Earthbound on Solid Ground

                Earthbound on Solid Ground by Bell Hooks is an excerpt about home and change. It could be related to Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s book of The Place You Love is Gone. Both authors talk about their home towns and the changes they went through. Bell Hooks writes about how Kentucky Hills is where she grew up and spent her childhood. There, she was surrounded with wilderness and honeysuckle and wild plants. “I was taught early on in my life the power of nature” (Hooks 67). She states that meaning she grew up learning about nature and how it hold all the power. She brings up a point about white power, and her being a black woman, she wanted to believe that whites were not the highest power. Seeing as nature cannot be changed by anyone, she believes that nature hold the ultimate power.

                “Humility in relationship to nature’s power made survival possible” (Hooks 67). Many people learned that nature had made people the way they are. Connecting to nature allows people to learn to survive. Those who lived in nature, like Hooks, learned that the environment gives life and takes life. Those who are from the “backwoods” were taught to ignore the rules of the society and law. “The wild spirit of unspoiled nature worked its way into the folk of the backwoods, and ancestral legacy, handed down from generation to generation” (Hooks 68). She is talking about the people who grew up in the backwoods, and were not able to experience the effects of nature and how it can shape you.

When Bell Hooks said “To tend to the earth is always then to tend our destiny, our freedom, and our hope” (Hooks 68), it kind of caught my eye. Saying that tending to the earth is kind of determining your destiny, she is saying that the nature and the earth can potentially affect your future. How does the earth control your future? According to Hooks your destiny and freedom can be controlled by the earth. Since the earth is not something that can be changed by people, Hooks sees the earth as the essential power, rather than white power.

Bell Hooks is also stating that she would like to be back in her natural suburban childhood home town rather than the urbanization she is now subjected to. There are not as many greens and that is when many started seeing whites as the powerful ones. Much like in Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s story both her and Hooks want to go back to the suburban areas they came from.

Becoming Metis

                Many of the themes we have read about lately are reoccurring, such as themes about multiculturalism, colonialism, and place and home. When Melissa Nelson states "To learn who I am today, on this land I live on, I've had to recover that heritage and realize a multicultural self", she means she has to discover who she is, individually. She states how she is a mix of cultures and breeds, Native American and European. Her goal is to find a culture and religion and spirit that fit all of her native cultures, as well as describing herself.  Nelson states she wants to “honor all parts of myself; the spiritual traditions of my Ojibwe ancestors as well as the traditional knowledge of my European ancestors” (Nelson 147). She told us her story about her native and new traditions and that will help her find herself in a religion. She mentions to us how her mother remembers only a little bit of her native tongue, Anishinabemowin. Even that, however, was a mixture of Cree and Canadian French. I feel that if she learned her native tongue it might help her choose which traditions she can relate to most. Both of her parents had lost most their native tongues because if they were going to become American then they had to forget about the past.
            Melissa Nelson then tells us how she doesn’t feel connected enough with her indigenous past to claim any Indian spirituality (Nelson 148). She explored on her own, by reading books and by lectures. Nelson had to find her multicultural self, meaning taking in all she can between her Native American and European past as well as finding her own creativity now that will express her, separately. To find that, she often wrote poetry and started to play the selje flute. “We all have Earth-based spiritual traditions in our past and we should work to uncover our heritage. But we also have our own individual creativity, imagination, and distinct relationship with what we call the sacred” (Nelson 151).

In History

In the story “In History” by Jamaica Kincaid, she is describing what history is according to her. She says it is “the thing that happened to me and all who look like me” (16). Now, I am not entirely sure what she exactly meant by that, but I think she is referring to her ancestors and all that they went through. They could’ve struggled in America or in another country. That was her families past, therefore it is her history. We all have our own history, and she tries to tell us that in her story. She starts to tell us her story of her history. She mentions how Columbus “discovered the new world” (17). Although she doesn’t tell us much about her actually family history she does elaborate a little bit on where she is from, Antigua. She talks about the landscape. She says it is green. “Let me describe this landscape again: it is green, and unmistakably so; another person, who would have a more specific interest, a painter, might say, it is a green that often verges on blue, a green that often modified by reds and yellows and even other more intense or other shades of green” (19). She goes on and on a few more sentences about how green it is.

Kincaid also talks about Vermont, and how it is not the same place where she is from, Antigua. I find it a little bizarre how she is sort of speaking for Christopher Columbus. When she said that’s he never saw Vermont and he saw Antigua on a weekday, or a Sunday, and that he was exhausted.  She first thought of “what is history” when she realizes she was no longer living in the place that her ancestors, or those who looked like her, had lived. She is making a new appearance (21).  Kincaid also talks about naming different items. Items either have a proper name or a Latin name.

 Creative Challenge

When I was younger I learned about the New World and Christopher Columbus in school. I was very young. It was back in kindergarten, actually. We even had a feast for the pilgrims and Indians. I actually had to make a map of the world, or what I thought it looked like, when I was younger. I know my world was pretty much a few blobs on the paper. I knew, at that point. The world was round. We had a globe in the classroom. As I grew older I realized that my blobs actually took forms as countries. I learned more in detail about Columbus and his discoveries. What I was taught in school and at home is pretty much all I knew about history. I never really sat down and thought of it. When Kincaid mentions the landscape, it makes me think of my home town landscape and that of that world.

Adopted Town

The second part to "The Place You Love is Gone", Adopted Town, is about the author moving to a new house in a new town. She left Akron and moved to Hoboken, Jew Jersey. She dislikes this place a lot. She talks about the town, the street, her house, and why she dislikes everything about it. "At first I lacked the vocabulary to properly term it a railroad apartment, and all I knew was that the interior rooms could have been used to safely process film” (page 68). I love this quote she used because I could truly picture how dark the room is. In high school I took a photography class and I know that to develop film you can’t use real like so I can picture how dark the room is she is describing. Following that she says that “Rarely was food prepared in what was determined to be the ‘kitchen’.” (page 68-69) She describes that the kitchen does not feel like a kitchen, especially compared to her old house. Those quotes help me understand that she is not happy with her new house in New Jersey, and that she misses her old house in a way.

               

The text relates to me in a few ways. For one, I have moved to a new house, other than the one I grew up in. I moved when I was about seven years old and I was forced to give up my old memories and make new ones in my new house. However, my new house wasn’t as bad to move into as hers appears to be. I was a bit excited to move into my new house, although I know I would’ve missed all my other memories of my old house. That was the house I was born into and all my baby and toddler memories were there. I am very glad that I, at least, have the advantage of watching home videos and actually seeing those memories.

Salem, now, is kind of like my adopted town. I am still learning my way around and certain little short cuts, but I adapting to it, kind of like the author did to her new house. I am not usually good with change but Salem is becoming like a second home to me. Methuen will always be my home town and where I grew up but I am slowly adapting to the changes of Salem. The actual University is kind of like my adopted home. It is where I spend most of my week. I don’t like that I’m so far away from my home and my family. But they come to visit, or I go home to visit. I am adapting to both the down and school even though I miss my home. At first meeting new people and seeing all these new places what a little alarming because I wasn’t sure if I fit in here, but after a month or two it gets easier to adapt.

The Place And Memory Project

          This piece I read about was about the BP Oil Spill on April 20, 2010. I picked this topic because it affected so many people. It was known throughout the entire country and was one of the most important pieces on the news for months. The fact that so much oil was being poured into the Gulf of Mexico every single day. It was estimated that 5,000 barrels was being poured into the ocean every single day. That went on for months.

          This story really made me think about how many people were actually affected by this disaster. When the fire of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig broke out eleven men out of the 126 were not able to make it out. That affected the entire crew and those who loved the eleven individuals. Not only were those families influenced but the entire shore of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, BP as a company, and many many sea animals were also very disturbed in the outcome. All of the workers who helped with the spill and with the cleaning did as much as they could to help those who were devastated by the event.
 
          In class we were learning about how change affects our home and our lives. As I stated this oil spill affected so many people, not only those directly involved, but the ones who just care about the environment. To think about all the animals and creatures that were forced out of their homes and even were killed, that might also affect people. The people of the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana were not able to even go near the ocean, and those who had homes near the oceans were not able to live there. That affected them because maybe they grew up there, and now they had to move and leave all their memories because of this disaster. It related to our class because we are all influenced by the changes that happen to our homes and in our lives.


The link to the boston news article website is listed below.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/oil_spill_approaches_louisiana.html

Why is Nostalgia Such a Bad Thing

MHP:" Thank you for saying that. That’s a nice way of putting it. I’m online, I’m on all these lists that are throwing this information at me till my eyes glaze over. There’s a little bit of magic that goes on when you’re researching, or at least the way I do it, which is not methodical. I don’t really know how to research. I think my papers in grad school—I just flunked them all. I don’t really know how to do that. But what I do is a sort of have this faith that if I get into the head and I read something, then it will lead me somewhere else."

-I think when she said this it kind of surprised me a little bit because it is a little ironic. She said in grad school she flunked all her papers. Which is weird because she is now a writer. The questioner stated that her books must have involved a lot of research. She said that she doesn't exactly know how to research, but she just uses a sort of "magic" to do it. I feel as a writer that takes a lot to admit that she did not always excel as a writer.



MHP: For me, in my first book, I could read all the literature on motorcycles because there wasn’t that much. I spent days in the New York Public Library, in the science room, when they still had that, and I did a lot of my research in used bookstores, you know [trails her finger across an imaginary shelf], like that. Same thing with The Place You Love Is Gone. A lot of those were old books that I stumbled on, and when you amass enough stuff, it starts to coalesce. I don’t think about things. I read. I take notes. And then, maybe after a year or two, something will start to take shape and I’ll get out colored pens and I’ll say, This will belong over here. It’s like piecing together a puzzle.

-I love how she said after some time things will take shape and she will start to piece things together. She got much of her inspiration and research done at library and old book stores. This qoute shows how she was dedicated when it came to wanting to write a book. I like how she can say that she will just pick up colored pencils and start puzzeling her thoughts together.


MHP: How many times have you heard someone say they’ve gone back home and it’s changed or it’s gone? I mean, people weep over this. Is it sadness or is it nostalgia? Why is nostalgia such a bad thing? I mean, nostalgia is a longing to return. If you really loved where you came from, if, in essence, you really loved yourself—because that’s what created you—how can you not want that to exist? It’s like wanting your parents keep living. Is it nostalgia when you cry when your parents die? The bad kind of nostalgia is getting lost in it and never leaving. My point in writing about those three places was to say, “Aha, but guess what? I get nostalgic about every place.”

-In this quote she is saying again what we have been talking about in class. She is saying that she looks back on her places she grew up and places she has been and they are all changing. She says, in a way, it's good to see that change, and the only bad change is when you get lost and never return back to your old ways. She is saying that your going to want your old home back because that is where you grew up and "exist". But good things do come to an end at some point.


-Nostalgia is in fact not such a bad thing, in my opinion. It allows us to look back at our memories and cherish those that were important to us. Remebering your childhood is very important because it is what made you who you are today.