Three Articles

After reading three articles: JA, The Cost Conundrum, and Heeeere´s....Conan!, it was easy to compare their styles and expression forms of the authors. To begin with, both JA and The Cost Conundrum are based, or rather, tell real life stoires, based on the experiences of the authors either wanting to solve a mystery or simply going along for a ride. Heeere´s...Conan!, instead, is based on the experience of Conan O´Brien, his beginnings and where he is going now that his contract with "Late Night" is over. Unlike the other two articles, which has a first person author, the author is in third person, adding a sense of seriousness to the piece. Even the length of the articles are very different, The Cost Conundrum being very long, expanded and detailed, followed by JA and, finally, Heeere´s Conan! with only a few paragraphs and a much lighter read. They all fall under the informative branch of journalism, the three exposing a person, a situation, or a way of life (sometimes more than one at a time). In all of them, the author uses several methods to expose this certain subject. Interviews, for example, and the use of direct quotations is a method seen in the three, an effective way of really getting to understand how the character lives, what he feels, or why a thing is the way it is. Overall, they all do a good job in getting the message across, but some make it more interesting. I was by far more engaged by the style and topic of the JA article than by The Cost Conundrum, which I did not even finish (eight pages of dullness seems a bit too much), showing that the biggest difference is the developing of the ideas: some are effective, some are not, depending on the person. The Cost Conundrum, in my eyes, failed.

Guilliver´s Travels, Cahpter One Part I

Introduction-Guilliver´s Travels

Waxman-Markeys Bill

It comes as no surprise to any of us to hear that the environment has been crippled lately. A large movement has been created to raise awareness on the subject among the general public in the hopes that the problem is, it not solved, at least improved. The subject became political (proved by Al Gore´s presidential campaign) and today, two men named Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, try to make a difference by attempting to pass their anti-greenhouse gases bill, the Waxman-Markey bill. As described by Paul Krugman in his New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/opinion/18krugman.html?_r=1&hpw), this bill has encountered opposition from skeptics and, surprisingly, environmentalists. Skeptics claim, as always, that the threat posed by nature is not a real one and that passing such bill, which proposes to reduce greenhouse emission by demanding emission permits from industries, reducing with time such emissions, would only harm the economy. Environmentalists were hurt over the fact that a cause so dear to their hearts was used solely for gaining political support. Those who would like to see it passed argue that despite its many defects, its better than no bill whatsoever.

Personally, a policy that favors big industries over little ones, due to the fact that these companies have a larger purchasing power, should try to be avoided. But I recognize that such is the capitalist system, and, as the author stated, the planet will not wait for us to make a decision that favors everyone. I also believe that trial and error is, although risky when working with politics, a chance that must be taken for any kind of improvement possible. If it turns out a total failure, we´ll know for the future what NOT to do, different from our complete ignorance today.

The image above, a painting by Paul Klee, is both colorful and full of lines. The attention of the viewer is immediately driven to the red balloon in the middle, first and foremost because of the light in the painting. The far ends of the painting are dark shades, blues and blacks and greens, while he shades of color surrounding the balloon are very soft, yellows in a sort of pastel palette, which makes the red stand out and yell for attention. Lines also help center our attention here because the buildings (?) are also facing this object. Mainly because of the light, some could say it was a poetic painting. I differ, however, arguing that it is jargon, not really saying anything or being realistic, but beautiful in a special way.

Marriages

As I continue to read through Cathedral, I notice how three out of three stories I have read include some sort of odd, malfunctioning marriage. Feathers is about a weird family, as I previously discussed in my blog. Chef´s House is about a couple divorced over the man´s drinking problem who move into a cabin for a while when he said he is clean and done with treatment. The third one, Preservation, talks about a man who lost his job and his wife suffers because he does nothing else but sit on his couch and watch T.V. "Why this motif?", I asked to myself. "Why can´t he write about children, or friends, or anything that does not include an unhappy couple?". Knowing that many authors write on what they know, I looked up Carver´s biography just to check that he had not been through a series of failed marriages and was losing faith in love. What I found was that I was right, many of his stories have been based on similar experiences. Just like the wife in Preservation, he had to go through a series of annoying jobs to support his family, finding their condition often miserable and having to struggle. When his career as a writer kicked off, so did his drinking problem and soon had to join Alcoholics Anonymous, but not before losing his wife. Just like the drunk in Chef´s House, he too went to a cabin and hid himself for some while, taking a female friend along. The resemblances are many, and I don´t doubt that the largest part are soon to come. For now, I´ll begin to look for the hidden Carver character in every one of his stories.

Freaks

Raymond Carver´s Cathedral is a recollection of different stories. The first one, Feathers, is a tale of two work friends. One invites the other, wife and all, to dinner in his house. This is the first time that either meets the family of the other, and as soon as Jack and his wife arrive to his friend´s house, things start becoming weird. They have a peacock, an ugly, hidden baby, and bizarre ornamentation. After strange conversations, mishaps with the peacock and with the baby, Jack leaves with his wife and never mention it again. Neither do Jack with his work friend. Despite still being close, they never mention that night again and keep their relationship on a superficial level, notmentioning their families ever again. This only makes us wonder: Why? Of course it was strange, but weird encounters such as these are not uncommon today. Stranger than all of these mishaps, stranger than kept teeth, stranger than the dinner is the fact that all relationships were cutbetween the two families. Is Carver perhaps not mentioning the worst incident of all? Or is it that it is all a mockery of society´s prejudices? Either way, the outcome of the story is by far stranger than the dinner party.

Stereotypes

In Chapter III of A Simple Soul, Felicite both meets and loses her nephew to the navy. Devastated, she knows nothing of him for a very long period of time, until she hears that he has reached Havanna.
"Felicite imagined that Havanna was a place where people did nothing but smoke, and that Victor walked around among negroes in a cloud of tobacco."
This passage, at first, made me laugh, for I know Cuba to be something more than that. "Maids", I thought, "What a shame they don´t know better". I recalled this one time, where I asked my maid to help me pack for Egypt. She was shocked, for she thought I talked about Egipto, the neighborhood where she lives and did not comprehend what packing was needed for. When I explained I meant the African nation, she was amazed and asking all sorts of questions on how we were getting there, what we would do, the places we would visit, and so on. I remeber thinking how cute she looked, knowing almost nothing about such an important country. But I would soon learn that although I do not mistake the country with the neighborhood, I too was very wrong. I believed I would arrive to a country where camels were the main form of transportation, a country where us women would be forced to cover ourselves up, where Coca-Cola was not heard of, and no one knew what a cellphone was. How wrong I was, but the worst thing was that coming from Colombia, where myths about our country are plenty, I should have known better. I was just as wrong as my maid, showing that stereotyping and ignorance does not belong in one group of persons. It is widespread, and it is a general effort what can save us from such dumb mistakes.

Nanny To The Rescue

Upon reading the first few lines of Gustav Flaubert´s A Simple Soul, much is said about the main character, Felicite. You instantly learn about her simplicity, innocence, and effectiveness. As the story progresses we also learn about her position, the maid in widower Madame Aubain´s modest house. This woman was devastated with the loss of her husband and after hiring Felicite became extremely dependent on her, leaving even the simplest of chores to her. Additionally, the care of her two children was left to Felicite, while Madame Aubain rested in her chair or entertained her many visitors, which Felicite was responsible for serving and making them exit when the time was right. In other words, Felicite, despite being an outsider, basically ran the household on her own. It made me think about all the other stories on a maid that fix the household and the following came to mind: Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee, The Nanny Diaries, and Uptown Girls. It´s a story I have heard a number of times, one that gets old thanks to its never-changing ending (despite the fact that the beloved nanny has left the family, they manage to move on thanks to her great legacy). Is it that Flaubert predicted the 21st century mentality, its likes and dislikes for movies? Or is it this story inspired many others? Or, perhaps, did Flaubert simply follow a current nanny stories that have existed since his time? Hopefully, it´s none of the above. I still hold on dearly to the illusion that an author with such a reputation will surprise me with a completely different, surprising, unexpected ending, one that will leave me satisfied, not bored about seeing the same thing all over again, even if it was the original copy.