Just for Lindsey

A long time ago I posted a picture of my wall. Since then I have updated it, and Lindsey wanted a picture. And I am Lindsey's slave.

Quintessential Coffee

With stores in all 50 states and in 38 countries outside the U.S., the Starbucks Coffee Company is something that we automatically think of when we think of coffee. Named after the first mate in Moby Dick, Starbucks can be found all over the place. Some people only go there occasionally, as a treat or something to sip while chatting with a friend, but some are regulars. The white cup with the watermelon-green, circular label is a familiar friend, a little way of greeting the day. But Starbucks isn’t only a coffee place, and we don’t love it only because it’s where we get our caffeine jolt. Starbucks is so much more than that. It is a chance for us to make a clear decision about what we want; it gives us the opportunity to be in control. The sense of identity and decisiveness that comes with ordering coffee at Starbucks is why you can find them in Honolulu, New York City, and Beijing. You are not handed the same cup of coffee as the guy in front of you, your order can be so specific to your every need that it is as if the person behind the counter got up that morning to make a coffee just for you. “Iced Decaf double venti Vanilla Non-fat no whip Latte!” “Tall caramel macchiato!” “Tall strawberry frappuchino with whipped cream!” “Grande decaf cappuccino!” When we walk into Starbucks, we do not feel like just any customer, but a special and important individual. The quintessential cup of Starbucks coffee can be found anywhere because anyone can find something there for them.

Literature 8 No. 5: Lexicographer

Being a New Critic was fun, but it was kind of exhausting and time-consuming, so I'm going back to lexicography.

Precipice - a situation of great peril
Bereft - to deprive and make desolate, esp. by death
Parsonage - the residence of a member of the clergy, as provided by the parish or church.
Bachelor’s Button - any of various plants with round flower heads, esp. the cornflower.
Exonerate - to clear, as of an accusation; free from guilt or blame; exculpate
Penitent - Feeling or expressing remorse for one's misdeeds or sins.
Pirogue - a native boat, esp. an American dugout
Papist - a Roman Catholic
Infirmities - a physical weakness or ailment
Hoary - gray or white with age
Egregious - extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant
Buttress - A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement
Novena - a devotion consisting of nine separate days of prayers or services.

Wall Art

Lately, I've been putting stuff up on my wall. Not like posters spread out around the room, just stuff covering the area above my bed. My bed is in the corner, with two huge windows on both walls. There's a small space between the corner and the edges of the windows. This is the area I'm covering. I wish I could put stuff on my ceiling, but it's that gross cottage cheese-y popcorn stuff. This is definately a work in progress.

I have a Japanese print of a cat (out of the picture) and above it is the lyrics to a song I like called "The Year of the Cat." I plan on lining the rest of that side of the wall with photographs. They'll probably all be pretty old since now I use a digital camera. Then there's the birthday cards. My friend and I have this tradition where on our birthdays, we make each other these cars made up out of index cards or some other kind of paper, with random thoughts and memories and quotes. That's what the index cards going down the wall on the far left are, and the larger colorful pieces of paper are last year's card. Then there's the magazine pictures. I've just been cutting out pictures I like. Some are celebrities, but most of them are just cool pictures. On Saturday I went to Passover party, which is just as boring as it sounds like it would be. I started looking at my friend's book of photographs by Annie Leibovitz.
I looked through the entire book and then went back to the beginning and looked at it again. I went home and looked at some of my pictures on my wall and realized that some of them were taken by her and I just hadn't realized it. She takes the most amazing pictures.

Passage Analysis

We had a Poisonwood Bible quiz where we were given passages from the book and we had to analyze them in a metaphorical way and in a literal way. Our assignment is to do that again, only picking a passage on our own.

"On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals. The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up the trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope's shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first." (347)

Adah says this when they are on the big hunt with the rest of the village. She is describing the attack of the animals, and how they, as humans, are also a part of this cycle. It is a metaphor for a lot of elements in the book. The Congo is under pressure from a lot of countries. Patrice Lumumba has been killed. The quote might indicate that the Congo might do some killing in order to survive. It's also a metaphor for what's going on within the Price family. The part about the elephant sounds a lot like Nathan dragging his wife and children out of their comfortable lives in Georgia. The whole thing is part of the theme of killing to survive, killing because it's all they know. Anatole said earlier, "If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know." (308) These quotes both seem to point toward a bleak future for the Congo, full of fighting and loss of life.

SAT Practice Essay

People today do put too much emphasis on learning practical skills. They see their goals and will sometimes focus all of their energy into achieving those goals. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, there are two characters at opposite ends of this spectrum of learning only for practical purposes and learning just to learn. Nathan Price is a missionary, sent to the Congo to bring Christianity to the natives there. He tries everything he can think of, all with single-minded determination and the belief that he is doing the right thing. He is not interested in learning anything about the place he is imposing himself upon, only in changing their ways. Brother Fowles is the missionary that was there before Nathan. Although he has the same mission, he looks beyond his goal of Christianizing the natives, and instead focuses most of his energy on his surroundings. He learns everything he can about the birds, plants, and people in the African village that he inhabits. Not only does his approach gain a lot more followers than Nathan’s, he also has a much more self-fulfilling experience than Nathan does. He leaves the Congo with new knowledge and understanding of the world he lives in. All the knowledge that Nathan gains has to do with his failed attempts at baptizing the villagers.
It can be easy to get caught up in the state of mind that Nathan Price does in The Poisonwood Bible. A goal is set and knowledge is gained for the purpose of achieving that goal. Learning for learning’s sake can answer questions we didn’t realize we had or provoke new ones within us. If people did not think beyond practical skills, nothing new would ever be discovered. Learning for learning’s sake can give us a better understanding of the world we live in and it often helps us with the practical purposes too. Brother Fowles’s knowledge of the forest and the people gained him their respect, although he didn’t intend for it to. This, therefore, helped him in achieving his goal of spreading Christianity because the villagers were more willing to listen to him.
People put too much emphasis on practical knowledge and skills. While these things are important, learning beyond what we need to is also important to gain depper understanding of the world around us.

Spring Break

This spring break I did kind of a lot of reading. In addition to Judges in the Poisonwood Bible, I read:
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
- Dry by Augusten Burroughs
- Shopgirl by Steve Martin

I also started a bunch of other books. I had a lot of time on my hands. Now I’m kind of an Augusten Burroughs freak, and I was always a David Sedaris freak. They both write memoirs. Augusten Burroughs’s are a bit more depressing, whereas David Sedaris’s are more humorous. This made me start thinking about all the people they are writing about. Usually, writing a memoir about someone, especially these kinds of memoirs, usually means that they are particularly laughable. Even if you change the names and places, these people definitely know that they are being made fun of. Even the people who look the best in them are usually called fat or stupid or something, and people tend to pick out the bad things against the good ones. I guess picking that kind of a career can mean offending a whole slough of people on your way to fame.

I recorded a show on my DVR called October Road. It’s a new show on ABC, and I recorded it because the girl from That 70’s show is in it. The point is, it’s exactly about what I’ve been thinking about. This guy leaves his hometown and writes about all his friends back home and makes most of them look bad, and ten years later he comes back. A lot of people hate him because of what he said about them, and some people were offended because they weren’t in it at all.

Then I thought, maybe some of these people deserve it. Hey, if you’re going to call a guy a pickpocket and say he smells bad on the subway because you don’t realize he speaks English, maybe you deserve to have the world know what a prick you are. Maybe if you end up in rehab for being a creepy sex addict, you should be prepared to have millions of people know all about it.