#i wish i was better at Words because i would write a 70 pages essay on this book

[saiintofawe]

nona the ninth will always be one of the most beautiful and most painful books in the world to me because. it is about love in its every possible form. it's about the love you have for someone who takes care of you and the love you have for those you care for. it's about loving someone after seeing all their rough edges and ugly sides and choosing to love someone even if it hurts and even if you know it might doom you. it's about not choosing to love someone, but loving them anyway because sometimes it's not up to you to choose. it's about loving the dogs on the street and the stranger you met at the park and the child that never speaks to anyone in class. it's about loving the creases in someone's face when they laugh and the way their hips sway and how they can't stand still. it's about your love for the sea and the pang of grief at the tought that it is being poisoned. it's about the immense pain that comes with the loss of someone you loved. it's about bearing that loss, it's about letting that cut burn because its presence means that there was love. and that cannot be taken away. you have loved, you have been loved, and you always will. and the fact that it hurts and it ends doesn't erase the fact that at the end of the day, it's always love at the core of it all. in its every form and expression, by turning into rage, or kindness, or utterly destructive force, it all starts and ends in love. you can't remove that. you can't take loved away.

[callipraxia]

So, I only recently discovered that you can use Microsoft Word online, and I’m still getting the hang of all the features. Today I discovered that spellcheck has been expanded into an editor feature which considers multiple factors and gives your writing a score. Y’all can probably guess what happened next….

In rough order of composition…my fics, as graded by Microsoft Word Editor.

1. “Be All Our Sins Remembered”: overall score of 86%, a respectable B+. 8 spelling issues (these were down to the words “grunkle” and “gonna”) and sixteen questionable points of grammar (dialogue). 10 issues with conciseness, 35 with formality, and 2 with punctuation conventions. Since I’m refusing to pay for this service, I can’t set the formality level, so it’s not surprising that a word processor would get confused on that point; it also won’t show me what the ten conciseness problems and 2 punctuation conventions are.

2. “The Long Lie”: Ouch, overall score of 74%. If I was in class and Microsoft Word Editor was my teacher, I would definitely cry, but happily, I’m not. 42 spelling issues (the name “Shermie” wrecked me here), 37 grammar points, 1 issue with clarity, 25 problems with conciseness, 96 issues with formality, 1 issue with inclusiveness, and 5 issues with vocabulary. If you take out the 96 formality points the computer isn’t set up to assess properly, though, I suspect the overall score would look rather better.

3. “Everything’s Fine - Pass That Wine?”: 80% overall score. 21 spelling, 24 grammar, 2 clarity, 32 conciseness, 51 formality, 3 vocabulary. Not bad, especially since adding a lot of GF-specific words to its dictionary would pretty much erase the spelling issues.

4. Infinitesimal Variations: because yes, I copy-pasted the whole thing into a document to see what I ended up with. Overall score: 75%. 99+ issues with both grammar and spelling for the previously mentioned reasons. 3 issues with clarity, 99+ issues with formality and conciseness, 3 issues with inclusiveness, 10 issues with punctuation conventions, and 37 issues with vocabulary. Despite Powers mentioning the Patriot Act at least twice, it still had zero issues with “Perspectives” (though I’m only about half-sure what that means) and “Sensitive Geopolitical References.” My guess on the SGRs is that the robot is not very smart and therefore would have needed me to name-check and exactly quote stuff to register on its radar. 177 pages in Word and therefore, I assume, in letter-sized pages.

5. Isoseismal Emanations: overall score, 72%. 99+ spelling, grammar, conciseness, and formality, etc etc. 1 issue with clarity, 5 issues with inclusiveness, 19 issues with punctuation conventions, and 35 objections to my vocabulary. Guess the Cold War was too far back to register as a Sensitive Geopolitical Reference, since I remain faultless in that category and in the category of Perspectives. 275 pages.

6. Interproximal Gradations: Overall score, 73%. 99+ issues in spelling, grammar, conciseness, and formality, of course. 3 issues with clarity, 6 issues with inclusiveness, 23 issues with punctuation conventions, and 52 issues with vocabulary. 362 pages.

7. “The Earth Never Tires”: overall score 79%. 39 gripes each with spelling and grammar, 2 with clarity, 51 with conciseness, 99+ with formality, 1 with inclusiveness, 1 with punctuation conventions, and 21 with vocabulary. 24 pages.

8. “The Player of Games”: whoo-hoo, we have an A! Overall score 96%. 5 spelling gripes, 25 grammar gripes, 2 clarity gripes, 50 formality gripes, 1 problem somewhere with punctuation conventions, and three gripes with vocabulary in 52 pages. Really starting to wish I knew what things it considers vocabulary gripes, though.

9. “Our Beginnings Never Know Our Ends”: overall score 79%. 39 issues spelling, 32 grammar, 1 clarity, 23 conciseness, 70 formality, 1 inclusiveness, 1 punctuation conventions, and 6 vocabulary.

And then, just for fun, I threw the latest edit of The Ford Essay in there, too. It got an overall score of 83%, with only two grammar issues, two vocabulary issues, only ten conciseness issues, and zero clarity issues! Heck, it only registered 8 formality issues, even! 16 pages.

Is any of this data useful or reliable or meaningful in any way? I doubt it (even though, curiously, it basically agrees with my assessments of what the best and worst pieces were), but it was a fun exercise, though I really wish I understood what some of its criteria for different categories were. I would also like very much to see what it would spit out if I could adjust the formality setting and add a bunch of GF words to the dictionary - my guess is that I might escape having Word Editor think of me as a C+/B- kind of writer, and might have a shot at joining the B+ writer club - but alas, still not quite curious enough to pay for it.

[knives-out21]

The Impact Of The Intergalactic - David Bowie Opinion Essay - by Beck S.

This is an essay I wrote about the span of David Bowie's career. I wrote it for a summer school course I took last year (August 2021) for a course called History of Rock & Roll.

My teacher gave nice feedback after he marked it, talking about how it was an "Excellent paper. It charts Bowie's progress throughout his career well, and includes significant detail. I could really feel the passion you have about him throughout. In fact, there is *too much* detail! The paper was supposed to be 3 pages max, double-spaced. Still, this is a good problem to have; better too much than too little."

So...enjoy!!

From his early works like Hunky Dory, to Black Tie White Noise in the 1990’s and stretching over to Blackstar as his final album, David Bowie has rarely had a bad album or song- in my opinion. His career has had ups and downs, his musical creations ranging in the way he would pitch his voice and what instruments he would use, the people he would produce with, and the wild things he would say. Charting David Bowie’s development over time is in fact an interesting journey.

Early on in his dreamy career, Bowie would have done nearly anything- or in fact, anyone- to grow in the music world. Hopping from band to band (like The Velvet Underground), producer to producer, doing whatever he could do to get ‘in’ in the industry. His early albums weren’t taken very highly in their times- especially with the ‘man-dress’ he wore on the British release of his The Man Who Sold The World album. Although, this dress was only the start of the androgynous appearance he would soon be known for, over the course of his 5-decade-spanning career.

The 1970’s were strange, to say the least. He married Angela Bowie at the start of the decade, then welcomed their son Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones a year later. Bowie went on to be hopped up on cocaine. David donned the look of one of his famous personas, The Thin White Duke. The same persona with slicked-back ginger hair, a white button-up under a black waistcoat and paired with black dress pants. The same Duke who called Adolf Hitler one of the first ‘rock stars’ and gave off a lot of faschist energy. He said many statements he’d later apologize for and grow as a better man from, which is good- it’s better than standing by then, or even backing himself up and supporting them. David Bowie called that period the darkest days of his life, and blamed the crazy statements on his horrid addiction and deteriorating mental state. The late 1970’s were more favorable, seeing as it gave the world what was dubbed the Berlin Trilogy alongside Brian Eno and David’s personal friend, Iggy Pop. Made up of three of his albums: Low and Heroes (both in 1977) and Lodger (1978). He moved from Los Angeles to Switzerland, then to Berlin as a further decision to escape his addiction (the reason he moved away from LA in the first place). It was in Berlin, of course, where he wrote his famous song Heroes, about two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from West.

Speaking of Berlin, David Bowie performed near the west of the Berlin Wall in 1987; he played so loud that crowds gathered on the east to listen. At this time, Bowie had no idea he would be the beginning of the city’s soon-coming unifying. After his death in 2016, the German government thanked him for bringing the wall down and unifying a divided Germany.

Music isn’t all he is known for, though it is a majority. He also starred in movies from time to time. Being the titular man in The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976, Jareth the moody goblin king in Jim Henson’s 1986 Labyrinth film (what is most likely his most famous role), Monte the barman in the 1991 movie The Linguini Incident, cameoing as himself in Zoolander (2001), Nikola Tesla in the 2006 movie The Prestige, and even Lord Royal Highness in Spongebob Squarepants’ Atlantis Squarepantis in 2007, among a few others. David Bowie dabbled in the art of acting, and was not that bad at it. He was good enough to gain a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, too. Sometimes it bends my mind that my first introduction to my all-time favourite musician was in a Spongebob Squarepants movie, back before I knew who he was, but David Bowie was never one to shy away from foreshadowing. At least one song from many of his albums would hint at the direction he’d go in for his next release. For example, his track Queen Bitch on Hunky Dory foreshadowed his soon-coming Ziggy Stardust. And the Diamond Dogs track 1984 actually hinted at the Philadelphian soul of Young Americans, which is a more famous song of his, which he went on to perform on The Cher Show with its host.

The 1990’s were certainly an experimental time for David Bowie. But to my knowledge, I think the 1990’s was a time for everyone. He married supermodel Iman some days after performing at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, and released the album I named earlier, Black Tie White Noise. It is known to have had a prominent use of electronic instruments, as was his other 1990’s album, Earthling. The early 1990’s greeted David’s first real band since the Spiders From Mars, dubbed Tin Machine. They recorded three guitar-driven albums which received mixed reviews from the masses, but Bowie looks back at this period- as do I- with a certain fondness; “a glorious disaster” he called it, when talking to journalist Mick Brown. Tin Machine is a period I don’t listen to often, compared to his solo stuff, but I don’t press the skip button when it comes on.

Alas, the starman’s career drew to a close as the 2000s rolled in. David Bowie greeted the 2000’s with the birth of his and Iman’s daughter, the beautiful Alexandria Zahra Jones. After suffering a- strange, as it were- heart attack symptoms mid-song during a concert in 2004, he took a hiatus from his career. I say strange because given what I know, he was trying his best to stay healthy at the time. According to my special Rolling Stone edition magazine about David Bowie (released at the start of this year), he was on tour and performing in a really hot arena. But Bowie was sober, and had quit smoking. He was taking medication to lower his cholesterol, and worked out with a trainer. Bowie looked great, and yet he felt a pain in his shoulder and chest, along with a shortness for breath. A bodyguard rushed onstage to usher Bowie off of it, cutting the concert short. He only performed live once or twice after that point, but was set on never going live ever again. And he kept his word on that, unfortunately but also fortunately. Unfortunately, because David Bowie live would have been quite the experience- I wouldn’t know, personally. But fortunately, because I do not believe anyone needs a repeat of the 2004 Reality scare.

I am actually not too fond of speaking of his final years. Nobody really likes to speak of the last years of their idols’ life before their death, so it’s no surprise. Blackstar was David Bowie’s 25th and final album, recorded entirely in secret in New York alongside his long-time producer, Tony Visconti. The album's central theme lyrically is mortality, and seeing as Bowie was undergoing chemotherapy for his cancer at the time, I see it as his way of coping with his incoming death. His producer Tony Visconti called him a ‘canny bastard’, when he realized Bowie was essentially writing a farewell album. Every song on the album is what is considered a swan song, a swan song in question being a phrase for a final gesture of some sort before retirement or death. In this case, death. Over the course of recording the album, David Bowie’s chemotherapy had actually been working and he had an eerie optimism while recording. But by the time they shot the two music videos Blackstar and Lazarus, where he showed off the definite passage of time and cruelty of chemotherapy through sparse and gray hair with sagging skin, he knew his condition was terminal and that this would be a battle he would lose. Blackstar wasn’t the first album to have been made by a musician succumbing to a fatal illness, but in my opinion it is in fact the most beautiful. It’s jazzy, and elegant, showing how at peace he had become with dying.

Blackstar the album was released on January 8th, 2016. Also known as David Bowie’s 69th birthday. Two days later, David Bowie died at his Lafayette Street home on January 10th after living with liver cancer for up to 18 months. Beforehand, he had let it be known he did not want a funeral nor a burial, but rather that his body be cremated and the ashes to be scattered in Bali by his loved ones. His wish was received, and planet Earth was very much bluer and quieter without his colour and wonderful noise.

As I said earlier on, David Bowie’s career came with ups and downs. His mysteriously close relationship with Mick Jagger, his cross with famous underage groupie Lori Maddox, the births of his two talented children, his faschist bender in the 70’s, and final bang of Blackstar in his final year on earth. Through the highs and lows, his career and his music meant a lot to the quote-unquote misfits and freaks of the world, myself included. David Bowie turned and faced the strange, shouted “you’re not alone!” To those who felt the loneliest, he surely spent his career helping those who needed to be themselves, feel more freer and braver in doing so, no matter what they may be when they are themselves. He never went boring, he never went stale, he sang what he wanted and dressed how he pleased, and kept to his word on how much more to life there is when you’re just that; yourself. A year after David Bowie’s untimely passing, his son Duncan Jones accepted an award for British album of the year that was won by Blackstar at the 37th annual Brit Awards. When he accepted it, he made a speech about his father that I will leave here, and never forget. Seeing as it perfectly encapsulates David Bowie’ legacy, and the true meaning of his extraordinary career.

“I lost my dad last year, but I also became a dad. And, uhm, I was spending a lot of time- after getting over the shock- of trying to work out what would I want my son to know about his granddad? And I think it would be the same thing that most of my dad's fans have taken over the last 50 years. That he’s always been there supporting people who think they’re a little bit weird or a little bit strange, a little bit different, and he’s always been there for them. So...this award is for all the kooks, and all the people who make the kooks. Thanks, Brits, and thanks to his fans.” - Duncan Z. H. Jones (February 22 2017, at The O2 Arena in London.)

[inkskinned]

literally just a dumb unorganized list of school tips

source: im a grad student. i’ve had a lot of school. also i’m adhd & mentally ill and require +8 organization. this is mostly directed @ college students, but maybe high school students can use it too, fuck, idk, it’s been forever since i was stuck in that hell hole

just say “professor” either ur using the correct title for a person (will make them feel good) or you’re giving them a bigger title on the assumption they deserve it (which will make them feel good) and also prevents having to ever i mean ever use their names

talk at least 1 time a week in each class, aim for 1 time a day. even lecture classes. i fucking hate talking in front of more than 5 people, so what i would do is prepare a question about the hw/etc (even if i didn’t need it answered) to ask the professor after class so they saw me and got used to me and saw i was invested in their class. about 89% of teachers - if they see you try, they will pass you. i mean it’s literally that easy. i know people who went from like a c- but because they legit tried, their grade got bumped up to a b-. 

if u have to bring a laptop, pre-download the required material/screenshot it, and then turn off your wifi. it’s too easy to not listen.

physical writing will always give you more information recall over typing.

nobody cares about stupid shit anymore trust me they don’t remember that you were accidentally locked in a towel out of your room bc they have their own dumb shit that happened.... in college all the “cringe culture” turns into “god i wish that were me” culture ... wear ur onesie to a party trust me you make +800 friends and 799 of them will be girls telling you you’re adorable and they’d die for you

about locking urself out.... if ur like me and can breeze past post-it notes placed in obvious areas, don’t be a dumb bitch and rely on post-it-notes. while most schools offer 1 free lockout, dont rely on it - it once took 2 hours before someone could get to me. i was in a towel, which meant no phone. so like. anyway, what i do now is i put something on the handle of the door i have to open/unlock. i can’t just open the door w/out the thing falling down and making a loud “you dumb bitch unlock the door before u shower” sound. 

this works for all important don’t-forget it things. other obstacles i’ve used to remind myself to do something include: putting a chair with my wholeass posterboard in front of the door, an entire printer with a single piece of paper that just read “for the love of god check to be sure you have that essay”, and a recycling bin i kept forgetting to empty. guess what bitch finally emptied the bin once it was between me and a swift exit!

no offense and like the whole “it’s the best years of your life!” thing is great but in reality everything goes better scholastically when you treat it as “i came here to win, not to make friends.” i still did make friends, went to parties every weekend, was popular enough i’d be invited to several on one night - but i came there to win. when i put my scholastic life and my mental health first, i went from a 2.0 to a 3.98. yes you can, bitch.

you’re spending the money. don’t squander it. trust me when i say i know plenty of people who breeze through, bc you often can. but like. don’t. challenge yourself bc like. talk about an investment.

if you hate your major, change it. don’t make your life something you can’t stand. on that note, do NOT agree 100% to a track until you have at least some experience in the field. i cannot tell u how many ppl i know who got their whole masters/phd program done, walked into their new profession, and were like, Oh Fuck, I Can’t Live Like This.

college literally offers so many free things and if you’re not taking advantage of them whenever possible i get it but like. try to take advantage of them. this is everything from your gym (which probably has free classes dude) to clubs to like. sober events. these sober events are so ... fuckin good dude i’ve made mason jars with little plants in em... bee aviaries... candles.... go to the free stuff

oh ps on free stuff i wanna say about 4 of 5 days there’s free food on campus just look for things like job fairs, presentations, or discussion groups. also while you’re there at the job fair like. u know, go to the job fair in earnest

i took off 2 years to work and also to just. recover from my bullshit. and it took me 6 years and 3 schools to get my bachelor’s. it wasn’t easy but bitch i lived. there’s no such thing as “too long” to graduate if that’s truly what you want to do.

if on the meal plan, eat as clean as you can the first week. then introduce each part of the cafeteria’s possibly-food-poisoning-creating foods one at a time. give @ least 2 days between each experiment so you know for sure if you get sick what caused it. i literally never eat meat at school but you can still get sick off of unwashed lettuce/salad dressing that hasn’t been refrigerated properly/weirdass things you won’t even think of. this prevents like. dying in a public bathroom.

white loaf bread can be gross & boring. discount bakery section for your slightly chewy artisianal bread needs. if overstale, either toast it or dunk it into water and microwave it (unless u got an oven. use the oven if u can)

steal as many apples from the dining hall/events/etc as physically possible just do it they keep FOREVER and @ some point you’ll be like. fUCK i need a nutrition. ps if you’re keeping them in ur backpack (i wouldn’t keep more than 2) make sure to wrap w/a few paper towels so if you drop your bag you don’t get apple mush

write it all down bitch. “i’ll remember it” no you won’t. unless you are capable of remembering every idea on this list and in order, you won’t remember it. in general, if you write something 3 times, you will recall it correctly at least 80% of the time. i also read it out loud to myself, bc, you know, auditory recall

DO NOT just put your assignment at the top of your notes, unless you’re 100% sure that will work for you. in most cases, it’s much better to have a planner/agenda/place you expect to look for assignments. +7 points if you lie to yourself about deadlines and move them all up.

like not to sound too much like a DARE ad but like. if you don’t like it/don’t want it, don’t fuckin do it. the idea that “there’s nothing to do if you don’t party” is such bullshit. like i promise if you’re like “i am a grouch and want to stay in and binge netflix” about 45 ppl will show up in pjs like “bitch fullscreen it, im a grouch too.” there’s also like. the chance to just.... not overindulge. on wednesdays i have “wine wednesdays” where we sit around and drink a glass of wine while we do our hw. it’s chill and friendly instead of like. drink until u vomit. don’t feel like you either gotta slam the breaks or the gas pedal, is what i mean.

PLEASE know the signs of alcohol poisoning/overdose. most schools have a “Safety Always Matters Most” policy, which means that you can call for help w/out getting into trouble. if you think someone is in danger, act. this also goes for making sure ppl get home safe even if they’re just incapacitated, not poisoned. step in, dudes.

also just. notice when ur starting to rely on stuff too much. i’m super easily addicted to things, so i keep a healthy distance from liquor. i don’t let myself “drink to feel better” bc that’s a scary, scary thing to link to feeling better. if you or somebody u know starts drinking all the time/gets anxious if they don’t drink/drinks in the daytime .... get help. schools have counselling services for a reason.

you’re gonna get a cold/flu of some sort in the first 2 months just brace for it. in the meantime, drink vitamin c, try not to touch too many handles, and when people say “there’s something going around” believe them.

watch kaplan nike just do it 

if you can teach it, you know the material. a super good way of knowing if you studied the right way is to try and teach the material to a stuffed animal/imaginary class.

“i don’t know how to study” bitch me too the fuck. this is usually bc we’ve been taught that studying is just sitting down and staring @ ur notes. it’s not. it’s different for everyone, and you need to understand it’s 99% preventative care. if you don’t go to the class or do the homework, studying is going to fucking suck, bc you’re learning the material all at once for the first time. the place you should consider “studying” is “i’m confident in 70-90% of the material, but need to review.” do not let yourself fall behind .... just go to office hours and ask questions if ur not getting something. studying should feel like you’re remembering what you already knew but kinda forgot, not like you’ve been blindsided.

the whole “writing it down in ur own words” while u have been told this 700 times it really helps bc it means u gotta translate it through your own understanding. if you can’t, and it’s not bc the material seems too obvious to you to state in another way - ask yourself if you don’t understand the material. chances are u are missing a bit of info.

i know it’s like A Thing that Some People do but i never had the mental health points for it but i know some people just take 15 minutes after every class to review their notes. since i’m 100% early to every class ever, obnoxiously so, i try to do it before class. having the last class’s notes up in my head super helps. like. put down the phone i know you’re socially anxious me too but review those notes. chances are if u start flipping through pages other ppl will too. this is also fun bc as soon as you start this whole thing, at least one person will be like “is there a test?” no bitch there’s no test but im gonna be ready when there is!

literally so much of success is fucking posturing i could link about 800 peer-edited studies that show that when a student is expected to do well (and knows they are), they do well. like i literally didn’t change my appearance at all, never bothered to look nice (once winter hits i wear 67 layers all the time), but when i showed up after my 2 years off from school, i presented myself with the whole “i came here to win” vibe and people... really respected me? i mean in hs i remember ppl saying shit like “yeah, well, you aren’t gonna have the homework”. by the time i was in college i had an honest-to-god conversation which included someone being like “so tell me what you’re overachieving at right now” like they just expected it from me. wild.

i live by “bite off more than you can chew, and then CHEW IT” but it’s probably unhealthy. the truth is that i have a lot of energy all the time (lmao adhd!!!) and i used to get told i was “trying too hard” and for a long time (still???) i didn’t (i don’t?) know what that was, you know, bc i had a D average, clearly i wasn’t trying. it turns out i was just. putting all my energy into stuff that wasn’t making me happy like toxic friendships etc. when i decided “nope, all this energy is for me and my schoolwork”..... uhhhhh suddenly i was a golden child and everyone praised my try-hardness ... it’s a fuckt up system tbh

take at least 1 class just for fun. i try to do that every semester. it helps break up all the requirements. if you’re like an engineer and got no time or credits left to spend, try to audit your fun course.

make ur advisor love you i don’t care what it takes make them cupcakes show up to thank them i dONT CARE just do it 

the library isn’t always the best place. if i start getting anxious bc i pavlovian train myself that library=work, i find a new place to go to do hw. try to go outside if you can!!! not like where i live bc like it’s snow all the time but try. a little green really really really helps depression. 

if you’ve been in the same “Studying” place for 1 hour and haven’t done anything the chances are Something Isn’t Right. first, look @ ur body. are you not focusing bc of some pressing physical need? sometimes just taking a shower and coming back helps. are you uncomfy? are you too comfy and going to sleep? if body okay, look @ the material. do you not understand it? do you just need to switch to a new topic for a little bit? can you find a youtube video that will help you better understand it? make notes on what you don’t get so you can ask in the next class. if it’s not the material, it’s not ur bod, check the Actual Space. sometimes just getting up, going for a short walk to a new place, and trying it there actually? really works? if none of this is working.... try ur brain next. hardest to reset bc like, what, turn it on and off again? i use things like caffeine, a short workout, a nap, or a podcast all to just... give me a little boost. 

don’t be afraid to leave. i mean this about class, friend groups, and the college ur at. just get up on outta there if ur not feelin it. i cannot recommend “drop the class” enough. even if it’s a required course see if u can switch the times if u hate the professor day 3 it’s not gonna get better just get the fuCK out

don’t nap in the same position u go to sleep in, nap upside down w/ur head away from ur pillow. don’t ask me why but it works to 1. fall asleep faster 2. make sure u sleep okay at night and 3. wake up less annoyed 

on that note don’t ever do anything in ur bed in a sleeping position unless it’s genuinely sleeping in it. body will get confused. just sit up, lazybones.

when/if the library has those therapy dogs during finals week.... just go pet them make the time for it

ask before hugging people, but don’t expect a “yes”

get a backpack that fits and doesn’t hurt ur back u fuckin hippie idc how cool it is to wear ur backpack super low just don’t do it it’s not worth it

the tutoring center is a fucking goldmine.... free essay edits my dudes

bring a fan dorms are always hotter than u expect

switch dorms if u can if u realize ur in the wrong room/wrong roomate like just don’t bother with nonsense

when in doubt, follow preschool rules. tell ppl when they did something cool, just ask when u need help, and be confident even in your mistakes, because at least u tried

[zhue-blog1]

1

“dailiness”

my independent study work is grounded in the development of daily/weekly practice

30 quick drawings a day -- this week I worked with charcoal drawings on newsprint and typewriter paper 

a sketchbook a week -- these drawings are mostly pen drawings that are a return to a love of link and small, tiny marks 

daily reading 

daily movement (swimming, dance classes, dance rehearsals, hiking, etc.) 

weekly visits to Museums or shows // events 

[ attempt at keeping me from always being a studio and bed hermit] 

to give some context, I included these quotes in my Independent Study Proposal: 

“It comes along when it comes along. In the meantime, you have to be in there trying a bit of this and a bit of that, and staying with all those semi -moments- all those ho hum kinda moments- trying something else, and doing it over, and maybe like this, and working- but also waiting. You have to keep yourself available, keep the work available.” (Susan Rethorst, A Choreographic Mind)

“Would one tell them so soon the whole truth, that one must be ready at all hours, and always, that the ideas in their shimmering forms, in spite of all our conscious discipline, will come when they will, and on the swift upheaval of their wings -- disorderly; reckless; as unmanageable, sometimes, as passion?” (Mary Oliver, Upstream). 

My Independent Study began with clearing out our garage, which used to be my sister’s room. I covered the floor in tarps, and the wall-shelves in newspaper. In Oakland there is a funky store called the East Bay Depot. It’s a junk store. A beautiful junk store for an artist. People bring things they don’t want, and drop it at the store, where it is then sold at a really low cost. I went in on a whim looking for art supplies, and stumbled upon the crown jewel: oil paints. I also found lots of fabric, foam core, cardboard, acrylics, and paper. My materials are now a messy and odd, seconded and makeshift collection. 

 I’ve been attempting to search through ideas of movement, chaos, stillness, energy, mark-making, and color. I make a mark, and then want to learn how to disrupt myself, re-direct, and change patterns at the same time that I try to understand what those patterns/habits/predictable methods are. I fluctuate between “controlled” marks and “impulsive//movement” marks, better trying to understand what each one is. 

When I make, I am trying to get something out, and I’m curious as to how others interpret the work, and what the paintings/drawings make people feel/think about. 

I think a lot about place, and the place that’s created within the image. 

For this first week, I read Ann Carson’s “Autobiography of Red” and have begun reading Monique Witting’s collection of essays “The Straight Mind.” Carson’s writing blew me away -- it was beautiful, melancholic, painful, and full of desire. Wittig’s work has me even more confused with how to live in our society, and also blessed to be surrounded by so many queer-thinking/embodying artists (!!!). Simultaneously I’m making my way through “The Power of Feminist Art” that focuses on the 70s. Most recently I read about Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro and their work with Womanhouse. 

The work that I’m doing in video/dance also deals with abstraction-- the abstraction, fragmentation, and distortion of moving bodies via moving imagery -- through an editing process playing with opacity, clarity, split-screen/framing, and timing. So I have all these questions about what abstraction does//means, and I have this lingering question about it’s relationship to both queerness and biracial identity -- some in-between space, some space of rigorous searching, some way of deconstructing how we live, and learning to live in a much more blurred, less categorized state.  

other tidbits of thought 

What is a “liberated mark” and how do I make one? 

the color pink ? the color pink and the color green? the color red? 

titles !? .... maybe they really are beginning to mean something to me, I used to always cast them off as unimportant ... 

this quote by Joan Mitchell: 

“Painting is a means of feeling ‘living’... Painting is the only art form except still photography which is without time... It never ends, it is the only thing that is both continuous and still. Then I can be very happy. It’s a still place. It’s like one word, one image.”

knots // tangle 

A T M O S P H E R E !!! 

a sensible explosion, a wild explosion 

this quote by Judy Chicago: 

“... it’s not about talent, it’s about the degree to which we can fully realize our creative power, because it’s tied to self-power, and we’ve been taught female power is destructive.” 

ending a painting?? knowing “when” to stop?? 

here are some photographs of work / my studio 

[ dimensions and ~ official photos~ to be added ] 

oil on a thin wood panel, working title “High Voltage” : 

acrylic on stretched muslim fabric on the wall: 

acrylic on paper, working title “soggy love” : 

acrylic on paper, working title “I wish I was the Moon Tonight”

 Here are some charcoal drawings from the 30-a-day series 

And some sketchbook pages: 

and a funny little figure as a goodbye to the tumblr world for tonight :] 

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

IT’S AMUSING TO THINK of light verse as the gateway drug to poetry, something to sample before moving on to the hard stuff. As readers and writers, children favor rhymes, sing-song rhythms, and silliness. No kid asks for Charles Olson at bedtime.

Some of us never outgrow our childhood pleasures, guilty or otherwise. But only in the last half-century or so has light verse become less than respectable among readers, poets, and critics, and less ubiquitous in popular culture. The New Yorker featured it for decades, making Ogden Nash a household name. Millions of non-poetry readers can still quote him: “Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker.” Phyllis McGinley, one of the best-known light verse writers of her day, published in Ladies Home Journal (and The New Yorker), and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961. Kingsley Amis, himself an enthusiast and practitioner of the form, described the highest aspirations of light verse as “genial, memorable, enlivening and funny.”

Still, some readers and critics maintain that light verse isn’t real poetry. It’s kids’ stuff, doggerel, greeting-card fodder, unhappy echoes of Richard Armour, whose whimsical riffs appeared in Sunday newspaper supplements starting in the Great Depression. Definitions of light verse are notoriously slippery. Connoisseurs and detractors alike defer to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s threshold test for obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” As to the charge of frivolity, the poet Bruce Bennett notes that the best writers of light verse “not only verge on seriousness; at times they embrace it.”

Take X. J. Kennedy, for example, the éminence grise of American light verse. In his introduction to Peeping Tom’s Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008, Kennedy takes a stab at defining the genre: “[Light verse] suggests negligible froth, like the pitiful head you get on light beer. For the sake of clarity, I call funny things that rhyme and scan ‘comic verse.’ Maybe some are heavy enough to call poems. I hope that’s all right with you.” Kennedy’s cocky taunt says it all. In “Jews,” Kennedy, an Irish-American and a lapsed Roman Catholic, writes:

Excluding me from Talmud, Yom Kippur, Uncircumcised as I’m, born far from folks Who struggled in a ghetto. Different strokes, That’s us. But meat a rabbi’s blade makes pure,

Chopped chicken liver, challah, macaroons Nest in my hungry mouth like home sweet home.

[…]

They have one up on me. More centuries past Remain their heritage. My lucky kind Haven’t been herded, shipped to death camps, gassed.

Can verse address the Holocaust and similar weighty matters and still retain its light credentials? Tom Disch, who titled one of his volumes Dark Verses and Light (1991), thought so, as do other light versifiers. A. M. Juster, a poet and translator of poetry from Latin, takes the comic seriously. When starting out as a poet in the 1980s, Juster decided to “no longer be solemn all the time,” while also resolving not to descend into nonsense or “cheap political jokes.” According to him, “Light verse has to deal with the timeless issues the way that Martial, Horace, Swift, Byron, Dorothy Parker at her best, and Wendy Cope do, to have any longevity at all. Just wordplay and/or inside jokes on the issues of the day doesn’t last. Dialect poems, which were also popular in the first half of the 20th century, went almost immediately from funny to the elite to offensive to everyone.” (Which brings to mind the recent brouhaha over Anders Carlson-Wee’s dialect poem, which is certainly not light verse, in The Nation.) Light verse must judge itself and be judged as poetry, not as some second-rate imitation.

¤

For more than a quarter-century, light verse has found a sympathetic home in Light, the biannual journal founded by a retired Chicago postal worker named John Mella. When he started the journal in 1992, one of Mella’s goals was to salvage verse from what he called the “cheerless, obscure, and finally forgettable muck” of poetry written by and for academics. Mella gives autodidacts a good name. A Roman Catholic seminary dropout, he published Transformations (1975), an alternate-history sci-fi novel about a crossdressing actor that one reviewer described as “proto-steampunk” and another praised for its erudition and “dazzling prose.” His favorite book was Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, about which he once wrote, “Although not chiefly somber, the brightly amusing parodic exaggerations are nibbled at by incursions of inky sorrows,” which sounds a lot like light verse. Among those who contributed to Light during Mella’s tenure were Richard Wilbur, John Updike, Dana Gioia, Tom Disch, Dick Davis, Wendy Cope, and Timothy Steele. The journal also boasted a small but devoted following. As Mella told the Chicago Reader in 2004, “My subscribers are very faithful. There are about 750 to 850 of them. That’s not great, but not bad for a literary magazine with absolutely no funding but my retirement check from the post office.”

The poet R. S. Gwynn says that Light “filled a gap in American poetry, for there was almost nowhere that light verse could be published, then and now.” He notes that The New Yorker was the country’s leading venue for light verse until the 1960s, when the magazine began to disavow it in favor of more self-consciously “serious” poetry. “It’s a shame the sophisticated humor in its cartoons can no longer be found in its poetry, which is fairly dreary and has been for years,” Gwynn says. “Maybe the magazine is too high-minded to think that poetry can entertain.” Gwynn’s poem “Carpe Diem,” from the winter 1999 issue of Light, is an example of how light verse can address a weighty subject — in this case, time’s passage and the vanity of human wishes:

Don’t sweat it if your tresses gray Or if Time’s sands have shifted. Whatever starts to sag today Tomorrow can get lifted.

A. E. Stallings, a 2011 MacArthur Fellow and a translator of Lucretius and Hesiod, published early poems in Light, some of which later appeared in her first collection, Archaic Smile (1999). “Mella was a very gracious and warm editor, and always sent nice little notes,” she says. “Often, they were rejections, but always with something like ‘not quite’ or ‘I liked x best.’” Stallings, born in 1968, was also the youngest poet to receive a full feature in the journal (in 1998), a dossier consisting of poems and an essay. She says the honor “felt like an important promotion.” In 2005, she published “Lullaby for a Colicky Baby” in Light:

For crying out loud, It’s only spilt milk. The way your sharp cries rend The air’s thin silk, The way your blue skies cloud And take away our sun, You’d think the world about to end Instead of just begun.

Stallings recalls that Mella’s taste for mordant humor moved her to examine her own assumptions about the differences between light verse and other kinds of poetry. “I was often less successful in placing poems I truly considered ‘light’ verse with Light,” she says. “Rather, [Mella] seemed to like darker things with music to them. It was often a place where I would send in things that were quite polished, but perhaps didn’t have the scope or gravitas for a ‘serious’ magazine. But light verse requires a great deal of polish. It can be harder to turn out a perfect squib than a publishable page-and-a-halfer, the typical form around the millennium.”

When Mella died in 2012, at age 70, editorship of the journal fell to Melissa Balmain, an English instructor at the University of Rochester who had contributed to Light since 1999. “It quickly became clear that if no one volunteered to edit Light, it would fold,” she says. “The journal was running out of money, and the remaining staff couldn’t afford to work without a salary. John himself never took a penny.” The board of the Foundation for Light Verse, the nonprofit that publishes Light, as well as an advisory panel including Kennedy, Gwynn, and others, approved the choice of Balmain. (Before his death, Mella had asked her to be the next editor.)

As with most small literary journals in the digital age, Light operates with a skeleton crew staff and almost no budget. There are eight volunteer staffers, counting Balmain, and contributors are unpaid. To economize, Light became an exclusively online publication in 2013, a few years after it had switched from a quarterly to a biannual publication schedule.

Balmain estimates that she spends about 12 hours a week promoting Light on social media and corresponding with poets via email, on top of her family responsibilities and her job as an adjunct instructor. “That’s about 600 hours per year,” she adds, “including the scramble leading up to publication of a new issue.” For her, editing the journal is both labor and love.

Poems submitted by unknown writers are given the same attention and judged by the same criteria as those from established poets. Though better known as a novelist, John Updike’s first book, The Carpentered Hen (1958), is a volume of mostly light verse. About Updike’s dealings with Mella and Light, Balmain says: “He didn’t earn his spot easily. When he submitted a poem, [Mella] rejected it. His letter to Updike explained that he didn’t print poems that contained swear words. Then he said something like, ‘Just because you’re a famous and talented writer doesn’t mean we can make exceptions for you.’ Updike, I’m told, was amused. He resubmitted the poem, without the swear words, and [Mella] published it.”

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Balmain saw a growing interest in topical verse. “I hadn’t seen any journals that regularly published funny topical poems, so last spring we launched Poems of the Week,” she says. “Each week since, we’ve received a pile of poems inspired by the news.” The deadline for submissions is Friday, and every Monday the journal’s staff publishes their favorites. While most of the entries are about US politics, Balmain says she’s also “gotten poems on everything from Brexit to the Vatican’s refusal to recognize gluten-free communion wafers.” Mae Scanlan’s “Donald Trump Goes to the Grocery Store” is a recent representative example. The first stanza:

“I’d like to buy some applesauce.” “You need to show me your IDs.” “I left them home.” “You may be the boss, But I need proofs. Produce them, please.”

Several publications have since started running their own news-inspired poems. Some, such as The New Verse News and Poets Reading the News, are entirely devoted to topical poetry. For others — Rattle’s “Poets Respond” feature, for instance — newsy poems are just a sideline. “Poets themselves, galvanized by current events, have helped drive that change,” Balmain says. “This is true for both light and non-light poets. The Washington Post’s Style Invitational, a weekly humor contest that often runs light verse, is inundated with topical stuff. The same is true for Light, which is part of why I launched Poems of the Week.”

Balmain says that Poems of the Week has encouraged longtime contributors to write more, often with “a real sense of urgency.” For them, topical verse is a way to resist or support government policies, or simply an entertaining way to share their views. Light receives three to four dozen submissions a week. And while verse about Trump has tapered off, Balmain says that at least half of the submissions involve the president in some way, “including poems about people he’s fired or allegedly had affairs with.” Cody Walker’s “A Mad Gardener’s Lament,” a riff on Lewis Carroll’s “The Mad Gardener’s Song,” ends with this downbeat quip:

He thought he saw his Country’s Fortunes       Crumble — wait a minute: He looked again, and found there was       Another way to spin it “In eighty years we’ll be cadavers.       Kinda funny, innit?”

The digital world, technology, and social media are also recurrent topics for contemporary writers of light verse. Balmain’s “Nightmare,” for instance, was published in Light and appears in her collection Walking in on People (2014):

Your TV cable’s on the fritz. Your Xbox is corroded. Your iPod sits in useless bits. Your Game Boy just imploded.

Your cell phone? Static’s off the scale. Your land line? Disconnected. You’ve got no mail — E, junk or snail. Your hard drive is infected.

So here you idle, dumb and blue, with children, spouse and mother — and wish you knew what people do to entertain each other.

By encouraging the submission of political and otherwise topical poems, Balmain believes Light is remaining true to Mella’s original vision to help “restore humor, clarity, and pleasure to the reading of poems.” Today, though, the journal has embraced this secondary mission of delivering witty takes on the news of the day. Whatever one’s politics, the world since 2016 has been good for light verse. As Balmain says, “Every day brings the kinds of over-the-top, did-that-really-happen? stories that are catnip to funny people.”

¤

Light verse overlaps with the New Formalism school of poets that emerged in the 1980s with the work of Gioia, Kennedy, Brad Leithauser, and Marilyn Hacker, among others. The third issue of Light, published in 1992, includes “An Attempt at Unrhymed Verse” by Wendy Cope, which pokes fun at the free verse triumph among poets:

People tell you all the time, Poems do not have to rhyme. It’s often better if they don’t And I’m determined this one won’t. Oh dear.

Never mind, I’ll start again. Busy, busy with my pen…cil. I can do it if I try — Easy, peasy, pudding and gherkins.

Writing verse is so much fun, Cheering as the summer weather, Makes you feel alert and bright, ’Specially when you get it more or less the way you want it.

In her introduction to The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems (1998), Cope writes about the label light verse:

I don’t believe it is useful any more, and I wish we could scrap it. The word “light” seems to imply that a poem can’t be funny and serious (weighty) at the same time. Some people do believe that a humourous poem can’t be deeply felt, or deal with anything that matters very much. In fact, much humourous writing arises from despair and misery.

Barbara Loots, of Kansas City, Missouri, takes bemused offense at the way some critics denigrate light verse by likening it to greeting card verse. For 41 years, she wrote greeting card sentiments for Hallmark. “According to most literary publishers, this is the cesspit of poetry,” she says. “I got over it, since most writers end up writing something other than immortal poetry for a lot less financial security. I continued to write for Hallmark and pursued my literary ambitions with credible publishing success in magazines and anthologies over the years.” Loots describes her latest collection, Windshift (2018), as “a living, breathing expression of how light verse and serious intentions cross over.” A poem from the collection, “Colonoscopy: A Love Poem,” originally appeared in Light:

My love is like a red, red rose. I know because I’ve seen the photographs inside of him projected on a screen:

the petal-like appearance of his proximal transverse, his mid-ascending colon like a rose’s opening purse,

appendiceal orifice, a bud not yet unfurled — Oh, what a pleasing garden is my true love’s inner world!

How very like a red, red rose his clean and healthy gut. I love my laddie all the more since looking up his butt.

Deflation — reducing human vanity to its ridiculous or distasteful essentials — is a frequent strategy of light verse. Loots’s poem starts as the 10-thousandth Robert Burns parody and quickly turns Swiftian and more substantial. Critics risk killing the patient when dissecting light verse (or dissecting any kind of humor), but one can’t imagine Loots’s poem written as free verse. The rhymes are amusing — “proximal transverse/purse,” “gut/butt” — and the brevity and metrical regularity, albeit with variations, lend the poem its mock-formality.

“As a greeting card writer, I had to say something sweet, and invariably positive, in a highly restricted form,” Loots says. “Limited vocabulary, limited rhyme choices, limited ideas. Over the years, we began to push the limits of idea, while still retaining the strict form. How many different ways can you rhyme the word ‘you’? I got plenty of practice with meter and rhyme, which are the most important characteristics of the light verse genre. The point of humorous verse is not only to say something funny, but also to say it in a funny or clever way.”

¤

Gail White of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, is a contributing editor at Light. She has published numerous chapbooks and four volumes of poetry, and in 2012 she received the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. “I’ve been writing poems ever since I could pick up a pen and print in block letters,” she says. “I wrote rhymed and metrical verse from the beginning, but it was other people who told me I was writing light verse. I just called it poetry. However, I don’t mind occupying this niche at all. Light verse is accessible and readily understood, and I’ve never aspired to obscurity.”

White doesn’t remember how her association with Light began. “I started sending them poetry when I learned of its existence,” she says. “Like other magazines such as Measure, Raintown Review, and The Formalist (now deceased), Light was of immense help to my career and identity. I was stuck in a midlife morass in which no one wanted anything of mine until the New Formalism came along, and suddenly there were markets for me. I associate light verse with formal verse because I have seldom read a light poem in free verse that I thought was a success.”

White’s work is tartly satirical and deftly crafted. There’s little happy talk or striving after the inspirational or therapeutic, and she prides herself on concision. Almost any subject, from domestic to cosmic, is fair game. Here is her epigram “On Louisiana Politics”: “The politician, like the tabby’s young, / Attempts to clean his backside with his tongue.”

Asked if her work has grown more political of late, White replies: “You bet it has. There has never been a subject for creative ridicule so ready to hand as the current administration. And laughing is better than constantly screaming in rage.” She isn’t worried about the demand for light verse ever petering out. “There will always be an audience for it. The question is whether there will be publishers for it. I hope there will always be journals open to light verse — and publishers for anthologies of it.”

As to the enduring appeal of light verse, Juster calls it “primal”: “Most offices, of course, have somebody who serves as the office poet.” In an age of entitlement and political strife, when memes and snark ad hominem assaults go viral, perhaps light verse is recapturing some of its broader appeal. “[Light verse] was not considered artsy or highfalutin,” Juster says, “and it certainly isn’t academic. It used to be a significant part of the popular culture. But it’s important to remember that a lot of it was God-awful.”

¤

Patrick Kurp is a writer living in Houston and the author of the literary blog Anecdotal Evidence.

The post “Cheering as the Summer Weather”: On the Primal Appeal of Light Verse appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2TYlulQ

[epicliteraturebywomen-blog]

Midterm Paper

Virginia Woolf:

A Feminist Withstanding the Test of Time

 Virginia Woolf was an English author and is considered to be one of the most notable writers to come out of the 20th century. She is best known for her modernist classics Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Beyond that, she is also known for many of her feminist texts. Seventy years later, the feminist movement has made much progress, but in wake of the current political state of the United States, Woolf´s feminist works continue to be relevant and of utmost importance as they continue to invoke a conversation about gender equality, sexuality, gender fluidity, masculinity, and femininity.

           Virginia Woolf argued through her works that the woman´s movement could bring about social change. For many, Woolf is simply a literary name, and although her additions to literature are profoundly relevant, Woolf should be regarded a feminist before anything else. The Huffington Post went as far as to write an article called “Why Virginia Woolf Should Be Your Feminist Role Model.” Though Woolf has of course received the credit she so deserves throughout the years, her writings are more important today than most people could understand.In many of her writings, Woolf made valid arguments that have not yet been resolved, including gender equality in regards to equal wages, equal educational opportunities, and the equal opportunity to follow whatever dreams a woman might have. From a literary standpoint, Woolf writes beautifully and can be analyzed and appreciated by any scholar of English, but from a sociological standpoint, Woolf spoke about issues, like gender and equality, that not only affected her and the society she lived in but continue to affect women. With new studies on the gender spectrum, sexuality, and how we should move forward in regards to these things, Woolf serves as a sort of insight on the conversations that should continue to be held. She spoke about things that at the time no one else spoke about. Her works can be a good starting point for any conversations on a number of issues .

           Woolf has been regarded as a trailblazer in the feminist movement for many years but the relevancy of this fact has become even more important since the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States. It is no secret that Donald Trump´s rhetoric is for lack of a better word anti-feminist and at times misogynistic. Because of this, it is important to look back to Woolf´s writings and dissect and analyze the message that she shared with the world through her work. Woolf understood women´s part in the world and  often wrote about her position as a woman. She once wrote “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” Woolf understood the importance of women in society, and continuously pushed those ideas in her writings. In 1994, Donald Trump is quoted by CNN saying “Putting a woman to work is a very dangerous thing.” Here, he implied that a woman is better off being left out of the work force. In contrast, Virginia Woolf gave the speech “Professions of Women” where she addressed a group of women entering the workforce that was predominantly men at the time. She speaks about the expectations of society for women and how she must constantly break them as a woman. She uses the metaphor “The Angel in the House”. This angel spoke to Woolf as she reviewed the writings of men. The angel urged her to “Be sympathetic; be tender; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.”. Woolf kills this Angel that serves as a metaphor for the chains that society tries to place on her and by doing so breaks any expectations that society and men placed on her. She then goes on to finish this essay by telling the women she was addressing that after killing this angel, they would have a room of their own and it was their responsibility to do with it what they wished.

¨You are able, though not without great labor and effort, to pay the rent. You are earning  your five hundred pounds a year. But this freedom is only a beginning the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished, it has to be decorated it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it and upon what terms? These, I think are questions of the utmost importance and interest. For the first time in history you are able to ask them for the first time you are able to decide for yourselves what the answers should be.¨ (p 247)

 Despite her optimistic ending to this essay, it seems that today , we have not fully reached the equality that Woolf so desperately saw as necessary. Donald Trump has continuously made his stance on the position of women in society clear. In the 2016 presidential race, his opponent, Hillary Clinton, fell victim to countless sexist remarks that implied her inability to fulfill the job of president of the United States because she was a woman. Woolf wrote in “A Room of One's Own” that “The history of men's opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the emancipation itself.” Here, Woolf clearly shares that any emancipation of women from the restraints that society had placed on them would be met with opposition from men. Trump has proven Woolf´s statements to be true. Literature and art serve as a looking glass that reflects the struggles and truths of our world, and it seems that Woolf´s beliefs and essay, without her knowledge, give insight into current issues over 70 years later.

Even before the election of Donald Trump, Woolf´s statements regarding women and the need for equality remained relevant. In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama addressed the gender pay gap. In this speech, Obama said “In 2014, it´s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work ”. Over 70 years earlier, Woolf wrote about the need for women to have financial freedom in “A Room of One’s Own¨ saying that financial freedom would be necessary in order for a woman to write. Here, she explains that financial freedom would be the first step in allowing a woman to be creative and follow the path that she wants to take.

In this same essay, Woolf talks about the inequalities in opportunity that women suffer. She argues that women share the same passion to be great as men do but are not rewarded the same chances as them.. She references Shakespeare and talks about his sister to argue the lack of opportunity that women like Shakespeare´s sister had.

¨Meanwhile, his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother´s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about books and papers¨ (Pg 240)

Here, she argues that women share the same enthusiasm as men to write and read and share their talents and creativity with the world, but are simply not given the chance to do so. Her decision to use Shakespeare and his sister as a reference makes a strong argument to the idea that if women were given the same opportunities as men, we might have more beautiful literature to look back on. She also talks about the many women writers and poets who have had to hide behind the name “anonymous” in order to be published or have their works taken seriously. Of course, it makes sense that Woolf would choose to use a Shakespeare as a reference since she herself was a writer. In some sense, Woolf could be considered lucky to be able to be taken seriously as a writer without having to hide behind an anonymous alias. There is no telling how many talents women writers have been lost over the course of history because of the inequalities in opportunities that women have suffered.

Beyond her feminist ideals, Virginia Woolf was also extremely progressive in her ideas of sexuality. She and her husband were in an open marriage. Woolf used this opportunity to explore bisexuality. It was her idea that both femininity and masculinity were necessary pieces to reach one’s potential. The masculine/feminine ideas are some that have often been discussed in modern day culture. It is important to recognize that Woolf was a woman way before her time. Her ideas are some that many liberals of today share but were not common in her time. Woolf lived at a much more conservative time, and thus many of her ideas could be easily overlooked by those who read them at the time. Today, her ideas serve as a conversation to be held about the fluidity of gender and the concepts of masculine and feminine characteristics. Today, the conversation about the gender binary and gender spectrum is often discussed. The conversation has moved towards a more accepting one as we are influenced by popular culture that brings transgender issues and gender to light. Woolf embraced the idea of individuals embracing both the masculine and feminine parts of themselves. Analyzing these ideas from a sociological standpoint, we can come to the conclusion that Woolf was a woman who would have enjoyed the liberal ideals that have molded much of our society today. Of course, that is not to say that our society is exactly where Woolf would have wanted it, but it's safe to say it's closer to her beliefs than the world was at her time.

Despite Woolf´s passing over 70 years ago, her essays and writings continue to serve as strong, relevant arguments that continue to affect women and society. Woolf is, of course,  one of the greatest literary figures of her time, but beyond that, Woolf´s forward way of thinking allows her work to remain a relevant piece of history hat has inspired, and can continue to inspire generations to come. Whether in reference to gender inequalities or the fluidity of gender and sexuality, Woolf continues to invoke a conversation that is necessary in order for society to progress.

         Works Cited  

Crum Huffington Post, Why Virginia Woolf Should Be Your Feminist Role Model, 2015

Gilbert & Gubar, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 2007

Wright CNN, Donald Trump in 1994, 2016

Washington Post, FULL TRANSCRIPT: Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address, 2014

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

3/24/2017

Why I Became a Lefty

Stephen Jay Morris

©Scientific Morality

  Introduction

What molded my political beliefs?   Was it some college professor with a beard, preaching Marxism in a Russian accent?  Nope!  Were my parents former members of the Communist Party? I wish, but no!  They were, in fact, moderate Democrats.  Was I kidnapped by the S.L.A. and brainwashed at gunpoint?  Hell, no!  But, I watched it happen on TV, in the 70’s.  Was I hanging out with a bunch of radicals on the street?  Not really.  All my friends were apolitical.  So what gives?  How did I arrive at this belief system?  Read on.

 Ideological selection by volition   In other words, I arrived at this ideology through free will.  My political journey began when Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.  Until then, I was a clean cut Liberal, supporting Kennedy, but after his assassination, I felt devastated and betrayed.  My anger drove me to the Ultra Left when I went shopping for a belief system. I read books that were all over the political spectrum.  Here is a short list of some of them:

 1: “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler

2: “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx

3: “Quotations of Chairman Mao”

4: “Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith

5: “The Blue Book” by Robert Welsh

6: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

7: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

8: “The King James Bible” by God

9. “The Quran” by Allah

10.  “The Satanic Bible” by Anton Lavey

 What book really influenced me?   It is not on the list above. It was Jerry Rubin’s book,  “Do It!”  Yep, that Yippie corrupted my young, impressionable mind.  After that and learning Marxist theory in a “Students For a Democratic Society (SDS)”study group, it was dope, fucking, and rock and roll in the streets for me!

 I didn’t arrive at that political affiliation by being brainwashed.  After examining every political option available to me at the time, I chose that of a Leftist.  Why?  Because, throughout history, the political Left have been the true rebels.  They rebelled against the state and the capitalist system.  Of course, there was a split between the Totalitarian Left and the Anti-Authoritarian Left.  I sided with the latter.

 It would take a 500-page essay to completely explain my political belief system; maybe some other time.  Briefly, I came by my political knowledge through the public library and the tuition free university, the “University of Autodidactic.”  In other words, I had an insatiable hunger for knowledge.  I was working in the garment industry, in downtown Los Angeles, and rode on public buses every day.  Every morning, I’d pass this old building with an inscription on the trim of its Art Deco edifice that read, “Knowledge is Power.”  Well, after 10 years of this, its meaning dawned on me:  The more you feed your brain with knowledge, the better the possibilities in your life.  Plus, you increase your chances of winning money on a TV game show!  However, the real purpose of learning is political polemics.  Once you memorize historic facts, you can slay your political opponent in a debate!  Learning is limitless and never ceases.  I am 62 years old and I am still a student of objective reality.

 Where did the terms “Left wing” and “Right wing” come from?   They came from the French Parliament of the 19th Century.  In Parliament, the opposition to the French government sat on the left side of the room, and the pro-French government supporters sat on the right.  Newspapers used the terms in their articles about political issues to save money on ink and space on the page, so instead of writing the word “communist,” they used words like “Reds” or “Leftists.”

 Who is who on the Left/Right dichotomy depends on whom you talk to.  In short, American Conservatives have their subjective political chart.  On the conservatives’ chart, the Nazis are included in the Left wing section.   This is not only misleading, it is a blatant lie!  In short, their chart indicates:  “Right wing—good; Left wing—bad.  The Left’s political charts are closer to accuracy, as established by objective political scientists.  If you look at political charts, stay away from Right-wingers’ charts, such as the one for Libertarian on the Internet.  Instead, visit a public university’s web site and view the political science department.  You can also check out the public library’s site.

 Why are artists Leftists?   Believe it or not, there are a tiny handful of artists and movie stars who are Right- wingers.  Why?   Because, as such, they stand out like a giant pimple on a forehead!  When you are an in the entertainment biz, you depend on publicity, so there is an old adage in show business that says, “When your career goes south, you go Right!”  Getting the public’s attention is a science.  It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive; it’s still attention. In cases like Chuck Norris or Ted Nugent, it is all a publicity gimmick!

 What about the Lefties?   Left Dom is about rebellion.  Most artists are rebels, and the anti-authoritarian Left fits their bill. Right Dom means conformity; Leftists are nonconformists.  I am an artist and will always wave the black flag of Anarchy with the American flag. I love the USA because I was born here and I will die here!  

 Does this answer your question of why I am a Leftist?

 Oh, one more thing:  I’m also left handed, but that has nothing to do with anything.