This blog is a place where you and your fellow ENG101 classmates can share your work. Feel free to post any of your brainstorm ideas or your essay drafts - anything from your first to final drafts. Pay attention to each other, make thoughtful contributions, ask plenty of questions, and most importantly, enjoy each other!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
RL #8 Excerpts
Post excerpts from the readings and discuss why they are significant to you. You must also respond to your classmates' posts here, too.
The excerpt "With us,for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summerof short, but violently active cannings". I can identify with this because my mom did frenzied cannings of many fruits but lots of vegetable as well. This brought pleasant memories of my childhood summers.
“The Measure of My Powers” The most significant quote to me is this one. “But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of religious women, made it clear that helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men….” This quote is paints a perfect image of her grandmother dutifully working in the kitchen.
“Buckeye” The most significant quote for me in this essay is this. “After supper we often drove the Arsenal’s gravel roads, past munitions bunkers, past acres of rusting tanks and wrecked bombers, into the far fields where we counted deer.” It is a great quote to me because it is a perfect example of how descriptive the author is throughout the entire essay, and how he is able to not clutter the essay with too much description, either.
Your quote actually reminds me of when we used to have a marathon session of picking raspberry's for pudding in my grandmothers garden, and the times when we would have to spend a full week weeding the garden too.
“She was a grim woman, as if she had decided long ago that she could thus most safely get to heaven.” I chose this because I wondered if this was an analysis she made when she was a child, or when she wrote the memory years later. I took a quote from Sander’s Father “’It’s beautiful,’ my father agreed, ‘but also poisonous. Nobody eats buckeyes, except maybe a fool squirrel.’” It perfectly shows how wise his father must have sound, and it is easy to see why a young Sander’s looks up to him. -Patricia
An excerpt from “The Measure of my Powers” that I found hilarious was, “Sometimes she let me pull stems off the cherries, and one year when I was almost nine I stirred the pots a little now and then, silent and making myself as small as possible” (297). I found this amusing because she talks about how proud she was to move up from stem puller to pot stirrer, which is such a tiny detail. It makes me jealous of the fact that as children we could always laugh and find happiness in the easiest of life’s gifts, like licking the cookie batter off spoons. The end of this excerpt shows how she wanted to please her grandma, and show her that she was ready for whatever was next. As a child I know I was always trying to be older than I actually was so I could experience something new, like the adults did! This passage stuck out to me because I found myself smiling and watching different memories flood my own mind.
Tcayer, that is the same excerpt that I was going to post. I can remember helping my grandmother can carrots and preserve strawberries. But now that she had gotten older, she doesn't do any of it as much anymore. Which I sad, I really miss helping her out with it. I especially loved the strawberries.
I really enjoyed one of the lines in which Fisher reiterates housekeeping for women, “helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men, and generally to children”. I thought this was even a little humorous, especially when it made the ranking in comparison to men and children.
My favorite line of the Buckeye was, “If you were quiet, if your hands were empty, if you moved slowly, you could leave the car and steal to within a few paces of a grazing deer, close enough to see the delicate lips, the twitching nostrils, the glossy, fathomless eyes.” I thought that this was an extremely beautiful moment that seemed to stop time. The deer and their eyes gave a different meaning to what the author defined as "buckeyes" previously in the essay, relating to a larger metaphor.
From "The Measure of my Powers": "In spite of any Late Victorian asceticism, though, the hot kitchen sent out ... tables."
This is the last paragraph of Fisher's essay and it seems to throw me off entirely. This could have gone in the questions section as well, but this really played a part in my confusion with this piece. I'm kind of lost in what time-table this story was written in, and this sentence is the main contributor to my confusion.
"Buckeye": "I sat enthralled as he righted himself and investigated the imaginary wall with his open palms, running his hands over the seemingly hard surface i hopes of finding a way out". This part adds a sense of curiosity to the essay and it really complimented the sense of childish wonder in this piece. I thought entailed everything that was important in the overall essay into this one sentence.
I really loved the moment in "The Measure of My Powers" when Fisher is describing how her father was expected to stay out of the kitchen. I just feel it captures such old world mentalities, hardly ever thought about now, " I have a feeling that my Father mighty have liked to help with the cannings, just as I longed to. But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of religious woman, made it clear that helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men..."
In "Buckeye" I actually enjoyed a more obscure part, for reasons I'm not 100% sure of, but it really stood out to me, "So he fondled those buckeyes as if they were charms... carrying them still on his final day when pain a thousand times fiercer than arthritis gripped his heart."
"With us, for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summer of short, but violently active canings" turned me off yet turned me on as well. It's way too female for me. I hate house work (yet I get paid to cook and clean after people, ironic). I liked how Fisher kept tossing up the flow (like throughout the essay) with all these comas.
"After supper we often drove the Arsenal's gravel roads, past munitions bunkers, past acres of rusting tanks and wrecked bombers, into the far fields" reminded me of Combat style Air Soft. I'm a horrible shot and can't aim worth shit (kind of like how I bought a skateboard but can't ride it worth shit). I love running through the woods and trying to "kill people." I always get the Rambo award ever since I "fell" in a swamp. (Yet, my debit card and cell phone in my right pocket were perfectly fine. Everything else wasn't.)It was a good time.
"the first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam." It puts a very disgusting image in your mind than turns it into something pleasant. It made me wonder if it was a pleasant or not so pleasant memory.
"Trees breathe," he told me. "Listen." I listened, and heard the stir of breath. I really enjoyed this one because I like stories that tell you just how alive the planet is.
"with us, for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summer, of short but violently active cannings." - Fisher
I liked how she describes the cannings as violent. I can just picture this really well.
"I remember the auction...remember my father telling her that he would prize that walnut as if he had watched the tree grow from a sapling on his own land" - Sanders
I think when he describes his father here, you really get a sense for his character.
"The Measure of My Powers" the part i personally liked was, "All I knew then about the actual procedure was that we had delightful picnic meals while Grandmother and Mother and the cook worked with a kind of drugged concentration in our big dark kitchen, and were tired and cross and at the same time oddly triumphant in their race against summer heat and the process of rot." I liked this part because it reminds me of people, such as myself, racing against the clock to get things done in time. But I also like the picture you get when reading this, someone almost in a trance cooking and making jam. I also like Lana's post, I also had similar thoughts when I read this part as well. In "Buckeye" the part I liked the best was how the father had so many different names for the trees. Even though they weren't book correct, the names he used helped his son learn the names of these trees and now recognizes them when he is out. Just little tricks our parents use to help us learn things.
"The Measure of My Powers" The most significant quote to me was "such a beautifull smelly task should be fun, I thought." This quote is perfect because when i walk into the kitchen and smell something tasty, and my mom is fighting with my sister, I would think that anyting that smells that good couldn't possibly have any bad behind it.
"Buckeye" The most significant quote to me was "what use would he be if he could no longer hold a hammer or guide a plow." This quote is perfect because i think that my grandfather looks at himself like this. He looks at him self as a hard worker and he believes in working on every little thing.
"he would go out of his way to visit particular trees walking in a circle around the splayed roots of a sycamore, laying his hand against the trunk of a white oak, ruffling the feathery green boughs of cedar. "Trees breathe," he told me. "Listen" I listened and heard the stir of breath" I really enjoyed that excerpt from "Buckeye" because I have been out in the middle of the woods on a cool fall day and listened to the woods. The wind blowing through the trees gives a sound of breathing.
I liked the description of the box that contained the buckeyes. "I remembar the auction, remember the sagging face of the window whose house was being sold..." the paragraph told how the father planed it, cut it, and made the box himself. this showed how much it meant to him.
“The Measure of My Powers” The most significant quote to me is this one. "With us,for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summerof short, but violently active cannings" because i used to can blueberries and strawberries with my grandmother, and sometimes my grandfather, lol he was kinda stubborn.
“Buckeye” The most significant quote for me in this essay is this. "if you moved slowly, you could leave the car and steal to within a few paces of a grazing deer" i really do not know why, i just laughed when i read it.
17 comments:
The excerpt "With us,for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summerof short, but violently active cannings". I can identify with this because my mom did frenzied cannings of many fruits but lots of vegetable as well. This brought pleasant memories of my childhood summers.
“The Measure of My Powers” The most significant quote to me is this one. “But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of religious women, made it clear that helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men….” This quote is paints a perfect image of her grandmother dutifully working in the kitchen.
“Buckeye” The most significant quote for me in this essay is this. “After supper we often drove the Arsenal’s gravel roads, past munitions bunkers, past acres of rusting tanks and wrecked bombers, into the far fields where we counted deer.” It is a great quote to me because it is a perfect example of how descriptive the author is throughout the entire essay, and how he is able to not clutter the essay with too much description, either.
Your quote actually reminds me of when we used to have a marathon session of picking raspberry's for pudding in my grandmothers garden, and the times when we would have to spend a full week weeding the garden too.
“She was a grim woman, as if she had decided long ago that she could thus most safely get to heaven.” I chose this because I wondered if this was an analysis she made when she was a child, or when she wrote the memory years later. I took a quote from Sander’s Father “’It’s beautiful,’ my father agreed, ‘but also poisonous. Nobody eats buckeyes, except maybe a fool squirrel.’” It perfectly shows how wise his father must have sound, and it is easy to see why a young Sander’s looks up to him.
-Patricia
An excerpt from “The Measure of my Powers” that I found hilarious was, “Sometimes she let me pull stems off the cherries, and one year when I was almost nine I stirred the pots a little now and then, silent and making myself as small as possible” (297). I found this amusing because she talks about how proud she was to move up from stem puller to pot stirrer, which is such a tiny detail. It makes me jealous of the fact that as children we could always laugh and find happiness in the easiest of life’s gifts, like licking the cookie batter off spoons. The end of this excerpt shows how she wanted to please her grandma, and show her that she was ready for whatever was next. As a child I know I was always trying to be older than I actually was so I could experience something new, like the adults did! This passage stuck out to me because I found myself smiling and watching different memories flood my own mind.
Tcayer, that is the same excerpt that I was going to post. I can remember helping my grandmother can carrots and preserve strawberries. But now that she had gotten older, she doesn't do any of it as much anymore. Which I sad, I really miss helping her out with it. I especially loved the strawberries.
I really enjoyed one of the lines in which Fisher reiterates housekeeping for women, “helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men, and generally to children”. I thought this was even a little humorous, especially when it made the ranking in comparison to men and children.
My favorite line of the Buckeye was, “If you were quiet, if your hands were empty, if you moved slowly, you could leave the car and steal to within a few paces of a grazing deer, close enough to see the delicate lips, the twitching nostrils, the glossy, fathomless eyes.” I thought that this was an extremely beautiful moment that seemed to stop time. The deer and their eyes gave a different meaning to what the author defined as "buckeyes" previously in the essay, relating to a larger metaphor.
From "The Measure of my Powers":
"In spite of any Late Victorian asceticism, though, the hot kitchen sent out ... tables."
This is the last paragraph of Fisher's essay and it seems to throw me off entirely. This could have gone in the questions section as well, but this really played a part in my confusion with this piece. I'm kind of lost in what time-table this story was written in, and this sentence is the main contributor to my confusion.
"Buckeye":
"I sat enthralled as he righted himself and investigated the imaginary wall with his open palms, running his hands over the seemingly hard surface i hopes of finding a way out". This part adds a sense of curiosity to the essay and it really complimented the sense of childish wonder in this piece. I thought entailed everything that was important in the overall essay into this one sentence.
I really loved the moment in "The Measure of My Powers" when Fisher is describing how her father was expected to stay out of the kitchen. I just feel it captures such old world mentalities, hardly ever thought about now, " I have a feeling that my Father mighty have liked to help with the cannings, just as I longed to. But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of religious woman, made it clear that helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men..."
In "Buckeye" I actually enjoyed a more obscure part, for reasons I'm not 100% sure of, but it really stood out to me, "So he fondled those buckeyes as if they were charms... carrying them still on his final day when pain a thousand times fiercer than arthritis gripped his heart."
"With us, for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summer of short, but violently active canings" turned me off yet turned me on as well. It's way too female for me. I hate house work (yet I get paid to cook and clean after people, ironic). I liked how Fisher kept tossing up the flow (like throughout the essay) with all these comas.
"After supper we often drove the Arsenal's gravel roads, past munitions bunkers, past acres of rusting tanks and wrecked bombers, into the far fields" reminded me of Combat style Air Soft. I'm a horrible shot and can't aim worth shit (kind of like how I bought a skateboard but can't ride it worth shit). I love running through the woods and trying to "kill people." I always get the Rambo award ever since I "fell" in a swamp. (Yet, my debit card and cell phone in my right pocket were perfectly fine. Everything else wasn't.)It was a good time.
"the first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam." It puts a very disgusting image in your mind than turns it into something pleasant. It made me wonder if it was a pleasant or not so pleasant memory.
"Trees breathe," he told me. "Listen."
I listened, and heard the stir of breath.
I really enjoyed this one because I like stories that tell you just how alive the planet is.
"with us, for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summer, of short but violently active cannings." - Fisher
I liked how she describes the cannings as violent. I can just picture this really well.
"I remember the auction...remember my father telling her that he would prize that walnut as if he had watched the tree grow from a sapling on his own land" - Sanders
I think when he describes his father here, you really get a sense for his character.
"The Measure of My Powers" the part i personally liked was, "All I knew then about the actual procedure was that we had delightful picnic meals while Grandmother and Mother and the cook worked with a kind of drugged concentration in our big dark kitchen, and were tired and cross and at the same time oddly triumphant in their race against summer heat and the process of rot." I liked this part because it reminds me of people, such as myself, racing against the clock to get things done in time. But I also like the picture you get when reading this, someone almost in a trance cooking and making jam.
I also like Lana's post, I also had similar thoughts when I read this part as well.
In "Buckeye" the part I liked the best was how the father had so many different names for the trees. Even though they weren't book correct, the names he used helped his son learn the names of these trees and now recognizes them when he is out. Just little tricks our parents use to help us learn things.
"The Measure of My Powers" The most significant quote to me was "such a beautifull smelly task should be fun, I thought." This quote is perfect because when i walk into the kitchen and smell something tasty, and my mom is fighting with my sister, I would think that anyting that smells that good couldn't possibly have any bad behind it.
"Buckeye" The most significant quote to me was "what use would he be if he could no longer hold a hammer or guide a plow." This quote is perfect because i think that my grandfather looks at himself like this. He looks at him self as a hard worker and he believes in working on every little thing.
"he would go out of his way to visit particular trees walking in a circle around the splayed roots of a sycamore, laying his hand against the trunk of a white oak, ruffling the feathery green boughs of cedar. "Trees breathe," he told me. "Listen" I listened and heard the stir of breath"
I really enjoyed that excerpt from "Buckeye" because I have been out in the middle of the woods on a cool fall day and listened to the woods. The wind blowing through the trees gives a sound of breathing.
I liked the description of the box that contained the buckeyes. "I remembar the auction, remember the sagging face of the window whose house was being sold..." the paragraph told how the father planed it, cut it, and made the box himself. this showed how much it meant to him.
“The Measure of My Powers” The most significant quote to me is this one. "With us,for the first years of my life, there was a series, every summerof short, but violently active cannings" because i used to can blueberries and strawberries with my grandmother, and sometimes my grandfather, lol he was kinda stubborn.
“Buckeye” The most significant quote for me in this essay is this. "if you moved slowly, you could leave the car and steal to within a few paces of a grazing deer" i really do not know why, i just laughed when i read it.
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