Photo

With extremely humid air and a temperature more than twice that of what is on the other side of the room the green house contains things alien to winter. With multiple small pink flowers and yellow centers this plant was one of the few with much color in the building. It did not have much substance with only a few small flowers and a long skinny shaft but that did not stop it from bringing focus to its self.

Favorite reading 3-2

Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or Life in the woods.

This thus far has been my favorite reading. It covers one of my favorite things to do which is go out into the wilderness.

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The photograph shows a fire/rescue team pulling people out of the water. They are under an overpass for an interstate and the road that they are working on leads down into the water showing how deep it really is. The water is also a dirty brown which seems to add a sense of disaster to the scene.

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A Hut of One’s Own

“Hut”--from Okakura’s The Book of Tea –“an ephermeral structure built to house a poetic impulse…devoid of ornamentation except what may be place in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment…purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete."

-Where is your hut located? Be specific.
-To what is it oriented?
-Briefly describe the exterior and interior of the hut:
-What is it made of?
-Describe a ritual you could enact that would be appropriate in your hut and express things fundamental to you.
-Create a tribute to someone important to you.
-Choose a particular music that would be played in your hut. Under what circumstances?
-What smell would be prominent in your hut?
-What living person would you like to bring to your hut?
-If possible to raise the dead, which famous dead person you would like to bring to your hut?
-List three personally important objects you would display inside:
-What would someone close to you discover about you by visiting your hut?
-What about you would most interest after a visit to your hut?
-What one food would you serve there?
-What one memory would you commemorate? How?
-What one photograph of yourself would you include?
-What one photograph of another?
-What one thing you’ve made?

1. Amidst an alpine forest at the base of the Rocky Mountians
2. It is oriented to the rising of the sun
3. It has a stone base with a pine roof. The inside is covered with pine needles
4. It is made of pine and store
5. Plant a new tree to give back what I have taken
6. A carving depciting a flower, an onion, and a knife for my mother who loved gardening and cooking
7. Classical. Before or during storms and then compeser would depend on the individual storm
8. Either the smell of pine from the forest or of mushrooms cooking
9. My father
10. Theodore Roosevelt, He is my linages name sake ( I am the 4th) and he loved a balance of man and nature
11. Fire, a knife, and water. What is needed for survival
12. That I care about my environment and love to cook
13. My analysis of seemingly simple things. Like a simple landscape or a thunderstorm
14. Mushrooms sauteed in white wine and rosemary
15. Camping with my family, building a camp site
16. Me wtih my camera at indy 500
17. My mom with my dog in her garden
18. A bow

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Assignment:

2-On page 747, Terry Tempest Williams details the ritual of bird watching with her grandmother and how it shaped her understanding of the land. What rituals shape your experience of "place"? Hiking? Camping? Fishing? Gardening? Hunting? Farming? Describe those experiences in as much detail as possible and reflect on how they've changed your perception of environment.

When I was younger we took vacations during the summers and went camping in the fall and spring. We would always go on vacation to the Colorado, Wyoming, Montana area. We would hike in the mountains and walk around everywhere. Frequently we would just hike out with food and have lunch and come back by night. The wilderness and openness there is a vast change from even Des Moines. There are no vast expanses of concrete, no huge developments of crappy houses, and very few people. The people that are theEnglish 250re understand life considerably more than probably 90% of the people from densely populated cities and those working in corporate jobs and the such. While most people in the US and most of western civilization life has become a scrambling for material goods and money. No one fixes anything themselves anymore, few people actually know how to build anything anymore. It seems that people go about life expecting everything to be done for them.
    Now in the sparsely populated regions of the US there are no supermarkets every mile, no gas station on every corner, no fast food places, none of the "necessities" of the standard person. They understand that things are not given to them on a silver platter, that you shouldn't plow over a field to build a mega mall or a housing development, and if you are wasting away your life in an office building then you might as well pass away.

Class 1/19 Photograph

This is a photo that I took two years ago in my neighborhood. I like it because it shows a transition from the past to the present. The area of Des Moines that I am from is called Beaverdale. It consists of  many older families and all of the homes are at least 60 years old. Something that is vastly different from almost every other neighborhood in the US any more is that we actually have tress. There are many oak tress, many of which are approaching 100 years old. We also have a large number of parks. In my neighborhood there are four parks that I can think of right of the back. This is more than any of the new suberbs and most of the other communities in the town.




NOTE: This photo is property of Theodore William Mathews IV