English

In the summer of 2016, Taylor Swift got into a feud with Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian. It was an escalation of pettiness and hostility that goes all the way back to 2009. In this case, the conflict arose when Kim Kardashian publicly posted a recording of Taylor Swift giving Kanye West approval to add a particular line about her to his song “Famous.” After the release of the song, Taylor objected to the misogynistic line in question, claiming that she had cautioned Kanye against using it. It added to the already contentious relationship between the two musicians. However, the video exposed the truth: Taylor’s denial that she ever approved the line was shown to be a lie.

(Edit: serendip confuses me, i think this is posted correctly now and not as an attachment?)

Turtles All the Way Down:

Counterstorytelling in Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories

These are the photos I talked about in class; they are screenshots (my mom sent me these from her iphone during a meeting lol) of the app she's creating to map Native American land and settlements in our area. Hopefully I can add better photos/maps to the conversation soon.

"To me the important thing is not to offer any specific hope of betterment but, by offering an imagined but persuasive alternative reality, to dislodge my mind, and so the reader’s mind, from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live. It is that inertia that allows the institutions of injustice to continue unquestioned.

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller." -Ursula K. Le Guin

here are a few things i have on my mind after today's class. some questions, some requests, some feelings. for myself and others. i want to hear back on these. let me know how you're feeling, in comments or in person or however you like. if you'd like. 

Water is life! Water is LIFE! I love water so much. I have a jacket that reads "DRINK WATER" on the back. Everyone knows my neon green water bottle. There is nothing I love more than a glass of crispy-fresh ice-water. But also hot water, with a squeeze of lemon to wake up my immune system. Or have it fizzy! I've grown up on San Pellegrino. I am always leaving class to use the restroom... Water is life! 

I grew up drinking three or more glasses of milk every day. Sometimes I'd stir in the Hershey's, but most often I would drink it plain. As I grew older and moved out of the Dairy State I realized that milk-drinkers were few and far between. It was actually one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Bryn Mawr, because eating in the dining halls provides an eerily public display of what we eat and who we are. My dad described me once as a milkfed Midwesterner, and I definitely realized what that identity meant at college. Coming to school I realized more and more about the realities of the place I grew up - it was not the warm, welcoming place that I was raised to believe but rather a tense, sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of social scene.

Last night I had an hour long conversation about coffee milk. Myself, another classmate with Rhode Island roots, 3 others. My biggest struggle with coffee milk is trying to find the words to describe it: 

     -Like yoohoo, but coffee flavoured

     -like if you had coffee with no bitterness, just heaps of sugar and cream

     -no, I promise it's not caffinated

       Green tea matcha, the thick swirl of coconut speckled with green tea. Shaking it as my hand clenches the slippery, warming shake. Lime green spreading across my lips, moistening them. Crisp, yet somehow processed freshness. Knowing the flavor is familiar, reminds me of easy dates, charged study routines, and people bustling around me. Makes you pause as heaviness creeps up the straw, slowly, begging for mixture. It calls extra attention, the bits, straggling at the bottom, melting yet still firm and moist. Swirling the slurpy ice pieces around my mouth, pressing the matcha chunks against the side of my mouth. Crunchy chunks, enjoying the process of consuming the drink. Lasting taste, a little too thick, too hard.