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jrlewis's picture

I Love the Material Nature of Books

I love the material nature of books.

Books will make you stronger, if you let them, in brain and body.  Anyone who has walked four miles with the Norton Anthology of Poetry, a paperback novel, and a macbook in their bag can attest to this truth.

I have a history of violence with books, the first casualty was my high school guidance counselor who made the mistake of questioning my sexual orientation.  Instead of answering, I threw my chemistry textbook at her head.  I will also throw books at people bent on preventing me from reading.  It takes less time to cross a room and retrieve a book than it does to explain to a man, my preference for words over his package.  A woman with a book is not waiting for a man to rescue her from loneliness.  In my experience, a book is a better companion than most men.  Or women for that matter. 

I say books, not novels or poetry, because fiction or science it is always a story.  Bring me your organic textbook and I will read you a brilliant collection of short stories.  Every chemical reaction is a drama.  The reagents are characters and the products are their descendents.  Every scientist is telling their own story, whether or not they have the insight to admit it. 

jrlewis's picture

Meeting my Favorite Author- Jeanette Winterson

Please

Let me tell you a story.

I didn’t know what to wear to meet you.

 

You,

Dressed in your memoirs.

The writing hard as steel shod hooves

Of course paper shows softness, throat and fat too

It gaps.

 

But,

I’m naked.

Only a line for cleavage,

Paper white shirt, and non-descript jeans,

Trying to cover myself with a poem

 

What does the ideal reader wear?

jrlewis's picture

Alone on an Island

With buttered popcorn

See heat melting windshield ice

Winter Nantucket

jrlewis's picture

Toe Shoes (X series)

Like knives he sharpens

- his wool clad toes, too far

from crackling fire

FrigginSushi's picture

Setting the Scene (3-29-12)

Here's her more popular song in case this singer isn't ringing a bell.

Vanessa Carlton "White Houses"
sara.gladwin's picture

The Miniature Earth Project- youtube video

This was something interesting that I found a while ago and todays class is reminding me of this video so I decided to post it to see what people think. I found it interesting that the She's the First video promotes their usage of twitter and social media; while this video talks about how few people have interent access in relationship to how many people are actually in the world. I have other thoughts about the video but I am hoping to see what everyone else thinks too!

the video comes from this website: http://www.miniature-earth.com/

The minature Earth
MC's picture

Links for March 29, 2012

-Here is a very interesting PDF by the Women Media Center's Name It. Change It. Project. It's a guide to how to avoid sexist and otherwise problematic representations of women politicians and candidates in the media, both for consumers of media and creators of media. 

-This is an article that one of my math professors directed me to on one of Bryn Mawr's former professors, mathematician Amalie Noether. 

-A different look at Kristof, one of the authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, and the organizations he advocates for,

-Similar to the link above, The White Savior Industrial Complex.

Amophrast's picture

Setting the Scene: Feminist Punk Rock

The two videos S.Yaeger and I shared in class:

 

 

dchin's picture

Urban Dictionary

Here is the Urban Dictionary page for "queering" that we were talking about in class: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=queering. What confused me specifically was this definition of queering: "Forcible anal sex given to a man, usually by a group of 4-5 men, not for the purposes of enjoying the experience, but to teach the victim a lesson or punish him." I have never heard it defined this way before, and the violence of the definition shocked me so much so that I intially thought it was a made-up comment by someone trolling the site.  

kobieta's picture

Collective Property

I really liked Aliza's juxtaposition of Plagiarism to Tissue Sampling. Like I mentioned in class on Thursday, I think they're very much same processes. With that claim, I'm also claiming that our physical self doesn't belong to us.

Yes, it's a scary thought. But I really don't believe that we own ourselves. At a molecular level, what makes you, you, is your DNA. Even if you have different mutations that are unique to only you—or your family—the fact remains that 99% of your DNA is similar to every other human being's DNA (Stix). Only 1% of your DNA is different from your next door neighbor, your professor, or even Obama. Thus, our DNA, the building block of the self, is collective property. If we all have similar DNA and it’s the same for everyone, it’s not really yours. It’s shared, collective property that you really don’t have any rights to; if scientists want to take your DNA, your consent is not needed.

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