No Name Woman

An interesting look into the another culture.  It somewhat reminded me of some of the stories that I heard from some of my family members.  My father side of the family emmigrated from Yugoslavia when he was about 10 years old.  His older sister, my Aunt Rita, told me some stories that happened in her town during World War II.  She told me of how people went after those who sympathized with the Germans after they had fled.  She didn’t say much about it and I rarely ever heard my father say anything about it unless promted by one of us kids.  My grandmother never learned english so I never really had normal conversation with her about it either.  Hmmm, maybe they were hiding something?

Even though we still occassionaly hear about these types of things like honor killings, I don’t think the average American things about how brutal it was in the past.  I suppose that’s normal though and not just an American trait. 

Her writing style took some getting used to.  It seems to have been written by someone who didn’t have english as a first language.  It seemed fast paced, somethimes abrupt, and very to the point at times.  That was just my impression.  Perhaps I just felt that way because I knew the narrator was Chinese?

making sandwiches

The sandwich technique really helpled me with this papaer.  I think this was actually more of a pain to get going then it was for the “Loss of Creature” paper.  I don’t know why, but for me it seemed hard to get an idea from the source papers.  The technique helped me but I still think I have some work to do, my argument seems repetitive, I know a paper is never done.

About Time?…

I must have gotten alittle carried away with my previous post.  I titled it “About Time” and didn’t say one word about the essay.  Anyway, I enjoyed reading it.  It makes you think about other people’s perscpective’s and how alike we humans think.  I can definitley relate to thinking about going back and changing decisions that I had made.  I try not to though, it doesn’t help much.  We’ve all have to deal coming to terms with our own mortatlity.  It’s a very personal and sometimes frightening concept to think about.  We all deal with it on our own terms.  I look forward to everyone’s take on this during class tonight.

About Time

Yesterday at around 10:30 at night I was sitting in my comfy chair when I heard a loud crash from upstairs followed by a wails of pain.  My five year old had rolled out of his bed and hit his cheek on the corner of his nightstand.  There was alot of blood.  He had a nice cut on his right cheek that was about an inch long.  As I was holding him I mouthed to Heather, “Don’t freak out”.  My thinking is to not make a big deal out of it so maybe he wouldn’t either.  Of course she freaked out.    First she said that I need to wake up our daughter and get her ready because we all needed to go to the hospital.  I said I would take him myself, no need to put out the whole family.  Then I got the look that says I’m a total idiot.  The one where she says nothing and just shakes her head in disgust at me.  Then she tried to page the on-call pediatricians?   She wanted to confirm if we could wait to get stitches in the morning.  The whole time we are “discussing” the situation our son is balling his eyes out.  Finally she decided to take him herself.  She said she didn’t want me telling him to toughen up or that he was ok.  He received two stitches from the doctor.  When they came back around midnight I made three bowls of ice cream and watched an episode of Caillou.  All was well once again. 

If you want to know who or what Caillou is here you go.  I’m advising against it though. 

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/videos/character.aspx?preset=caillou

Busy week…

Ugh, these last few weeks have been a pain. Their mom works in Spotslyvania(sp) and has been in meetings and confrences every other day. I’ve been picking up the kids from daycare and putting them to bed. I haven’t had alot of time to do stuff but I’ve been trying to enjoy the one-on-two time that I have. I worked over this weekend and didn’t have a fun time there either. Our company seems to have this policy to hire the lowest bidder when we are doing a project. The money they saved is wasted when our tech’s have to go behind them and clean up their mistakes.

I’m glad that Happy reminded us about the bibliography. I need to start cracking on that this week as well. Especially while it’s still fresh in my nogging. It seems the comments on most of the blogs are similar to each other’s and to our previous reading. You can’t help but think back to our own experiences and compare. Interesting stories.

Annie Dillard’s American Childhood

I followed the link and read the rest of essay.  I liked the way writer’s style alot.  Reading the entire essay put the excerpt into place, especially the time.  If you just read the excerpt you would think this poor child has such neglectful parents.  As a parent it made me wonder about the parenting philosophy of past generations.  It seems kids back then were left to their own devices.  Now parents are fighting to put their kids into the best schools and after school programs.  I’m getting off topic here and this is a whole nother’ post.   Anyway,  I thought it was funny how she wanted to contact the author of the “The Field Book of Ponds and Streams”, to let him/her know that the book was being read. It’s funny how kids think no matter what era.

Movies and pundits

I’ve been slacking off on writing in my blog this week.  It seems everytime I sit down I end up turning on the television.  I’m getting sucked in about the bailout meltdown mess.  I end up switching from one cable news show to the next.  

I watched Vantage Point.  I liked the movie it was pretty good.  I usually like to think that I can pick out plotlines in movies but this one had a few that I didn’t anticipate.  So that was refreshing at least.  I’ll try to re-read White’s essay before class.  The motivation to read it again is there because I like the essay.  The author is so detailed about his experiencies it really does bring you back.