Where The Red Fern Grows

Hint: It's likely where my soul should be

When I was younger, I absolutely hated everything we had to read for English class. 

From 5^th grade to high school (and even now), every book was often pushed aside, avoided until the last moment. They all followed this common theme that made me absolutely dread reading them. They were all sad, not a little bit sad, but heart wrenchingly sad. Whether it was the Great Gatsby with it’s ever so happy ending, or The Kite Runner which made me want to throw the book out the window, each and every book was utterly depressing to me. Even my little brother echoed the sentiment and soon we began to describe this phenomena as “sad dog stories”. 

This phrase came about because the first books we ever really had to read on our own in class were, you guessed it, stories where the dogs die. Those stories have haunted us till this day. For me, the book was Where the Red Fern Grows. In fact just trying to write this and re-reading the summary of the story made me cry. 

If you’ve never read Where the Red Fern Grows, consider yourself lucky. The basics are, a boy, Billy, saves up all his money and buys two gorgeous red coonhounds named Old Dan and Little Ann. He trains them to hunt raccoon and they make an exceptionally good team. The story sucks you in convincing you that this team will never fail, in fact they even win the coon hunting championship against everyone else! But no, we can’t end on a happy note. The dogs accidentally tree a mountain lion, who in turn attacks them and Billy. In order to save their master, the dogs fight till the near end. The boy is safe but Old Dan has his stomach split open, his guts wrapped around the bushes. Billy has to unwrap his intestines, clean them off quickly and shove them back into this poor dogs stomach. Then Billy rushes home dragging his barely breathing dog with him, to try and save him. Old Dan manages to hold on for a few days before finally passing away, leaving Little Ann and Billy. As if this didn’t hurt enough, Little Ann is so distraught with grief, that she will do nothing but lay on Old Dan’s grave and soon dies from heartbreak.


I read this in 5th grade, and it was awful. Not only that but our teachers had us watch the movie so we could really imagine the absolute heartbreak this little boy felt. It may sound silly but I never quite recovered from reading that story. It was just so awful and seemingly so unnecessary to read that I couldn't get passed it.  There's no particular reason this book was assigned except for fitting the reading requirements (whatever those were). There must be a reasoning behind this book and all the others, whether it be the push that one can move pass sadness, just as Billy does. He is comforted by the bright red fern that grows over the graves of his dogs, as it's said to have been placed there by an angel, and it's what lets him move on. Maybe it was to teach us the bond between creatures and how strong it can be. Or maybe it was to just make a bunch of 5th grades slightly traumatized for life. 

Really it might be to make us appreciate the good in our lives, that we get a bit of luxury by experiencing such sadness in books rather in our own lives. 

While all of those are possibilities, the actuality is I appreciate the fact I no longer have to read stuff like this. Because, unlike Billy I never found comfort in that red fern. Rather, it just made me cry even more.

 

Works Cited
Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

11/30 - Pink Flamingos - Laug

Pink Flamingos, Black Comedy, and the Carnivalesque

Why do cult films reach their obsessive almost religious status? Is it in their obscenity, immersive milieu, campy beauty? In most cases it certainly is not their narrative, or cinematic qualities, specifically with low budget films like Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Room, Troll 2, or Sleepaway Camp. I think that cult films, specifically black comedies, present a world that doesn’t get produced, and with those who it resonates, it resonates for the first time.

http://salesonfilm.tumblr.com/post/100567133222 

Divine’s grotesque obscenity captures this quality that certainly fits in the zeitgeist of the 70’s counterculture. Her performance as Babs Johnson in Pink Flamingos, in which she literally eats shit, marks a turning point in not only her career but what it reflects about society’s reactions.

The film centers on a family, self proclaimed as “The Filthiest People Alive” who live in a pink trailer in Maryland. Over the course of the film they kidnap women, impregnate them, and sell their babies to lesbians in order to sponsor heroin dealers targeting inner city schools. This scenario is perhaps the hellish nightmare of evangelical creationists that persists 40 years after the film’s release. In a direct address and exploitation of their conservative ideology, the film perhaps resonates not with heroin dealing human traffickers, but those who are suspected to be these criminals (low income earners, drag queens, people who eat shit).

It is gross, blatant, and exaggerated, featuring the best “worst” aspects of American culture in the 70s. Black comedy in cult films retains its entertaining qualities through this very notion, by going against the grain and subverting any fabric of structure that has been or will be set up in its audiences world. This is most evident in Babs Johnson's comedic climactic monologue when taken out of context:

“I love the taste of it. The taste of hot, freshly killed blood. Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder!... Filth are my politics! Filth is my life! Take whatever you like.” (John Waters' Pink Flamingos).

In academic terms, this oddly comedic subversion is a reflection of some of the ideas I read in an essay series for a class last year called the Carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin suggests that there is an underlying freedom in subversion of traditional ideals by the humor and chaos of darkly morose, real, unhumorous things. He says “In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act… The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, that is noncarnival” (Bakhtin). In many ways, Pink Flamingos, and other Black Comedy cult films exist as carnival acts. They exist in tandem with the active participants who are willing to subject themselves to have the rules of their worlds torn apart for entertainment, and perhaps in that subversion, they can find freedom in a grown woman dressed as a baby with an egg addiction.

http://divineofficial.com/post/99646077530/edith-massey-as-edie-the-egg-lady-and-divine 

Works Cited

-Baxhtin, Mikhail and Emerson, Caryl. "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics." Poetics Today: 560. Print.
-John Waters' Pink Flamingos. Dir. John Waters. Perf. Divine, Edith Massey. Saliva Films, 1973. Film.

11/30 Root: Guns

“Guns are part of the American identity”

- Henry Rollins

Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. Columbine. Aurora. Amish Schoolhouse. Fort Hood. All of these places have something eerie and traumatizing in common. They all were the sites of some of the infamous mass shootings that have occurred. And the one of these places was the start of it all: Columbine.

Before we dive in with mass shootings, we have to start at the gun itself. How did guns come about? Why are they black?

According to the NRA, or the National Rifle Association, the origin of guns came from gunpowder back in 1250 A.D. either from Turkey, Europe or China. After gunpowder came cannons, or a giant gun. Within 50 years, early cannon had been developed. A large thick metal tube, with one closed end (the breech) and an open end (the muzzle) was loaded first with gunpowder then with a projectile. (NRA) Finally, the first hand-held weapon was created almost a half-century (1350) after the cannon, or as they called it “hand-cannon”.  From there, firearms kept advancing over the next four centuries.  

The hand-cannon from around 1350.

It’s no surprise that guns have extremely advanced over time. Around the 1400s is when the first real “gun”, the matchlock appeared. Then, around the 1540s, the mechanism of “rifling” in guns appeared, followed by the first true flintlock. (PBS) Through 1750 to 1850, dueling pistols came into fashion, and this is during the French and Indian War, The Boston Massacre, the War of 1812, and a War with Mexico. During 1850 is when the “true” shotgun was developed after the design of the musket. Through 1854-1892, the evolution of the gun was enormous due to multiple wars, and technological advances; guns like the Winchester rifle, double-action revolver, cartridge revolver, and automatic handguns. Anything after the 1900s is when the evolution of contemporary guns begins.

Guns now are more modern, more slick. And gun manufacturers have learned how to stop the rust from taking over the gun.

Are you sure this is a gun and not a lazer gun? Yes? Well then I'll take 3!

 Guns obtain their black color by a cheap process called ‘bluing’. The process was developed as an easy and cheap way to protect the gun from rust, and is done by gun manufacturers, gunsmiths, and gun owners. Not only does it help protect the gun from rust, it also prevents scratching and reduces the glare that the shooter will see when they look down the barrel of the gun. The bluing process only affects the outside of the gun. Everything else inside of the gun is metal. However the name ‘bluing” doesn’t quite fit well with the outcome of the gun’s new black coat.

Actually pretty informative!

To suggest that a black coating over guns is ONLY for economic purposes would be silly. There is some metaphorical reason as to why guns are black, however I can only speculate that it is because the color black is feared. Black screams stealth, power, and panic. Shooters want to be feared, whether feared from an animal or a human being.

Columbine was the one of the first school shootings in America, and is tallied as one of the worst. Both shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot and killed 12 people, and wounded over 20 on April 20, 1999. They both had with them multiple weapons.

Guns used at Columbine.

Dylan had on him a: Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, a Double-barrel Savage 311-D shotgun, and various knives and bombs.

Eric had on him: Hi-Point model 995 carbine rifle, pump-action Savage-Springfield 67H shotgun, and also had various knives and bombs on him.

They shot 188 rounds together that day.

They killed 12 people together that day.

Both Klebold and Harris wanted revenge that day; they had been bullied by some of their classmates, they also suffered from mental illness, and played violent video games. No one knows the exact trigger that set the two young students off when they decided to attack their school, but they were out for blood. They wanted to be feared and respected, and what better way to gain both from their fellow peers than pointing a black, ominous gun in the innocent faces of others?

Works Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#Journals_and_videos

http://www.acolumbinesite.com/weapon.html

https://riversong.wordpress.com/the-guns-of-columbine/

http://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-shootings

http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/a_us_history/1800_1900_timeline.htm

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/

http://www.nramuseum.org/gun-info-research/a-brief-history-of-firearms.aspx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNYIJPwqbdA

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0057.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluing_(steel)  

11/25 Urmston - REDRUM in "The Shining"

The first time I saw “The Shining,” I fell asleep. 

This isn’t to say I found the film particularly boring by any means. Instead, it was the combination of four glasses of red wine and the opening credits that take you over majestic waters and mountains to The Overlook for a solid five minutes. I’d say that did the trick. 

My friend at the time had explained how Steven King’s “The Shining” was her favorite movie of all time. After sleeping through most of the film, I woke up to the scene where the five-year-old son, Danny, is chanting, “REDRUM” over and over and over again in the dark voice of his imaginary friend Tony. A friend who basically lives inside of Danny’s finger. I thought to myself, “I have some pretty twisted friends.” Turns out, I’m just as twisted as they are. This story is now one of my absolute favorites. 

To catch those up who haven’t seen the film/read the book, REDRUM spelled backward is MURDER. In the movie, Danny and his mother Wendy are hiding out in their room from their father, Jack, who has grown more and more eager to harm his wife and child throughout the story. While Wendy is asleep, Danny picks up his mother’s dark red lipstick and writes REDRUM on the door facing the mirror. He slowly walks toward her with a knife in his hand, the chanting of the word growing louder. She wakes to see the word MURDER in the mirror. 

This scene did not take place in the book. Instead, it was a word used by Danny (or I should say “Tony”) that comes up every time there is an evil near. When Danny is found outside of Room 217, REDRUM appears to him to show him the past murder of a woman in a tub. “He could see that limp hand dangling over the edge of the tub with blood running down one finger, the third, and that inexplicable word so much more horrible than any of the others: REDRUM.” (The Shining). 

It is argued that the meaning of the word REDRUM is meant to symbolize the opposite of murder, because it is murder backward. “In the chapters titled "REDRUM" and "Jack and Wendy," Jack and Wendy both almost murder each other. It's murder averted, murder that doesn't come to pass.” (Shmoop). 

As much as I appreciate good symbolism, I find this argument to be the last one I would have suspected. Instead, as straightforward as it can be, I would argue that it means just the opposite. It is used in both the book and the film as a warning; a way to get the family as far away from the premonitions of The Overlook as fast as they can, before it’s too late. Before REDRUM. 

Because Steven King is as creative-minded as he is, he knew how to make this a good story. He wasn’t going to simply begin the piece with Danny chanting the word “murder”. That’s too easy. Instead his twisted mind literally twisted the word around, creating an eerie, creepy way of warning the family without completely ruining a good story with an even better ending. 

Works Cited

King, Stephen. The Shining. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. Print.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "REDRUM in The Shining." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. 

11/25/Wohlfrom/The Black Line

7:09 Am. “That’s odd.” I thought as I awoke, sprawled out and wrapped up in my big, fuzzy, black and red Oak Hills swimming parka on the floor of the mirror room. “Katie should have been here by now. She’s probably running late, it wouldn’t be the first time.” I glanced around the room to see many of my teammates dozing on the floor wrapped in parkas and other layers to keep out the morning chill. I checked my phone for the time once more. “7:12 AM, December 30th.” I gazed around once more. Christmas break, or more commonly known as “hell week(s)” by swimmers throughout the nation, had started 10 days ago. It’s a time where coaches no longer have to work practice times around school schedules and have free reign of the pool and the day which often resulted in a 4 hour morning practice followed by a 2 hour afternoon practice. It was because of this that none of my teammates seemed the slightest bit disturbed by the delay. We exhausted swimmers knew that once Katie arrived we must once again force our exhausted bodies into the frigid water for nearly the 9th day in a row. It was with that thought that I began to wonder why I chose a sport that required early mornings in cold pools, a sport that demanded that you push your body to its physical limits, a sport that required that you hold your breath for a good portion of practice, but mostly why I chose a sport that required you to stare at the same solid black line for hours every day.

The black line. A peculiar aspect of swimming that according to http://www.livestrong.com/article/554626-how-swimmers-recognize-marks-in-a-swimming-pool/ serves the practical purpose of “These lines act as guides to help athletes stay straight while swimming. The lines are painted a dark color, often black, to stand out. Near the end of the pool, the lines form a T-shape to alert the swimmer that he's nearing the end.” It’s such a simple part of the sport that, to normal people, probably doesn’t mean much, but to a swimmer it means a lot more than just alerting you to the fact that the pool is ending.

The door swung open at 7:16 AM. “Alright kiddie kiddie’s wake up and get ready to get in the pool!” And she moved to unlock the door to the pool. 7:19 AM, “Let’s go ya little turd nuggets get in the pool! 500 warm up!” And then finally actual frustration crept into her voice at 7:22 AM, “Get in the pool NOW!” LET’S GO!” And so I found myself in my senior year, the final stretch of my swimming career, once again looking at that fateful black line. Maybe I didn’t quite need the black line to guide me through the pool, but perhaps it had guided me in other ways throughout my swimming career that I had never come to realize until that moment.

I first became acquainted with the black line during my freshman year of high school. I had signed up for a lifeguard training class for my gym credit second semester and I was nearing the end of my cross country season when all of a sudden I realized that I couldn’t really swim. At least not well enough to be a lifeguard. I could keep myself from drowning and swim for fun but that was about it. So I decided to go to a swim conditioning. I figured I’d go and pick up a few pointers. When I told my family, the response I got was “Psh, you can’t swim!” Challenge accepted. Thus began my relationship with the black line. The black line that guided me through my first year and would continue to guide me through the rest of my career.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year that the black line helped to guide my teammates and myself through difficult times. “Nocheck, due to his condition, has chosen to resign to focus on his fight against cancer. He’ll still be around as much as possible but he can’t be here full time. So I guess that leaves me.” Katie fell silent. A long moment of realization followed the somber news. The reality of our beloved coach’s condition became clear. “But he wouldn’t want us to just sit here wasting time so here’s the next set.” Katie spoke up. And so we continued with our practice and it was then, for the first time, that I found the company of the black line and the swooshing of water around my ears as I swam comforting. That black line guided us through the season and once again it guided me and reminded me of his impact on my life at the time of his death later that summer. It was an odd coincidence that only a couple days after his funeral I found myself swimming in a meet at the very swim club that he had managed for so long and the very swim club that he had given me my first job at. I swam my races at that meet with the memory of the man who introduced me to the sport that would teach me more about myself than I would have ever realized at the time and to a job that I would hold for years after.

A little over a year, during the spring of my junior year of high school, while sitting in second bell we received news that there was a shooting at a local private high school. A student had brought a gun to school and attempted suicide. During my third bell, I came to the realization that the student was a childhood friend of mine during all of elementary and middle school. Two days after the event, after going to the hospital, after attending prayer services, after two sleepless nights, I went to swim practice. I went to see my teammates and my coaches and most importantly I went for the peaceful company of the black line. I found comfort once again in the camaraderie of my team and the quiet solemnity of that ever present black line.

Even though I am pretty much retired from competing and training in the sport myself, I still find comfort in the fact that if I’m going through a rough time I can always dig up the cap and goggles and go seek the comforting presence of the black line on the bottom of the competition pool. It would always be there as a coping mechanism and as a link to my teammates who were some of the best friends I’ll ever have. I know that I can always turn to the sport and the experiences that the black line helped guide me through and know that everything will be turn out okay.