Rethinking Undertow



Ah, it's 13, and it's called a Bar Mitzvah.
You learn something new everyday.



After we discussed Undertow in class, I realized that I had been so focused on finding out how it ended that I didn't come to a full understanding about the different neighborhoods they were passing through.  I didn't realize they were Polish either, I thought they were Jewish because Perry said him and Sir could go but Mick couldn't, like he wasn't at that age that Jewish men have to be to become a man.  What is it like 15?  I'm not sure but that's how I interpreted it.  But this story does really touch on ethnic relationships.  They first drive through Chinatown, and the boys want to stop but I think the dad thinks they are too different of a people so they shouldn't stop.  When they pass through the black ghetto, Sir gets weary and tells them to roll up the windows.  I didn't think about this, but my mom did that too.  My mom has family in Omaha, and she would say stuff like that whenever we would visit, because my grandmother lives in what is now a black ghetto.  She invoked that fear in my so much that I would do that when I would take my niece and nephews to Omaha.  I know it is a mostly false stereotype that people living in those conditions are packin' heat, but I would have rather been safe than sorry.  One time my nephew, about 10 at the time, stuck his plastic Nerf gun by the window of the car while we were parked and I freaked out. I said are you TRYING to get us shot.  My sister would also always tell me that you do NOT want get stopped by a red light in that area of Omaha.  But really looking back on how I was raised, I feel bad because stereotypes like that are cruel.



In "Thinner" the gypsy touches the
protagonist's face and curses him.



They went through Jewtown, which is a part I have never heard of anywhere.  Like, how does that happen?  I see at as a religion, not an ethnicity, but I guess it can be both.  That's what I was most confused about but things were more clear to me after class.  The gypsies...(click if you want, I love this song) Sir said they were dirty.  Which is what people think.  Dirty, almost witchy type people that try to rob you.  Have you ever seen "Thinner"?  It's a movie that was made based on the novel by Stephan King.  Really creepy, but it teaches about gypsy culture so we should totally watch it in class, hint hint. I didn't give it much thought while reading, but in the car they are judgemental about the people they pass.  At the lake, everyone gets along.  There is no color.  I think that is because everyone is having fun.  They have come together based on a common interest and nothing else matters at that moment but having fun.  It is too bad the world cant just "have fun" all the time.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Undertow

I am going to make an assumption before I even read this.  I was born in California, so every summer we would go back, and during the trip we would go to the ocean.  Where we went, however, was not the safest place to swim because of what my dad called undertow.  He had a friend that got sucked under by it when he was a teenager and died.  Because of that, he would never let us go out farther than waist deep.  So I am going to guess that someone gets sucked under the water, but survives, because I like happy endings.  Okay, time to read...

Okay. Some of my questions have been answered.  First of all, these are the same characters as the last one! So, these must be chapters from a book.  The setting now, I'm guessing late 80's early 90's.  And I was thinking they had to call this guy Sir cause he was some kind of master and they were child laborers. He is there dad, and that's just a silly nickname! Wow.  And for spacial setting, it tells us now that they are in Chicago heading towards the lake.  I was always told that undertow had to be an air pocket in the sand, but if this lake has rocks at the bottom, I was way off on how it's going to end.  Oh! And they are Jewish! Hooray, I learned what I wanted to learn.  I hate when you can't picture the characters because the author doesn't tell you what they look like.  Not that skin color or anything like that matter, but I like having a solid picture in my head, a movie flowing smoothly. 

From what I've read so far, this must be a great book.  The chickenman? Crazy! We had a guy in my hometown we called catman because he's pick up all the stray cats in town and take them home and keep them in his garage. Haha. The gypsies.. that might affect the temporal setting.  When were gypsies in Chicago?  I want to find that out.  I still have a few pages to read and now I'm curious as to how it will end.  These aren't short stories like I thought they were, so there probably won't be the climax at the end I was hoping for. Time to read the rest...

Okay. So Perry did almost drown. And his father! What the hell was he thinking even letting his kids swim in a dangerous area like that.  That's why my dad would never let us go in past our waist.  But I did learn that undertow can be both and air pocket in the sand or a current at the bottom of a river.  You learn something new everyday.  That was the climax I was looking for, so I'm glad it ended that way.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Live from Dreamsville

This is the kind of story I was used to reading in Intro to Lit.  The kind with just a few main characters, with a first person narrator, and a smaller setting.  You can really get lost in a story like this because you are so close to the characters.  There were some things I had questions about.  First of all, this is a multi-ethnic class, yet no race or culture was specified.  Because of the way I interpreted the story, I pictured two African American kids back in the 70's or 80's, one about 6 or 7 years old and the other about 12.  I found myself wondering what they did all day.  It seemed like they were locked in there room because they were in there for so long, or because that was pretty much the only setting.  So I also interpreted them to be brothers, although it doesn't say they are.  If they aren't, they sure are close. 

Also what about their parents? Moms is mentioned but only when she is having a panic attack.  That was easy to interpret because I know plenty about those.  But who was Sir?  Obviously Moms man, but what was he to the kids?  Were they like slaves or something like that?  It didn't say anything about them having to work but they did get beat, but a lot of kids got beat (whooped) back in the day.  That's just how parents used discipline.  This story leaves so many questions unanswered that it would be a great one for class discussion.  Lots of room for interpreting.  Lots of possible answers, and no room for wrong ones.  This would be a good story to do a response paper on too, because everyone would come up with something different.

I like how these kids had a close relationship.  They way they messed with each other it sure seemed like they were brothers.  I liked how these characters seemed real, and the idea of a place called Dreamsville for a  young kid is neat.  This was a neat little story, but now that I learned so much about the characters personalities, I want to know more about their culture, which I'm sure we will discuss in class.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Encounter Activity 1

"I am a drinker with a writing problem."
- Brendan Behan

Someone once said, "If you're lucky enough to be Irish, you're lucky enough."  Well I'm a grand mixture of Western European, but the Irish in me sticks out the most.  1/4 to be exact.  As for the rest, I'm 1/8 Danish, and less than 1/8 German, French, Spanish, and English.  I never really gave it much thought, because I'm only a quarter anything, but I like the idea of being Irish.  I should embrace it more.  I got the blond hair from my grandpa the Dane, but other than that I have the pale skin and freckles of the Irish.  St. Patrick's Day should mean more to me, but for most people, whether their Irish or not, it's just another excuse to drink.  The irony.  Us Irish don't need a holiday to be our excuse to drink, our blood is an excuse in itself!

PS: oddly, my favorite color is green...



So anyway, we've touched on my roots.  Now what does that mean?  My family has always been dysfunctional and broken, so I'm not really sure what it means, if anything.  But as we go through this class, I realize that I want a culture to cling on to, to have close to my heart.  So stay away from my lucky charms. They're mine. You can't have any.


Race.  I'm a white, mostly Irish, European American.  As I said before, the Irish and Danish stand out in my physical features.  Blond hair, green eyes, pale skin, and freckles.  I look mostly like my dad's side, which is where the Irish and Danish come from.  My dad's mom was full Irish, and had red hair and way more freckles.  My grandpa was a tall Dane, but only half.  Not sure about the other half, but it must have been a mixture of something that was also on my mother's side or I'd have an 1/8 of something else in me.  My mom's side for sure has all the German.  They have light skin and dark hair and eyes. 

There is something about the Danish part of me I want to touch on, while it isn't the most prominent part, there is some interesting history.  My great, great, great, great? grandfather worked for the King of Denmark.  He was his right hand man.  I know right? That's pretty cool.  So the King gave him an ivory pipe with engravings and painting on it.  My dad has it now, because the tradition is that the first born son inherits the pipe, and since he had two girls, he said his first grandson will get it.  So hopefully my first child will be a boy so I can steal it.  Hey!  I do have a family tradition! Also, my last name is Danish.  It was "Pedersen" before my family came to America.  When they got here they had to change it to Peterson.  We got Americanized...

As for religion, I could have hoped to be Irish Catholic or even a Christian, but no such luck.  In my immediate family, as in my mother, father, and little sister, do not believe in God.  They call me a fool for being Christian.  But I don't care.  I don't have to be like them. ✝

We have always spoke only English, so there isn't much to talk about in the language department, although I would kill for an Irish accent.  I think it would be really neat to have an accent.  And my nationality, always been American.  I have never even been out of the country so I know nothing else.

Holidays!  We celebrate all of the main ones.  Easter, Valentine's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas.  For some reason New Year's Eve is always the biggest one though... but yes. We have traditions in how we celebrate these holidays.  When we were kids, we would paint eggs every Easter and then whoever had us that weekend (parents divorced) would hide the eggs.  We always got Easter baskets with candy in them.  PEEPS.  Always got peeps. Our dad was a lot more into the holiday traditions than our mom was.  His mom sent him everything from May Day baskets to Halloween candy until the day she died.  I remember he was in his late 40's and she would send him candy from California to Iowa and it would be stale by the time it got to him, but it was tradition.  I have told him in the past, "Dad, I'm grown.  I don't want candy." But I see now that he wanted to hold on to that tradition.  For Valentine's Day we would get candy from both parents.  Still do.  For the 4th of July, there would always be an event in the park we would go to.  There would be games, food, a carnival sometimes, a talent show, and fireworks after dark.  Our mom would take us and we would claim a spot in the park, grill out, and the grown ups would drink beer.  The fireworks in Creston, IA are always amazing.  For Halloween, we always got dressed up and went trick or treating.   I went so long people started refusing me candy because I was "too old." We would also carve jack'o'lanterns and bake the seeds.  Yummy.  Thanksgiving was the only holiday we could get our parents together.  My dad always cooked.  My mom and dad are both great cooks, but my dad always wanted it done a special way.  A turkey three sizes too big, stuffing made with the turkey's giblets, mashed potatoes and gravy, sometimes corn or green beans, rolls, and pie.  I always had to have pumpkin pie. With whipped cream. 

Christmas was nice, because my little sister and I would always have two.  Mom's on Christmas Eve and dad's on Christmas morning, because he insisted on having us Christmas Day for the tradition. New Year's Eve was always a party night.  All of our parents did it, so when my friends and I got older we did  it too.  Sometimes we wouldn't even make it to midnight.  Sometimes we would party right through and miss the new year all together.  It wasn't about resolutions or new beginnings.  Just about fun.  It is such a "tradition," that I even partied last New Year's only one day after getting my wisdom teeth removed.  Worth it.  Maybe I'll embrace the Irish in me and switch my party day to St. Patrick's Day instead of New Year's Eve. Or KEEP tradition and just add another fun holiday for cultural purposes.

Now that I think about it there are some other traditions we had that didn't have to do with holidays.  They are all passed down from my dad's side, because on my mom's side all they do is drink beer.  One tradition was that we always had hot tea with milk and sugar in the morning.  My dad told me it's how the English drink their tea.  Not with cream, with real milk.  It was good. There were also recipes that were passed down to my grandma, but since she has passed away and my dad and I are estranged, I cannot share them with you.

The behaviors and everyday thinking of my family are a mixture of the free party lifestyle from the 60's and chaos and dysfunction.  Our social economical status has always been lower middle class.  I would describe us as poor, but we have never gone hungry or been homeless for long. 

From how I was raised, I want to be different than my family.  Although I will remain a liberal, I want to be different in the way my parents were.  My dad was way too strict, and my mom was way to lenient.  But my mom raised me, so I want to be more strict with my children.  My parents also believed that if there is a God, He was an alien.  What the hell?  I will raise my kids as Christians, but I will not be too hard on them about it.  I will just teach them about God through Bible stories at bed time and tell them they can pray if they want to.  People should have a choice.  I didn't have a choice because whenever I expressed my religion I was mocked for it.  That wasn't fair.  I will celebrate all of the American holidays the same way my family does, hopefully inherit (or steal) the Danish pipe, and make my children hot tea with milk and sugar.  But more than anything, since I've been in this class, I want to embrace my Irish heritage and learn more about it.  Maybe someday I will get to travel to Ireland.  That would make me happier than a leprechaun with a pot of gold. 

"If you could drink dreams like the Irish streams
Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn
In the Pool they told us the story
How the English divided the land..."
- John Lennon, "The Luck of the Irish" (song)

Go dtí an chéad uair eile,

Keri Jo

Revisiting "Heritage" by Lorna Dee Cervantes

In some cases, my ideas won't change much after class discussion.  Some pieces of literature are so complex that we could spend hours and maybe even days discussing all the different angles it could be viewed by and the different possibilities for themes, but this poem to me was pretty straight forward.  The speaker was a Mexican-American woman that visited Mexico to find her roots.  Again I will say how much I loved the Spanglish; I love all poems like that because it really makes them come to life. 
It makes me wish I had a heritage, a different culture, to take into my heart, a different language that only my friends and family understood.  But then I think of how I grew up feeling different in the first place, and how being from a different country could make fitting in that much harder.  I'm not saying that being of a different culture makes you the outcast, it's just the fact of being outside of the culture you live in's norm, if that makes sense.
It would be worth it though, because growing up without a religion or a strong culture makes you feel kind of empty sometimes.  It is ironic to want to not belong just so you CAN belong.  To say, I don't want to be like everyone else.  I want to be different like them.  I will give you an example, because I don't want you to think it's race I'm talking about. 

I was raised by Atheists.  On my own, I decided I wanted to be different from them.  Be different from my whole family and follow my heart.  I started reading the Bible in middle school, but I never really felt comfortable enough to walk into a church.  Now that I'm at NW and away from my family, I desperately want to belong with other Christians, but because of the way I was raised, I feel I may never fit in.  So in a way, I can relate to this speaker because I feel her pain of wanting to belong where you know you SHOULD belong.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

"No Name Woman" by Maxine Hong Kingston

This excerpt taken from The Woman Warrior is an amazing story in itself.  The Chinese used to do things so differently than us.  I remember hearing stories that you could only have two children in China, and if the second one was a girl they would kill her.  When I first started reading this, I was thinking that the aunt had an affair willingly, and while it is looked down upon, she shouldn't have had her family's home destroyed.  But as I read on, I realized what the narrator was saying: Women had no choice.  She could of hated the father of her baby and still had to sleep with him.  Old times were bad times.  Old times were unforgiving.  It reminds me of the Old Testament, which I have not read regularly, but know enough to know that God was cruel and unforgiving in the old days.  In the New Testament, after Christ, He is a benevolent god.  The new God forgives.  Or maybe he doesn't.  Maybe the new times just mean we don't care that much anymore.

This story was very informative for me, culturally, because I don't know a lot about different cultures.  To  think that the man that impregnated the aunt could have been one of the people with the white masks.  The ending, when the narrator describes the birth and suicide was imagined so well in my mind that a shed a few tears.  How cruel to think it is love to kill your baby along with yourself.  But it also WOULD be cruel to abandon it.  Which is the worse of two evil?  I do not know.

I do know, however, that this narrator is full of emotion while writing this and is desperate to figure out if this means anything about her heritage.  The Chinese worship their ancestors, so they had to forget this one.  The aunt could not be remembered because she would have brought shame to the family, and with people so proud this would be the end of the world. 

I felt a lot of different emotions while reading this.  I felt the anger of the narrator as she became angry at her ancestors, at her mother.  I felt the shame of the father, never having returned to China because he was traded once for a girl.  I felt the pain of the aunt as she felt she had no way out.  This was a very powerful piece of literature that I could go on and on about, but for now I will save the rest for class discussion.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

"Heritage" by Lorna Dee Cervantes

It's amazing how so much emotion can be packed into so few words. That's why I love poetry.  It is a way I can express my feelings comfortably without having to write a lot.  I've been writing since the third grade, poetry that is, and when I read a poem like this I feel something powerful.  I feel respect, and I feel a likeness with the writer.  Sometimes poets write about personal experience, but sometimes they just write, and the speaker is the one going through the experience.  I think that Cervantes was speaking for herself, but until I know for sure I will just use the term speaker.                                                                             

This poem was a mixture of beautiful agony.  It's is agonizing because of the pain she feels, but it is beautiful because of the language.  The Spanglish used makes it very authentic.  It makes you feel what she is feeling, even without a translation.  This poem is a strong one. 

The speaker of this poem feels so alone, because she does not feel 100% Mexican or American.  She wants to find her roots, but she has been in America so long she doesn't know who she is.  The native Mexicans call her a whore because she was "Americanized" and she says it isn't her fault.  She didn't ask for this.  But none of us ask for anything.  We just have to deal with the cards we got dealt. 

In a situation like this, it would be very hard to find someone to accept you.  To find a place where you belong.  But I think that she (the speaker) could find her way with other Mexican Americans that feel the same way.  An important thing to remember is that no matter how bad you feel, there is someone out there that feels the same way.  I love the language Cervantes uses though.  The similes, metaphors, the way she describes things, it's all really amazing.  I hope we have a class discussion about this poem so I can follow up on it because I really enjoyed reading it. 

Until next time,

Keri Jo

[Long Time Ago] after class discussion

After discussing this poem in class, I realized that I had misinterpreted it.  I thought they were a group of medicine men having a friendly competition, and I didn't understand that they were evil.  I thought it was a child speaker that called them witches just because he hadn't seen them before.  Now that I know more about the poem, I think it is sick.  Why would these people boil babies for competition?  For the same reason people hate America.  For power and fame.  They wanted to be the best and impress the others.  It's all about ego and pride.  Once I learned that the good medicine man was the one telling the story, it made more sense. These witches wanted the Indians to believe that the white man is the evil one, when really they were worse.  I like what was mentioned in class, about this having a biblical theme. 

After discussing this poem in class, I realized that I had misinterpreted it.  I thought they were a group of medicine men having a friendly competition, and I didn't understand that they were evil.  I thought it was a child speaker that called them witches just because he hadn't seen them before.  Now that I know more about the poem, I think it is sick.  Why would these people boil babies for competition?  For the same reason people hate America.  For power and fame.  Once I learned that the good medicine man was the one telling the story, it made more sense. These witches wanted the Indians to believe that the white man is the evil one, when really they were worse.  I like what was mentioned in class, about this having a biblical theme. The witch telling the story had no gender, race, and was both evil and mysterious.  Just like God has a mysterious form, so does the devil.  Maybe they were trying to get that point across subliminally.  I definitely felt something supernatural was present in the poem after we discussed it in class.  I thought it was interesting how a story that had not came true yet was more scary to the Native Americans than the boiling of babies.  But I guess an evil you know is often less scary that an unknown evil.  I liked how the poem was set up to look like a totem pole, and with the most important part at the bottom, so I had to go back and re-read the end of the witch's story.  He said the white men are already coming, and there is nothing they can do now to stop it.  It is already coming.  I'm glad I went back and re-read this after we discussed it, because I feel better now that things are clear.

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Thoughts about [LONG TIME AGO] by Leslie Marmon Silko

This poem was a moving piece of Native American culture.  It didn't create as much emotion in me as Zinn's version of history writing, but it was very effective in letting me see life through their eyes.  I had a lot of questions while reading, but I think most of them got answered by the end.  First I couldn't figure out who the witches were.  Silko wrote how they came from all over the world, so that made me think they were immigrants coming to take there land, and that the witchery was their guns, swords, and other things the Indians hadn't seen before.  As the poem went on, I realized that these were other natives, witch doctors, from other tribes that came from all over to the speaker's reservation.  They were having a competition, that I thought was a friendly one, and showing off their talent as witch doctors.  They were showing off and doing magic and curing people.  The speaker, a young native, was going to this event for the first time I think, and I'm sure it would be an incredible event to attend.  This is why I love different cultures.  Everyone has their own beliefs and ideas and it is just so interesting to learn about. 

I think this poem was meant to entertain, but also to make us wonder about the witch doctor's prediction.  His story was the most important part of this poem.  It was creepy because it actually happened.  I'm on the fence about whether I believe in psychics, but it is almost too curious to NOT listen to them.  It sparks our imagination and makes us feel like kids again.  But this poem also made me feel sad, because the events actually did happen and there was nothing they could do about it.

There were a couple of parts in the story the witch doctor told that really made me think.  I love when writers word things just right and it makes you feel something.  The witch said the earth is dead to us.  It's SO true.  We don't live off the land, and honestly, how many times a day do you stop to just take in nature and appreciate it? We don't have time. We run, run, run and make money so we can spend it on crap we don't need.  And while some of us are trying to 'go green' it's kinda too little too late.  Plus, we aren't gonna give up our cars and hairspray anyway.  It's sad how things worked out.  I wish we could go back to a time when things were more simple.
Another thing the witch said that was SO true was that the white people would come and have fear, and kill what they feared.  We've been doing that for centuries.  Whether it's animals or people, we kill if we are afraid.  We kill people from other countries because we don't understand them.  We fear what we don't understand.  And we kill what we fear. It's scary to think about, but it's a painful truth.  The witch said we would bring over disease and kill and destroy everything. And we did. 

This was one of those of those poems that almost gave me goosebumps, and for that, I thank you Silko. 

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Reflections on "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn

Christopher Columbus: a hero, right?   He discovered America, didn't he? Because of him, most of our ancestors knew where to immigrate to for a new life. So, we celebrate Columbus Day in his honor.  I think I'm going to be sick.


Zinn writes about history from the victims viewpoints, points of view they don't tell you much about in grade school.  Sure, I knew my ancestors came over and killed most of the Indians, just like I knew they went to Africa and forcefully took the natives as slaves.  But when a story, HISTORY, is told like this, with such detail that one has never heard before, I have to say, it shook me.


Zinn writes about how the Indian lifestyle was so shocking to the Spaniards.  They were nude, didn't care about monogamy, and were free to live as they pleased.  I like that.  It would be hard work living off the land, but the liberation of true freedom would be amazing.  They lived without government, and for the most part they did fine.  And the women! They treated the women very well, something that European immigrants didn't start doing for hundreds of years after.  History is really hard to believe sometimes.  And what is worse, is that it's about us.  MY ancestors. Possibly some of YOUR ancestors.  Aren't we proud?

  When I first read the title of this reading assignment, I was like oh God, history.  I'm going to fall asleep reading this.  Then I got into it, and was really interested.  I thought, wow, how bold, how daring of Columbus to sail an unknown ocean, to risk his life.  But as I read more and more, I became full of emotion.  How can anyone, ANYONE, be so cruel as to do the things he and his people did to the Native Americans.  And the worst part of all this inhumanity is that we still do it everyday.  People rape and kill people all the time, sometimes just for enjoyment.  It's something I will never understand.  The Spaniards started killing the natives because they wanted gold.  They were pressured by their king, and they felt they were doing what they had to do to survive back in Europe.  But even 500 years ago, didn't conscience come into play?  The Indians shared EVERYTHING they had because it was the right thing to do. And they couldn't even defend themselves.  This total lack of morals and ethics shown by the Europeans made me sick, angry, and upset. Mothers had to drowned their children because it would be a less painful death than starvation.  It was like their End of Days.  And when I read about the Spaniards walking up to the two Indian boys and beheading them just for fun, I couldn't take anymore.  I broke down.  Zinn even wrote a passage that pretty much said don't cry for them because it won't help anything, but I couldn't help it.  I was so overwhelmed with thinking about how my ancestors killed the Native Americans, followed Hitler in the Final Solution, and enslaved the Africans.  And thinking about that all at once caused some emotions to arise.

The theme behind Zinn's kind of writing, is that if you don't look at history from every view point, you are lying to yourself.  I never, EVER, thought it would be immoral to celebrate Columbus Day until I read this, and now I'm angry that we do it.  He didn't even discover America! We should be celebrating Rodrigo Day, if anything at all!  But I agree with Zinn, that we must look at history from all viewpoints, because it's only fair. I am glad I read this though, and it will give me something to think about for years to come.   

Until next time,

Keri Jo

Encounter Activity 1a / Practice Blog Entry

Hello all,

Since I am new to Maryville, I decided to check out the different neighborhoods around town.  As I was driving around, on the East side, this beautiful house caught my eye.  It was a two-story home that was painted bright blue, and it had red and white siding.  There are many nice homes in Maryville, but I chose to discuss this one because I loved the bright colors.  It stood out from the rest of the houses on the block.  On the front porch there were wind chimes hanging, and there was a beautiful, tall spruce tree in the front yard.  In the backyard there was a swing set, and there was a nice four door truck in the driveway.
I believe these residents have good taste, and because of the swing set I believe a family with children live there.  The swing set had both a slide, and a baby swing, which made me picture a family of four.  A mother, father, a baby, and another child around grade school age.  This was like the type of home I grew up in, which is why I wanted to share it with you all.

The next house that caught my eye was also in Maryville.  It was across town, but still on the East side.  I was looking for a house that would be the complete opposite of the first one, and I found it.  This house was only about the size of a one car garage.  It was run down, and the white paint was chipping off the outside walls.  There was a front porch, but it was very small and looked like it was falling apart.  There were branches piled on the porch.  There was no sign of life in the front yard, so I decided to drive around back to see if there was anything else that might give me an insight to who might live there.  Out back, there was nothing but a small grill and a shed (which was bigger and nicer than the house).  Behind the shed there was some junk piled up and couple of old wooden ladders. 

So I assumed, based on my observations, that an old man lived here alone, perhaps a widower, and didn't have the help or strength to keep up the house.  Boy, was I wrong!  I tried to take notes quickly and get out of there, but before I could take another picture I was spotted.  I man came storming out of the house.  He was about 40 years old, had dirty clothes on, and looked very angry.  Before he could get to my car, I just smiled, waved, and sped out of there.  This proves the point that I think this assignment was meant to prove. Don't judge a book by its cover.  "You know what happens when you assume, you make an..." well you know. 

Well, that concludes the first encounter activity. 

Until next time,

Keri Jo