Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY SISTER FUNERAL ORATION
My sister just past away on March 07, 2007. I love and miss her very much. I wrote this poem to send to my brother-in-law and her family to express my sympathy to them. This poem was written in Vietnamese language. Now I translate to English with the meaning only.
Oh my sister! Oh my sister! Oh my sister!
Three years ago you and I were happy together
Three years later you had gone to Nevada
In my mind, I think you are still alive
But truly I will never see you again.
Oh my sister! Oh my sister! Oh my sister!
You are a daughter of piety!
As a good mother, you took good care of your children.
You always work hard to provide for your children
Your children had grown; you got rid of every thing to become a nun
Oh my sister! Oh my sister! Oh my sister!
You are successful in prayer
The Buddha and angel farewell and welcome you,
Because you are sincerely and deeply praying daily.
In the Earth thousand people respecting, love and mourn you.
Friday, April 13, 2007
My father - LE
Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
Dr. KIP REDICK
RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
Date: February 12, 2007
MY FATHER.
My father died when I was six years old. I just remember him very little, but someone told me these things about him.
My father was a math professor. He liked to plant many things, especially fruit trees. He was a very handsome man and generous. All of our neighbors and his students liked him.
When our neighbors needed any thing they would wait to ask him, because they know, when they ask him, they would get exactly what they want. Sometimes my father gives more than they expected. For example some neighbors needed a dozen fruits and my father allowed them to take as many they want. They took a dozen but my father still gave them more than a dozen.
I remember one thing very bad about myself. One day, when my sister made me unhappy, I cried then I stopped a long time. When my father came home I pretended to cry again, and then my father came to hold me up and asked me who made me cry. I said my sister. Then my father came to clap his hands on my sister’s shoulder and said, “Why did you make my spoil daughter cry? I beat you.” Then I was very happy and laugh too loud, because I thought my father beat my sister real hard. Is that a bad girl?”
I love my father and miss him very much. Now if I see someone who looks like my father or acts like him, then I like that person more than regular men. I wish he was still alive and if he were (alive) then I would love him and support him the best.
:
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Buber's I and Thou and a Bit of Nietzsche Kelly Moody
I have really been perplexed by what we have been reading in class lately, Martin Buber's I and Thou. I remember reading it last semester and it never clicked and dominated my mind like it does now, the 2nd time through it.
I was thinking about the I-you versus I-it relationship that occurs when picking a flower. You find a flower, one of a kind, and you stare at it, encountering it, it is encountering you, you are both breathing the same air, sacred space, both alive and equal.
Then you pick the flower. Suddenly the flower turns into an 'it'. You just couldn't help yourself and you wanted to keep it all for yourself, parade around with this flower, but in the process of that you box yourself up, you kill the flower, and all for the price of temporary enjoyment.
You encounter the flower and initially the relationship is an I-you one. Then, you pick the flower, dominate it, you don't even allow it to choose its own fate, you force yourself on it for the sake of your own indulgence, and the relationship changes to an empty 'I-it' one.
I also think about the flowers in grocery stores. We pick them, we take them away from the sacred all really to just sell to people who are nostalgic about their lack of the sacred. We sell these symbols because we have that void, we are becoming more and more like those drones in Baraka, like those chicks in the factory, so we try to compensate for it by picking flowers, selling them in grocery stores, to buy and enjoy (one sided that is, i-it, because the bouquet is merely an empty symbolic object that can't participate) for a temporary time. Why don't we just go for a walk in the woods and admire the art of creatures? Encounter but not experience(taking away from the reciprocity and then resulting in that void of your own "i")
Thinking about the I-you and I-it relationship among all things we do, and realizing it as an underlying theme in our interactions is really important and puts things in such a better perspective.
When i was reading the section on religion, i was thinking about what Nietzsche said, "God is dead". We have turned God into an "it" i feel, Buber talks about how the idea of spirituality originally had the i-you but transformed into dominantly an i-it kind of practice. There can be individual interpretations among people on this, everyone has their own way of treating religion, of treating their relationships whether with people or God, but the overarching picture of religion seems empty, because of this void that i-it creates. A friend of mine was telling me once that he was having a tough time in his life, he was homeless, and distraught, confused, and was walking around a city one day and decided to seek help in a church. He went in, and asked the priest to please help him, comfort him, give him something to read, some insight, and the priest refused and made him leave because of the way he looked. Where is the sacred here? This is a perfect example of how the church is often turned into an i-it kind of relationship. that priest would not have turned him away if he has an i-you relationship with God and other people. my friend was merely an 'it', something he could yay or nay salvation for, he could choose to help or not, but his own value system had been dominated by that i-it perspective with the cover of i-you. he proved that he had the cover, the mask, when he chose to prove that God is Dead.
I was thinking about the I-you versus I-it relationship that occurs when picking a flower. You find a flower, one of a kind, and you stare at it, encountering it, it is encountering you, you are both breathing the same air, sacred space, both alive and equal.
Then you pick the flower. Suddenly the flower turns into an 'it'. You just couldn't help yourself and you wanted to keep it all for yourself, parade around with this flower, but in the process of that you box yourself up, you kill the flower, and all for the price of temporary enjoyment.
You encounter the flower and initially the relationship is an I-you one. Then, you pick the flower, dominate it, you don't even allow it to choose its own fate, you force yourself on it for the sake of your own indulgence, and the relationship changes to an empty 'I-it' one.
I also think about the flowers in grocery stores. We pick them, we take them away from the sacred all really to just sell to people who are nostalgic about their lack of the sacred. We sell these symbols because we have that void, we are becoming more and more like those drones in Baraka, like those chicks in the factory, so we try to compensate for it by picking flowers, selling them in grocery stores, to buy and enjoy (one sided that is, i-it, because the bouquet is merely an empty symbolic object that can't participate) for a temporary time. Why don't we just go for a walk in the woods and admire the art of creatures? Encounter but not experience(taking away from the reciprocity and then resulting in that void of your own "i")
Thinking about the I-you and I-it relationship among all things we do, and realizing it as an underlying theme in our interactions is really important and puts things in such a better perspective.
When i was reading the section on religion, i was thinking about what Nietzsche said, "God is dead". We have turned God into an "it" i feel, Buber talks about how the idea of spirituality originally had the i-you but transformed into dominantly an i-it kind of practice. There can be individual interpretations among people on this, everyone has their own way of treating religion, of treating their relationships whether with people or God, but the overarching picture of religion seems empty, because of this void that i-it creates. A friend of mine was telling me once that he was having a tough time in his life, he was homeless, and distraught, confused, and was walking around a city one day and decided to seek help in a church. He went in, and asked the priest to please help him, comfort him, give him something to read, some insight, and the priest refused and made him leave because of the way he looked. Where is the sacred here? This is a perfect example of how the church is often turned into an i-it kind of relationship. that priest would not have turned him away if he has an i-you relationship with God and other people. my friend was merely an 'it', something he could yay or nay salvation for, he could choose to help or not, but his own value system had been dominated by that i-it perspective with the cover of i-you. he proved that he had the cover, the mask, when he chose to prove that God is Dead.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Christopher Carter - "Cloister and the Plow"
The "Cloister and the Plow" was my favorite chapter in the Ecology of Eden. The chapter talks about Byzantium Monks that lived in cells around a central garden. Many people that witnessed these spectacles said that they "looked into a prefigured heaven". What did it look like? What would have it
According to an account from the book, the St. Benedict monastery had "all necessaries" to be found within cloister walls. I think this is an amazing thought. To think that everything was found in these beautiful "Echoes of Eden" makes me want to actually make one of my own.
I always wonder about the effect of "Zen Gardens" on people. Do they calm people in a similar way that the Cloisters of the Monasteries calmed Byzantium Monks, just in a smaller way?
Slowly but surely all of the technology from the monks builds from a plow, to greater farming, to more products, to production and capitalism. This cataclysmic chain reaction probably could have been seen by a lot of people, but I don't know how many people would have stopped it out of sheer need for food and greed. People do not want to stop producing or stop growing out of "necessity." It is now necessary for people to want to go to the grocery store and purchase mass amounts of food for themselves and their family, not just enough to survive for the day.
According to an account from the book, the St. Benedict monastery had "all necessaries" to be found within cloister walls. I think this is an amazing thought. To think that everything was found in these beautiful "Echoes of Eden" makes me want to actually make one of my own.
I always wonder about the effect of "Zen Gardens" on people. Do they calm people in a similar way that the Cloisters of the Monasteries calmed Byzantium Monks, just in a smaller way?
Slowly but surely all of the technology from the monks builds from a plow, to greater farming, to more products, to production and capitalism. This cataclysmic chain reaction probably could have been seen by a lot of people, but I don't know how many people would have stopped it out of sheer need for food and greed. People do not want to stop producing or stop growing out of "necessity." It is now necessary for people to want to go to the grocery store and purchase mass amounts of food for themselves and their family, not just enough to survive for the day.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Culture and Peru, Kelly Moody
I'm stuck in a bit of a dilemma. The problem is one concerning globalization. In May, I am going to Peru for a class through ODU. We are going to a lot of different places but what i am looking forward to most is the time we will spend with different groups of people in Peru. We are visiting a school in one of the small villages to see what their schooling is like. We are also going to stay with a family for a night on an island that has mostly maintained its cultural identity over time, it will not have modern facilities and no electricity(as far as they tell me). My problem is that, how can they maintain their cultural identity if they are having us there to be paid by travel companies? People go stay with them regularly, and they perform their dances nightly, dress tourists up in their clothes, sell their culture, and it makes me kind of sad that it has resorted to that. The thing is, a lot of other cultures like this around the world are doing the same thing. Turning their heritage, their identity into a consumer commodity. Watching Baraka just made me think about every single indigenous ceremony as just a consumer-driven act for the camera, that as Westerners looking on, we could never get a true experience of their culture because of what we live by, because of how we get around in the world. It bothers me that i will be perpetuating this practice, when i go to Peru and get to witness the dances of these people, their ceremonies. I will just be wondering: what would it be like without us here? The thing is, we could never truly have that experience. That's the sacrifice. As Westerners, trying to become culturally open minded, culturally relative, non bias, well-traveled, just makes it all worse. For us to just be there, to just be put in their culture is automatically destroying their cultures because we are implanting a part of us there. In the process of experiencing their culture, we are destroying it. We celebrate something we are taking away from them at the same time.
Aside from that, my other problem. We have to bring gifts. Both for the schoolchildren and for the tribes people. They are telling us to bring things they 'need' like toilet paper, writing utensils, brushes, paper, food utensils etc. But i am thinking: that is terrible! Who are we to judge what is good for them? It reminds me of that scene from Baraka where the indigenous man is putting on his face paint with a brush! Why would i want to push this process along? But what the heck else could i give them?? They want Western items, because they believe it will help them prosper, and the economy around them forces this need on them. I don't want to give them gifts like that, i want to give them something that won't destroy their culture. But what?? It's a bit of a moral dilemma in a sense, because the teachers arranging the class will want to know what we are bringing as gifts and if i don't bring something they feel is a good gift(aka western products) then that may be a problem. I know it seems like not such a big deal, but coming to all of these realizations about what we are doing when we are masked by the illusion of otherwise makes me question the motive of everything else happening.
Aside from that, my other problem. We have to bring gifts. Both for the schoolchildren and for the tribes people. They are telling us to bring things they 'need' like toilet paper, writing utensils, brushes, paper, food utensils etc. But i am thinking: that is terrible! Who are we to judge what is good for them? It reminds me of that scene from Baraka where the indigenous man is putting on his face paint with a brush! Why would i want to push this process along? But what the heck else could i give them?? They want Western items, because they believe it will help them prosper, and the economy around them forces this need on them. I don't want to give them gifts like that, i want to give them something that won't destroy their culture. But what?? It's a bit of a moral dilemma in a sense, because the teachers arranging the class will want to know what we are bringing as gifts and if i don't bring something they feel is a good gift(aka western products) then that may be a problem. I know it seems like not such a big deal, but coming to all of these realizations about what we are doing when we are masked by the illusion of otherwise makes me question the motive of everything else happening.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Garrett Dalton-people and food
A film the class viewed dealt with food and its connections with people and culture. Food has the inordinate ability to bring people closer together and to their past. Dinner is a time in which many families come together to socialize and to cement those family connections. Though my family is rarely together long enough to sit down for dinner, mainly due to college and work, it is always good to eat a good meal with the family and to catch up. Food can define entire cultures and many foods around the world are eternally linked with a certain people or culture. Being of Irish descent, I have come to understand the importance of the potato to the Irish people. My own family immigrated to America during the Potato Famine of the 1840s. They relied so heavily on the potato crop that such a large crop failure forced immigration. There was an interesting portion of the film in which a prison cook described his experiences preparing the last meals for inmates on death row. The last meals were often foods that prisoners had when they were children. These foods probably brought about fond memories from the past.
Garrett Dalton-Tender Carnivore free write
The Tender Carnivore tells a great narrative about the relationship between man and nature. The author argues that man today is less human than the man of the past because he has turned away from hunting and gathering towards agriculture. According to the author, there are so many advantages to be had in hunter-gatherer societies that the need for agriculture is negated. Man can survive by only using what it needs and at the same time preserve the environment by not overdeveloping the land. The author makes a compelling argument for a reverse in human tendencies away from farming and civilization toward a hunter-gatherer society. However, one of the ways the author supports his argument is by discounting history as a purveyor of propaganda against hunter-gathering societies. Anyone attempting to use historical trends to show the superiority of agricultural societies are automatically dismissed by the author as playing into the conspiracy against hunter-gatherers. The author even discounts present hunting groups such as the Bushmen or Eskimos as recent examples that do not represent hunting societies of the past and as such cannot be compared against agricultural societies. It would seem that the author's arguments would be more plausible if he could rely on the evidence and not delve into speculation and conspiracy theories.
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