Mariner's museum. The paths were well kept but still treacherous due to the joggers whizzzing past, intent on exercize. Me and Ashleigh chatted, keeping our own rather slow pace behind the rest of the class. We pointed out the may apples with their umbrella like appeal, and the lovely bloodroot which deserves a name to match its simplistic beauty. The sun shown brightly as we wondered where Dr. Redick had gotten to. We spied him through the trees, off the trail taking pictures. When we lost him we joked that he probably took a short cut and would beat us all back to the bus! I saw a dark colored crane at one point which did not resemble any of the herrons I usually see around my house. I saw a turtle off the path attempting to hide behind a stump. I was surprised at the lack of mosquitoes, and quite glad they had apparently already eaten that day. Poetry was perilous work because it took my eyes off the road and off the joggers. All in all a fun little trip, though I wish we had more time to gaze across the lake.

Shanna 4/30/08 Exploitation & Berry

I do not understand how science, in all its glory, could not see that exploitation of the land for agriculture would one day kill the land and render it useless. As Dr. Redick spoke of in class, they (scientists) inject the land with replenishing chemicals so it can continue to be used and used. How could they not predict the destruction of the land? The answer (if there truly is one) can be found in Berry's The Unsettling of America. "The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization... the exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, hard facts..." (Berry, 8). The scientists serve institutions and are probably paid by those who want to exploit the land. Therefore, the scientists cannot afford to protect the land, they can only make it better and more efficient for the exploiters. In the long run though, we all lose. The exploiters will not be satisfied until they have every slice of the pie (or every plot of farmland) on which to wreak the havoc of machinery and chemicals. In The Likings and Loves of the Subhuman Lewis describes, "the area in which they operate should grow wider still and wider" (Lewis, 27). Contentment has never been a word to characterize the dominating and destructive nature of America. The exploiters can only think in terms of money and product.

Shanna 4/30/08 Unsettling Poison Berry

This post must begin with song lyrics. You will surely know the song. In the 60s it was sung by Melanie, and I believe the Counting Crows do the version of it that is popular today. It goes "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The line of this song most relavent to my topic is "Farmer, farmer, put away your DDT's, I don't care about spots on my apples, leave me the birds and the bees." Wendell Berry talks about this, in essence. No one wants to be farmers anymore because it is expensive, difficult, time consuming, and uncertain. The bigwigs from big cities are taking over the farming industry and making it alot easier... for themselves. They employ heavy machinery, crop dusters, scientists, and worst of all- Chemicals. You just don't tamper with chemicals around food, it's common sense. But they do it anyway, in the name of progress, production, and business. Berry put it best in The Unsettling of America: "And it is one of the miracles of science and hygiene that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." A greater truth was never spoken. DDT's, hormones, steroids, whatever the hell makes chickens lay more than one egg a day. All of this is severe tampering with something that simply does not need tampering with: nature. And yet, despite the words of Berry, and so many others, nothing will be done. Americans will continue to be "poisoned." From Rationality and Narrative, Socrates tells us why. "Do not be annoyed at my telling the truth; the fact is that no man in the world will come off safe who honestly opposes either you or any other multitude" (Redick & Underwood, 402). The little guy just can't win against corporate America. Or, in the words of Berry, "throwing a rock into a frozen river does not make a ripple."

Shanna 4/30/08 In Defense of Poetry

To define a poem is not easy, but it is possible. Poetry, however, does not define. It does not attempt to tell the reader, for instance, what an apple is. That is the job of science. The job of poetry is quite the opposite. Truth: "Wilderness is so heavily freighted with meaning of a personal, symbolic, and changing kind as to resist easy definition" (Redick/Nash, 1). The realm of the poet is the personal, symbolic, and changing. The poet attempts to coax the reader into tasting an apple, or biting an apple, or even believing he is an apple; it does not define an apple because that is boring, scientific, and everyone knows what an apple is. Science states the obvious, poetry states the hidden. In A Continuous Harmony, Berry uses the poetry of Wallace Stevens: It was when I said / "There is no such thing as truth," / That the grapes seemed fatter. / The fox ran out of his hole. The only truth Stevens could find was found in nature. That is interesting because most would say science, in all its endeavors, harbors what little truth can be found in this world. Like Stevens, I think much the opposite. The only truth cannot be defined. The only truth is nature and its description, experience, and vibrance.