Stories

On Friday, I went to a reading by Brian Doyle. It was great. He read a few short pieces he had written and talked about his writing process. He was very funny, but also very moving. He was able to switch from something touching and serious to something more lighthearted smoothly.

One thing that he talked a lot about throughout the reading was story telling. He talked about the importance of stories. Stories are things that can move people, they can bring so many new perspectives. Stories are memories or things that help you remember. He said stories are food. That every story is important and everybody has an interesting story.

I loved how he talked about stories, it was so interesting. I have always loved reading books and when I was younger on road trips my mom would make up stories on the spot and tell them to me and my siblings and I loved it. But I never thought of stories as vital, as food. I think Brian Doyle is right about the importance of stories. Stories help us to understand things. They help us to see new things. They are entertainment. When you look at different groups in history, you can really see the importance of stories. Stories are how we pass on memories in our lives and how we pass on history. It is so cool to think of how important stories are to life.

Something else I loved about the Brian Doyle reading was hearing the author read his own writings. It’s different from reading the pieces yourself because he knows how he was feeling when he wrote it, he knows exactly what he means. He was able to make me feel so much more emotion then I would feel reading the pieces myself. He also was able to explain some of the context of his writing, which I also really liked. It was really great and I really enjoyed listening to him talk and read his work.

Communal TVs

How weird would it be to have a whole village share one TV? Here in a lot of houses there is one TV in almost every room. And if there is no TV in one room, we can always take our laptops there and watch things on Youtube or Netflix. Like so many things, we take TVs for granted. If we're bored we just go and turn on a TV and watch whatever is on. Even if there is nothing particularly interesting on, we'll sit there anyway just for the sake of sitting there.

 The picture that I looked at today from Salgado's book was one of a group of people working on a farm. One is pulling a cart full of hay or wheat and two others are behind the cart pushing. They look hard at work. It doesn't look like an easy job. The description for this picture talks about how there isn't a lot of funding from the government for agriculture. There is no money for farming equipment, so farmers have to do everything manually. Although there is no money for machinery, the people of the village all bought a communal TV. The TV sits in the middle of their village and everyone brings their own chairs to watch.

This is so odd to me. In my house there are three TVs and five computers. There are times when all of my family are in different rooms watching different TV shows. There are also times when we're all in the same room but each on a different computer. For us, TVs are really no big deal, they are everywhere. But for the people of this village, their one TV is their pride. I love hearing about things like this--not the hardships of others--the little things that make other people's lives exciting because a lot of the time those little things are things that I take completely for granted. It makes me re-think my views.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 346 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 26 Print

Perspectives

In the Region of Ranchi, State of Bihar, India, there is a tribe that reveres stream and waterfalls. They hold family and tribal ceremonies by waterfalls. Waterfalls are so important to them.

I think this is so interesting. The picture from Salgado's book that I was looking at was a picture of two people sitting by a waterfall. They are in a forest. Normally when we see pictures of people sitting by waterfalls in our society, we think of vacations, of tropical adventures. But for these people, the forest and the waterfall are home. It’s not just a beautiful site to visit, it’s where they live.

 I really love thinking about that, realizing how there are so many people around the world who live so differently from me. That’s one of things that I like about Salgado’s book. Not only does he raise awareness for the issues that we often don’t know about, he also brings new perspectives by showing us how other people in the world live and how it works for them.

However, as the forests are lost, rainfall is dropping which means that there is less and less water. In my sociology class, we were discussing what happens when a group of people has a fundamental part of their culture taken away from them. The example we discussed was a tribe in Canada who's culture was largely based around the caribou. Their stories often had caribou in them, they hunted caribou and ate their meat and used their fur for various things. When these people were moved onto a reserve, they lost that fundamental part of their culture and they experienced a sort of culture shock. Alcoholism and other things became huge problems on the reserve. It's very sad to think that if this tribe who reveres waterfalls loses them, they could lose a fundamental part of their culture.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 337 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 25 Print

Left to Tell

Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza was an amazing book. It’s amazing in its honesty. Ilibagiza tells her story, the story of how she survived the Rwandan genocide. She talks about how her experiences drew her closer to God and ultimately how she learned forgiveness. Her honesty as she tells her story is something that really catches the reader and pulls them in. She doesn’t sugar coat anything, she doesn’t pretend that she never felt hatred or that she was always perfectly forgiving and without anger. She admits her great struggle and that honesty makes the reader want to keep reading, because they recognise that honesty.

This story gave me a new perspective on not only forgiveness, but keeping love in your heart instead of hatred. Ilibagiza went through a great struggle to be able to forgive those who were slaughtering her family. But not only did she forgive them and say those words out loud, she also fought to rid her heart of anger. She recognized how anger was adversary and she couldn’t get closer to God while she had that anger in her heart. It’s amazing to me how she changed and was able to develop a love for her enemies and it makes me contemplate how I can better love those around me. Instead of keeping anger in my heart, I can try harder to feel God’s love for His children.