Week 1 Reading

It's no lie. The chapters in Seeing &Writing 3 are long. I made it through a fair amount, and here are some of the pieces I really enjoyed (in case you haven't read it yet, and just want to skip to everything cool, because I am the final say on cool, ha).

• Manipulations of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photograph, p. 23
  
• "The Pencil" by Henry Petroski and corresponding photograph, p. 38
• Richard Estes painting on p. 72
• "Joyas Volardores" by Brian Doyle, p.87
• Photographs: Wigan's "Man v. Ant" on p. 120 and his bio on p. 135; "Voyager 1" on p. 125, Harold Edgerton's apple on p. 126
• Carl Sagan's excerpt "Reflections on a Mote of Dust"
  

Reading Highlight:
The multiple pieces on Pepon Osorio, p. 94-103

One of the over arching themes from Chapter 1: Observing the Ordinary seems to be that we will not be alive forever. "We come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it." -Bill Bryson, p. 122. Why does this theme creep up? My guess is because in learning to appreciate the ordinary, every day, taken for granted things in life, we become better at our appreciating ourselves, because we have to admit, and sometimes choose to overlook, the fact that we, as individual human beings, are rather ordinary.

Also the piece entitled, "Re: Searching the Web" provoked a lot of questions that I have been asking myself recently. For my sanity, I hope I get around to responding to them. There's nothing worse than an idea that won't leave you alone.

If any of you have read the above and also found them interesting... please, discuss.