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In the mid-twentieth century, literary structuralists began to argue that there is no such thing as original writing. Roland Barthes wrote in a 1968 essay that "writers only have the power to mix already existing writings, to reassemble or redeploy them; writers... only have the power to draw upon that immense dictionary of language and culture which is 'already always written' " (Seldon, et al. 62).
Cuddled up by the fire in a woolen blanket, in a huge pink house on a tall, steep hill in a fantastically remarkable neighborhood, Neil came up with the grand idea of trying to figure out how he would design a long, crooked road so that he might one day find a wife. You might be asking: what on earth does building a crooked road have to do with finding a wife? Well, if you saw the hill, and you knew about the pink house, you might begin to understand.
Neil had always been self-conscious about the pink house. His mother, in her later years of dimentia and widow's grief, had spent her days walking down the tall hill to the town's only store to purchase a single gallon of pink paint. She would then walk back up the hill with her gallon of paint, singing old war tunes and whistling dixie, until she returned home to her two young sons. Then she would paint the house pink, inside and out, one brush stroke at a time, until she ran out of paint. The next day, she began her routine once again-- walking, singing, painting, and drinking champagne all the while.
So- that is how the house came to be pink. Neil's mother passed away when he turned 18, just old enough to inherit his father's grand estate. For Neil had always known that he lived in the biggest house on Sluts Hole Lane, but it wasn't until MRS. HORNEE passed away that he gained access to the 947 tons of gold bars and coins in the pink basement of the pink house.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that most women might be offended at a dinner invitation that requests their presence at "Mr. Hornee's giant pink house on Sluts Hole Lane". (By the way, the last name is French, and is pronounced /hoor-nay/, but most Americans butcher the pronunciation and say /whore-knee/. This had always been a problem for Neil, who has the utmost respect for women.
But, on the rare occasion that a lady might finally look beyond the surface of the pink house, and the Hornee host on Sluts Hole Lane, and actually accept his invitation, there was no road on the tall hill to walk on or bring a carriage. It was a tall, muddy, grassy hill, and the only way up or down was to walk the trodden dirt path that Mrs. Hornee had stomped out in a zig-zag fashion (any hill-climber or mountain-dweller knows that the only way up a steep hill is to wind your way back and forth). Mrs. Hornee had spent years walking this zig-zag path, so the foundation was well laid. However, the mud was slippery and dangerous, and the few women who DID accept Neil Hornee's dinner invitaiton never made it up the hill. Sadly, one of them was even buried alive in a mudslide after a particularly heavy rainfall... The girl's parents never forgave Neil and he paid them 10 gold bars for their loss.
Now that his mother was gone and his brother was off fighting the war, it was time for Neil to find a wife. This would inevitably be a long process, but one that could easily be broken up into three steps: (1) Build a road, (2) Paint the house, and (3) change the name of the street. Neil was certain that he could find a suitable mate if only these three obstacles were overcome. And so, he began.
In the lofty name of research, he ransacked dusty bookshelves (and braved the subsequent paper cut threat) for engineering journals and scholarly articles. He studied the road-building techniques used in the Swiss Alps and other mountain villages around the world. The library produced enough articles to keep Neil busy well into the fall. Since he cared about the production of history and literature as much as he cared about architecture and engineering, Neil made sure to consider articles from different time periods, so that he could view how engineering has adapted to surrounding circumstances. Neil figured out quickly that thelimits of good taste and fiscal responsibility did not apply to him, since he was the richest man, with the biggest house, on the tallest hill in a small town, and so he began to fervently plan his extravagant new road.
He hired all of the out-of-work townsmen as masons and laborers, which made their wives and the tax collectors very happy. He even built a new public house halfway up the hill, so that weary travelers would have a place to rest halfway up the hill (after all, even with the new, state-of-the-art road, it would still take the average person two hours to walk, or one hour by carriage, since the steep angles required a slow pace). The new pub was known as the "Halfway House" and it became the most popular place in town, spawning an entire "hillside community" off to one side.
When the road was finished, Neil could finally hire painters to get rid of the awful pink decor of his house. Before, no one would take the job, since it meant walking up a mud hill with gallons of paint and supplies. But now, Neil was able to hire five upstanding gentlemen, who had the house painted grey in less than a week. They went, room by room, painting over the pink walls and pink ceilings and pink trimwork. They restored the grand mansion to its original state, just in time for Neil's grand housewarming gala.
He invited all of the townspeople and sent carriages for each "eligible bachelorette" and her family. People loved the road; they loved the pub and they loved the new paint color on Neil's house. And once he had everyone gathered in his fanciful home, he made a short speech:
"I have worked for many years to build this new road and pub, and I have gainfully employed many of my dear friends to help me. I am so happy and pleased, yet there is one thing that would truly make me happy. With the approval of all of the residents of Sluts Hole, I propose that we change the name of this fine city to something much more appropriate.... perhaps 'Queens Hollow'."
Before Neil even finished his sentence, the townsfolk roared with approval and applause!
Now that Neil's master plan had been fully realized, he was finally ready to relax and smile. How fantastic it feels to set out to do some thing and then DO IT!! How wonderful, the feeling of production and accomplishment, the pride in one's own work and good deeds. And how awesome to finally sit in a NOT PINK room in a NOT PINK house with NOT MUDDY feet!!!! And, as he sat and marvelled at all of the beauty around him, he noticed a beauty that he had never seen before.... a beautiful young maiden, dressed in a pink gown, wearing pink satin shoes and pink ribbons in her hair.
Neil had spent his entire life loathing the color pink, and now, here stood a vision to behold-- the woman of his dreams-- doused in pink from head to toe. He approached her and their eyes met. If there was ever such a thing as "love at first sight", this was IT. He bowed gracefully and introduced himself. She curtsied and blushed as he asked for her name.
"Why," she replied, "don't you recognize me?" I've worked in your house as a chambermaid for five years; I used to help your mother up and down the hill to fetch her paint... I cared for her up until the day she died, and she often talked about how much she loved you. My name is Rose Rouge."
That is all that Neil needed to hear before falling madly in love with her on the spot. They were married less than a month later, and lived happily ever after.
I would first like to say that I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be considered by your family as an au pair. I understand the amount of trust and responsibility that you are putting in my hands and I look forward to the reward of being a part of your family during my stay. I would like to tell you as much as I can about myself, my life, and my family and friends.
I live in St. Petersburg, Florida with my boyfriend of three years, Jose, and my dog Benny. Right now I am focusing most of my time on my last semester of college atthe University of South Florida. In December, I will graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Professional and Technical Writing and a minor in Mass Communication. School has been my biggest priority for the past four years and I have been honored as a member of the Dean’s List for earning all A’s in my classes during the last two semesters.
On the weekends, I work as a server at a restaurant called The Hut on Madeira Beach, Florida. I have worked very hard for the past two years to support myself financially as I finish my degree. I am also working as an intern at the Davis Island Yacht Club in Tampa, Florida where I am writing an operations manual for the club. I am using this internship to gain experience as a professional writer. When I am not going to school or working, I enjoy spending time walking my dog, bicycling, going to the beach, painting, taking dance classes, going to concerts, baking (chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, apple pies, yum!), and traveling.
After my first trip to Europe in 2005, I discovered my true passion for traveling. I spent one month abroad studying art history and humanities in Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, Innsbruck, and London. I am fascinated with foreign cultures and I have a sincere interest in learning first-hand about the cultures of the world.
My family is originally from Kansas City, Missouri. As a child, I spent most of my time playing outside in the summer and visiting our lake house on the weekends where I learned to water ski and jet ski. Winters in Missouri are cold and snowy, so the children in my neighborhood would bundle up, go sledding and build snow castles to pass the time. We moved to Florida when I was 14 years old because we wanted to live near the ocean. As a teenager, I spent most of my time at school, at the beach, working, or taking dance classes. My mother and father have been married for 32 years and I have one younger sister who will turn 21 in November. She is my best friend, and the person I always go to for advice. We attend the same university and spend time together as often as we can. All of my family memberslead their own busy lives, but we always get together on birthdays and holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.
In conclusion, let me just say once again how thrilled and honored I am to be considered by your family as an au pair. I am happy to answer any questions you have for me and I would love to know more about your family as well. Thank you so much for your time and consideration; I look forward to spending time with you in the near future!
This is not where I wanted to go. In fact, I mentioned in the beginning that this is precisely what I wanted to avoid. C’est la vie! Such is life! Sometimes G~d throws us a curve ball. Sometimes the education we planned is not the education we receive.
I have noticed a pattern of community influenced Random Wiki Writings and also realized that the final piece I wrote for LIT 6934 Nature Writing “The Cycle of Life” (which became my graduate studies application writing sample) not only referenced life cycles, but also community. To quote from that piece, “To be fully human” we need to be part of a community that builds a “memory of itself that will be its culture” states Wendell Berry quoted in Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism (115).
"Community" is such an interesting word because it means dozens of different things in different communitites around the world. The Princeton Dictionary offers several definitions, including:
"a group of people living in a particular area"
"common ownership"
"a group of nations having common interests"
"an agreement as to goals"
In biology and ecology, a community is "a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other." In Belgium, Greece and other countries, a community is an administrative division based on geography. In these cases, a community is the lowest level of local government (called "cymuned" in Wales, called a "civil parish" in England).
Community is also a hilarious sitcom on NBC about community college students in Denver, Colorado. I love this show, and especially its reflections on the ever-increasing difficulty of achieving true political correctness in this day and age.
Journaling as Writing- originally was going to be coupled with information on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in related to the process of working with woman in transition, i.e., women in the process of reinventing their lives to move forward either by gaining independence, returning to independent living or graduating from surviving to thriving
My aunt (the grant writer and program director from Northern Kentucky University) devoted her entire career to working with "non-traditional" female students. She ran over 200 programs that were geared towards women who were reinventing their lives, gaining independence and learning to thrive instead of survive. Some of the classes she gave included study skills, basic English and grammar, home and auto repair, self defense, interviewing skills/ body language and resume workshops (building a resume, growing your references and writing a cover letter), and I was lucky enough to participate in all of them. This is where a portion of my professional experience has come from, since she hired me as an independent contractor to help with all of these projects, doing research for her and participating in the classes.
Elizabeth's neurosis stems from her hesitance to engage with the wiki for fear of losing control over her prose and her wariness of technology in general. Choosing not to manipulate the prose on her pages out of respect for her views, I contented myself with adding links. To her deep-seated fear, I respond with a series of images about that concept of author/ownership/sharing one's work. In order for Elizabeth to overcome her fears, she must realize that writing dies not occur in a vacuum, or even a perfect room where one is free from the influences of others. |
(meant to write "does not" here.... a Freudian slip, perhaps?)
I am certain that I have been terribly misunderstood in this class (or maybe not... maybe I am being perfectly understood, who knows?). I am not wary of technology; in fact, I quite embrace it. I have 3 laptops, an iPhone and a professional-grade network at my home office. I spend approximately 10-12 hours per day on the computer, multi-tasking my business projects and my homework. Technology is my friend, my ally and a necessity.
Image: wikignome, sampled from Wikipedia.
My true resistance to this wiki environment- and this class in general- is that I simply do not feel that I am accomplishing much "Advanced Composition" by sitting on a wiki for three hours in a classroom every week (and many more hours at home), reading hundreds of posts that are interesting, yet riddled with grammatical and syntactical errors. I feel like I'm just lost in a sea of blogs and random thought and research, and what I really want to do is just sit here and correct spelling and grammar, and perhaps that is what I will do from now on because it is driving me INSANE to be in a 400-level writing class where words like "its" and "it's" are still being misused on a regular basis.
Honestly, the reason I took an "in person" class is because I am already taking two online classes and I wanted to take two other classes that offered me some "face time" and a chance to get out of the house. Instead, I am simply carrying my home office to school and sitting on a computer for three more hours, which means that I should have just taken another online class. Why am I spending money on gas and parking when I could do all of this work at home? Herein lies my true frustration. The "face time" consists of sitting in a room with twenty other people on laptops, and I truly believe that I would be more productive and efficient if I were simply sitting at home and participating on the wiki. Perhaps some of this is related to my A.D.D. At home, I work in complete silence and multi-task 3-6 projects at a time. But in a classroom, I find it difficult to work AND listen. So when I'm listening to people, I'm not working, and vice versa.
Regarding the ownership and authorship of my work, I realize that, at the heart of literary study, nothing that I ever write in school or at work will ever be "my own." For the purposes of this wiki and this class, I have finally begun to let go of this concept of ownership and simply decided to change my approach to this class. I had grand plans in the beginning of the semester but as the weeks have passed, I have decided save these plans for another (non-wiki) time and to instead go in a totally different direction.
I know I can sound bitter and bummed out and bull-headed, and every other "B" word you can think of, and maybe it's because I am sometimes. It's easy to go on a rant on these wikis.... there's no one around to stop me from putting my foot in my mouth and hanging myself with all the rope that's been given to me.
BUT- I believe I have found a positive way to channel this frustration by starting my new Remix page devoted to grammar and syntax.
English-related mistakes are not acceptable in the business world. If a word like "its" or "their" (their/they're/there) is misused on a resume or cover letter, that resume goes immediately in to the "NO" pile. I used to screen resumes for a large marketing company, so I know this from first-hand experience. When there is a large response to a job posting, which is almost always the case in the current job market, the first thing a hiring director does with the resumes and cover letters is have a junior associate separate them into two piles- those with grammar and spelling errors, and those without. In a real world situation, if a company receives one hundred resumes, the hiring manager is going to ignore the pile with mistakes. It might not be fair, but it is truly the way of the corporate world.
I was getting ready to start a page devoted to grammar and syntax, called "THE GRAMMAR NAZI", but now I am worried that people may find this title offensive. So before I start the page, I'll wait to see what the general consensus is on the name... it is meant as a humorous reference to "the soup Nazi" character in Seinfeld, not as a direct reference to Hitler. As shown in the clip (I couldn't embed it due to copyright infringements, but click on "soup Nazi" to view), the soup Nazi is very protective of his soup and although he must make it and share it (it is his business, his true gift and his livelihood), he also is obsessed with having complete control of his recipes, his store and even his customers.
I have friends and classmates of many different colors and nationalities, so if the name "Grammar Nazi" is offensive, I'll gladly use another one. Maybe something like "Grammar Patrol" or "Grammar Police" would be more appropriate, although I do feel that the soup Nazi is a hilarious and relevant reference. What about Grammar Geurrilla? Well, I guess that has negative connotations as well, although it works well with the "spider monkey" theme... This brings up a touchy (and lengthy) subject of humor and political correctness.... And right now my ego- that is, the rational, socially-oriented conscious part of my mind with a censoring device (another term that is frequently misused)- is debating which titles are appropriate.
In the meantime, I'm going to sit on this wiki for the next five hours and "contribute" and "re-mix" and "reflect" and "emerge" as much as humanly possible.
Karl Nurse is a member of St. Petersburg's City Council. A political science BA, Karl Nurse has worked his degree by being active in the political affairs of St. Petersburg for two decades while also having been a legislative aide in the Florida State House and Florida State Senate in the 1970s. In St. Petersburg alone, Karl Nurse has been involved with the PSTA board, St. Petersburg Planning Commission, St. Petersburg Historic Preservation Commission, Pinellas Living Green Inc, St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services, among many other organizations as listed under his biography under his homepage.
Karl Nurse, as stated on his website, is concerned about various issues within District 6, St. Petersburg's most diverse district according to Mr. Nurse. One of the main issues of concern is that concerning crime which is often listed as the number one issue. Karl Nurse even mentions that he did a ride-along with the Street Crimes Unit of the police department. He did this in his second week of being a council member in order to see the issue up close. It is his conclusion that many neighborhoods in District 6, while making a comeback, need the City as an ally in combating crime.
Mr. Nurse also mentions his concern over budget cuts arising from speculative ventures for expansion such as where it concerns the proposal for a new Ray's stadium. In order to help shield children's programs in the area from feeling a financial blow from these budget cuts, Karl Nurse is working hard to find ways to save money where this issue is concerned. He further states that he is working adamantly for increased efficiency where it concerns District 6's buildings and city fleet.
I was on the verge of writing a post entitled "I should have brought my laptop to class so I could communicate with my classmates" a couple of weeks ago. I felt that same frustration in class that you did, but I think we made a little progress last week, don't you think? The circle was a little smaller and there seemed to be more discussion. I can understand why people bring their laptops to class, but it doesn't excuse them from the discussion.
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Comments (2)
kms said
at 1:41 pm on Sep 28, 2010
Elizabeth ~ Cool that you picked up on the name; thanks for the link.
M. O'Neill said
at 11:29 pm on Oct 4, 2010
I was on the verge of writing a post entitled "I should have brought my laptop to class so I could communicate with my classmates" a couple of weeks ago. I felt that same frustration in class that you did, but I think we made a little progress last week, don't you think? The circle was a little smaller and there seemed to be more discussion. I can understand why people bring their laptops to class, but it doesn't excuse them from the discussion.
You don't have permission to comment on this page.