Oddity, Week 2

Curious Consumption

The cochineal, an insect native to South America and Mexico, turns up regularly on the ingredient lists of foods we eat all the time. When you see carmine, carminic acid, cochineal, or natural red #4 sandwiched between modified corn starch and kosher gelatin, that's foodspeak for dried female beetle, a phrase you'll never see on the label of your strawberry yogurt. The cochineal's red dye, known as carmine, also makes ice cream, fruit fillings, and juices look more authentic. The ingredient is natural, not artificial.

If you can afford it, you can get your morning java from coffee beans tagged by CBC News as “Cat Poop Coffee,” labeled tellingly as “Good to the Last Dropping.” Coffee starts out as coffee berries; the beans are really the seeds. When Sumatra-, Java-, or Bali-based civets consume coffee berries, enzymes permeate the seeds, which reappear a few days later with a higher than average protein value and in need of a good wash. These civets, or wild cats, make coffee beans a delicacy, upping the value to around $75 per half pound.

I remember saying once after watching a documentary about odd delicacies around that world that “I would not under any circumstances eat chocolate-covered grasshoppers.” But I've heard the rumor that insect legs are common incidental additions to chocolate in general. My husband Jeff tells me not to worry about that. “Just think of it as extra protein.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2002/09/13/catcoffee_020913.html

http://www.vrg.org/ingredients/index.php#rennet

http://www.sallybernstein.com/beverages/coffee/kopi_luwak.htm

Peer Response 2, Week 2

Response to Susana's Memory, Week 2

Your first sentence, I think, is a strong one, effective for peaking our interest. But the parenthetical aside seems unnecessary. You've really fleshed out some intereseting details in this draft--I'm especially fascinated by the "walking catfish" and the "walking-catfish-sucking-machine," but there are others. A thinning-out revision might serve you well in this piece. Expositions like, "The imagination is amazing at age 11" and "We were homebound," your readers get for free, so you don't have to say it outright.

Also, there seems to be an odd play here between fear and adventure. And I think you should take advantage of that juxtaposition. For example, were you just a little sad when the water receded and everything went back to normal?

Peer Response 1, Week 2

Response to Brett's "Oddity" Post:

You're right! Gatlinburg is the kitsch capital . . . and certainly the goody-two-shoes relative of Las Vegas. You made smart use of specifics in your post--The Donut Friar, The Happy Shack, and my personal favorite, Cupid's Chapel of Love. Even if I hadn't been there before, I could conjure up a telling image of what to expect should I make the drive. And without saying what a Gatlinburg vacation says about its patrons, you do a nice job of showing us. It's funny because when I think of going to the mountains, I think of spending time in nature. But Gatlinburg, seemingly uncomfortable with its association with nature, promises a kind of steroid-induced culture, a kind of hyperbole culture designed to claim the cash of the bored. Maybe when you swing to an uncanny connection, you could bring in the fake snow and transition to the downplayed beauty that the town attempts to distract from. What do the kitsch and bright lights keep us from seeing?

Memory 2, Week 2

Catching Pop Flies

My brother Dan and I still argue over which one of us got shot in the butt with a bb and which one did the shooting. I think I pulled the trigger and got in trouble afterwards. He says it was me who got shot. I was maybe ten, so Dan was either seven or eight. I remember a large woodpile next to the propane gas tank in our backyard, the firewood thrown in a disheveled heap like there might be a bonfire later. I want to say that the wood was stacked one log on top of the other like an unsafe stairway, lower at the ends and capping out in the middle. But that's not how I remember it. I think it took up a considerable chunk of our backyard.

I didn't take a direct shot at my brother. I was aiming for the woodpile. My mom had warned me not to shoot at the wood, saying the bb could ricochet and hit me, hurt my dog Knuckles, or crack a window on the back side of the house. I don't think I believed her. Plus, maybe I saw a snake or a rat and that's why I took the shot. The bb ricocheted, beaming my brother on his right cheek. At least according to me. I wasn't allowed to play with the gun after that when Dad was away. Dan says what happened is that he shot me on purpose, that we both lost shooting privileges. He says it was to get me back for pinning him down in a wrestling move when our cousins Chris and Mike were over.

My dad warned me all the time that Dan would get bigger than me one day, that I would pay for bullying him. Dad wouldn't let me forget my genetic weakness. He fought hard against it, arming me with bb guns, pellet guns, baseball bats, bows and arrows. And fishhooks. I remember baiting hooks with earthworms I had dug up by hand from the damp soil in the pasture next to the creek, the way those slimy brown bodies writhed as I hooked them in sections, making each one into an 's.' Dad said earthworms might still live even if you break them in half or in sections. He said they have seven hearts and don't need them all to survive. And I think I do remember watching halved earthworms wiggle along different paths after being split apart. Minnows were baited differently, the point of the hook entering through the eye and coming out the other side of their thin heads.

My dad and I played catch, too, and not just for fun either. Dad insisted I not flinch when he beamed the ball at my worn leather glove, suspended between my chin and sternum. "Don't close your eyes. Watch the ball and you won't get hit."

When I dodged the ball, shifting to the left or right, he yelled at me, "Don't be afraid of the ball!" So I learned precision, snagging balls on a path with my face, my shin, or the propane tank behind me. I thought he was training me for something. I thought I might get to play on a team. So I sucked it up when he made me pitch til dark, refusing to go inside until I landed a fast pitch straight into his stationary glove. If he had to, he'd make me angry on purpose. He said it made me throw faster. If I was mad enough, I'd go in for dinner certain that the dull thud of cork against leather had stung his palm. Happy it might have hurt a little.

I stopped playing catch with my dad when he forbade me to try out for the baseball team. It was an all boy's team, he said. Still, when I was older, I volunteered to catch pop-flies for my brother when he practiced at home between game days.

*couldn't verify whether pop flys, pop fly's or pop flies is correct -- none of them seem right. :)

Original Prompt, Week 2

Text: "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

This essay excerpt works to broaden the reader's perspective by comparing the experience of Antigua's tourists to the experience of the natives. Kincaid doesn't mind painting an ugly picture of tourists (who could of course be you or me, but at any rate are certainly European or American). She captures the escapist expectations of an island holiday, only to inform us that the natives "cannot go anywhere . . . are too poor to go anywhere . . . [are unable] to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure (264).

It's all about challenging perception: tourists come for the promise of sunny, dry days, for example, while natives suffer the realities of drought. Kincaid often introduces a loaded image or fact with, "You may say" or "You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder" or "You must not wonder," a writing strategy that suggests what you should say or should wonder when you come to the island. If you are thinking and observing, she suggests, you will wonder certain things. For example, "You must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it" followed a few sentences later by "the contents of your lavatory might, just might, graze gently against your ankle as you wade carefree in the water, for you see, in Antigua, there is no proper sewage-disposal system" (262).

Prompt: What do you have inside information about? I've heard horror stories about hotel sheets not being changed/washed for weeks, food dropped on the floor in restaurants served to the customer anyway, and the tip of a finger being found in a package of ground beef. Is there something you want your audience to seriously rethink? Something about which we "must not wonder?"

Junkward Quotes 1-4, Week 2

1) "The devil will drink your kool-aid, eat your cookies, and make you like it."

2) Mother: "Your shoes are on the wrong feet."  Daughter (6): "These are the only feet I've got."

3) "Loud children will be pressed between the pages of very large books." ~sign at Elder's Bookstore in Nashville

4) "She's an 'I love you' whore."