I.

I'd like to pick up where we left off, thinking about education and challenge to society as a starting point. To return to the notes from last week: Thinking about education and empowerment, I'd like to start with this quote from James Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers":

"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."

How does this prompt you to think about what we've been doing in the jail? Or experiences of education in your own lives?

II.

I.

We opted to attend Mia Mingus's lecture during the first two-thirds of class. As it turned out, the lecture was hugely relevant to our discussions across the whole 360 cluster. A few highlights from my own notes (to which I'd love to hear your additions):

Link to first draft -- /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/titillation-meaning-terminology-exotic-and-erotic

The Elision in Meaning

The separation and hybridization of meaning cannot be seen independently from the structures that enforce the model of power in which we live. No word is defined without another, no meaning is without relation to value, no value is without a source of power. This power tells women that the erotic involves no transcendence of sexual, and that they must fear and devalue its essence.

All Over Creation, by Ruth Ozeki, is not an environmental treatise or manifesto. It is a novel, a work of fiction, and it is about people and the complex relationships between them. In the midst of daddy issues, child molestation, pornography, cancer, baby-stealing, miscarriages, abortion, cultural appropriation, Alzheimer’s, and bombs, the environmental side of the book can seem secondary. And yet, as Yumi tells us at the beginning of the story, “It starts with the earth. How can it not?” (Ozeki 3).  The very point that the novel is making is that we cannot separate ourselves from the environment. Ozeki demonstrates this through Momoko’s relationship with seeds.

“Exotic” and “Native”

 My first draft started with several questions on Momoko and her “exotic” identity. I wondered what is the real meaning of  “exotic” and how does people use it to define others. With the more exploration of Momoko, I was convinced that people should not be defined as exotic or native by its origin. As this word embrace more complexity related to identity.

I am so glad the weather was lovely (climate change frights aside) and that we were able to find an excuse to shift to an outdoor location. The leaves gleaming in the sunshine and wafts of sweet, clear fall air were taunting us through the windows when we were stuck sitting on the stuffy couches of Pem East's Common Room.

Elena Luedy

Professor Cohen

E-Sem

11/6/15

Potatoes are People Too

            In All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki continually uses the environment as a backdrop for her story. By interweaving the environment into characters, Ozeki is able to convey lessons on conservation and having a positive relationship with the environment. The characters are not only a reflection of the environment they live in, they are the personification of the environment.

Change and Religion -Draft

Was there a moment or an event I decided to change?

The novel All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki creates a number of stories that all bind together in the setting of a potato farm community in Idaho. In an interview, Ozeki says that "Nothing exists independently of anything else." From a scientific standpoint we know this statement to be true, because no organism can exist in solitude from the rest of the environment. Every piece of the environment is somehow connected other parts. Each organism in an ecosystem has a responsibility in the system, and the system only functions if all the pieces are working properly  together. Ozeki creates interconnected stories in which characters are linked through relationships that develop throughout the novel.