Every Rose

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my English XI blog, I hope you all enjoy! If you would like to learn more about me feel free to click on the About me, the author tab for some pictures, reading, and fun! If you would like to see any of my writing samples my English papers are all there for your enjoyment, and I've thrown in a few odds and ends that you may have never seen.  Feel free to comment on anything you feel so inclined to, but keep in mind that the whole world can see what you write, so please keep it PG. 

Thanks so much!

~Caroline

[This post was written in response to Peggy McIntosh's essay that was given to us by Mr. Franek during class.]

In Peggy McIntosh's essay regarding "white priveledge", she mentions many truths that I have witnessed in my lifetime.  First I'll note her point about finding people of the white race on " posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines."  Thinking back to when I was a child, the barbies that I could find in the toy isle where all white with either brown or blonde hair.  It wasn't until very recently while walking down the toy isle at Target that I saw an African American Barbie.  I can see how that would be very difficult for young African American children growing up being forced to act out scenes of white homes/families.  My mind jumped next to the Disney princesses… There's Belle (pale skin and brown hair), Snow white (white= self explanatory), Cinderella ( plae skin and blonde)…. I'm seeing a trend.  There is not a single black Disney princess.  The closest thing to an African American princess is Jasmine, and shes of Arab descent.  How hard would it be to think up a story in an African Kingdom for young children to enjoy? Not hard at all. 

      The next point that stuck out to me was Peggy's point about Public accommodations and treatment there. I found this point interesting because it relates to one of my own life experiences.  Two years ago our French class took a trip to a French restaurant in the city.  While the rest of the class and our teacher went to park their cars, my friend and I were sent in to get the table.  My friend was a black male.  I found it interesting that when it was just the two of us sitting down not one waitress came over to help us, but as soon as our blonde, white, teacher walked in, three waitresses came over to take our drink order.  THough I don't like to beleive it, I can say that if my friend haf been a white boy, our order would have been taken much sooner.  It's small gestures like that where I can see that racism still clearly exists today.   

[This post was written as a response to question posted by Mr. Franek on his blog regarding the book Invisible Man by: Ralph Ellison.] 

I have to admit I had the same feelings as Todde in regards to reading this book. I saw it as a 600 page novel that would probably tell me something that I could say in five words; Black people are treated differently. I saw it as 600 pages of reading that was taking up my time from studying for APs and writing my Term Paper, and to be completely honest after finishing chapter 9, my oppinion wasn’t changed too much.

While reading the first nine chapters I found it hard not to fall asleep and it took me forever to finish a page. With an opening line that reads, “I am an invisible man.”(1), I was grabbed thinking, sick! ghost story! I was throughly disappointed after reading the second line, ” No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of you Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.”(1) Well then I knew I was in for a long read. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my share of literature written around literature as much as the next person, but it’s completely different when it’s 600 pages of the same thing.

It wasn’t really until chapter 10 that I really got into the symbolism of the book. While working at the Liberty Paint company, the narrator mentions the mixing of white paint. Surprisingly, the two contents in the white paint are brown paint with exactly 10 drops of black. It seems strange that though both of the origional ingredients are so dark, the outcome is the “purest white that can be found”(202). It is alot like the way the world works, unfortunately. While it is the black people that do all of the work, it is the white people that get the credit for the outcome.

Hopefully with further reading the novel will continue to catch my interest, but at this point, I wouldn’t be throwing any awards its way.

[ This is a soundoff written in response to a book review written about Barbara Kingsolver's book, THe Poisonwood Bible.]

Though spending my summer trying to get through this book wasn’t what I would call a highlight of my life, I would have to say I strongly disagree with the hatred Jim has for this book. I’ll give him that maybe the first hundred/ hundred fifty pages were rather dull, there was still a well written story and characters that you could connect with, even though they are female. The main problem I have with Jim’s piece was his resentment towards the author about her portrayal of Nathan. Jim seemed to think that Orleanna was in the wrong when she left Nathan in the Congo. The conditions that Nathan kept his family in for those few years were completely unsafe! Nathan was crazy to keep them there. I know that if I had been in Orleanna’s place I would have done the same thing, though I probably would have brought along all my children.
I do however slightly agree with him in regards to Orleanna’s behavior post Ruth May’s death. Not so much about Orleanna wrongly blaming Nathan, but instead about how it took her so long to finally get it that she needed to get out. Even though her children nearly died of various illnesses and could have been killed at anytime by the animals there it takes her a death to break the camel’s back! . She says “”Anyone can see I should have, long before…”” but clearly she was the only one that didn’t see.
I also agree that Kingsolver’s writing is very political, and if Jim is true she seems to not know all the facts. She writes as if the government is trying to screw people over when honestly they are just trying to do what they believe is helpful. She also seems to form the trend that it was constantly the Americans that were doing it. Jim says, “Kingsolver takes this set of facts and turns it into some sort of grand Eisenhower-led attempt to impose the American will on peace loving Lumumba and the people of the Congo.” I completely agree with him there. It seems that through the entire book she pins the problems on the Americans and according to Jim’s facts, that’s incorrect.
Over all I wasn’t a fan of this hateful review, but Jim brings up some valid points. In my opinion Kingsolver’s book, though lengthy, descriptive, and definitely not a beach read, is a pretty decent book over all. I think that from the political standpoint it is very one sided, but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

[The following is a draft of a vignette in my literacy autobiography that was posted on Mr. Franek's blg.]

Chapter 2: De Tar Baby (Or reading made fun)
Brer Rabbit was a spunky Disney character that went on adventures and got into plenty of trouble. One of his favorite adventures was told to me by my mom when I was about five or six. My mom had the best Brer Rabbit talkin’ accent I’d ever heard. She would tell me dat “right den, dey hear a scufflin’ way at de other end of de brier-patch. An lo an behold, who do dey see scramblin’ out but Brer Rabbit hisself, whistlin’ and singin’, an combin’ de tar outer his mustarches wid a piece of de brier-bush.” I’d never heard anything like it. From then on I would try to imitate her voice, and without noticing she was making me enjoy reading. I couldn’t get engouh of it. I made her read it over and over again until I had it down perfect. To this day we still put on the accent occasionally for kicks and giggles.

 [This was a soundoff in response to the terrible comments said by Don Imus on a countrywide broadcast earlier this year.] 

Well I’ll admit, like Autumn, I wasn’t too informed about who Don Imus was. When one of my friends came up to me a few days ago and said, “Didya hear what Imus said?” my immediate response was, “What’s an Imus?” It wasn’t until later that day when I turned on the television that I was introduced to the scary old dude. As a 30-plus year vet of the business, I would never think that he could have made such a HUGE mistake. I understand that he was hired to be a controversial figure on the show, but he took a hop skip and a jump too far over the line.
Because I myself am a female basketball player, I can understand where Imus would get his original comment that the Rutgers team was “tough”, because I’ve played against girls like that, and trust me it isn’t fun. However, I would never dream of going as far as Imus did. It could partially be because it would sound plain dumb coming from a skinny white girl, but mostly because you just plain don’t say things like that. On the drive home from my basketball tournament in Richmond this weekend, I listened to an African American woman that had called into one of the local radio shows that was discussing it. She was trying to impress on the white show host that when any black woman is called “nappy” the hurt it causes is intangible to the white male. She also brought up the point about the music industry, in particular the rap industry. She made the point that most of the albums with explicit lyrics were being purchased by white teenagers. She saw this as one of the major problems of society. I will agree with her to some extent that when adolescents hear a black rapper singing about “Hoe’s” and “Bitches” they think that it makes them entitled to do just that. But I draw the line when she completely blamed the incident on this.
I understand the Don Imus was fired because of this very extreme slip up, but I’m having a bit of a hard time understanding it. I hear black men on the radio everyday saying things of the same nature, or worse, but they still rake in more money in a year than I probably will in a lifetime. I think these issues cause a bit of a double standard in our society, and in some ways I think that could be worse than the comment itself. When you fire a white man for something a black man gets away with saying I won’t stand behind it. Imus slipped up, but he also has an unalienable right to speech and firing him won’t take that away from him.

 [ This soundoff was written in response to an Op-ed written by Mark Franek about children's reading habits today.]

My favorite line in the piece was “All teachers know that the desire to read grows with reading. Perhaps some books should be treated like Brussels-sprouts, force-fed to students at certain times in their educational lives. Most books, however, should be offered up like genuine invitations by loving parents and caring teachers.” Though I?ll admit I?m a Brussels- sprouts fan, I understand what you?re getting at. Many of the literature selections I have read in the past have been forced upon me, but when I got into them I really enjoyed them. For example when I purchased East of Eden for summer reading, I didn?t know how I was going to get through it. I?ve never been a Steinbeck fan, but once I forced myself to read it I loved it. I have also had my share of books passed down to me by my mom.

My mom saved her favorite childhood books and passed them down to my sister and me when she thought we could handle them. Since my sister is four years older then me she received them first, and sadly got to watch all the movies first. So there was my sister locked in the basement allowed to watch little women, the movie. I was so jealous I walked up to my mom that day, in second grade, and begged her to read it to me so I could see the movie too. Well having her read it to me wasn?t part of the deal, I had to read it all on my own. Well I did. I finished the entire book and then read it again. I loved it. Sadly the movie wasn?t all I had hoped it would be.

Little Women was really the beginning of reading for me. Sure, I knew how to read before that, but I had never really grown attached to a character like I did in Little Women. Post reading it, I became an avid reader. There was a summer that my mom still talks about when I read fourteen decent sized books. That?s not to say that I would read just anything that was set in front of me, but when I found a book I liked I was finished it in a day.

I suppose the book a day thing isn?t still in affect, seeing as I don?t have all-day-reading time, but I can still finish a decent book pretty quickly, and though the past few books I?ve had to read for school haven?t been my favorite, I?ve learned to grin and bear them, just like my Brussels sprouts.

 [ This soundoff was written in response to an Op-ed written by Mark Franek in regard to the academic rules about cell phone use on campus's]

My favorite line in the piece was, “Instead, young people continue to leave us in their digital dust while we spend our time worrying about building outdoor, coin-operated lockers, completely oblivious to the obvious logistical problems, not to mention the tendency of technology to make all kinds of walls obsolete.” I thought it was a cleverly worded zinger that was easy to understand.
I have to agree with all the rest who have previously commented, this is a very dumb idea. What’s wrong with the lockers that teh school has already paid to install in tha hallways? From the sound of it, those lockers would be more safe than the cell-phone lockers. Though I’ll admit, I tend to keep my phone on me and not leave it in my locker,simply because in an emergerncy situation I’ll have a life-line. I also agree with brigid and Caroline about our school doing a great job keeping the phone activity under control. They have been working on including the use of such devices in the classroom, for example, in my French class. My teacher participated in a workshop that got her up to date on the latest technology that she can use in the classroom. She says for future assignments we will be required to use a cell phone, and hopefully will be able to do some iPod activities aswell.
I think that technology is moving forward at such a rapid pace, that it would be silly to attempt to slow it by adding a few more expensive lockers.

 [The following was written as a response to an op-ed by Mark Franek regarding the desire to censor a children's book written by Susan Patron.]

I found this article very amusing. Reading through some of the other responses, I think Dan puts it the best when he says, “There are more important things going on in this world than the word “scrotum” in a middle school reading level book. ” For example, I highly doubt that the families of the Virginia Tech students who were killed today are too worried about whether their child read about scrotums at a young age, they just want them alive again. I think it’s absolutly rediculous that anyone, be it parents, librarians, teachers, etc., would want to censor this word from their children’s literature. If anything I think that hearing words like that could really only help a child growing up. When kids are told that they can’t use the word penis because it’s a bad word, what is the first thing they want to say around their friends? Penis. If innocent story books have these words in rotation it takes the sense of “bad” off the word and the children are then not as prone to use it. When people go through and try to black out the word or cover it up, there will always be that kid that goes back to a bookstore in search of the book to find out what it says. If people are going to go through the libraries and scratch out words as innocent as scrotum, where will they go next? Before we know it they will be scratching out the classics, and they have absolutly no right to do that. They are called classics for a reason.