The Raven... no quoths

Every year Grand Rapids, Michigan hosts art prize, a huge art scavenger hunt. Pieces are strewn about the city—this year there are more than 1500 pieces in over 130 different venues. If someone were to wake up at 6 am on the first day of art prize and race through the streets from venue to venue for the entire three-week event, they might just get to see all the artwork (this leaves no time for consideration, of course…just a quick “howdy-doo” to the wooden horses galloping up the Grand River).

            But then, as you’re sprinting past all the artwork, it just so happens that a piece may grab you, take you by the arm (or eyeball, more like) and force you to turn and stare.

            I experience this every time I walk past the gigantic raven…well, technically it’s a crow, but it’s a large, black bird, and most definitely part of the corvid family, so, for my purposes, it’s a raven.  This bird looms 10’ tall, feathers formed from metal and old tires, eyes black, but tinged with the streetlight’s glint. 

            If you’d like a gander, you can easily find this raven directly between the huge brass phoenix and Gerald R. Ford’s massive golden head. Although of great size, the corvid seems to hide in the shadows of these flashy adulators, its black dullness making the grandiose metal shine even brighter.

            I have a great fascination with ravens. In fact, while in college I wrote a paper comparing a wonderful friend of mine to a raven. This may not seem like a compliment, but let me explain. Ravens have awful reputations—the heralds of bad news, gloomy, dark, cawing in dead cornfields, wandering through the bones of an elephant graveyard (side note: elephant’s don’t actually have graveyards per say but that’s another story for another day). People don’t generally find a raven to be a likeable creature, but in reality, ravens are magnificent. 
A list of reasons to follow: 

A. They are manogomous and mate for life—which always seems to be the excuse for why humans should like some part of the animal kingdom, so I’ll continue…

            B.Ravens are fairly territorial and may sometimes get into fights. No worries. That’s not the fascinating part. The fascinating part occurs post-fight when the loser returns to his or her partner, instead of reprimanding or making fun of the poor fellow, the partner will “twine” bills. They comfort each other.

      C.    They’re extremely social and love to play. On windy days you can watch as they perform incredible synchronized air shows and snowy weather gives them a chance to slide down snow-covered hills like children out to play. Uhhhmmmm… No weather complaints for the raven…nope, you don’t see the corvids flying to Florida.

      D.    Corvids are considered the largest of the passeri, or songbirds. Most describe the raven call as more of a squawk or a caw and, although a bit pitchy, those really are songs you hear coming from their beaks! Maybe they tend to sing a bit loud for their talents but at least they're quite unashamed.

      E.     I’ve already touched on this, but ravens are extremely adaptable. They can live in awful conditions—conditions from which many-a-bird would fly away.

So now, keep going. Just a little further, past the Gnome’s Forest, past the Dreaming Carousel, across the road and yes…there! Right past that gigantic golden head! There’s the raven—the subject of Poe’s fear and the subject of my fancy. If you have the time during your three-week sprint, stop and ponder it a little…maybe imagine rolling it down a snowy hill. This usually-ominous bird may just make you smile. 

shade and worms

Yesterday I went outside to read a little C.S. Lewis. I chose to sit under a small tree in the middle of a field.  Its shade reminded me of the Divinely-provided vine given to Jonah after he delivered the Lord’s message to Nineveh. I know this isn’t necessarily a positive image, seeing as how God then sent a worm to eat the vine— the unfortunate result of Jonah’s bad attitude— but I happened to be reading Miracles and the Jonah-esque shade seemed quite appropriate. You see, I don’t have faith as big as a mustard seed and Jonah’s lack of faith is infamous. So I sit under this tree, reading about the existence of miracles and pray that God grants me a mustard seed of faith before the worm is necessary. So far the tree still stands. A good sign, I suppose. 

........tv..........

So, today I’m simply discussing Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

            This book is phenomenal. I’m on Part 1 Chapter 3 and cannot put it down. In this book, Neil Postman describes how, during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the United States was a print-based society. Print, being the main source of communication, influenced every aspect of the American life. First English books (as americans did not have enough paper to create their own literature), then americans began writing. This included newspapers and pamphlets. Even speeches began to take on the sound of writing. When Lincoln and Douglas would debate, they’d write down all their speeches ahead of time…even their witticisms took on a typographical tone. The audience had the uncanny ability to sit for hours and listen to these debates…uhhmhhh…unlike nowadays where we have difficulty listening to a 20-minute speech. Books/ print was their entertainment, their discourse. They were used to sitting down and sifting through a book for hours at a time. This was expected by society and rolled over into oratory tradition training the public to sit and sift through lectures for hours at a time, weighing each argument, inference, metaphor, etc. Sometimes, people would go to see a “stump” speaker, where some random person would find a stump or an opening of some sort and “take the stump,” so to speak!

            How interesting that print influenced our society in such a way. I’m coming to the next section where he discusses society’s drift from print-based discourse to television-based discourse. I find it interesting that, as Postman mentioned, people used to speak like they’d write.  Now we tend to write like we speak. There is obviously a place for writing like one speaks in fiction or when recording dialogue, etc, but there isn’t an influence to write differently.  I’m off to go think now and will probably discuss this much more later. Hope your day goes swell. I still feel as though this is floating to the bottom of the canyon. Ridiculous. Although Postman writes in the 1980’s and doesn’t specifically discuss blogging, perhaps I’ll take a crack at how blogging, which is technically print, will also influence a television-based society. Hmmmm… 

A Quick Squish

I don’t like the word “blog.” It’s an ugly word—uglier than “moist” or “flesh.” I don’t like the thought of writing short nonfiction pieces, pushing enter, and watching as they hurtle out into the universe. You may as well fill up a journal with supposedly profound thoughts and chuck it into the Grand Canyon. If you’re lucky it’ll knock some lone hiker on the head. Then maybe he or she will pick it up and show some interest. If not, well, it’ll float down the river, and, honestly, no one will really care. And you know what, we shouldn’t expect them to…care, that is.  Who do we think we are— we egotistic bloggers-- to think that anyone would want to, let alone enjoy, reading about how, while biking home from work today we hit a squirrel, and luckily we didn’t squish it flat but the blow may have caused internal bleeding, which may, perhaps, be much, much worse than a quick squish?  Then again, maybe it’s more egotistical to refrain from joining the masses simply out of self-righteous priggery. So, here it is-- the beginning of my blaaaaugh.