Entry two: Bedding the Cows
How would it feel to lay on a bed of straw? That’s the question I ask myself as I wonder how much straw to throw under each cow. My family’s barn is a station barn. This means our cattle stay in the barn at night, but go out to pasture during the day. The cows sleep in a manger that’s parallel to the center isle in the barn. A manger is a personal stall for each cow. Once the cows come into the barn they go to their assigned manger. The cows don’t need to be told where to go. They know theirs spots and walk in and wait to be tied and milked. Once all the cows are in their mangers each one gets tied with a chain and collar until milking is complete. So, as you can see bedding is important. To bed the cow’s, we
How would you like to be mugged and have to attend a crappy job all in one day? In the essays, “Mugged,” written by Jim Crockett and “Selling Manure,” written by Bonnie Jo Campbell, they both want these things to happen to them. Jim Crockett tells how his coffee cup has “mugged” him, theoretically. His essay talks about his addiction to coffee and how it affects his everyday life. Bonnie Jo Campbell expresses her experience selling manure as her summer job. She thought it was going to be the worst job that didn’t have a meaning. She also writes about the impact it makes, not just on her, but to her customers. I worked at a gas station for a while where I had to deal with customers just like Campbell. The difference, between Campbell and me, is I made food rather than providing the fertilizer to make the crops grow. I’m also, like Crockett in a different way than Campbell. I have an addiction to pop, which is the same with Crockett and his coffee. These essays relate to everyday objects in our lives to show the value, meaning, and impact that they have on us.
Journal Entry #1 Wiesel says this because he wants to keep the Holocaust from happening again. He probably meant that it is selfish to keep something to yourself when it is important and you can prevent it from happening. When he was being tortured, the other citizens did nothing to help. Maybe he just wants to make up for what others did not do for him. I agree and disagree with his statement.
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” a short story by Katherine Anne Porter, describes the last thoughts, feelings, and memories of an elderly woman. As Granny Weatherall’s life literally “flashes” before her eyes, the importance of the title of the story becomes obvious. Granny Weatherall has been in some way deceived or disappointed in every love relationship of her life. Her past lover George, husband John, daughter Cornelia, and God each did an injustice to Granny Weatherall. Granny faces her last moments of life with a mixture of strength, bitterness, and fear. Granny gained her strength from the people that she felt jilted by. George stood Granny up at the altar and it is never stated that she heard from him again. The pain forced Granny to be strong.
Many people may ask, “What the heck is the Cattleman’s Association?” Normally, the first thoughts that fill people’s minds when they hear “Cattleman’s Association” are: farmers, cows, farms, rednecks, dairy, beef, steaks, hamburger, milk, and so on. Many of these “stereotypes” prove true and many not so much. My experience with the KCA (Kentucky Cattleman’s Association) may be limited, but its roots run deep in my hometown and my family. Although a great number of my family members are in the KCA, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about them, which inspired me to “get to know” them.
The American Revolution, fought for the independence of the American colonies from British rule, was a turning point in American history since it granted autonomy to the colonies from the powerful, influential nation of Great Britain. The colonists, as well as the founding fathers, helped plan the counterattack against British influence and actions to remove the burden placed on them through taxes and military involvement. The founding fathers, who were part of the colonial elite, galvanized the public and used their power to fight against the British and grant the colonists their ultimate desire: freedom. Bernard Bailyn is correct in saying that the British parliament was systematically trying to strip the colonists from their civil liberties, and the Founding Fathers and the colonists fought against this simultaneously for the advancement of society and ideals.
In Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (rpt. in Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 11th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2012] 286-294) the main character is Granny Weatherall. She has lived a long and very independent life, and now she is having a hard time trying to grasp onto reality. She is constantly worried about what she is going to do tomorrow, which makes it easy for the reader to grasp onto what is going on throughout Granny’s life. Granny Weatherall has spent most of her life trying to face the fact that she was never married to her first love, George. She has never been able to let go of what has caused her hurt, which turns it into something that is bitter and sour. Throughout the story Granny Weatherall shows her independent side, how organized and hardworking she is, and how she dealt with her broken heart.
Yellow Wallpaper - Bedroom.. As the story progresses in, The Yellow Wallpaper, it is as if the space of the bedroom turns in on itself, folding in on the body as the walls take hold of it, epitomizing the narrator's growing intimacy with control. Because the narrator experiences the bedroom in terms of John's draconian organization, she relies on her prior experiences of home in an attempt to allay the alienation and isolation the bedroom creates. Recalling her childhood bedroom, she writes, "I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. . . I could always hop into that chair and feel safe" (Gilman 17).
To start a horse in this method, a cowboy would bring a horse into a pen. The horse would then be roped and snubbed up to a large post that was set in the middle of the pen. Two other men would hold the horse down while the cowboy threw his saddle on the horses back and cinched it down. The horse was then fitted with a rope Bosal. The cowboy climbed aboard and the horse was turned lose. The cowboy was then supposed to stay with the horse until he quit bucking. It was a rare thing for a horse not to buck when started this way. (Miller 25)
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
The bedroom is an overvalued fetish object that nevertheless threatens to reveal what it covers over. John's time is spent formulating the bedroom in a way that conceals his associations of anxiety and desire with the female body, but also re-introduces them. The bedroom's exterior, its surface, and its outer system of locks, mask a hidden interior that presumably contains a mystery--and a dangerous one. The bedroom in "The Yellow Wallpaper" generates this tension between the desire to know and the fear of knowing: on one hand, the enigma of the bedroom invites curiosity and beckons us towards discovery; on the other hand, its over- determined organization is seated within a firm resolution to build up the bedroom, so that what it hides remains unrealized. Mulvey writes, "Out of this series of turning away, of covering over, not the eyes but understanding, of looking fixidly at any object that holds the gaze, female sexuality is bound to remain a mystery" ("Pandora" 70).
There is a famous 1961 film called West Side Story. In this film the “Sharks”, who are Puerto Rican immigrants battle the “Jets”, who are New Yorkers, for claim of New York City. Often erupting into violence, these two different culture groups despise each other simply because of the ignorance both have experienced. Through the rubble a love story emerges and eventually put aside their differences. This is however after several knife attacks, gunshots fired, deaths, and a hate filled mamba dance routine. Stories such as this about cultural differences are ones that one would think are far in the past. That as a society, we have moved past the differences accepting and embracing the differences that make each individual unique. But this is not the case, especially not in Northern Ireland during the 1960s till the 1980s. In Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland, religion has been the main divider between the Irish. The Catholics and Protestants have become forms of ethnicity in which the natives identify with. In John Conroy’s book, Belfast Diary, one sees an American journalist’s perspective on the conflict which hinders Ireland. The “democratic system” that was in place created an unstable power struggle only lending more fuel to the fire between these two groups. Strong examples of the unbalanced system are seen as John Conroy gives the reader access to his experience of “the Troubles” of Northern Ireland.
A great day to add to my diary. I've got a new job after that stupid
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
wondering why I put cows down, well that is because you need a lot of
Within the rather disturbing short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman expresses an underlying tone of women’s suppression. The narrator lived life as normal, under the domestic ideology. Without the realization of what was occurring to women in that era. Throughout the story, the narrator began to realize the social norm was suppressing women and their “voice”. She began to act different from what society view on ideal females. The narrator found the source and reasoning to why the people in her household and other acquaintances acted in such a manner. After putting the puzzle pieces together, she came to accept the reality. During the 1800s, African Americans were given the right to vote in which it essentially