Category: Scissors

In chapter 25 of this week’s book, Paper Bullets by Kip Fulbeck, Kip describes an episode in his life where he worked with a group of at risk children during the summer intervention group. In this chapter, Kip spends a lot of time explaining an exercise that he uses often for such groups where the participants write down the worst things and then the best things that people have are said to them. (P.247-258) I was inspired by this chapter and the exercises mentioned in it. I give them a try and did them myself. I admittedly am currently trying to sort my life out after some major changes and figured if nothing else this might be enlightening.

I am not going to share what I came up with here in part because a lot of it is stuff I can barely stand to write down for me to see. I’ve been in classes and/or programs like the program Kip described in this chapter. As a kid I had issues and was labeled “high risk”among other things. The program I participated in was not anywhere as cool as the one Kip describes in this chapter. That would’ve actually been helpful. Instead what I ended up with was yet more things to add to the bad side of the paper in the exercise that I completed last night. Supposedly this labeling was supposed to help me but it really made things worse. I know if someone had helped me and my classmates in the way that Kip describes having conducted his program it would have been a different story. While admittedly I can’t speak for all of my classmates, I know a lot of them did not go on to have successful academic careers and quite a few dropped out. We still don’t know what the point of the program I participated in was but I really hope that things have improved since I was a kid.

Refrences

Fulbeck,Kip. Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.

A lot of the content of this week has reminded me of my class I took at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on the anthropological concept of race. As a concept race, is something that seems so real but in reality is a figment of Western societies culture. Race is an invented concept and is far from a universal concept even within the United States. Part of this is because of the ways that Americans understanding of race (and thus definitions) has changed over time. Geography has also played a role in the concepts development. Race played a significant role in how and why it took Alaska and Hawaii years to gain statehood.

While absurd to the modern observer, the fact that Alaska and Hawaii had majority populations of nonwhite or so-called “colored”peoples barred both states from entry into the United States for years. I can’t help but wonder if this is also why no other territories have been converted into states despite the fact that the laws that allow us keep territories mandate that there be an end goal of converting such places into states. While officially race no longer impacts such decisions the reality is much more complicated. The same ideas that barred Alaska and Hawaii from entrance because of their “skewed”population ratios are no doubt the same ideas that bar the entrance of other territories to statehood. It’s disturbing to think that such antiquated issues still have such an influence on modern politics, but after the events of the past few years it sadly not surprising. More than anything else, the concept of race in the United States still serves its purpose of separating and dividing people within this nation. The results of this division is keeping us all from achieving our full potential as a nation. All of us lose because of this concept and yet it still remains.

Thinking back to when I was a kid, I remember that my family always went fishing somehow during the summer. Whether it was deep-sea fishing, dip netting, lake fishing, or river fishing we always did one of them at least once during the summer. There is even a few years where we went ice fishing. My parents idea of a fun family activity was required to have fish, or game involved. Admittedly I enjoy fishing, and not just because we always did it when I was a kid. I enjoy fishing because it’s both relaxing (it’s always done somewhere beautiful) and thrilling. There is always the anticipation of what kind of fish will we really catch? How big will it be? Can I get this one to take the bait? Can I land this fish?

My favorite kind of fishing when I’m in the mood for a good thrill, is always deep-sea fishing. The fish your attempting to catch are almost always never visible. Admittedly there was one time when we finished a reef, and it was especially calm and sunny out when we could see the fish we were attempting to catch but even then there was massive amounts of distortion because the fish were actually 250-300 feet below us. But that day was a serious outlier on the average of my experiences deep-sea fish. Usually you can’t see anything at all. You spend a good minute, or longer just getting your hook and bait down to the bottom where we usually fish from. Then you’d sit there and feel the boat move up and down as your weight (the big chunk of lead in the shape of the cannonball usually no less than 6 pounds) bumped up and down on the bottom at a slight delay from the movement of the boat. You just sit there for hours sometimes, waiting to feel a fish nibble on the bait at the bottom. Then he would have to manage to set the hook correctly, without knowing what kind of fish it is that you are catching. With every fish having a slightly different mouth shape, the best bet was to just pull up on the pole, but if you knew what kind of fish you would likely had (based on advanced scouting of the location) you could specialize how you set the hook a little bit. It was still a gamble, as the ocean has no rules about where fish can go, as long as the fish in question stays within their depth range. After setting the hook, you then have to pull the fish up from way way far down. And the fish moves when you do this. You can make an even more educated to guess about what kind of fish it is by how it reacts to being caught, but you still can’t know for sure until you pull it up. This often takes a ridiculous amount of time. The weight that keeps the bait at the bottom, alone, weighs at least 6 pounds, and the fish in question is going to be over 10 pounds (fish smaller than that can’t pick up the hooks we were using), there may be a current that you have to fight, and don’t forget the fish is moving. This process seems like it takes hours, but usually it is only a few minutes. You can stare into the deep water beneath you and try to see the fish, but you can’t until they are within the last 20 feet or so that you have to pull them up.

This quarter in school may possibly have topped my list of quarters that have sucked, and that I am not confident that I am able to finish. I feel as though I have hooked a fish, but the fish is fighting really hard, and feels suspiciously as though the hook might not be quite set right. I hate not being able to finish things, but I have never been this far behind. Not even in elementary school when I got chickenpox did I have to spend this much time out of school. Not even last quarter, when I was involved in a high-speed crash the first day of the quarter, did I get this far behind. I am seriously scared that I will never see this fish. I’m seriously scared that I will never finish this damn degree. There are so many things that have happened to me during my time at school and I have had to cope with things many of my classmates have never even considered. I have watched my parents get divorced, I have watched my dad wither away during chemotherapy, I have watched my mom freak out about it, I have had to go over my dad’s funeral arrangements and will, I have moved so many times, including a move from Alaska to Washington (a move considered even by the military to be on an international scale), I have had to coordinate with my little brother to get mental health care for my dad, I have had to receive the news that my father has tried to kill himself – and failed – three different times. And now this latest struggle with my own health. I am tired, and I just don’t know why I am continuing to try to go to school. Am I just trying to finish this to prove a point? Or do I actually have something worth fighting for here? Will I ever land this fish? The best answer I can give now is maybe.

This past week has been a bit of a blur. But in saying that I realize I really have to expand out to a month. The biggest problem I am currently having is trying to be able to keep a single thought in my head for long enough to actually write it down. Whatever you do kids don’t end up with epilepsy it will rob you of everything you’ve ever tried to do in your life.

I am trying to get a grip on what I need to finish, and just the world in general. Spend most of the day struggling with vertigo or a migraine and I have forgotten a lot of things. At this point, I know I need to catch up on these blog posts. I think I need four of them, yes! I need four of them. I know I need to finish some book annotations. Those are more complicated. I still don’t know what I’m needing to do to make up my classwork. That terrifies me. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I’m also not sure what I need to do about my final paper. But I can write blogs!

My experiences over the last week have really shaken me. To provide a working background, I had a seizure in the middle of Rite Aid and as a result have been diagnosed with epilepsy. I know that many people who have the condition I do are mistaken as mentally ill, addicts going through withdrawal, and many other negative stereotypes. Combining these thoughts with the topic of the class, has resulted in some dark ruminations.

I am a white woman so in some ways there’s a slight chance that such stereotypes might not be the first destination of bystanders of the next event I have, but the fact that that makes a difference and the fact that it is such a dramatic difference is a little depressing to me. What would happen if I was Asian American and had a seizure in the middle of Rite Aid like I did the other day? Admittedly my friend was with me and knew what was going on but what if they hadn’t been? Would the onlookers have given me the benefit of the doubt and assumed that I was having a seizure because of a medical problem, or would they have called the cops assuming that I was an addict going through withdrawal or having some kind of mental health breakdown?

The intersection of race and disability is one that ends up shorting so many people. The church that I go to here in Centralia runs a soup kitchen and intentionally conducts outreach to the homeless populations in the area. It is terrifying to me how many people I have met at the soup kitchen who are on the street and turning to illegal drugs because of disabilities such as mine. It’s also disheartening that a significant proportion of homeless people I have known both through my current church and from my experiences these last three months on the public bus system are not white, and are also disabled. The idea that my inherent appearance, something that I can not change gives me an advantage in my disability makes me feel slimy.

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And here is A snip it that was in the “paper” section.  This week is full of choping.

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My efforts in making an entry in the “paper” category this week are going to require some inventiveness on my part. I missed every day of class this week because of my new health diagnosis of epilepsy. I still can’t deal with this. But what I can do is some independent self evaluation of my rough draft.

Writing my rough draft actually was a little bit easier than I thought it was going to be. In many ways that made me nervous however, as I’m still not sure if I’m doing it right at all. But I’ve definitely figured out where I’m going with this paper now. The article that I found and that I talk about in the “rock”section this week really gave me a solid direction. Before the site really been struggling to find a way to put into words some of the ideas that I was thinking about, but having read that article the connections that I was making my head between two seemingly unrelated topics started to make slightly more sense. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep everything I have currently, but I have to admit what I have created so far is usable and I think at least parts of it will end up in my final draft. The exercise at any rate has not been without purpose.

So while this is not what I really wanted to be putting into this entry this week, I guess this is better than nothing. I will continue to attempt to keep up and I will continue to try to find relevant things to put into this category even if I have to keep missing class. Even without direct input from my peers, I know that I can at least evaluate myself and take notes on my own progress.

In high school I had the same teacher two years in a row for my advanced English class, and she made us take the class with the other teacher the next year, rather then take all of our required high school English education with her. We needed diversity in our teaching styles she said, and then promptly reminded us that not everyone teaches like she does. In retrospect, she would have fit right in at Evergreen, but the teacher that we then had to take the next two years would not have. The first day of class as we were all grudgingly trying to conform to more conventional class expectations, we were asked to write down what we thought constituted the American Dream. I will never forget how naive my vision was, and how while at first all of us thought such as discussion was pointless make work but by the end of the year understood what the point had been. It was also depressing to realize just how few of us would ever, be able to obtain what had been sold to us as the American dream and this was in the college track class.

Then my vision had been the rights to economic betterment, the right to own an home, the right to own land, the right to move beyond one’s parents in class development. This matched up with most of my classmates visions. Over the year this vision expanded a little, but not much. One thing that influenced this slight expansion, was to look at what had been considered the American dream in the past, and the idea of Henry Ford’s melting pot came up. I still don’t know which version is the one I buy into, or which is less depressing. But looking at Ford’s vision, while it is clearly flawed, it has none the less been really influential on what makes up a lot of people’s vision of the American dream. The question that lucks out a at me form the dark of my mind is what on earth is left if we all dissolve into a big melting pot? Is there a single American culture that can develop out of this or, is this just an effort by the people in charge to create a more cooperative and docile work force? Ford’s intentions were motivated directly by his efforts to create the optimized American worker. This vision was created as a means of control, and it is very effective. If you have no were to go back to, you have to play along with the game of employment and survival or unemployment and death/failure. You don’t refuse to work because you feel your rights are being violated, you keep working, because work is your new culture, your new home, your new leas on life.

So what is the American Dream? Is it really just a lie? I still can’t answer this and I don’t know if I ever will.

Attempting to sort through my thoughts this week has continued to prove quite difficult. So many different streams of ideas at once, and I am still sick so I am having trouble concentrating. I have been struggling to find a way to define my topic for my final project now that I am trying to do research. I thought I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I am not so sure now. I have some research, but I do not know exactly what to do with it, or how it fits, or if it is any good. I hate pop culture. I don’t want to leave the library so to speak. Ya I have interests out side of my work, and my academic pursuits, but I have kind of forgotten what they are over the last few years. I have had to. Attempting to keep up with school work, working a full time demanding job, being involved in my children’s homeschooling, managing my dad’s issues, helping manage my mother-in-law’s issues does not leave a lot of time for my own life in any form. So thinking of pop culture, and of my own not strictly academic interests with in it is just hard. And I am totally lost again. Oh well, I will research until I find the way again!

Understanding were immigrants in general fit in to any nation is a far from simple challenge. While it seams like it should be a no brainier, this is something that has never been simple for any nation to figure out. Through out history there are examples of how different nations and peoples have dealt with the reality that humans can and will move from place to place. Thinking of the origins of America as a nation and the reliance that this country has had to have on immigration reviles a complicated and rocky relationship between the topics, that is far from logical. Trying to change the history of our nation to cover up the existence of peoples and events that are awkward to us is apparently just the SOP. Now admittedly there are not really any humans on earth who have not polished up stuff for the history books, it an inherent flaw of humans in general, but it is disturbing to see how the contents of our revisions reveal motivations so far against the stated goals of our nation.

If I were to list my obsessions, the list would have to begin with music. So much of my life is centered around music in one way or another, it is impossible to imagine my life without it. To be more descriptive, it’s not just one genre of music that I am obsessed with. I’m obsessed with music itself, with writing my own music, with playing my own music, with listening to music of all forms shapes and kinds. So why you ask, am I not pursuing music in my degree field… Well that’s more complicated. I still have aspirations to one day become a music therapist (the idea of healing people with what I am most obsessed with seems like a win-win, and it’s amazing how powerful music really is) but the reality I’m not there yet. And I like food, and a roof over my head, and the heads of my family that I’m responsible for. So for the time being I am pursuing a focus which will allow me to both expand into music therapy later, and be able to actually get a job now.

On that note, attempting to create a focus for the final project in this class seems both daunting and yet simple simultaneously. Obviously, I want to do something with music. But I also enjoy watching anime now and again. And I have to have something that I can do research on. Attempting to research about composers of music for anime films and shows so far, has not left me with any insights on angles for a paper. While interesting, and certainly something I will continue to do in my free time, I’m not quite sure that attempting to relate the Asian American experience through such a topic will be effective.

On the other hand, what I could do is bring in another element of my obsessions in the form of history. The history of different forms of music has always been fascinating to me. So the paper about the history of Asian American music seems reasonable, and with this topic, it seems as though I would be able to relay a component of the Asian American experience. No guarantees on anything yet, but my efforts to sort this paper out, have gotten this far.

A personal journal – these posts will include any snippets (pun intended), fragments, partially formed thoughts, personal observations, etc., related to our program and which you may or may not reassemble into logical/linear fashion form by quarter’s end.