Writing Across Communities
Writing the World Symposium
Paper Proposal
April 18 – 20, 2012

“The Old Canonites v. the New Colonies: Détente through a Pragmatic Theory of Writing Pedagogy”
Proposed by Kate Baca
Master’s Program – Rhetoric and Writing
University of New Mexico

Since the mid-to-late 1990s, there has been a move in the American academy to distance undergraduate composition from a literature-based essay focus. Emphasizing variations on Aristotle’s rhetoric in a neo-topoi, genre-based pedagogy, the “New English” composition classroom has been burnished of literature. It purports to teach critical thinking through critical writing emphasizing its essential nature as a tool in service to civic awareness and engagement. This is admirable and desirable both from a political perspective and an economic one. Higher education should mint a productive and principled polis, and if it is funded by tax dollars, so should it produce a national product. But the move is equivocal. Old lights, such as Richard Rorty, have argued separately and eloquently for a reinvestment in humanism and “Great Books.” They warn of the dangers that lurk when critical thought is separated from the wisdom, beauty-for-its-own-sake, social pride and error – even hegemony - that are captured in literature. For them, new writing that is disconnected from old writing is bereft of its heritage. Without tradition and context it can inspire neither allegiance to nor reform of the status quo.

Ironically, rhetoric – as a teaching strategy - is at the crux of this impasse. Rhetoric is both a hallmark of the new colonies camp and a symptom of its inability to close the deal in the pedagogical debate with the old canonites. Walter Beale’s A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric maps the way to an understanding of these thinkers as far more Platonic than pragmatic, and it exposes the reasons for the impasse between the camps as well as suggesting a methodology for spanning it. Beale offers a hermeneutic approach to texts that draws heavily on rhetoric in the Sophistic tradition. It assumes, as did the Sophists, that rhetoric is irrevocably tied to varying, contingent realities, and that understanding this dynamic, and identifying the reality any given discourse act proceeds from and reflects is critical to its meaning. This hermeneutic is also pragmatic for the same reasons. It seeks to demonstrate that texts are a manifold affair, that rhetoric is not perforce formalistic a la Aristotle or worthless without foundation a la Plato. It is one of man’s measuring sticks a la Protagoras.

A pragmatic approach to writing would redefine great books and welcome them to the workshop. We should not follow Eagleton’s rejection of traditionally revered writing because it arises out of values specific to an over-class. Neither should we revere or elevate writing without also examining why we should and whether we should continue to do so. Learning to write should stretch reality and comfort and commitment and demand engagement with alienation, disquiet and second thoughts. It should also build emotional muscle, the capacity for hope, and energetic engagement. Rorty had his Proust, but today’s freshman may better have Andrea Gibson and we, as teachers, should be facilitating such relationships. The ability to passionately form and hold convictions while understanding their contingent nature is the essence of a Sophistic, pragmatic view of civic responsibility and writing, as its voice, should follow suit.

Hello, World!

Just a notification to all our authors to cover their hair and eyes: Betting on the Universe has officially gone public.

update

Greetings Class,

Mom is doing great. She is mostly back to her normal sarcastic self. her articulation is back to mostly normal, though she is a bit fuzzy still from all the medications. She has gotten up and walked today, and is eating, rather than being IV fed (though the food is somewhere between liquid and solid still: soups, jello, pudding, etc.)

My write-up is turning out very good so far, and I think this will make an excellent project for the course. I am hoping to be in class next week, but I will keep you all informed.

Thank you for those who have kept us in your thoughts.

--Richard

“This is a Love Movement” Dr. Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street Movement

A status update and comments made by a friend and colleague of mine:

You know things are bad when a young person from a middle class and privileged family is as uncertain of their economic future as a young person from a poor family.

When a black kid from the Bronx doesn’t live the American dream something is wrong with that kid. He must be lazy or dysfunctional. When a privileged non-minority doesn’t live the American dream, something must be wrong with America. I don’t think so.

When you turn a blind eye to the suffering of your neighbor don’t be surprised when the suffering creeps across the yard. The social and political system in this country that contributed to the suffering of the underclass for decades was allowed by the privileged who wanted to maintain the status quo. Now that same greedy machine is biting the middle class in the ass. I think it is too late for the blame game. The damage is done. I only hope we can all learn an important lesson: The social woes of the underprivileged are the social woes of EVERYBODY. We are all connected.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~John F. Kennedy

Richard’s status update after attending a General Assembly in Albuquerque:

Irony in action: At the Occupy Albuquerque movement this evening, after getting kicked off of Yale Park and discussing steps to take, an individual walked by and called the protesters "Idiots". The word "idiot" is descended from the Greek word, Idios, which means private person, or individual. This specifically relates to anyone who was not part of the Polis, or the political workings of Athens. The protesters were in a group, in the midst of a highly democratic decision-making process (voting on proposals) actively using their First Amendment Rights to freedom of assembly. So who's the Idiot? I love irony. :)

I think I might have been waiting for this movement for my whole life. From the outset, the occupy movement reminded me of King’s movement for the poor that never really happened. I’ve also thought often of Langston Hughes’ A Dream Deferred. Actually tons of stuff has gone through my head since I first heard about the Occupy Movement, so I am going to throw some of that together.

Two quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. that I love and have used as a signature line on emails:

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

And

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

I reposted this picture on facebook. I feel it’s pretty clear who is actually protesting the power and who is not.

Ani Difranco’s song Fuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMX8QPP9t-U

Who are the police supposed to serve and protect?

Paraphrasing Brian:The homeless have been “occupying” Albuquerque for quite awhile. If you put signs in their hands, then it’s a problem.

And here are a couple of videos:College humor: We Are the 1%

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrQiGBpHVCc

Video made in support of OWS by moveon.org http://front.moveon.org/this-powerful-clip-is-exactly-why-we-support-occupywallstreet/#.TqcG2DpGEGQ.facebook

Dr. Cornel West participating in a people’s trial of Goldman Sachs. I really like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgvgHQMV6Mc

We made the front page of the Valencia County News Bulletin.

In this picture are my sons Jason and Jarryn and my husband Jim.

Rough Weekend

Greetings Class,

I had informed Dr. Kells about this weekend, but I wanted to post a brief summary of events.

My mom had open-heart surgery on Friday. Everything seemed to have gone well, but about an hour after I left for the evening, I got a call that she had gone into cardiac arrest. Panic ensued. They were able to stabilize her, but they had to go in a second time to do so and repair the damage. The graft on her heart tore slightly where it connected. Luckily a nurse was in the room when she went into arrest, so there was no delay in response time.

She is doing well now. She is off the breathing tube, responsive, and even smiling a little. She still is not talking, but she had a tube down her throat for 48 hours.

I will most likely not be in class Wednesday, and I plan on, once I am a little more removed, doing a brief write-up on the whole experience in the vein of our class.

I hope everyone's weekend has been much much more boring than mine has.

--Richard

Insider/Outsider Practices: Denise Chavez is a real Chola

So I lost all of my documents a few days ago when my computer crashed and I’ve had to re-write all of these blogs. In a way I’m glad that happened. After last night’s class and Deb’s presentation on Bennet I am seeing Denise Chavez’s work through a different lens. Denise Chavez is from Las Cruces, NM. She is a Nueva Mexicana in the truest sense. Espírtu of the Southwest and a good La Llorona fearing mujer. A product of her landscape, Chavez takes the stage and commands the audience’s attention with the forceful presence of the Organ Mountains. During her performance at the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture Series, Chavez stressed the importance of belonging to the land from which we came. She told stories about growing up in New Mexico and she read a piece reminiscent of Jimmy Santiago-Baca. It’s hard to write about Denise Chavez’s because it is so embedded and situated in being a Chicana from New Mexico. Every aspect of her screams New Mexican but that quality is indefinable. I remember last semester in ENG 540 I was tasked with presenting Martín and Meditations. Since we had been talking about insider/outsider practices I thought it would be an opportune moment to deconstruct and imagine how an insider might read that text as opposed to an outsider. This presentation failed tremendously because it was nearly impossible for an outsider to ‘imagine’ being an ‘insider.’ The experience, socialization, historical/political context, linguistic knowledge, code-switching strategies, and everything else involved in being an insider is so vastly complex that an outsider cannot access or acquire the persona of an insider by merely trying to ‘imagine’ what it may be like and if they did try to artificially enact insider practices the exercise becomes reductive. To complicate this even further, if knowledge is always contingent and rhetoric is always situated in some knowledge framework then the linguistic and social practices of an insider discourse community, like that of the South Valley or Southern New Mexico, rely on the a shifting knowledge. What I mean is if we shape knowledge and knowledge shapes us (a dialectical process) and we communicate based on this shifting structure then even insider discourse communities are not static but always changing. How is it ever possible for an outsider to acquire insider practices if those practices are ever-changing? This is what I see in Denise Chavez’s work. It would be easy to say that she uses New Mexican insider cliché’s like references to green chile, mariachi music, baptisms, el chupacabra (or el chups as his friends like to call him), and low-riders but Chavez is referring to these uniquely New Mexican traditions in ways that only insiders can appreciate. However, this quality, this insider use of traditional aspects of being New Mexican, is hard to define. I think perhaps a good way to illustrate this is Deb’s explanation of Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter.’ Our traditions, our unique New Mexican-ness, the artifacts that make the people from here New Mexican are our vibrant matter. Chavez knows this and uses these artifacts to generate meaning and connections to our land. We New Mexicans are part of an ecology, we thrive on ritual, and the non-human aspects of our culture (our environment, our traditions, our chola y cholo –ness, our “mira you know what I mean, or no, vato-hombre y que?) are just as important as the human ones. The vibrant matter is generative and foundational to who we are.

Democracy and Pragmatism in Occupy Albuquerque

General Assembly Meeting

OWS-Albuquerque

Wednesday, October 26^th 2011

At the last minute, I decided to attend the Occupy Albuquerque general assembly meeting for my third observation. I was joining Amiee, and her son Jason, for this observation. As I arrived near Yale Park, the majority of people were moving away from the spot. Amiee grabbed me as I was crossing the street, and we went back the way I had just come from. The police had just informed everyone associated with OWS that they had been ordered off the park. Coincidentally, this occurred just at 6:00, when the meeting was slated to start.

The people moved to stand in front of the nearby Satellite Coffee and Schlotszky’s with the permission of the owners. As this was privately owned, the police could not pursue. What followed was incredibly interesting from an analytical point of view. This group, following the lead of other groups across the country, has developed incredibly pragmatic ways of dealing with interesting challenges. Their whole process is incredibly democratic, and the rhetoric is fascinating as well.

The People’s Microphone

In some areas, laws have been instituted to remove megaphones and microphones from protesting groups, under the guise of noise ordinance laws. In response, the People’s Microphone was developed. Anyone who wishes to speak simply speaks up fiorst with “mic check” and everyone around them who hears them repeats (the goal being to repeat in unison) “mic check” and then the speaker talks in short phrases, and everyone repeats, amplifying the words so that the whole group can hear, and without using any electronic support.

Straw Poll

Propositions were made freely, from anyone in the group, and then each one was written down, read (using the people’s microphone) and then reworded as people suggested. Once the verbiage was to the majority’s liking, each one was voted on using a “straw poll” which was simply done. If one agreed with the proposition, they held their hands, fingers up, and if they disagreed, they held their hands up fingers down. Each and every one was voted on, with comments and stand-asides, and sub propositions that wound up combining several into one. The entire process was highly democratic and well organized for the chaos that preceded it.

The focus of the meeting was first focused on what the immediate reaction to the eviction by the police should be, and then down to other points on the agenda. Once decisions were made, the group broke into working groups for ideas on how to accomplish the larger goals of the group and keep the movement progressing forward. The whole process was pragmatic in the approach, dealing with immediate problems in the clearest and fairest way possible, while still generating new ideas that work toward the ultimate goals of the group.

Irony (I posted something very similar to this on my Facebook page)

After getting kicked off of Yale Park and discussing steps to take, an individual walked by and called the protesters "Idiots". The word "idiot" is descended from the Greek word, Idios, which means private person, or individual. This specifically relates to anyone who was not part of the Polis, or the political workings of Athens. The protesters were in a group, in the midst of a highly democratic decision-making process (voting on proposals) actively using their First Amendment Rights to freedom of assembly. So who's the Idiot? I love irony.

Wanderlust: Trials and Tribulations in Occupying the World

Three weeks ago Brian, Deb and I visited the Occupy Burque protest on UNM campus. This protest is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, which began on September 17^th . I have two major concerns with the Occupy ABQ branch but before I address those concerns I think it may be best to place the Occupy movement in a broader social and historical context.

Below is the mission statement of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. This was taken from their website: www.occupywallst.org.

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.

In this mission statement the Wall Street protesters are identifying three main components of their protest:

· Who has a right to protest: everyone

· Who are they protesting against: Wall Street and politicians

· How are they protesting: By creating general assemblies

Here’s the problem though, every US citizen is implicated as an “enemy.” Unfortunately, Wall Street is the backbone of our capitalist economy. Every product we consume is produced based on the foundationalist belief that someone will buy it. What I mean is capitalism is controlled by the consumer. As long as we consume products that we have bought from a store and that have been manufactured by a company we are supporting “Wall Street.” Wall Street in this sense then is capitalism and a consumerist society. I agree that there needs to be a shift in the American mentality of over consumption and greed. What I find difficult and problematic about the Occupy Wall Street protest is that they are not outlining clear tactics and strategies to create this shift and they are not clearly defining specific persons or entities as the focus of the protest. The Occupy movement has traveled across the world. Protests are sprouting up everywhere but little change has been made.

The Occupy Wall Street mission claims to be leaderless, however, there must be people organizing the occupation. The mere logistics of physically sustaining a massive crowd of people takes man power. If this power was harnessed in creating a rhetorical infrastructure the protest would be much more effective. I fundamentally agree with the ideology of the protesters but a pragmatic approach with clear tactics and strategies must be implemented in order to create change. This was most evident at the Occupy Burque camp on UNM campus which was greatly unorganized and quickly dismantled by APD. Granted there is power in occupying a space but rhetorical and political power comes from constructing a clear and precise agenda and then executing it effectively.

Re-Imagining American Identities Pragmatically

Evening for Educators: A Focus on Humanities
at UNM Art Museum

Hosted by: Sara Otto-Diniz, Curator of Academic Initiatives and Interim Director

Wednesday, October 26, 4P-6P

The Brochure:
The black-and-white event brochure (8 ½ inches by 11 inches) included the above information as well as information about parking, hours, admission, and contacting the museum. Half of the brochure featured one of the exhibit photographs, Ex-Slave with Long Memory, Alabama, taken by Dorothea Lange in 1937. The photograph is compelling, but the title of it is what sealed the deal for me. The woman isn’t just an ex-slave, but one with a long memory. I found myself curious about what this woman would have to say.

This paragraph was under the picture:

“Educators of Grades 4-16 are invited to preview the exhibition Re-Imagining American Identities and learn how historic…and contemporary…American photographs can support your social studies and language arts curricula. Gallery activities, vocabulary and lesson plans for the exhibition will be available.”

“Grades 4-16”…I never seriously thought of myself as an educator for 13th grade. It seemed odd word choice to me at first, but ultimately, I like that Sara chose this wording. It tied in nicely with the overall theme of the exhibit – human connection. This terminology creates community; it connects me to my cohorts doing their thing in elementary school, in middle school, and high school. I have a vested interest in what they are doing since I pick up where they leave off, but they have a vested interest in what I’m doing, too. Am I going to screw up what they worked so hard to achieve?

Sara created curiosity and connection before we ever crossed the museum threshold.

The Event:
A small group of us – 7 educators, Sara, and 2 of Sara’s interns (an art history graduate student and a student doing an independent study) – met in the entrance of the museum at 4P after museum hours.

Melissa, the art history student, walked us toward the Re-Imagining American Identities exhibit, pausing along the way to explain a large piece of sculpture and to indicate the direction of two other exhibits (one with famous printmakers and the other with paintings of sinners and saints) currently on display.

The Re-Imagining exhibit is located essentially in a dead-end hall. Photos are lined up on two opposing sides of this hall; no photos are displayed at the end of it.

As we stood at the opening of the hall, Sara gave us a little background information about the exhibit. She told us that the exhibit came into being from monies left over from a grant she had secured from NEH (thus a focus on humanities) to conduct a two-day workshop for elementary and secondary social studies and language arts teachers. In the workshop, Sara showed teachers how they could use NEH portfolio photographs in their classrooms. These portfolios are, as Sara said, “northeast centric.” There were very few representations of Hispanic or Native peoples. In fact, out of 44 photographs, there was one representation of the Hispanic culture and one of pueblo arts, pottery I believe.

When she realized she had enough money left over to do an exhibit, Sara wanted to take the idea of the portfolio, but expand it to include more images related to our region. She wanted to re-imagine American identity and really tried to pick a diverse group of Americans to exhibit.
She explained the layout of the exhibit. One wall has a seemingly random grouping of photos. They aren’t organized by regions, race, ethnicity, jobs, social class, gender – none of what we might consider typical groupings. Nor are they organized chronologically. Instead, they are organized in ways meant to provoke conversation.

The opposite wall is organized into five bays: Childhood; Crime & Punishment; The Civil War; Ritual; and Domesticity. Various bays represent, for Sara, various identities: family, national, community, etc. In each bay, Sara has selected a quote that is somehow related to the bay theme. She told us to imagine the conversations the photos in the bays could be having across time and various places with the photos on the opposite wall.

One bay has a quote from Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club. I commented that the way she chose to organize the exhibit reminded me of The Metaphysical Club. I kept thinking that the conversations the people in these photographs might have would be historically rich like Menand’s narratives. Sara said that The Metaphysical Club was an inspiration.

After introducing us to the exhibit, Melissa took over, leading us in an activity that could easily be mimicked with our students. Our activity focused around a photograph of Langston Hughes. This gave us the time “to see” because as Sara says, “It takes time to see.”

We sat around the photo, and Melissa asked us to take a few moments to quietly “see” it, to notice whatever we could notice. We shared our thoughts afterwards. Of course, our perspectives varied. I know a little about Langston Hughes and had just re-read Alain Locke’s “The New Negro.” My thoughts were mostly rooted in what I already knew, but others didn’t have this background info. Their thoughts were strictly limited to what they were seeing through the lens of their personal experience. I thought this added a lot of dimension to the overall conversation. When we take the time to “see,” we do so through the lenses available to us.

After this initial discussion, Melissa gave us a handout with three boxes. In the first box, we wrote down 10 adjectives describing the photograph. Then, she gave us a copy of Hughes’ poem “Freedom’s Plow.” We took turns reading this aloud and discussed our impressions of the poem separately and in reflection of the photograph. This led to another dynamic discussion. We noted such things as his audience, his tone, his discussion of hands and manual labor, and we commented that the various subjects in his poem have different definitions of freedom.

But the conversation was also a springboard into how we handle real instructional issues in the classroom. One of the educators works in UNM’s College of Education, specifically secondary history education. She talked about the limits of history texts. Two of the teachers – gifted ed elementary teachers who work as a team, one teaching in English and the other teaching in Spanish – talked about using literature, in part, to teach history. They talked about teaching their students activism as well. A librarian from Belen told us that educators in her district can’t take students off campus. The two gifted elementary teachers face funding issues, but will be able to take some students to the exhibit…with a little creativity. Their school is in downtown Albuquerque. They’ve secured one-day city bus passes for a limited number of students.

We ended the activity by writing our own poems using adjectives and phrases we had generated from the photograph and the poem. Sara had us read them aloud simultaneously because she said that students have a hard time sharing aloud one at a time. Then, we were invited to read our poems aloud individually.

At the end of this event, Sara told us that the grant reviewers at NEH laughed at the title of her proposal – Making the Human Connection. They tried to get her to change the name, but she was committed to the essence of this project and refused. The exhibit doesn’t share the same name, but the idea of making human connections is still a significant theme. Certainly, we felt connected at the end of our two hours.

This entire evening was an exercise in pragmatism.

http://unmartmuseum.unm.edu/education.html
http://unmartmuseum.unm.edu/

Juxtaposition and the Unwritten

Nestled next to Santa Ana Casino Resort are the remains of the Kuana Pueblo. Once occupying the land of the Rio Grande Valley, Kuana’s ruins are back dropped by Santa Ana’s golf course. The juxtaposition of Coronado State Monument next to a Native American reservation casino resort is the most telling exhibit in all of the state attraction.

The walk through the ruins is littered with the sterile quotes of Spanish explorers like, Pedro de Castanedo. On one of the plaques lining the walk his impassive words describe his observations of the Tiquex Province:

Tiguex is a province of twelve pueblos on the banks of a large and mighty river. Some of the pueblos are on one bank some on the other. It is a spacious valley two leagues wide. To the east there is a snow-covered sierra, very high and rough.

However, they are followed with further explanation:

At first, the Tigua people welcomed the visitors and submitted to their demands for food, shelter, and clothing. However, demands of the army became unbearable. The Tiguas staged a desperate revolt against the Spanish invaders in the winter of 1540-41. The results were disastrous for the pueblo people. Two villages were destroyed and many of the people were killed.

What strikes me here is yet another juxtaposition, the juxtaposition of the sterile quote with the description of the demise of the people once inhabiting this land. The enthymeme left is the impression that these explorers approached interaction between the pueblo people without concern for their culture. They were a dispensable resource providing aid in their exploration of the new land.

So, as I look over the almost nonexistent ruins camouflaged by the dirt, plants, and brush that surround it, the Santa Ana Casino and golf course take full view. The juxtaposition a visual enthymeme speaking to the attempts to rape, plunder, and kill the Native American people and their culture.

Open Mic in Ashdown Forest

Allowing my assumptions to lead me, I walked in on the café side of Barnes & Noble looking for the poetry reading getting set to start. Therefore, when I could not find a gathering around a microphone my next assumption was to head towards a table of people reciting words from a books. Not my idea of or experience with poetry readings, but the only group of people that sounded and looked like poets. Yet, as I neared it was obvious that this group was reciting Shakespeare so I wondered round the bookstore making it to the corner of the kids section of books and under the mock up of Pooh’s forest was a gathering of poets.

This group still not fitting my image of poets was most definitely there to share their work. Share being the operative word. The group laughed and applauded when appropriate to the poets request. The flow of words from each poet eager to be heard was accented by discussions of Barnes & Noble’s customers , laughing children and an occasional cough or sneeze. Yet, the poets I witnessed were unphased by what I considered distractions.

With the audience and participant‘s age being well over 50, the group didn’t fit my mold of open mic audiences and participants. Used to a younger crowd of poets I compared the leisured and generous nature of this reading to the more formal and insular nature of readings I have attended in the past. The act of this reading being that of sharing while others I have attended seemed to be the act of an intellectual pairing off. Not the coffee house peacocking of ideas this open mic poetry reading really held true to the concept of open mic. The atmosphere was open, welcoming, and unaffected by the distractions of the business surrounding it. The poets were eager to give you their words. And, under the trees of Ashdown forest were people willing to listen supportively.

Hollywood Walk of Name Game

Walking with my head down not in shame, but along with all the other tourists as I read the names we step on as we wonder down the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Adding to the “hey looks” and “who’s thats” heard around me as we get hassled to go on bus tours every few feet. Created as a lasting homage to the people who have notably made their mark in the entertainment business and Hollywood’s hegemony, the walk of fame has been a Hollywood attraction since 1958. The latter description obviously serving to be my criticism of the attraction.

Hollywood is more than a district of Los Angeles. A place supported by the movie and television studios that inhabited the district physically; it is the capital of fame and fortune. As a tribute to the men and women that embodied this fame a star with their name centered in the middle of it is added to the walk each month.

Simple in shape and design, the star is a metaphor for famous entertainers in American culture, a person shining out above all the rest. The “shining out” being the factor that has made Hollywood stardom such an interest, goal, or envy of all who desire success in the entertainment business or are enticed by the power stardom holds in American culture.

Since the golden age of film and television, legendary Hollywood studios through its representation of life have set our cultural status quos. The people notably contributing to production of entertainment fascinating all who have enjoyed their work. Even those not fascinated by fame most likely would be affected by a chance encounter with a celebrity. So, as the tourists step on each star I can’t help but wonder how many are daydreaming of meeting anyone of the stars lining Hollywood Boulevard or excited by the fact that the celebrity owning it once touched that star. Even in the desecration of certain now unpopular stars like David Hasslehoff shows the power of that celebrity’s notoriety.

Even though I would like to think that stardom , fame, and fortune doesn’t interest me I have to admit finding certain stars like Johnny Cash was fun and I joined in the act of walking over each star thinking about the celebrities contributions. However, the most thought provoking moment in this event was when we asked the city employ tasked to polish the stars with brass cleaner where a particular star was he grumbled an "I don’t know" and drug his one-legged body onto the next star putting fame and stardom in what I think is its rightful place in the end.

The Great Debate: Appletini vs. Scotch

Group: Richard, Heather, Rachel

Independent Project

The other day, I got coffee with a few friends and couldn’t stop thinking: what designates coffee as the universal “getting to know you” beverage? Why not tea? Or Hot cocoa? Or lemonade? How many times have you been asked out to grab a glass of milk or cup of cider?

Think of how many times you’ve gone out for coffee with someone. Be it a close friend, professor, colleague, classmate, or a date, coffee seems to be the social common thread.

So the I began to think about the classifications and thought that goes into arranging a date, or a get-together, or a conference and what each different beverage communicates.

Tea: Too European and potentially too feminine

Hot Cocoa: Too childish

Soda: Too adolescent

Lemonade: Too childish and too “southern”

Milk: Too childish

Cider: Too complicated

Fruit juice: Too childish and only appropriate for early morning functions

Energy drinks: Too adolescent

While going out for drinks seems a little more formal than going for coffee, there are similar associations we make with alcoholic beverages. Going out for drinks seems a little more serious because it’s at night (and maybe sexy if it’s a dat because apparently alcohol is directly correlated with getting lucky?). We’ve all watched Scrubs at some point and laughed at the image of JT daintily sipping his appletini. How do beverages become gendered? And why is it that most mixed drinks are especially associated with the feminine? Here’s a brief list of drinks and their generalized gender associations:

Martini-masculine

Gin and tonic-masculine

Scotch-masculine

Beer (especially darker beers)-masculine

Bloody Mary-masculine

Wine (especially sweeter wines)-feminine

Mimosas-feminine

Margaritas-feminine

Fruity-tinis-feminine

Cosmo-feminine

I’ve noticed that the non-alcoholic drinks become a concern with age while alcoholic beverages become a concern with gender. If you’re on a first date with a guy and he orders a milk at Satelitte, what is your reaction? If you decide to give him a second date and go out for drinks and he orders a fizzy apple cocktail…what would your reaction be?

Why is it that if a guy went out and ordered a Cosmo when I’m sipping an IPA, I’d be a little turned off? How is it that gender has become engrained in the most basic human activities?

And so, just as in my blog on creamed corn, I’m wondering, who establishes these distinctions? When things are foundational rather than relativistic, how do we, as unique individuals go about deciding what is foundational? What drinks are girly and which are manly? Which are age appropriate and which are not? And the even bigger question is, if things are relativistic rather than foundational, who is responsible? Where is the power? The authority? Relativism and foundationalism have the same general problem, neither effectively determine where the power comes from.

Off Center Art

Off Center Art Gallery

Off Center Art Gallery, located at 808 Park St. in Albuquerque, New Mexico might easily be called Outsider Art Gallery because most of the art and artists are certainly on the outside of artistic convention. The building is across the street from a park on the west end of downtown where the gentrification of the neighborhood, that has its origins in the early part of the twentieth century, begins to stall. Beyond the few square blocks of renovation are dilapidated buildings old motels and hotels in the last phase of efficacy. Off Center Art Gallery sits at the epicenter where tree lined, residential streets that feed into the area of Eighth and Central are filled with homes of the affluent. One block to the east is a downtown area bustling with the revival of the past ten years that has seen the old Albuquerque High School converted into condominiums, the area anchored by restaurants, bars, art galleries, haberdasheries, and jewelry stores preserved in a setting reminiscent of the heydays of route 66.

Off Center Art Gallery is nestled into a side street at the west end of downtown where affluence ends, but you can still see it from the front door. The art gallery provides free work space for the artists, and you can watch them work as you peruse the gallery. The founder of the gallery is Janis Timm-Bottes an art therapy counselor who saw a need for those who could not afford one-on-one art therapy; disabled veterans, homeless people, handicapped people, shut-ins with nowhere to go. The gallery was established ten years ago, and has been in this location for eight years. Ms. Timm-Bottes has moved on, but the gallery remains as one of the older tenants in the area. The work space is open to all, and the day I was there seven artists were working at tables and three staff members were serving artists in wheelchairs who have limited control of their extremities, children finger painting, and a few men, but mostly women sewing or making jewelry.

Ron, the man who runs the gallery, is a furniture builder by trade who now spends most of his creative time there. He is there because he feels hope for humanity within the walls. He regularly sees the kindness of patrons, along with the desperation, hope, and joy of those who come to create something. All artists need the money as most live at or below the poverty level, living on incomes of twelve to fourteen thousand dollars a year, all government stipends.

There is a story here that extends well beyond the few hundred words of this essay. It is a story of tragedy for some who have done nothing deserving of their affliction but be born. When I enter I cannot help but think about my job in a psychiatric hospital where I learned to care for people that many Americans care nothing for. I feel the vibration of wonder, the vibration of those trying to find meaning and purpose in their state of existence, just like all of us, but here it is more salient, beautiful. The art is interesting, simple, complex, whimsical, good, and bad, and when I leave I think about Janis Timm-Bottes, and Ron, and the others who have discovered their purpose in life.

Cody Davis