EcoLit 313

So I just finished reading an article about the slow food movement for my Italian culture class and I came across this: 

Se, come dice il poeta contadino Wendell Berry, “mangiare è un atto agricolo”, produrre il cibo deve essere considerato un “atto gastronomico”.

This is when Berry was talking about eating as an "agricultural act." It seems that many cultures have really embraced his views on ecological justice. 

Hi guys,

here are my images from today's activity. Thank you so much for playing this game with me. I really really enjoyed having this day to just relax with all of you and play some fun games, listen to a soothing serenade, eat some yummy lemon bars, and appreciate everyone's writing. I loved listening to everyone's guess at location. I was a little worried before class that my activity wouldn't go over well; that y'all would think it was too simple or dull. But it seemed like eveeryone enjoyed the guessing game, especially when they thought the picture might have been taken close to their site-sit spot. I'm not quite sure where I came up with the idea- I was originally planning on blindfolding everyone and having them smell different plants I had taken from around campus and guessing what they were. From that idea the concept evolved to explore how much we miss visually, even though we consider it one of our more prominent and neccessary senses. I think my project interacted very well with Sarah and Sara's because it challanges our comfort with our perception.. We think we know an area  well, but we are constantly missing so much of our surroudings. I also think my project was align with Grahm, Sruthi, and Hira's work, because it questioned our ability to visually associate and represent. Overall, I think everyone's projects fit together very well. Thank you, everyone for giving me an very open and honest semester, summed up in such a wonderful class.

This class has been different than all the other classes I’ve taken in college.  Last week, when I started writing reflections about this semester, they were huge, sprawling, and unfocused.  My reflecting transported me all around my memory, and I realized as I wrote that all of my learning from this class happened inside of my head.  For me, this semester was characterized by introspection.  When my thoughts turned to this final teach-in, I couldn’t figure out how to make my learning interactive.  So I didn’t.  I decided to read some of my reflections.  I end with an invitation for interaction.

Negative spaces have always been interesting for me, not only in an artistic sense but in as an everyday occurrence- I think they speak volumes, especially about people. I’ve always liked seeing and observing what spaces exist between people. However, I had never thought about “hearing” or “feeling” negative spaces. I’ve been thinking a lot about blindness and the way in which not seeing necessitates you to “place” your body- it becomes all the more important to understand where you are, what is around you and where you are going. The environment you are in no longer becomes the background but a very important foreground. The only reason I knew where I was a given time was based on sounds and light variations. I knew we were near the road when I could hear cars, and I knew from the sound of the wind in the trees in my right ear that senior row was to the left of us. I knew we were in the woods and under senior row when the ever-present dot of light representing the sun flickered from interfering leaves and trees. When we were told to beware of an intrusive object possibly in our path, I instinctively and reflexively would put out my hand, in hopes that I could “feel” my place and know where not to walk. Finding these negative spaces through feeling and hearing instead of vision becomes necessary to find the safe spaces, in order to place your body within a context or environment.

For me our two field trips this past week to Ashbridge Memorial Park and our blind shuttle tour had a particular significance to them. In the last couple of web papers I have been trying to advocate new ecological teaching styles which are based on unorthodox experiences that take place outside the classroom. Although our fieldtrips were not based on accidental and personal experiences, they nonetheless still managed to encourage us to not limit our learning experiences to just the classroom. Rather the class field trips gave everyone the opportunity experiment with how we were soaking in the knowledge of our field trip.

I see that they (the administration/grounds) is still taking care of the grass at Perry.  In the beginning of the year, the vibrancy chairs were slowly being consumed by the vines in the Perry House garden but they are clean now and left with plenty of space to sit in silence and solidarity.  The last few times I've been to my site at Perry I couldn't help but think about the current ambiguity of the House's future.  It is strange how, once the students came together, the lawn vines were finally cut back.  Would it have been so bad for the vibrancy chairs to be swallowed by the vines?  Is it worse that the chairs are free from their plant captors, but left on their own?  Its almost like they are symbolic of the culture of Perry House.  Either the vibrancy of the house is to be swallowed up and claimed by someone else or it is to be left on its own, there to be looked at but never to be integrated into the whole. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

As for what I did at my site that day, I marveled at the warm weather (I was there on Tuesday) and I finally stepped through the stone archway.  I had been avoiding that all semester because I liked to imagine that there was another world amongst the bramble of the otherside.  I sat down on the steps and I sang songs though I'm not quite sure why.  It felt right.