Emotional Typography
I know as soon as we get to the airport that once we are in California I will want to be by myself in the hills. Though I haven't yet seen the yellow hills that roll up around us like huge haystacks, dotted here and there with black cattle. Yellow hills? They burn the hills seasonally, to trigger new growth. Black cattle? Where are the Jerseys, the Holsteins? Those are beef cows, not dairy cows.
My family is going to California to celebrate my cousin's Bar Mitzvah, and I am going to California to celebrate land. I haven't yet seen the hills, but I know what I am looking for when we are in the airport and it feels like an infirmary the towering-white-floating ceilings an empty cathedral hall an unfinished apse an artificial environment that belongs to no one, no one - and my father is fighting for our tickets six hours in a middle seat, us scattered around the plane, you don't even know how uncomfortable, for six hours? On the plane they come around offering me peanuts, warm, wet towels, plastic blankets, refreshing drinks-as if I am meant to feel numb.
I feel small and slightly blinded swaddled into these tall wheaty structures; it confuses me that they should surround us on all sides as we drive the highways, because I know only the flat, straight, tree-lined roads of the northeast. Once you are in those hills, there is nothing else but yellowness; it blocks your view to the outside. Round shapes molded of it, live oaks soaked with it. California feels like another life.
I become my landscape. A photograph my father took of me hiking in the hills: my face is embossed, dripping with the yellow light.
This is what is touchable. Life, or where life lives.
Life lives in life. (See: Gai...
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...seeing. Along the same lines, it doesn't matter1. I read about plants on a wooden-plastic signpost board and happily hopped among the rocks stopping to examine plants this might be yarrow, too bad it's all dried up and everything is the color of the ground. The sign also wrote about wild strawberries but having seen strawberries before I was certain I hadn't seen any and for that reason didn't write about them. (But I wished I could have.)
I did not see them but I knew about them. So I wrote based on what I knew.
Though that may not be true. I wrote because the words were too delectable. Bush-monkey. Snapdragon. Stickyglands. Yarrow.
I didn't know what I was seeing, therefore, I am unaccountable for falsehoods.
1It doesn't matter for these purposes, but it would matter if I wanted to use any of the plants, for medicinal purposes, and this fact plagues me.
The drive to cross the Kentucky border had taken hours and hours of strenuous patience to finally arrive in another state. The view was by far country like as hints of cow manure could be smelled far from a distance. We drive through small towns, half the size of our hometown of Glen Ellyn had been the biggest town we've seen if not smaller. The scenery had overwhelmed us, as lumps of Earth from a great distance turned to perfectly molded hills, but as we got closer and closer to our destination the hills no longer were hills anymore, instead the hills had transformed to massive mountains of various sizes. These mountains surrounded our every view as if we had sunken into a great big deep hole of green pastures. Our path of direction was seen, as the trails of our road that had followed for numerous hours ended up winding up the mountainous mountains in a corkscrew dizzy-like matter.
When their journey began in 1846, the members of the Donner and Reed families had high hopes of reaching California, and they would settle at nothing less. Their dream of making a new life for themselves represented great determination. When their packed wagons rolled out of Springfield, Missouri, they thought of their future lives in California. The Reed family’s two-story wagon was actually called the “pioneer palace car”, because it was full of everything imaginable including an iron stove and cushioned seats and bunks for sleeping. They didn’t want to leave their materialistic way of life at home.
Dillard’s use of images, words and figurative and lyrical language in her description of mountain together create a sense of motion and vitality, as if the landscape she depicts is actively alive, shaping and forming itself before her. The vitality of this particular landscape, as observed during her moment of transcendence, perhaps suggests that such life may only be observed but at rare and ...
Despite the problems that would arise, many people are beginning to feel that the drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. Studies have been made; however, no hard evidence suggesting lowering the minimum drinking age would help have surfaced. Although there are countless studies of how alcohol has many harmful effects on teenagers, there is a great deal of negative criticism about what if the drinking age is lowered. Some would say the morally right decision is to not allow teens the chance to hurt themselves. Everyone is entitled to having his or her own opinions and beliefs. However, the overall health of the youth of our country seems a little more important than some personal belief. The drinking age should not be lowered due to the fact drunk driving, juvenile delinquency, and alcohol-related medical issues related to teens will increase.
A familiar sound, yet somehow different. Blinding rays of sun pound on any bare skin that it can find. Out of breath, yet every time a breath is taken it tastes somehow more fresh than those that were taken just hours ago. Water has never tasted as good as it does now. Not a single tree blocks my sight of the vast landscape surrounding. As far as the human eye can register are planes and smaller mountains that seem like nothing compared to Humphrey’s peak; appearing almost as if they could be devoured in a single bite if wanting a light snack. The mountains dissipate into the far land; the decreased visibility makes the far land around me seem like a ghostly
Eastman III, Donald R. “Lowering the Drinking Age: Let’s Keep the Dialogue Open.” St. Petersburg Times. 25 Aug. 2008. Print.
is also simple. Hemingway uses simple writing not for the ease of complexity but to give the
As a young child, I would visit my grandparents in Marin County often. My parents would pack my sister and me up in the car, and we would head north from San Francisco to the small town of Novato. The road to Novato took us through San Rafael, where I would always marvel at the one mile stretch of shopping mall that Highway 101 traversed. However, once we were into the hills of wine country and the shopping mall was a distant memory, so too became San Rafael. It wasn’t until I met Paul, my partner, that I learned the full story behind this fascinating town.
"College costs and the CPI." Arkansas Business 9 Sept. 2013: 7. General OneFile. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
DeJong, William. “Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered to 18? No.” American Teacher 93.3 (2008): 3. Wilson OmniFile Full Text Mega Edition. Web. 3 Mar. 2010.
“There's something wonderful about seeing the landscape of East Los Angeles, yet knowing full well what's coming down the pike,” CT quotes Erickson’s statement to Variety.
Engs, Ruth C.. " Why drinking age should be lowered: Dr. Ruth Engs ." Indiana University. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2011. .
Pendleton, Ethan. “Advantages & Disadvantages of Rising College Tuition.”eHow/How to videos, articles & more. N.p.,n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2013. http://www.businessweek.com.
When you love the Desert Southwest, sometime, somewhere, you will stumble into the writings of Ed Abbey. Like me, Ed was not born there; he discovered his love of the place while riding a boxcar through it on a trip across the US; I discovered mine on a trip through myself. His writings helped lead me home, for that is what the desert southwest is to me: home. I don’t live there for one simple reason, i.e., I have not yet been able to put myself in the financial situation I need to be in. For now, I visit when I can, mostly during my long vacations at Christmas.
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).