I'd planned to have my piece ready for y'all by Monday, but this weekend I got seriously distracted by 1,500 vertical feet of granite and didn't end up writing nearly as much as I should have. Soon. I promise.
In the mean time, I'm going to tell Emma that we're okay with her joining the team. Unless someone voices their objection in the next 15 minutes. Cheers!
Nate
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Response to Sydra's piece
So, I guess I'll be the first to respond to Sydra's essay. If I seem overeager, it's because I am. Also I have to spend a couple hours every day in the office feigning productivity, so this is a good outlet.
I really liked reading an urban essay, especially one that takes on the sharper, less aesthetic side of PDX and not just the hippie-bourgeoisie side of the city. Some suggestions:
- Tighten up the details within each vignette; there were a few times I was confused about who was doing/saying what and why.
-I want to know what will draw someone who has never known you or Portland into this essay. I like the sense of unease you have created and the way you have a skeptical eye towards what's going on around you. Like, is that guy selling drugs or trinkets? And are those police really giving shit to the black people or is everyone being overly sensitive? What really are you trying to say through this tension, other than that there is tension?
Some fave parts:
-"dual voyeurism"
-"I sit up on my bicycle and light my rollie cruising effortlessly through the side streets towards home."
I really liked reading an urban essay, especially one that takes on the sharper, less aesthetic side of PDX and not just the hippie-bourgeoisie side of the city. Some suggestions:
- Tighten up the details within each vignette; there were a few times I was confused about who was doing/saying what and why.
-I want to know what will draw someone who has never known you or Portland into this essay. I like the sense of unease you have created and the way you have a skeptical eye towards what's going on around you. Like, is that guy selling drugs or trinkets? And are those police really giving shit to the black people or is everyone being overly sensitive? What really are you trying to say through this tension, other than that there is tension?
Some fave parts:
-"dual voyeurism"
-"I sit up on my bicycle and light my rollie cruising effortlessly through the side streets towards home."
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Q for you all
So is anyone going to be severely offended if I only send my piece via email?
I'm a bit strapped for cash, I know it's only a few dollars but yeah....it's still tight.
None of you have to snail-mail me copies unless you're really keen on it.
Just do that lovely Word editing thing, Track Changes I believe - it makes everything nice and RED!
Okay, enough out of me for one day
I'm a bit strapped for cash, I know it's only a few dollars but yeah....it's still tight.
None of you have to snail-mail me copies unless you're really keen on it.
Just do that lovely Word editing thing, Track Changes I believe - it makes everything nice and RED!
Okay, enough out of me for one day
finally...
hey all,
i just emailed my piece.
i'm out of practice in this deadline thing....
my life is ambiguous and day-to-day
it's kind of amazing, but sorry to keep you all waiting.
i just emailed my piece.
i'm out of practice in this deadline thing....
my life is ambiguous and day-to-day
it's kind of amazing, but sorry to keep you all waiting.
Monday, November 10, 2008
For Jenny from Matt
Jenny -
Great to read this fun little piece. What's been said before all rings true, but could your essay lie in your final paragraph? Maybe I've been way too politically tuned these last few weeks, but perhaps you could follow the thread of the "strained mix of liberal and conservative political sentiments gleaned from the western and eastern halves" of Washington. This concept could be a book, but left as it is, this sentiment becomes an elephant of an idea reduced to just being mentioned in passing.
Remember, a gun in the room means someone ought to be shot.
I'll be sending an annotated copy of your piece, Jenny, in the mail soon. I've been out on the Kaibab Plateau with my students for the past week, and I might have found an essay out there, but it has put me a bit behind.
-Matt
Great to read this fun little piece. What's been said before all rings true, but could your essay lie in your final paragraph? Maybe I've been way too politically tuned these last few weeks, but perhaps you could follow the thread of the "strained mix of liberal and conservative political sentiments gleaned from the western and eastern halves" of Washington. This concept could be a book, but left as it is, this sentiment becomes an elephant of an idea reduced to just being mentioned in passing.
Remember, a gun in the room means someone ought to be shot.
I'll be sending an annotated copy of your piece, Jenny, in the mail soon. I've been out on the Kaibab Plateau with my students for the past week, and I might have found an essay out there, but it has put me a bit behind.
-Matt
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Unas sugerencias para tu ensayo, Jenny
Jenny! Here are some comments, and I emailed you your piece with a bunch more written all over it, MOB-style.
Oh my. How I enjoyed reading your writing again, as I sit here looking out over the Patagonian seas at the sunset. I felt as if we were back in DS’s classroom, snarfing our hippie goulash out of yogurt containers and gazing out at Ankeny while listening to DS orate. After reading this my writing and editing juices are definitely flowing again.
I really like your premise of combining the ecological concept of an ecotone with your personal reality of transition and having a ‘home in tension’ (one of my fave phrases of the piece). It’s original and daring and makes me think, which is precisely the purpose an essay should serve. I would love to see you develop the idea of an emotional/spiritual ecotone more, as you have barely brushed the surface, and as I think that is probably the most fascinating idea you present in the essay. You throw it in at the end, but I want you to throw it in at the beginning. (That should also help it feel less journal entry ish). Connected with that, I think a stronger sense of what you feel or felt when you are in the different ecosystems (eastside, Westside, middle), and a stronger sense of what they actually look like and function like (ecologically) would help. More definition of terms (aridity? That’s pretty broad, and relative, and doesn’t give me a visual picture) and description, too (I get the idea from this essay that the Westside is a homogeny of doug fir while the east is a homogeny of P-pine, and that’s obviously not true) would help round it out. And then more about what it means to feel at home somewhere or not to feel at home somewhere or to be completely torn between two places that you love equally.
Although I like the dichotomy of the two trees as synechdoche of the two places (whoa, I sound so pretentious), and I want it to work, I think it needs some polishing. Is this essay about trees, really? Right now I’m not very engaged with or interested in the trees as you present them. I don’t feel the same things you feel (well, in real life I do identify with your experience, but the essay doesn’t provoke those feelings). You might also try mentioning a few other plants common to both types of forests, besides trees. Sword fern, sagebrush….you know.
Actually, I think I’m more interested in how ecotones function than I am by either of these trees. Ecotones are so intriguing, and you only devote one paragraph to them. Might you go more in that direction? A thought--Because ecotones are places of such diversity and such fierce competition and uneasy coexistence (by the way, I would LOVE it if you got into the whys and wherefores of exactly how strange bedfellows can even live together in ecotones….it’s an ecologist’s wet dream), they are by definition places of rapid biological evolution, places where change occurs by the very nature of the place as a ‘home in tension.’ I hella, HELLA want you to explore this, ecologically and personally and metaphorically. It’s sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ready for milking. See me getting all biologically eroticized by the very idea?
Serious props.
Emily
Oh my. How I enjoyed reading your writing again, as I sit here looking out over the Patagonian seas at the sunset. I felt as if we were back in DS’s classroom, snarfing our hippie goulash out of yogurt containers and gazing out at Ankeny while listening to DS orate. After reading this my writing and editing juices are definitely flowing again.
I really like your premise of combining the ecological concept of an ecotone with your personal reality of transition and having a ‘home in tension’ (one of my fave phrases of the piece). It’s original and daring and makes me think, which is precisely the purpose an essay should serve. I would love to see you develop the idea of an emotional/spiritual ecotone more, as you have barely brushed the surface, and as I think that is probably the most fascinating idea you present in the essay. You throw it in at the end, but I want you to throw it in at the beginning. (That should also help it feel less journal entry ish). Connected with that, I think a stronger sense of what you feel or felt when you are in the different ecosystems (eastside, Westside, middle), and a stronger sense of what they actually look like and function like (ecologically) would help. More definition of terms (aridity? That’s pretty broad, and relative, and doesn’t give me a visual picture) and description, too (I get the idea from this essay that the Westside is a homogeny of doug fir while the east is a homogeny of P-pine, and that’s obviously not true) would help round it out. And then more about what it means to feel at home somewhere or not to feel at home somewhere or to be completely torn between two places that you love equally.
Although I like the dichotomy of the two trees as synechdoche of the two places (whoa, I sound so pretentious), and I want it to work, I think it needs some polishing. Is this essay about trees, really? Right now I’m not very engaged with or interested in the trees as you present them. I don’t feel the same things you feel (well, in real life I do identify with your experience, but the essay doesn’t provoke those feelings). You might also try mentioning a few other plants common to both types of forests, besides trees. Sword fern, sagebrush….you know.
Actually, I think I’m more interested in how ecotones function than I am by either of these trees. Ecotones are so intriguing, and you only devote one paragraph to them. Might you go more in that direction? A thought--Because ecotones are places of such diversity and such fierce competition and uneasy coexistence (by the way, I would LOVE it if you got into the whys and wherefores of exactly how strange bedfellows can even live together in ecotones….it’s an ecologist’s wet dream), they are by definition places of rapid biological evolution, places where change occurs by the very nature of the place as a ‘home in tension.’ I hella, HELLA want you to explore this, ecologically and personally and metaphorically. It’s sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ready for milking. See me getting all biologically eroticized by the very idea?
Serious props.
Emily
Comment on my essay!
Do it!
It may not be the best thing I've ever written, but it wants your criticism. Otherwise I may as well just write in my journal. And that would be lame.
It may not be the best thing I've ever written, but it wants your criticism. Otherwise I may as well just write in my journal. And that would be lame.
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