What a Hunk of Junk

Surfing around the Net I came across these images of the Earth and all the junk that is orbiting the planet. I am shocked, I never, ever dreamt that this much rubbish was circling our Earth. How on Earth (pardon the pun) do they manage to launch any more satellites without them colliding with the old ones…and why has no one bothered to clean them up? Surely leaving them up there cannot be good?

“Some of the items orbiting are useful satellites. However, of the 6,000 satellites launched since the 60s, it is estimated only 800 are operational. The rest float uselessly in orbit, accompanied by thousands of items of debris from collisions and explosions.”

Anyone concerned????

Memoir

In my memoir class, my professor, D. Gess, made us complete an in class assignment, focusing on Kubler-Ross’s five stage’s of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Split into groups, I was to write a quick letter to a person I loved, focusing on denial in some manner. Below is my denial letter, brief and to the point, I switched it up and wrote to myself, not the person I love. This is a great exercise, but like my teacher said, you can’t focus on one of these stages for too long on your writing. Depression saps the energy from writing, too much denial makes the author sound crazy and anger is often misplaced love. The only stage a writer cannot write effectively, is acceptance, because once the writer has accepted something, then there is no longer a problem that needs to be mused over. Lesson over, enjoy my denial!

A Note to Myself

I know he doesn’t mean it. I know because when his birthday comes along and I buy him the best, most expensive gift his face will light up and the little kid I still love and look for will be there. He’ll open his arms and he’ll hug me tight, until I can’t breathe and the pain in my ribs will wash away the one in my heart. Because I matter. I’m his favorite. It’s me and him against the world, against our parents, against our sisters. I know he’ll grow out of the distance he is putting between us, because it’s always me and him.

Color Monitors

Martin Kevorkian’s Color Monitors was the reading material for my master’s class, Writing for Electronic Communities this past week. In class we discussed some of the major issues we had with the book, including what some students deemed to be overtly negative and racist in nature. I cannot speak for anyone else, but after our in class discussion, I started to think more in depth about the author’s intentions and my own reactions to the book. At first I was a little confused, especially being from an isolated area in England, I did not grow up in a society where racism against African Americans was an issue, therefore I did not have the contextual history to draw from, but once my teacher started to try and make a case for the author, that he was not trying to aggravate the reader, but instead was attempting to open up a discussion about contemporary racism. I believe now that perhaps Kevorkian was just trying to explain how technology could be a new medium to hide black men ‘behind’ – a remediation of servitude in the guise of something benign…what better way to hide stereotypes other than behind intellectual and technologized pursuit?

Color Monitors is a tough nut to crack – I think that to be able to access what Kevorkian was trying to discuss, the ‘reader’ needs to be able to put aside their own baggage, their instinctive reactions of defensiveness and its not an easy thing for some people to do…including myself.