4.04.2009

Update on the Candyman!

Hello again, fellow C&C bloggers! It's (apparently) time for an update! :P

I'm just pushing through second semester here, taking a 4 credit bio and a 5 credit chem, plus a 4 credit calc and men's choir. Things are doing well, I had a blast in the Philippines over winter break, and got to sit on the beach in the middle of January in my shorts, so that was nice! I hit Colorado for spring break, visited my girlfriend and my old friends, and now I'm back in WI to finish up the year! Anyhow, I'm doing well enough :) Any questions, leave a comment!

Nice to stop by again!
The Candyman

12.16.2008

Reflection

To whomever may be reading,


The Living Learning Community of Cultures and Communities has been a wonderful experience.  As a resident of the UWM RiverView Residence Hall, you get the chance to be involved in a Living Learning Community (LLC, as we call it) of your choice.  It just so happens that we are focused on cultures and communities.  As part of an LLC, you are enrolled in a related class; our class is English 150: Multicultural America.  It fulfills your GER plus adds an element of Service Learning too.  Although I may be biased, our LLC is the best!


Besides being able to wake up and take the elevator straight to our classroom, seeing how it is held in the RiverView Residence Hall, I have enjoyed the connections made with the local Riverwest neighborhood.  Not only has it been part of our course to involve ourselves in the community by attending neighborhood as well as campus events, but it has been very much part of our course to serve the community in some way, shape, or form.  We chose to write two articles for the Riverwest Currents—published and issued here in the Riverwest neighborhood—distributed throughout the greater Milwaukee.  It has been our honor to meet and work with influential people actively bettering the community in which they live.  


As students who live and learn together, we have learned to appreciate community, how it is developed and maintained.  Being able to work with someone is one thing, but living with them is entirely another.  Through our experience in the Riverwest community, we have a better understanding of how neighbors should be and how community thrives.  I have enjoyed applying the texts we've read to the realities of life and personal interactions.  Mary Louise Pratt defines a term in which she refers to as a “contact zone” in her “What is a Contact Zone” as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power,” and I, with the addition of most if not all my classmates, have identified a contact zone as the makings of a community, and it is how each contact zone is acknowledged and treated that a community can function.  


RiverView's Culture and Communities LLC has given me insight to what community is made of and the importance of it.  I have loved being able to walk down the hall to ask a classmate a question on homework and have enjoyed having a class in my living space.  It is a great chance to escape the normal classroom experience and get a taste for life itself.  


                                                                     Take Care,

                                                                                  Amy  


Collaborative Interpretation of "Father's Milk"

Here is another product of our interpretive collaboration with the Visual Art LLC, which was focused on the first chapter, “Father’s Milk,” of Louise Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife. “Father’s Milk” sets up what we need to know about history in order to understand the chapters that follow, which is set primarily in modern-day Minneapolis. In this chapter, a U.S. cavalryman named Scranton Roy participates in a raid on an Ojibwe settlement. After he bayonets an old woman and sees his own mother in her face, he runs away, following a dog with a newborn strapped to its back. The chapter is called “Father’s Milk” because, by some miracle, Scranton Roy is able to breastfeed the baby, who he names Matilda after his beloved mother.

Below, you'll find an image created by Calley in response to "Father's Milk," with text from the chapter selected by Abbey that we think interprets her art.




It occurred to him one slow dusk as he looked down at her, upon his breast, that she was teaching him something. This notion seemed absurd when he first considered it, and then, as insights do when we have the solitude to absorb them, he eventually grew used to the idea and paid attention to the lesson. The word faith hooked him. She had it in such pure supply. She nursed with utter simplicity and trust, as though the act itself would produce her wish. (7)

Here we've got a picture by Fly with text selected by Nikhil.

Sometimes across the room, at night, in his sleep, her father gasps as though stabbed, dies into himself. She is jolted awake, frightened, and thinks to check his breath with her hand, but then his ragged snore lulls her. In the fresh daylight, staring up at the patches of mildew on the ceiling, Matilda watches him proudly from the corners of her eyes as he cracks the ice in the washing pail, feeds a spurt of hidden stove flame, talks to himself. She loves him like nothing else. He is her father, her human. Still, sometimes, afflicted by an anxious sorrow, she holds her breath to see what will happen, if he will save her. Heat flows up the sides of her face and she opens her lips but before her mouth can form a word she sees yellow, passes out, and is flooded by blueness, sheer blueness, intimate and strange, the color of her necklace of beads. (11)

Reflections...

After a semester of the Cultures and Communities LLC here at RiverView, I think I've been part of more communities than I would have been otherwise.  With this class, I've not only been exposed to the Riverwest community and its neighborhood association meetings and cultural events like the Hurricane Season performance in the heart of Riverwest, but I've also been able to become a part of the community that is our Multicultural America class right here three floors below our homes.  I think that, overall, an LLC is a great way for a new freshman to ease into the college life, not only with the relatively light workload, but also with the connections you build within the LLC.  I recommend it to anyone slightly unsure of themselves in the new college setting.

It's been a great semester, see you guys around!

-The Candyman (Nikhil)

12.11.2008

Neighbor Spotlight: Jim Hawley

We've collaboratively written an article for the neighborhood newspaper, the Riverwest Currents.  We wrote a "Neighbor Spotlight," an article exposing the neighborhood to one of their neighbors, and how that neighbor is important to the community.  Read it here!

yesser

FROM READING BOOKS, AND VISITING SITES
SEEING NEW FACES AND MANY NEW INTERESTING
PLACES;LEARNING TOGETHER HAND IN HAND,
PAVING THE WAY BRIDGING THE GAP,
ALL FROM DIFFERENT PLACES, BRINGING
TO THE TABLE ALL.
IF JOINED TOGETHER WE CREATE A BRIDGE
IT CAN NEVER FALL…

-WE ARE LIVING AND LEARNING-

11.06.2008

Collaborative Interpretation of "Concentration Constellation"




We've been working with the Visual Art Living Learning Community in collaborative interpretations of a variety of texts.  The first of these collaborations focused on the poem by Lawson Inada, "Concentration Constellation."  Here we've included a visual interpretation by Fly, an excerpt from Amy's analytical interpretation of the poem, and a poetic interpretation from Sam.



"A constellation is any brilliant, outstanding group or assemblage ("Constellation").  In this way, Lawson Fusao Inada calls to attention the constellation of Japanese-American internment camps in his poem 'Concentration Constellation.'  During World War II over 110,000 men, women, and children were stripped from their homes and placed into military-like facilities.  Japanese-Americans were discriminated against and mistreated in various ways due to their race with no regards to their United States citizenship or residency ("Manzanar").  These internment camps clearly make a constellation which can be found on the United States map, if one desires."



This great land we walk
our friends turn to fiends
pointed the finger
now this scar our only friend
walking all alone
under the night sky
locked up put away
forgotten
now imprisoned alone under the night sky
had friends they pointed fingers
we are forgotten 
this great land we walk