Skunk Dreams

"We should take comfort from the skunk, an arrogant creature so pleased with its own devices that it never runs from harm, just turns its back in total confidence." What a beautiful and unique comparison. I feel as though Skunk Dreams is full of such lovely thoughts that get less recognition then deserved. But even though I feel this way, I'm not so sure how much I enjoyed reading Skunk Dreams. While it brought up a great amount of ideas facing philosophy in my mind, it also made me feel like the "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was exactly right about me. I absolutely adored Erdrich's writing style, but the long paragraphs of droning details about trees made me yawn. They were stunning at first, but quickly became useless and far too plentiful.

But like I said-- her writing style was stunning. I was crazily drawn to it. "Its ripe odor must have dissipated in the frozen earth of its winterlong hibernation, because it didn't smell all that bad, or perhaps it was just that I took shallow breaths in numb surprise." While this sentence is rather wordy, it's also quite informal. That's a style that's quite refreshing to read every once in a while. You could tell that she had a creative eye and could twist pretty visions into pretty writing, but at times I wish she would've been more frank. The paragraph that I found the most entrancing was the one she straight-forwardly declared that her "dream, however, was about obstacles still in place." She went on to describe that "the obstacles that we overcome define us." This brought up some fairly deep thoughts in my mind. I began thinking about the obstacles that restrict my own decisions.

I'd like to say that I enjoyed Skunk Dreams, but I can't. It's a lovely essay that touched on some great ideas, but I wish she would've been more consistent in her writing. While the organization of the essay severely pleased me, it was the disorganization of heavy description versus thought that bothered me.

Another Place at the Table-Summer Book

As a child of adoption, I had to spend a brief two months in foster care; neither of which I even slightly remember, so when I decided upon a book sharing the story of a life of a foster mom, I had low expectations, but I was blown away. Never have I felt such respect for a single human being after reading Another Place at the Table. Kathy Harrison's story is one for the big-hearted and the open-minded. I was crying within 13 pages, and felt a cornucopia of other emotions throughout the book's entirety. The book touches on an array of lessons-- from compassion to good parenting to learning to love for a child. I took more out of it than I expected in many different ways.

Kathy Harrison and her husband Bruce started in their early 40s with full time jobs and three of their own children, and their lives were about to get crazy. Kathy came upon two children growing up in a rotten family and a rotting household, and for the first time in her life she was introduced to the idea of adopting. After adopting her first two children, Kathy wanted to do more. She wanted to be able to reach out to other children who needed just as much love and help as the new additions to her family. At this point, Kathy began to consider foster care. It started out slowly with maybe a child or two for short periods of time, and things were going well. Then Kathy was asked to be a part of the hot-line service that foster care provides. That would mean that DSS could call her at any point throughout the day or night if a child needed a place to stay. Most of these children were special needs children. Now I don't know about you, but when I hear "special needs" I think of mental disabilities and children needing special attention, but the stories that followed the children that entered Kathy's home were unlike anything I could predict.

The first story that shook me was David's, a ten-month old who suffered from abuse by both parents. He was found on the floor of a warehouse surrounded by young adults that apparently had made a night of drunkenly beating him. His father 16 and his mother 15, and pregnant again, were not there when Kathy took David to the E.R. for x-rays. At this point in the story, my eyes were dream and my mind was still expecting a situation of normal circumstances, especially for such a young baby. But that wasn't the case at all. The doctor came out to inform Kathy that, "He's had five broken ribs, and his arm has healed fractures. This has apparently been going on for months." I put the book down and gasped. My eyes started to tear up, and while you do hear of these stories, they seem to be rare, but the things is--they're not. At all.

There were long nights, frustration, and anger described frequently throughout the book, but they were the moments of courage, love, and hope that kept me reading so diligently. While every child that entered the house had something uniquely and powerfully wrong with their lifestyle, the most impacting to me was the child Sara. Sara busted into this house angry and completely unfortunate to finally be in a safe place. She attempted to hide bruises and cuts by long sleeves and her hair was pulled out in places spotting her head. Sara was not a force to be reckoned with, and she made that known. But all Kathy wanted was to reach out to her, to help her, to give her hope. This child clearly had very little. Through a few pages of reading, I quickly learned that Sara had been raped by her father, her step-father, her uncle, and her brother. It seemed that almost every male figure in her life had harmed her in either a physically or sexual way. Sara didn't trust a single person. Sara didn't trust the bath. Sara didn't trust the car. She had a traumatizing reason for each as well. But love was forced upon this child. Kathy wouldn't have it any other way. Her progress was little, but intense by the end of the book, but of course I won't give that away.

Never have I really been able to wrap my head around the love my adoptive parents give me. I've never understood the process in which they were chosen as my parents in. Basically, I knew very little about anything that led me to the home and family I'm blessed with today. This book helped in all of those areas. By the end of the story, Kathy had adopted two more children besides the two she adopted at the beginning of the story. Within every page, I just wanted her to adopt every child that didn't have someone and needed stability, but through beautiful illustration I understand the love that an adoptive parent can give. In my mind, Kathy Harrison and her husband are saints. They gave so much more than shelter to so many kids, and changed the lives of numerous families in their area. Foster care is a topic that rarely gets mentioned and rarely appreciated. After this book, I can sternly say that that won't be the case for me anymore.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Before reading this article, I thought to myself, "Google isn't making me stupid. I just use it often to look up quick facts that I need to know--nothing major!" And then I read this article and I realized how stupid I was becoming...

I completely understand how sites such as Google help and really shape some writing and thoughts today, but the fact that our "nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones" allows for the habit of Google to not be so safe. That really scared me. This article really made me realize how the ways of today are morphing into solely convenience. There's no concentration or contemplation, therefor there goes our imagination and our mind no longer analyzes the information and only learns bits and pieces of it, and "thanks to our brain's plasticity, the adaptation occurs at a biological level."

Then I started to realize how badly this was happening to me. After printing out "Is Google Making us Stupid?" I groaned at its measly length of six pages. It took me weeks to actually force myself to read it. It's possible that since it's summer work that could be reason, or my brain is so adapted to the convenience of quick learning that I couldn't possibly fathom reading a whole six pages! That realization made me feel really stupid when reading the essay.

What also fascinated me about this article was how it not only focused on the fact that it is changing how we think, which is hard to deny, but also how we are beginning to rely only on the internet for any information. Also that it tricks us into learning more. The article discusses how when we search for something little footnotes and hyperlinks pop up, which keep us delving further and further into the subject, or completely away from it. The result may be a little more knowledge on something we might not have searched for in the first place (that's how I saw it before the article), but it is more so "to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration." And not only is this apparent in our (and when I say our I mean teenager's) web surfing, how we keep different tabs of facebook, grooveshark, pandora, and blogger consistently open while on the internet and flip between them, but also in the way that we sit in front of our computers while the TV's on, and while we're doing our homework. We're simply training our minds for convenience. So where does our imagination wander off to?

This article got me wanting to read a good long book (good thing we have to, because we have to blog about it soon) and taking my imagination for a stroll. I"m glad we had to read it, because it's an idea that should be brought to the attention of a very wide audience. This is something that we can change, especially now that we know that "nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones."