Final Reflection
Now Playing: Stevie Nicks "Rihannon"
Final Finds

This semester's project was an eye opener for me. Collecting my finds and organizing them under different projects was more challenging than I expected. However, I think the challenge resulted from the open-nature of the assignment. I was not sure, at any point what I was claiming, or why I was doing this work.

My intention with this course was to use my finds (our finds) to examine the place in which we live, Pittsburgh. I wanted to look at the history of our city and see where we fit into it; I wanted to look at my live immediately and see how it fits into a larger history of one town, one place. However, relying on Picturing Texts took me away from this larger idea and brought me too close to the technology and pieces of our format.

The next time I teach this course, I will not use Picturing Texts. Instead, I plan to use probably another text about writing history through found materials (The Geography of Nowhere) combined with acutal materials from Pittsburgh (newspapers, songs, photographs, etc.), and maybe even a field trip to downtown. The ideas from Picturing Texts will still be in the class, but I will bring them in as classroom concepts. That way, the time spent in class will be more productive and we will be working on something in stead of trying to make sense of nothing for 16 weeks.

Dispite my criticisms, I do think this class was a success because we were able to try out different formats for making arguments. I look forward to future revisions of this class and of my own finds entries.

And I want to thank all of my students for sharing themselves with me this semester. Writing from the personal is difficult, and I appreciate every veil you lifted up.

What I did today: Reflection on Finds 6
Mood:  caffeinated
Finds 6

As I collect my finds, I notice one contradiction already. On Tuesday (7.19), I have an uber-feminist find that discusses the Supreme Court, and then Wed. (7.20) I am talking about how much I enjoyed the film Anchorman. Anchorman is a film that parody's a woman's quest to become a network anchor in the maschonistic world of the 1970's news room.

Perhaps the connection between these two finds is that Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), the hopeful anchor, is an exageration of Mary Tyler Moore (in her news show) and Sandra Day O'Connor types, strong women who have been pioneers for women's rights.

I firmly believe that humor is a compliment, and parody is an honor. I am not so much disturbed by the apperance of two seemingly unlike finds as I am afraid of the possiblity of the world putting my DVD on rewind--taking us back into the workplace that (as with all good comedy) is only funny because it comments on real life.

Finds/Reflection 5: Finding Music
Mood:  silly
Now Playing: see below
Finds 5

The above link shows you a portion of my Finds 5 (aka Revised-Midterm Finds Entry); however, as I could not add song lyrics to my photo album, I chose to post the lyrics and album covers in this forum. Here goes nothing:

Project:
These finds show my chronological development as a writer. By beginning with first grade (1985) and ending in the first year of my PhD (2005), I trace my early engagement with writing to the isoaltion my work engendered between me and my family and friends to my acceptance of my work. In some sense, these finds show the pain, resistance, frustration, and struggle that even professional writers go through as they live and compose.

"Too late To Quit" ~ Wallflowers (Red Letter Days)

Too late to quit too soon to go home
Too late to quit too soon to go home
Too late to quit too soon to go home
Too late to quit too soon to go home
Too late to quit too soon to go home

Takes all my might
To find a hole that feels right
To bury myself
In a deep sleep at night
I hear a voice
Coming from the hillside
Says I'll show you the way
I will show you the light

But I'm tired
I'm tired
I'm much too tired
I'm tired

He says I know where you were headed
And you're half way there
But you've got to be careful
You've got to beware
Some people want to hurt you
Some people don't care
But I'm never gonna give you
Any more than you can bear

(chorus)

There's nothing left here to rise above
We're not talking 'bout that kind of love
You've got people here counting on you
Now's a good time
To learn how to pull through

Sometimes a good idea
Just isn't enough
You've got to do the work
Now get your ass up
There isn't really such a thing as bad luck
Yeah, but once I shot an arrow
In the sky and it stuck

(chorus)

You've got to keep movin'
You've got to keep pushin'
You're never gonna get back
Any more than you're givin'
Life is for the living
You've got to be willin'
A song ain't a song
Until someone starts singin'

(chorus)

Too late to quit, too soon to go home
Too late to quit, too soon to go home
Too late to quit, too soon to go home
Too late to quit, too soon to go home

----
Caption:
There are many moments in this song that remind me of writing. My favorite, and the most obvious one finished out the final verse: "A song ain't a song/Until someone starts singin'." When I was working on finishing my masters wort at Pitt, I kept getting stuck. I would drive around, smoking cig. after cig., trying to think of a way to actually sit down and write the 60 some-odd pages I needed to compose to complete my degree. As I took turns too fast and thought about the accident that might get me an extension, I would listen to this song on full blast, and one day I realized that, if I ever wanted to teach, I had to start writing.

I had plenty of good ideas that I couldn't sit down and tease out. I would panic, freeze, block the words that I could speak from comming out of my hands and onto the screen. Part of my problem was anxiety, but that didn't mean that I could get out of doing the work I needed to do: "Some times a good idea just isn't enough/ You got to do the work so get your ass up."
-----------

----------------------
Help! (Lennon/McCartney)
help
Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I've never done before.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these daya are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, oh
---
Caption: The co-authored (McCartney/Lennon) Beatles song, "Help," has ammused me since 10th grade study hall. When I think about finishing out the Spring 2005 semester at IUP, I think about this song. Lauren, Roseanne, and I relied on eachother as readers, collaborators, and sounding boards. We laughed together, drank wine, and talked about how we could revolutionize the field. Well, we talked shop in between mineature criss-management sessions.

Mostly we talked about how to live as academics. How to straddle the "real" world and the world we sat in day after day in the classroom. I am not sure we came to any conclusions or that there are any conclusions to come to, but I know that we are still helping eachother make sense of these hybrid splits our lives are fracturing into: "When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way. But now these daya are gone, I'm not so self assured, Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors."

______________________REFLECTION_____________________

I thought of the songs that would corelate with my project immediately; however, I think that early knowledge helped me rationalize procrastinating until Sunday night to compose my entry.

Because I chose songs that worked with my project, I thought it would be easy to compose the captions; however, teasing out a few lyrics to unpack was more of a challenge than I expected. I didn't realize how much these songs connected to my writing process until I began unpacking them, and these connections were difficult to gloss over. "Help""Help"help

Midterm Reflection
Mood:  quizzical
Midterm Finds

Constructing the argument for this assignment was more difficult than I imagined, but not because many of my finds would not fit under any specific argument (which they wouldnt). This composition was difficult because it made tangable things I often try to ignore.

In my first four finds entries, I have many photographs, cards, and mementos from my family; however, my midterm reflection contains none of these finds. The argument for my midterm reflection allows me to grapple with the pain of writing and being a writier and part of that pain is represented by the absense of my family photographs. Although I touch on the distance writing places between my friends and I, I did not find a vehicle in my first four finds entries that enabled me to integrate my family into my writing.

The subjects of most of my creative non-fiction (and most of my interests in reader response theory) have come from family stories. Perhaps I could include images of my great-grandmother or copy from one of those stories, but these would merely be concessions that allow me to elide what my choice of finds and argument show me in reflection: my academic work--my writing--has distanced me from my family.

Sometimes I feel like my parents and I have nothing to talk about, and I end up calling home and wishing my mom could be as excited about my passing candacy as she is about her new grandchild. I understand this is selfish, but there are fault lines between my family and I that no matter of code switching, multiple defensible interpretations, or reader response reflections can bridge. I suppose recognition is positive in and of itself.
___________________

This is a poem I wrote about the contradictions that arrise when you pair "activity" and writing:

social construction

if writing and language are social
then why do i compose in isolation
when the world has to be asleep
everything on away
hardly any lyrics
'cept the ones i am trying to syphon out of my mind
out of the sources
and onto the page
how many of my sources are mine and how many belong to the
society
that i cant seem to edge my way into
outside by the ashtrays
i seem to do ok
things make sense
and then i tease them out
when i am alone and they deconstruct into complexity and chaos
chaos. which we are trained to embrace at all costs
chaos. which we are conditioned to celebrate as the key to discovery
those moments when we make the sources out own
construct new readings
new ways of seeing the old
but all of that pomp and circumstance is part of the community
and i am sitting here writing
alone.

Finds 4 Reflection
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Harry Potter II (movie)
Is Technology Really an Advancement?

I am exhausted. One of my best friends got married yesterday, so this week was full of wedding preperation and sleepless nights. Yesterday was especially long, but exciting. It is amazing how busy and giddy enery can pump you up in the moment but wipe you out the next day.

Unfortunately, all of this hustle and bustle left me with little time to compose my finds entry. However, true to form, the pressure served productive for me. Because I knew I had little time when I sat down to compose my finds entry at 9:30 Sunday night, I began by looking through my finds. I selected more than I though I would, but after clicking through them a few more times, I composed my argument about technology being a double edged sword, something that helps but also takes away.

With this argument in place, I looked at each find seperately, thinking of ways that it helped me construct that argument. Through writing the captions for #3 and #4, I learned more about the ways I read these images together, and produced a deeper reading that had I just looked at the images and text (as I had done before so many times).

I think the choice of many of my advertisments from "Adbusters" (Nov/Dec 2004) helped (or encouraged) me to construct my argument around the downsides of technology. Perhaps had I chosen more pieces from Newsweek, my argument would not have been so cynical. However, based on my personal political perspectice, I believe I would have read the Newsweek advertisment (#8) with the same edge and criticism, because, whether or not I included the Adbuster pieces in my entry, they were already swimming around in my mind, influencing the way I interpret every advertisment I read.

Reflection 3: Finding Goals
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: "Brother" by The Organ
Finds 3: Finding Goals

I liked finding things other than pictures this week; however, when I went to compile my finds entry, I found it difficult to hone in on a project that I could link all of my finds to. Upon reflection on my Finds 3 entry, I relize that I will need some revision if I want my project to frame all 10 of my finds.

For this assignment, my argument is "to show my goals as a friend and teacher." However, when I took a look back on my entry before I wrote this reflection, I noticed that many of my captions did not link my finds to my project. Finds 1, 3/4, and 6 all deal with my goals as a teacher, a student, and a writer, and Finds 2 loosely touches on my goal to attend more Pirates games this season. Finds 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10, however, do not work with my project as it is written. These finds, save 7 (the letter from Pitt after 9/11/2001) deal with my personal life and my family.

Although I could link a few of these later finds to my argument by revising the captions to talk about goals of reconnecting lost friendships (5), I find it more productive to my larger course project to notice that the finds that I crafted my argument to speak to are those from my academic/professional life and those that do not fit are from a more personal part of my life. This makes sense, becuase I am often a carrear driven person. I tend to put work before everything else, so it stands to reason that I crafted a project that spoke to my goals rather than my relationships.

Finds 2 Reflection: A Chronology of Relaxation
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Boogie Nights
Finds 2: Photo Ops.

For the first part of this reflection, I would like to say that I am enjoying the process of going back through old photographs and finding the ones to pick for my Finds entries. There are always so many, and for this assignment, I found myself trying to figure out what the most important events in my life were. I realize that I probably missed a lot of events becuase there wern't pictures, or the pictures I had didn't really fit the title of photo op. Some of the ones I chose, like my family picture, are posed snap-shots, but, in lue of getting the whole clan together for a formal shot before class, it will have to do.

Perhaps, in my life--in my culture--photo ops. aren't formal. It seems like the photographs I chose begin more formal and become increasingly informal, suggesting to me that I am possibly relaxing as years go by. Also, I can't ignore the financial aspect of formal photographs. The sitting fee alone for me, my 3 sisters, and my mom and step-dad to all get in one shot would be on the up end of $60, let alone the air fair and lost wages from all of us having to travel to the same place at the same time.

I don't think this is depressing, more that the every-day events can become formal photo ops. with the apperance of a camera. Either this makes for too many photo ops. or makes more memories. If I think back to the Garbage show I just saw, and remember how anoying all of the camera phones were, perhaps the ever-presence of causal photo ops. makes those more formal pictures all the more special. I know that I look at the picture of me at 3 months old and think about the photographer's act and my mom on the sidelines, but in the family picture, since I don't remember whose camera it came from, all I think about is us.
-----
Unlike the last entry, which I did almost all at once, I took my time on this one. It took me a while to go through photographs and albums I had. When I had finally selected my pictures, I think that I waited a week before I scanned them in. After scanning, I uploaded them onto my computer pretty quickly, and, in doing so, I put them in chronological order (which was a task in an of itself). But I have been writing a few captions here and there since I uploaded the photographs. I am not sure if the result will be that the last pictures have better captions because I put more thought into them, or if these later captions will be more hurried and rushed.

I think that the role of the captions is to help me make sense of the photographs. Eventually, I hope that these captions will come togehter with one another to help me find a larger sense to these images. I am still wondering what I am saying, but I keep finding and posting, knowing a connection will come.

Educational Nostalgia Reflection
Now Playing: "Gotta Get Thru This" Daniel Bedingfield
Finds 1: Educational Nostalgia
When reflecting on the experience of composing my first Finds entry, I am reminded of that song from the 60s "Time is on your Side." In reference to this assignment, I would revise the song to say time ISN't on my side. It seemed like the cards were stacked against me.

First, the weather wasn't working durring the times when I was off, and it was perfect when I was at work. Pittsburgh is a great city, but Pittsburgh grey doesn't always make for the best pictures. So, durring one rainy afternoon, I went online and began collecting images of Pittsburgh (one of which is included in my Finds entry).

I was surprised by the small number of images of Pittsburgh I found through a "Google.com" search, so I expanded my search to include Sharpsburg, the borough I grew up in. Although I didn't find any recent shots of Sharpsburg, I was did snag some great postcards of Sharpsburg in the 1920s that I am going to save for that assignment later in the semester when we are working with postcards.

The up side of the online search is that I found some images to include in this entry and lots to save for later, including an abundance of Ziggy cartoons! Which reminded me of my aunt's bird Cygnus, and that Rush song "Hemmispheres."

It is strange how not so much taking but looking at and selecting these finds takes my mind in different directions. Take the songs, for instance. Just compiling this first entry has given me two songs to think about for my Mix disk later in the semester (well, three if you include the Bedingfield song I am listening to right now).

I am still not sure what all of these images, songs, postcards, etc. are saying when put together. I don't really like my argument for this finds entry. It is too fake or something. But I am still not sure what these images are saying to me when I put them all together. I like the idea of a connection between the personal, the past/historical, and the academic selves that I see in my finds. Perhaps that is a connection to persue further.

The Purpose of this Blog...
Mood:  on fire
This is going to be the forum for your reflections and any text-based finds (news paper articles-citations or links, quotes, stories, etc.) you collect. You should use your photo album to post your photographic finds, and use this space to link us to your album (see entry below). Be creative with the titles for your finds, but remember to mark them (somehow) as a finds entry.

This space is also the place where you will compose your reflections. You should title your reflections creatively, but always mark them (somehow) as a reflection.

General Pictures and Finds 1 Update
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: white noise
Check out these pictures...
https://aprilz0.tripod.com/aprils_pictures/

And here is my first finds entry.
https://aprilz0.tripod.com/finds_1/
Reflection comming soon.