stop making titles

Stephanie Louise Brown Keith & Keith Funeral Home

YAKIMA - Stephanie Louise Brown, 43, passed away in her home January 31, 2008.

She was born to James and Sandra Beamer on August 16, 1964 and grew up in Yakima.

After graduating from Davis High School, she continued on to graduate from Mr. Lee’s Beauty School to pursue a career in cosmetology, and become a beauty school instructor. She also drove school bus for the Yakima School District, was involved in several different businesses with her husband, and later went back to school to fulfill her dream of becoming a certified phlebotomist. She married Martin Brown on August 10, 1985. They resided in Yakima and raised two children, daughter, Chanel and son, Kenny.

Stephanie is survived by her husband and children; her brother, Richard Beamer; her grandmother Betty Beamer and many aunts, uncles and cousins. She is preceded in death by her father and mother, James Beamer and Sandra Beamer Eilertsen, her grandparents Kenneth and Esther Rowland, and grandfather, Archie Beamer.

Stephanie was a dedicated wife and mother and was loved very much by her family and friends.

There will be a Celebration of Life Service for family and close friends at Keith and Keith Funeral Home. To share a memory of Stephanie, visit www.mem.com.

We love you and we’ll miss you, Steph.

My laptop is going to die, so I can no longer work on the look of this blog.  I obviously need help with the whole thing, anyway.  I wonder if my brother can design a wordpress theme for me that I would like?

Sometimes I have to intentionally leave my power cord at home so that maybe I will do something useful.  I’m never taking another science class that is mathematically based.  Biology, anthropology, good.  Chem and physics… snore.

Found on Michael Faris’s blog (with credit to the developers and, as usual, more in-depth thought than can be found here).

I have mixed feelings about whether or not to bold “The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively” because of the way women are portrayed in media. Thoughts on that are more than welcome.

Privilege meme: Bold the items that apply to you.

1. Father went to college (Trade School)
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college (Community College)
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (though not anymore)
25. You had your own room as a child

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

“faces of people masturbating”

“intercourse crying men”

“sex education video girls masturbating”

“youtube men masturbating”

“boys nude photography”

“boy nude art photo”

“crying body photo”

“vaginal stimulation shot”

“girls photographing themselves nude”

“boy masturbating”

“photography people nude”

I feel like I am several dozen different people, and it is confusing and exhausting.

http://blackandmissing.blogspot.com/2007/12/pretty-bird-women-house.html

Chanel Brown

Instructor Schenold

Writing in the English Discipline

5 November 2007

How to Read “I dreaded that first robin so”: A Plea for Expressive Anti-Realism

Emily Dickinson’s “I dreaded that first robin so” poem is full of unsettling, confusing imagery and metaphor. In the course of the poem, the narrator feels threatened by things in nature, describing yellow daffodils as being able to “pierce” her with “a fashion so foreign to” her own, and “pianos” that will “mangle” her in the woods. Dickinson has thus created images that don’t make a lot of sense in their context in order to communicate that the narrator is suffering from a depression severe enough to distort her perceptions of reality. She does this to show the reader the frightening and unsettling effects of depression, rather than tell the reader what they are. Reading the poem this way allows readers who have not experienced this kind of depression to see how disorienting, threatening, and alienating its effects are, and readers who have to recognize and relate to its effects, somewhat lessening the reader’s feelings of alienation. If we read the poem as an expression of depression, we cannot read it as an expressive realist would, looking for true, mimetic reflections of reality. Instead, Dickinson uses anti-realistic imagery, (in contrast to realistic, mimetic imagery), to demonstrate a depression severe enough to distort the perceptions of the speaker of the poem, making nature and reality disorienting and threatening.

In Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey discusses the theory of expressive realism, and its concern with mimetic art, art that imitates and accurately reflects reality: “. . . the artist must both represent (re-present) faithfully the objects portrayed, and express the thoughts and feelings they evoke in him or her” (8). She refers specifically here to romantic landscape painting and its imitation of reality, but the concept is the same when reading literature as an expressive-realist, with the notion that art should imitate life, and accurately reflect reality in order to communicate some truth about the world. Literature is seen as a reflection of reality, bad literature being something that “tells lies” about the world, and good literature being work that reflects reality and expresses truth about the world. “The novel, above all, is praised for its ‘authenticity’ in describing the world of social relationships, or conveying the inner experience (sometimes seen as ‘universal’) of the individual in quest of identity” (12). In this model, Belsey states, “the mimetic and the expressive are one” (12). According to expressive-realism, in order for a work of literature to be expressive and meaningful, it must mimic, or accurately reflect reality.

Expressive-realism also emphasizes authorial intention in finding the meaning of a text. Expressive-realists may look at an author’s biography and other works in order to find out what she means, what the intended meaning and significance are. Scholars are aware that Emily Dickinson suffered from depression and was somewhat of a hermit, but readers don’t really need to take Dickinson’s biography into account to find meaning in this poem. The meaning of the poem is actually lessened, or constrained, when we look at it as simply an expression of Dickinson’s own experience and suffering, rather than a representation of the nature of suffering and depression that many people experience. Instead of reading the poem as a reflection of Dickinson’s depression, we can read it as an expression of the ways depression manifests itself in the perceptions of any individual who suffers from it. The following analysis of “I dreaded that first robin so” will demonstrate that the meaning of the poem is found in its anti-realistic imagery.

Each of the first few stanzas of the poem describes, through imagery and metaphor, the violent or threatening surroundings of the narrator. The first two stanzas of the poem describe the narrator’s dread and fear of the future, using anti-realistic imagery and symbolism. The robin in the first sentence, “I dreaded that first robin so, / But he is mastered now, / And I’m accustomed to him grown, - / He hurts a little, though,” could symbolize the recurrence of spring, something the narrator finds threatening as it presents physical evidence that time is moving forward, and the future she dreads continues to approach. In the next stanza, “I thought if I could only live / Till that first shout got by,” “that first shout” could be the robin, the first time the robin made her fear spring and the continuation of time and the future. The next sentence, “Not all pianos in the woods / Had power to mangle me,” could represent all the sources of anxiety that the narrator feels “mangled” by, even though she herself may not be able to recognize specifically what they are, making them nonsensical, confusing, “pianos in the woods.” She fears daffodils, with “their yellow gown” might “pierce her with a fashion so foreign” to her own. The contrast between the happy image of yellow daffodils and her own mental and emotional state becomes threatening, something that could “pierce” her, or become a source of intense anxiety. She also fears the tall grass, that “stretch to look at” her, and the bees: “I could not bear the bees should come, / I wished they’d stay away / In those dim countries where they go: / What word had they for me?” The bees, like the daffodils, inspire anxiety and dread in the narrator. They pollinate the new flowers and plants, acting as participants in the romantic portrayal of spring as rebirth, usually a joyous idea, but threatening and dreadful to the narrator. Because her depression makes nature and reality threatening, inspiring fear and anxiety, being faced with the rebirth of the world is a reminder that the future is approaching. The future, for someone experiencing debilitating anxiety and depression, is a thing of dread.

In the second to last stanza, the poem takes a critical turn, as the narrator reveals herself as “The Queen of Calvary,” or “queen of suffering.”: “They’re here, though; not a creature failed, / No blossom stayed away / In gentle deference to me, / The Queen of Calvary,” Calvary being the place where Christ was crucified, and also used to denote extreme suffering. As the poem ends, each creature “salutes” her as it goes, and she lifts her “childish plumes” in “bereaved acknowledgement / Of their unthinking drums. “Plumes” could easily mean the feathers of the robin, which would put the speaker of the poem in the place of one of the things she dreads, implying a loathing or dread of herself, which is common with depression. However, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “Plumed” can also be defined as “To congratulate oneself in a self-satisfied way.” If Dickinson is using the word this way, which is made more believable by the use of the word “childish” right before, it could be an acknowledgement to the narrator’s self-involvement, congratulating herself on her position as the Queen of Calvary, or queen of suffering, a rather self-centered thought, which is also very common with depression – self-involvement and self-centeredness, while a recognition of these things inspire self-loathing. She “lifts” her “plumes” in “bereaved acknowledgement of their unthinking drums.” The image of drums here is puzzling, but if we think of drums as keeping a beat, the creatures and nature have their own “unthinking” beat, a cycle of death and rebirth, a cycle of the seasons. The narrator is confronted with this cyclical recurrence and the hard fact that there is a future.

The narrator’s reference to herself as the Queen of Calvary is a critical point in the poem that informs the reader as to how to read the preceding stanzas. The positioning of the narrator as the “Queen of Calvary,” as opposed to the King of Calvary, asks us to address the poem as anti-realistic, and perceive the implications of it as readers. In Belsey’s discussion of Reader Power in Critical Practice, she writes about Wolfgang Iser’s concept of the implied reader: “a figure who is constructed by the text in the sense that ‘he embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect – predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself’” (Belsey 30). In other words, Iser sees an implied reader as a reader who follows the signals or clues in a text as to how it should be read: “the reader produces meaning which is neither wholly determined – because of the ‘indeterminacies’ created by the juxtaposition of ‘perspectives’ in the text – nor entirely subjective – because the formal properties of the text construct a role for the reader” (30). If “Queen of Calvary” is meant to suggest that she is suffering, reading the rest of the poem in this light makes it more clear that her suffering, or depression, are creating perceptions of violence and threat in nature and her surroundings.

In “I dreaded that first robin so,” meaning is not achieved by a mimetic representation or reflection of reality, but the anti-realistic descriptions of the narrator’s experiences. Expressive-realism would assert that only an accurate representation of reality could communicate meaning or truth, but the meaning of this poem is found in the misrepresentation of reality, the narrator’s perception of reality becoming threatening and anti-realistic due to her depression. If Dickinson had tried to demonstrate the effects of depression in a mimetic, representational way, it would be telling the reader what those effects are, instead of using threatening imagery and signals such as “Queen of Calvary” to show how the imagery can be read, in a way that makes the experience seem more real, and more meaningful.  The anti-realistic imagery in the poem show us how our own perceptions construct our reality, and how having a serious depression can distort those perceptions and become debilitating by constructing reality as a threat, and something to dread.

Yesterday I was studying at the Statistics Tutoring Center and a girl came in a while after I had been there with the sniffles.  She kept sniffing her nose every few seconds, and since the room had been silent before she came in I was kind of annoyed and wanted to offer her a tissue but didn’t want to be rude.  I pulled out two tissues, offered one to her, and used one myself, so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I was annoyed and pulling  a “here’s a tissue!” kind of thing.  She was embarrassed anyway, and left the room to use the tissue and I felt kind of bad.  She said, “Oh my god, thank you, I’m sorry,” and left the room for a minute.

Later she asked one of the tutors for help on a homework problem, and while they were talking she kept apologizing.  First, she apologized  for asking for his help, which was weird because he was there specifically to answer questions… I mean, he’s a tutor and he wasn’t helping anyone else.  Then she kept apologizing for not understanding concepts or how to do the problem she was working on.  She apologized so much I think the tutor was kind of  confused about how to respond and just kept saying “It’s ok,” or “Oh, no…”  I kept hoping he would say something like, “It’s my job to help you,” or “It’s okay that you  don’t understand, that’s why  we’re here,” but he seemed shy and unsure of what to say.

So, I figured that she was either not feeling very self-confident that day or maybe she’s generally not very confident.  Maybe I made her feel more self-conscious by offering that tissue.  Anyway, I kind of chalked it up to lack of self-confidence, but later I overheard the tutor talking to another girl there who seemed a little more confident about herself and her ability to do the work, but she was apologizing too!  Then, later, I asked the tutor for help and I found myself wanting to apologize at one point.  I didn’t, because I realized what I was going to say and stopped myself.  Still - what’s with this apologizing stuff?  I would appreciate thoughts on this, actually, ’cause I’m still thinking about it.

I’m not sure what to think about this.

Was the extinction of Neanderthals due to female hunters?

“The University of Arizona’s Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, use archeological evidence to argue that Neanderthal females - unlike Homo sapien women of the Upper Paleolithic period - joined men in hunts at a time when stabbing giant beasts with a sharpish stone affixed to a stick represented the cutting edge of technology.

That’s courageous, but probably bad practice for a population that never numbered much more than 10,000 individuals. The loss of a few males to a flailing hoof or slashing antler is no big deal, in the long run. But losing females of child-bearing age could bring doom to a hard-pressed species.”

Bonobo reserve created in Congo

I was also just reading the other day (instead of doing homework) about the destruction of the orangutan’s habitat and an organization called the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.  Here’s a video about poaching and how their habitat is being destroyed.  There’s a bit about an orangutan named Pony who was used as a prostitute in a brothel (pretty disturbing, so, uh, be warned about that) who was rescued by the foundation.