Randomness

I am unsure of what to write about as our class comes ever closer to the end. I think I will be upset when it's over, I actually enjoyed learning about Edmonton with my peers, it was amazing to have to many different views and opinions on issues we discussed in class. I've decided since this class is about all of the differences that brought our city together I will randomly comment on a few things. I was on the bus the other day thinking about the poetry classes we had and the whole talking about the stars and the gods, listening to the new Metric songs for the first time, when the chorus to Front Row came on:
"Burned out stars they shine so bright
All of us
Burned out stars they shine so bright"
It's true that stars when they burn out tend to shine brighter to us because we are seeing them explode from earth and it takes a while for the brightness to hit earth. I then came around to this thought that Edmonton is like a burned out star. I feel that we are glowing brighter now than we ever have before. The city is moving forward, it is expanding and we are becoming more culturally diverse. It lead to something more profound at the time, but I have had a stressful week and did not get my thought out completely but I thought I would share that random blurb into my thoughts. I also decided that to commemorate the poetry classes I would try my hand at a not so good version of a haiku for Edmonton, so here it goes:
Edmonton is home
many things hidden and unearthed
continuing to learn.
TADA!! Okay, so it's not that great but I am bored and tried. So I think I will end this post here, I am sure you have all discovered how much I lose my mind when I am stressed about finals, my thought process goes all over the place. Just one last thing before I go. Remember when we were talking about our heroes having different sides that might not always be great. For example, Emily Murphy and her involvement in Eugenics, well I found out something about Dr. Seuss. Beloved creator of Cat In The Hat also was involved in political cartoons, and I came across this one that I found very interesting. What do you all think?


http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/axis-conquers-philippines-7.jpg

Edmonton... Edmon-mum!

The other day we were in our "World Cafe" and we talking about Edmonton personified. I decided that if Edmonton was a human, she would be a mum. Now I know it seems kind of silly but I decided a little while ago that Edmonton was a mum. She can be all sorts of different kinds of mum, a cool mum, a hippie mum, a business mum or even a farming mum. She can from all different kinds of cultures or backgrounds and still be our mum. I think of Edmonton as a mum mainly because being from St. Albert, makes me feel like she is always looking out for us. I feel like as St. Albert we are that child that mum's thought was such a darling as a child but now we are teenagers and are being rebellious. We refused to be annexed, we even tried to pull the..."Why don't you become St.Albert?!?!" like the little brats we are. We are spoiled and whine a lot, but Edmonton is still makes the rules and plans fun stuff for the summer so we have something to do. Edmonton has other children too, and keeps some of us close... because some of her children went wild *Fort Mac*, some of her children just decided it was time to go, or be closer to their father once Edmonton and Calgary got a divorce and now they battle over everything! Edmonton, to me, has always been a feminine city (probably because of the culture and art). Calgary is more likes a dad, with it's stampede and the sprawl of the city. I don't know, thinking about Edmonton as a mum makes me feel comforted...probably because I am from her spoiled child and always feel like Edmonton will take me back under her wing.

Who ya gonna call? GHOST BUSTERS!

I figured out something very interesting while researching for my essay. Oral and written works become so varied over time! The same ghost story about the Firkins house in Fort Edmonton Park has been butchered and maimed over the years, twisting the facts about the house and making the oral history change. I find it amusing that they say a boy died in the house and suddenly it's the Firkins son that died (they had no son). From there the story takes on dramatic twists and turns such as he had TB or it was actually a ghostly woman that pushed the last owner of the house down the stairs! They become ridiculous over time, taking on new lives and fully coming away from the history of the house. It made me think. I know that history is heard from the winners perspective but this has me questioning how much truth is behind some stories. I mean, someone could just come up with an outrageous story that over time people believe is fact and then it becomes new history. I tried to tell my friend that no one died in the house and she got angry at me saying yes there was because there was a ghost and it left me a little exasperated. I told her "Dude, I am looking into this place for my essay and a guy in my class (Dickie) who works at Fort Ed even told me there was no one that died in this place." Her reply was "I don't believe you, this is like an oral history Emily and I don't think that books would write about it and everyone would know the story if it was false." This then followed with my eye twitching and me having to walk away before I strangled her. It is this experience that has made question how much history and literature I should take to be true, or if I should just take it at face value and leave myself open to other interpretations. It just seems like we are told at a young age that the book, the teacher, the parent is right... but history changes.... it makes me wonder what to believe.

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.

The last couple of classes has had me thinking about past, present and future. The past is something that I never really thought about before. Sure, we all ended up in Edmonton for whatever reason but I never thought about the area past my family's involvement. To read Goyette's book and find out stuff about the area that I live in and how it was settled long before anyone in my family decided to settle is a unique perspective to think about. I now look out my backyard window onto the area where they are digging up ground for the Anthony they are building and wonder about who walked over that land and how they affected the way the land was settled, since my house borders Edmonton and St.Albert. When I thought about how the world is really all the same way it made the earth in itself seem more realistic and approachable, since I am one that has not left North America. This then had me think about my present, about how I am going to school here instead of elsewhere to take my schooling and that I did it to be in the familiar close to home. As well, thinking about Edmonton and the fact that the buildings get torn down whereas in Victoria where I was during reading week keeps very old buildings. I questioned what I thought about this demolition of the old and it made me feel sad that we are losing this past. I think that's why I love visiting cemetaries. I am always trying to find very old gravestones, because that's something that links me to the past with their moss covered words to the beautiful stone beneath. I find these markers comforting in a city that can not see the stone past the grimy moss and has to get rid of the filth. After our discussion last week I thought about how the past and the present as I know it would be gone if the world ended up being taken over by the wildlife. There would be no one to take care of the grounds in the cemetaries, no one to keep the buildings intact and no books or other sources in which to tell our history to future generations, as there would be known. Thinking about the world continuing on as it had before humans ever walked it made me realize that we do live in a circle of time, everything that was will happen again... there was the ground in which we came from, that we then inhabited and die on and go back into the earth. In some bizarre way it made me feel calm knowing that even though humans might not be around forever that the earth is pretty well it's own living creature in itself that will keep aging without us.


~quote by:Maynard J. Keenan