The men of the family

Through the first few chapters of this book, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers I am already starting to feel like I can relate more to it. Obviously this is probably due to the fact that it's about a boy's life in a somewhat normal setting compared to an 8 year old girl living in a tiny town in Texas. Granted I can relate in some ways to Karr's life but there are is a lot more I can relate to with Lott. I also like the transitions in this book when compared to The Liars' Club. They seem a lot easier to notice and it made the first chapters a lot easier to navigate. During most points instead of all of a sudden switching to the adult role for a few sentences or words even, Lott will change back for entire paragraphs. Also, the pages just turn a lot faster for me in this book.

The book itself starts off talking about his garage and how it was kind of his sanctuary and it kept him connected to his brothers. Lott writes, "It was in that garage that we became, it only occurs to me now, brothers." This quote becomes obviously true by the many memories that Lott writes about with his brothers with that garage. It's obviously an important part of his life, as even in its absence, it has a huge effect on his relationship with his brothers.

He points out a connection between his brothers and him and his kids. As we read further we can also see that connection between his generation and his father's as well. I can see that these connections are going to be a very important part of this book and I'm excited to get further into it.

Stuff I recall

-One of my first memories doesn't last long due to what actually happened, but here it goes, I was five years old and my mom and I were at a picnic with some friends in Michigan. Everything was going well, we were playing games and I was enjoying a hot dog. This hot dog ended up not being so good about halfway through. I was getting ready to take a bite out of it and a bee landed on the very front where I was about to bite. Sadly, I was not able to see the bee before I took the bite and it became enraged that I had eaten it and stung the back of my throat. I happen to be pretty allergic to bee stings so my throat proceeded to swell to the point where I couldn't breathe anymore. Luckily for me, there was a doctor there who was able to help me breathe before I got to the hospital.

-One of my favorite memories is from my freshman year of high school. It was the year that I first decided I was going to join cross country. It was probably the best decisions of my life. Though it didn't start that way. I had no idea what I was getting into. The first practice of the year came and I was very unprepared. The first day loop, as it was called, is 4.5 miles long. It's also a very simple route to run. Not only could I not come close to keeping up with anybody, I actually got lost. I ended up doing a loop that was about a mile shorter, and I still came in about ten minutes later than the group. I was very down on myself for the entire run thinking I should give up and try again next year. But when I finally made my way to the finishing point, everyone on the small 9 person team was clapping for me and telling me I did a good job. I know now that it was kind of a formality but at that time it made me feel accepted. It was the biggest reason I ended up staying on the team. I got a lot better over the year and over the next four so I ended up being one of the top runners on the team before graduation.

-One of my least favorite memories comes my senior year of high school again during cross country. We had just lost our three top runners due to graduation and our coach of just under 30 years retired with them. Our team was a very young one at this point. With me being the only four year runner and another senior who I got to join his sophomore year. We also only had two juniors out of a team of fifteen. It was pretty much assumed over the entire summer training that I would be the captain so I pretty much took the position of leader over the summer and the beginning part of the season. Our new coach took his time trying to decide who would be the captain(s) of the team. After the he finally decided to hold a meeting to announce it. He took awhile talking about how difficult of a decision it was and finally announced that the two would be one of the juniors, who was the top runner but had only run for two years, and my senior friend who had only run three years, and knew the coach through speech and debate when our coach was his coach there. It really doesn't sound like a big deal but I took it that way. It seemed like I had put in the time and effort and not gotten the respect I deserved from it.

Titles are hard

Throughout Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, Karr’s Mother has a number of episodes due to her Nervousness, whether it be flying off the handle about something as small as something not straightened up, or something like her closet drinking problem. Her Mother hardly seems to be easy to get along with, let alone live with. Though Karr mostly shows contempt for her Mother before she’s taken Away, she proves through her feelings later on that she truly cares for her and feels lonesome without her.

Karr writes “After they took Mother Away, I sank into a fierce lonesomeness for her that I couldn’t paddle out of into other things.” (158). Mary’s Mother at this point has just gone completely “Nervous” as the book would describe and burned down many of the things making up Mary and Lecia’s childhood. In my opinion it would be hard to miss anyone including a mother after something as traumatizing as that, especially if we already had a rocky relationship. And their relationship definitely wasn’t perfect, and Karr even shows that part of her isn’t sure about wanting her back when they are going to see her. Karr writes, “I finally told Daddy I didn’t want Mother to come home if she was gonna go crazy all over again, just because we hadn’t cleaned our room” (171). As the reader, I’m unsure about whether this is actually Mary’s indecision about her Mother coming home, or her fear that her Mother will come home just as Nervous as she left. Nevertheless, Karr begins to miss her mother so much that nothing around her can pull her out of this loneliness that she is feeling. Her situation isn’t helped by any of the neighborhood kids since the local trend (even adults do it) is to label anyone’s faults no matter how hurtful it could be to them or their family. Due to this, kids are constantly making fun of her because of her mother. Ironically it ends up being her distraction from her Mother for awhile.

A few pages later Karr also writes “Without them to plot against, I sank back into lonesomeness for Mother” (162). Mary finally found something to keep her mind off of her Mother. Granted, though this is a fight against a boy for making fun of her mother, it still does the job. Sadly though, the battle ends after just a few days and she is right back into her loneliness. I think that the fact that nothing but a fight for her mother’s honor can keep her mind off her mother is just more proof that she truly cares for her and wants her back home. Luckily for Mary though it ends up not being much longer before they go and pick her Mother up from the psych ward. It becomes even more evident through Mary’s jealousy that she truly wants her to come home. While at the ward, she becomes jealous that the other people inside are able to be around her Mother every day. When they take her home, Karr is very willing to make things work and they all end up laughing about what happened before. Personally, I find that to be slightly odd, but the family has never really been overly normal.

Mary’s Mother has a lot of problems as far as being Nervous goes. Mary shows that even at her young age at the time she’s trying to deal with her mother’s problems and enjoys having her around. Though Karr mostly shows contempt for her Mother before she’s taken Away, she proves through her feelings later on that she truly cares for her and feels lonesome without her. This is thoroughly proven throughout the book especially at the times when she is away at the ward.

Imagining Imagery

1. "Cameron's preparations wouldn't have mattered much, though, since a good hunk of the Gulf of Mexico essentially lifted itself up and then topple over right on the low-lying town." (p. 98)

Mary uses this to help us visualize just how hard Cameron was hit by the hurricane. She really helps you see what they were seeing on he news reports in the following days.

2. "Mother had left us at home because she was hurt. For her, being hurt meant drawing into herself. (Old joke: What's the loneliest place in Louisiana? Bayou Self.) And that's where I have to leave her, alone on the dark highway with the cacti rearing up and falling back down as she passes" (p. 103)

This is another example of Mary showing both her adult side and her child side almost at the same time. While talking about her mother dealing with grief she stops for a second to tell a joke. Then immediately goes back to being serious. This is one of the many times she's done this during the book.

3. "... that picture of Grandma's pale arm with the ants would rear up behind my closed eyes. With it came a low humming in my head---a sound like a crazy cello player sawing the same note over and over, or like a zillion bees coming up out of the ground." (p. 103)

This quote is referring to Karr's insomnia after her Grandma's death. She not only lets you know that she has this insomnia but she describes it so well that you can almost imagine lying there at night with the same feeling.

4. "And why would God set Death loose among us like some wind-up robot destroyer if he loved us so much?" (p. 106)

This quote shows her going back and forth between child and adult vocabulary again. She does that to show us how she is losing faith/has little faith in God due to the events happening around her

5. "She was carrying a sketch pad the size of a small card table, like she was planning to draw the fishermen, but I knew with a cold certainty while I stood ankle-deep in that lukewarm water that she was climbing up there to get drunk." (p. 109)

This interests me because this is the second time in the book that Mary's mother has brought her sketchpad as a cover to drink. It makes me wonder how much of closet drinker she actually is. It seems we will find out eventually.

6. "In fact, that was the same humming sound our car tires had made when Mother either did or didn't try to crash through the guardrail and fly us screaming down to the river."(p. 103)

This is yet another quote relating to Mary's insomnia but this one especially made me think about whether or not she was trying to take the car over the edge. I think this could be some foreshadowing for later. We'll find out soon enough I guess.

7. "I was sure in my sleep that Lecia was fixing to die, which is why, I guess, I slept so deeply. I had wished her dead a thousand times, even prayed for it, no less fiercely than I'd prayed for Grandma to die." (p. 117)

This quote just makes me wonder where Mary's head is. She's already got family history against her as far as Nervous-ness and this just makes me wonder is she's heading in the same direction or if this is just her childishness showing through again.

8. "She's reaching over for the steering wheel, locking onto it with her knuckles tight. The car jumps to the side and skips onto the sidewalk. She's trying to take us over the edge. There's no doubt this time." (p. 138)

This of course answers my previous foreshadowing question because it makes it quite clear here that she is trying to kill everyone in the car. This really signifies what so far is the pinnacle of her Nervous-ness.

Let's try this again shall we?

While I was trying to think of a memory to blog about I remembered during the first chapter of our reading when Mary's grandmother gets angry with Mary's mother for the fact that Mary doesn't yet know how to tie her shoes. This brought me back to the memory of my grandmother teaching me how to tie my shoes.
I remember that she had this wooden block that was shaped and painted to look like a shoe. It had holes in it so that a shoelace could be run through it to make it look like the wooden block was tied.
I remember everyday when I went over to my grandparents house my grandma and I would sit in the kitchen at the non formal-dinner table(which looked like a booth at a restaurant) and practice tying the wooden shoe.
I was still pretty young at this point, though I'm not sure how young, but she had me tying the shoe in a couple weeks time. After I got this task completed it actually took me a little bit of time to apply this knowledge to a real shoe on my foot but I eventually got it down.

Liars' Quiz 1

A. Please write specifically about Mary's feelings about her grandmother. What are some of her grandmother's habits? What does she suffer from? What does she think about Mary and Lecia? What does she reveal to Mary about Mary's mother?

Mary has very ill feelings toward her grandmother. At one point she says that she should feel bad about blaming her for "much of the worst hurt in my family, but she was such a ring-tailed bitch that I do." (P.41)
Some of her Grandmother's habits would be just to say things like "Can I make a suggestion?". She would start doing things like making Mary and Lecia read the Bible or spying on the neighbors and completely stop doing them because they required too much effort. She was not fond of Mary's father and made it very clear especially at times when she threatened to divorce him.
Grandmother Moore suffers from cancer, it's because of this that she comes to live with the family while she deals with the illness. Eventually she ends up getting her leg amputated which is a very memorable and graphic time for Mary when she sees it.
As far as Mary and Lecia go, their grandmother think that they are spoiled, not hardworking enough, have non idea how to deal with money, and have a number of other problems with their upbringing. When Grandmother Moore starts to live with the family she makes a point to start making everyone live the way she believes they should. Mary and Lecia are forced to take baths every night, they have to wear their clothes all day, even during the heat wave, and they have to eat 'real' meals at the dinner table.

B. Briefly, What causes Mary and her family to run from Leechfield? What happens on the bridge?

Mary and her family leave Leechfield due to a category four hurricane. It took them a long time to actually leave as their mother, father, and grandmother wanted to stick it out like they had every other hurricane. On Orange Bridge, while trying to escape the hurricane, Mary's mother got into a car accident. While driving at a blinding speend they lose control and end up spinning out into a large metal rail. No one but Mary seems to be frightened or shaken up by the crash. At the end, Mary's mother doesn't get out to look at the damage, which was minimal, she just drives off toward their destination again as if nothing big happened.

Liars' and a memory

"As Nervous as she tended to be, she could always rally in times of crisis." (p. 50) The preceding quote is of course referring to Mary's mother during the time when Grandma Moore was fighting with cancer.
This quote seems somewhat odd to me because it seems different that some of the few times that her mother is actually a normal person is during a time when most people can't handle everything going on. In the previous chapter Mary finally gets into detail about her mother. She tends to have a lot of Nervous moments and I find it kind of weird that she would become a completely normal person during the time when her mother just had a leg amputated and was getting sicker and sicker from the cancer by the day. In a way it actually makes her seem more Nervous because she of the way she handles it. It could just be the way she handles her grief but I think the book will eventually get more into this.

Family Memory

For some reason while reading this book the memory of me learning how to tie my shoes with my grandmother comes to mind. I remember she had this wooden outline of a shoe that had a shoelace running through it like it would look on a real shoe.
Everyday my grandma would bring me into the kitchen with this wooden shoe and continually try to teach me how to tie. It took me a good couple of weeks but eventually I did it.
It then actually took me about another week to be able to apply this to an actual shoe, which I thought was kind f funny based on how long it took me to learn how to simply tie it. I'm not sure why this one memory comes to mind, my grandma taught me a lot of things. I think it is just due to the fact that Mary's grandmother kept yelling about how the kids couldn't tie.

Memoirs for liars

The first book I read was The Liars' Club. Mainly due to the fact that it was the first one handed to me. The story opens up with a memory of the main character at age 7. It starts with a doctor asking her to show him her marks which thoroughly confused me into thinking she had either been beaten or raped or something of the like. I figured out pretty quickly that I was way off in my assumption and she actually had no marks whatsoever. All I could really take from it is that it was a painful memory due to the parts that her mind blocked out.
After this scene she takes a bit to go into the story of her parent's meeting. Her mom jumps into marriage after marriage very quickly due to her mother's religious views about pre-marital sex. She ends up having a total of seven husbands, which to me seems ridiculous. I think another one of her reasons for jumping into a marriage is her need for stability. She doesn't have much balance in her life so she assumes that a husband will fix that. Later during the chapter, we find out that she's been taken Away for being "Nervous". Her father is the next to be explained. He comes off as the stable person in the family. Very social, he meets with friends a lot to play dominoes, drink and tell stories.
The second book I read was The Memoir and the Memoirist. The book opens with a teacher teaching a class of 15 how to write a memoir. The class, though small, has a wide variety of people. During the first chapter he goes over a part of his life where he tried to save his marriage by moving to California which only ended it even quicker.
The story goes over the entirety of the nine week class and at the end the teacher has had such an influence that the class doesn't want it to end. He was obviously a very good teacher since the class was pretty much offering to do anything to keep the class going.

First day of class...

Hey, I'm Phil. This is definitely my first time writing a blog since I've never really taken the time to write down my thoughts.

Well, since this is an English class(and it's the assignment), I guess I'll talk about some of my past English class experiences. I went to Maumee high school, in Maumee, a small city on the edge of Toledo. In my four years there, I had a number of different experiences in English classes. This is due to the fact that somehow, I only had one teacher more than once. So I ended up having a class with every English teacher in the school's department and I got to hear a lot of different teaching styles.

I did decently in my first few classes normally getting by with a B until my sophomore year when I had one of my favorite teachers and ended up with an A. Due to my apparent outstanding performance I was recommended to be moved up to the AP English class for the next trimester.

For those who don't know or may of had different rules for it, in AP classes you had to get a grade of at least a B to stay in the advanced classes. You were allowed one C but that was your only strike.

My first trimester of it was the second part of sophomore English. I had one of the better teachers in the department but I was in no way prepared to do as much work as what was given to me and ended the tri with a C+.

Then, my junior year started. In the first tri I had probably the least favorite teacher I've ever had. I have a history of mumbling sometimes when I talk and almost anytime he would call on me he would tell me to speak loudly and with clarity. Not the best thing to keep me motivated in my opinion. He pretty much knew that I wasn't prepared to take an AP class like this and would call on me a lot, unless of course my hand was actually raised.

I ended up with a C in that class as well and was promptly taken out of AP. The rest of my high school english career went by mildly uneventfully but not with great grades. Now I am here in this class trying to do a little better than what I did in high school.

Well, that's about all I'm gonna say this time, I'm sure I'll be back wednesday for another assignment. Same bat time, same bat place.