Day by Day

Here are a few segments from “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison that I can either relate to or are foreign to me. I found quite a few segments to build off of, so this may get a bit long.

On page 39 there is a segment that says: “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction.” What this segment means to me is that their ugliness is not physical, but rather it is their pasts that make them ugly. When I think about real-world and individual meaning in this the first thing that comes to mind is tied to religion. I’m Roman Catholic, and live in the United States, so both of those seem to try and force me to think that Muslims (and others of smaller faiths) are lesser and uglier than myself. In ways this is one of the strands underlying the Gulf War today. Personally I think the exact opposite, that no one is lesser or uglier than anyone else, so you could say that this statement is foreign to me.

On pages 44-45 there is a segment where Pecola’s mother is fighting with Cholly (Pecola’s father). At the end of this scene Pecola prays to God that she may disappear. The segment goes on to describe Pecola slowly fading away until her eye’s refuse to fade. The thing that I can relate to regarding this segment is that feeling of wanting to just disappear off the face of the Earth. I don’t feel this all the time, but in the past year alone there were a couple of times. These were some of those times: The very morning of the SJU Move-in day for freshman before I left home to come here (as with convocation a few days later); Right at the end of high school, just bare hours ahead of graduation; when my dad and I stood still after being present for my great-grandmother’s death in Vienna this past April; my 18th birthday; and, oddly, this past Christmas. I can’t say why I felt like disappearing these times, but I just did.

On page 49 there is a segment towards the top that talks about how white men look at black girls. “Distaste lurking in the eyes of all white people.” The thing that this seems to reference is, quite clearly, the whole civil rights battles past and present in the United States and elsewhere. This single line seems to define the very purpose of the civil rights discriminations. Sadly I can relate to this with both my person experiences (as a white observer) in the past, and by simply being an American citizen. These discriminations are a key form of unfairness in our society.

On page 50 there is a segment that says: “Three whores live in the apartment above the Breedloves’ storefront. China, Poland, and Miss Marie.” The names are what caught my interest here. China and Poland are country names, so it makes it seem as if the author is labeling those countries as whores. I know that Toni isn’t, but it certainly still had that feeling for me. But sadly, in history, the United States has been in some situations where that kind of language towards other countries wouldn’t be surprising.

On pages 62-63 there is a segment where a new student comes to the school and the girls feel like calling her names and making fun of her. But after she’s given a locker by one of the other girls they find that they can get along together. This incident seems to reflect the general stereotype that friendships may follow. This is where at first you hate somebody, but later on you become friends. I can relate to this because I know that in my own past I’ve both observed and been a part of this type of friendship growth.

On page 74 there is a segment that says: “We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser.” This represents someone of socially lesser status recognizing that they are brighter, but still socially on a lower platform. Given my gender and race this is directly foreign to me. However, I see this kind of discernment of status as a sign of growth for the affected and treat it as a positive sign towards equality. After all, for any change to be made, the affected need to recognize that there is a change to be made.

On page 84 there is a segment that talks about how a man does not know that women give men their bodies sparingly and partially. In a basic sense, the unknowing that you may not be given all at first is a concept that I venture to relate to. In many instances throughout my life there have been situations where this concept can be applied. A core, yet generalized, example would be when I’ve been learning something and yet the context of said thing was not taught until the end. In more traditional schools this might be quite common. Luckily, from 6th grade forward I was in schools that didn’t teach like this (first Crosswinds to 10th grade, then Avalon to graduation).

Finally, on page 86 there is a segment that says: “The cat will always know that he his first in her affections.” The “he” refers to her husband, not the cat. I can relate to this only on the aspect that it shows prioritized love. Within any family there are moments when you see this, and especially as you’re about to head off to college. I personally saw something a little like this exhibited with my family when my brother (hopefully jokingly) asked to take over my room as I wouldn’t be there much anymore anyways and my mom (entirely independent of me) steadfastly refuses him the option.

As some of you know, I’m Roman Catholic, and so you may be asking, why is Alex posing this question at all? The answer is simply that this was an assignment for my Biblical Tradition course. So, as always, feel free to comment on the assignment in the comments of this blog post.

Here is a link to the first solid assignment I had to work on in my Computer Art 1 course. It was a paper on Ralph Steadman and one of his works, The Sheriff. Feel free to leave comments on this paper in the comments of this blog post. Enjoy, Alex.

One minor goal of mine throughout my college career is to post every single assignment I complete to my blog as soon as I can after the class period in which I turn the assignment in. In doing so I’ll be building a permanent record of all my coursework, but also open all of that work to you all for viewing and commenting on. So here is the first assignment for my First Year Seminar course at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, MN, it is an I AM Poem, not too different in concept from the assignment I did for 10th Grade Biology back in September of 2007. The poem is below:

I am someone who enjoys most of what he does.
I am considerate of others’ feelings and beliefs.
I am deeply connected to my faith.
I am someone who has been in a school that has helped to prepare me for college.
I am a person who likes individual work much better than partner or teamwork.
I am one who loves to read for pleasure, but that may change during college.
I am one of just two family members who were present for a death in the family.
I am a person who has an open mind and heart towards new knowledge.
I am someone that has second-guessed major decisions in the past and present.
I am my own individual self, even while inheriting opinions of my parents.
I am someone who has accomplished lots in these short 18 years.
I am a person who has a seminary professor for a mother.
I am someone whose father has been a consultant in this bad economy.
I am a person with a wide range of skills getting wider by the day.
I am someone who has had a very interesting first 18 years.

Over this entire school year I’ve been writing many senior journals. These were designed to aid in the compilation of my senior autobiography, a final piece that brings many of the senior journals together to answer these three questions:

1. Who you are…
2. Where you’ve been…
3. Where you want to go…

A couple weeks ago I turned in the final draft of my senior autobiography. I decided that I might as well put it online so that any of you who are interested could read it. Feel free to write responses to it in the comments of this blog post.

Yesterday I presented my senior presentation and also finalized my senior project. These were some of my final steps towards high school graduation on June 9th. My senior project was “iPhone Application Development”, and as the primary deliverable I worked on an iPhone App named PF Touch that integrates to the Project Foundry. The software development company that Eric and I created back in October of 2009, named Tenseg, was created as a first step in my senior project. I wasn’t able to complete PF Touch before yesterday’s finalization, but it along with other software development projects that were a part of my senior project are continuing on under Tenseg as independent software development projects. At this point I have only one fairly easy project finalization before I can graduate. I don’t think that the true magnitude of what I accomplished yesterday has quite hit me just yet, but with two or three more school days of having no classes and really no projects I think that it will.

About 2 weeks ago my dad went and got a Dropbox account (I’ve had one for years), and with that had to install the Dropbox Client software onto his iMac (and MacBook Pro, but that isn’t relevant here). So, I quickly went and set up 1Password in my account on that iMac with my Dropbox account. Earlier this week a hint got posted to MacOSXHints that showed how to save an iWeb domain file to a flash drive for editing on multiple Macs. This hint was easily used with my Dropbox in place of a flash drive. But it got me thinking, why wouldn’t this same notion work to sync any application’s user data? As it turns the regular aliasing doesn’t work for root Application Support folders (the apps don’t recognize the link to valid user data in Dropbox), but using a linking method I read about in an earlier iPhone SDK release advisory I got it to work! Here is the procedure to get MyApp’s user data to be syncing with Dropbox:

1. Move the MyApp folder in ~/Library/Application Support to somewhere in your Dropbox (for the purposes of this article that is ~/Dropbox/Synchronization/)
2. Run this command in the Terminal: “ln -s /Users/my-short-username/Dropbox/Synchronization/MyApp /Users/my-short-username/Library/Application\ Support/MyApp”
3. You should now see that the MyApp user data is back where it started but has Dropbox’s “checkmark” or “sync” icon at the bottom-left. This means that the user data is now going to be accessible to MyApp but also synced with Dropbox so MyApp on one of your other Mac’s can utilize the same user data

To set up the user data on another Mac simply do step 2 above. For most applications you will need to have the application quit for data to get synced and should not have the application running on two Macs at the same time (1Password and Growl are working exceptions). The Application Support folders that I have successfully syncing with Dropbox (but without any special setup, like 1Password) are the following:

• Cha-Ching 2
• Console (Apple built-in Utility)
• Delicious Library 2
• Growl
• iWeb
• iWork
• ShoveBox
• SousChef

Keep in mind that this syncing isn’t supported by any of these apps (whereas Agile Web Solutions recommends it for 1Password) so you may run into trouble or data loss. In theory any of the Application Support folders could get synced, but some don’t make sense for syncing and others just won’t work at all. So proceed with these directions at your own risk.

In about 1.5 weeks the second-to-last quarter of high school will end. This past quarter I’ve been in a U.S. Government seminar at Avalon run through the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project (I could probably find a better link if I dug deeper…) by law students at William Mitchell College of Law here in Saint Paul. This seminar has been consistently one of my favorite parts of the block. As a culminating assignment we were put into small groups and assigned a Supreme Court case to learn as much as we can about and then teach to the class in the final two days of the class. My group got assigned Plyler v. Doe, a case on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In simple terms, Texas enacted a law that said they won’t reimburse local school districts for illegal immigrant students taught in their schools. This case was brought against the Supreme Court in 1981 and in 1982 they decided that the law was unconstitutional. As a whole third of our grade on this project we were to write an individual opinion essay. I turned this essay in this morning but doubt that the teachers have read it yet. Nonetheless I felt as if I should put it here for anyone to read. Feel free to add comments on it to the comments of this blog post. Enjoy, Alex.

Like most of the remaining possible senior journal questions there are too many potential answers. But seeing as how this is the final senior journal I’m required to write (the 30th) I really had no choice but to choose one with many answers. On top of that I wanted to challenge myself to answer a question that directly goes against the grain of how I (and the rest of my extended family) are feeling at the moment given that my great-grandmother is at what seems a bit like the brink of death. So we’ll see how much I can answer this.
I guess that I should start with saying that there are only two places at the moment where I feel like I can be perfectly happy. Those are the two places that currently feel solidly like home. The first is where I truly do live, in Saint Paul, MN. Not just my house, but also the two other primary communities separate in which I’m a fairly active member: Avalon and our church faith formation group. Between these three major components is built my primary “home” and place in which I live.
The second place is across the planet, Vienna, Austria (Wien, Österreich im Deutsch). More specifically my great-grandmother’s house and Grinzing, the neighborhood in which she lives. Not unlike my dad, her house has been the most constant “home” and one other place in which I feel truly safe. As my dad was one of the closest grandchildren of Oma my brother and I remain the closest great-grandchildren of Oma’s in how I see it. That’s of course a part of what makes all of what we’ve been going through this week so much harder, but also the solid truth. Though I only remember two of them, I’ve lived in three places throughout these nearly 18 years of my life: Beverly, MA, Boston, MA, and here in Saint Paul, MN. Over all these years Vienna has in many ways been the constant home, even while I really live in the United States.
With that stated I’d have to say that the idea of being “perfectly happy” is an odd concept. Just like us as human beings can never be perfect (in both the religious and secular forms of that idea) any one of us can never truly be perfectly happy. An eternal and subconscious goal is to reach that point, but we never get there. Some, including in rare cases myself, can say that birthdays or other holidays are this point, but really that isn’t the case.
So, in my mind as I see it today, there hasn’t been anytime in memory when I was perfectly happy. I’ve been happy a lot of the time, but being perfectly happy I haven’t ever been. There are even times recently when I know I’ve been the entire opposite, but those I won’t get into here.

There are a few different wordings that I’ve come across for what the golden rule is. Some come from religious backgrounds while others are more secular. None really have different meanings from any others. The one that I seem to think of when asked about the golden rule is this: Treat your neighbors as you’d want to be treated. This encompasses a ton of meaning, but over all it simply ways that if you treat those around you bad you shouldn’t be surprised when all they return the favor with is bad treatment.
I might as well spend at least a small amount of time delving into the other interpretations of meaning. I’ll say up front that they don’t differ much, and that they really are individual interpretations. I truth they differ entirely based on location and religious belief. So, for example, the more old-english/ religious (in my mind) interpretation is “do unto others as you want done unto you”. This taps into the realm of certain religious language I won’t mention in a school assignment. But it does layer into the understanding that the physical acts of how you treat someone aren’t the limits of the golden rule but rather anything you do to anyone around you is applicable to any interpretation of the golden rule.
Furthermore the very existence of the golden rule shows us that not all rules are based on societies separately or as pairs, but that there is a solid single rule that all those others need to follow. You can liken it to the way the United States government is set up. The Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that all of the people follow. All laws need to follow the base requirements that it lays out. In a way the golden rule does this, it is itself the central rule under which all of our separate rules follow.
However, it is quite important to keep in mind that every individual has their own opinion of what the golden rule is and so each of us individually will be building our own way of interpreting a rule as abstractly defined as the golden rule. None of these interpretations are wrong, they all will contain the same basic message, but each will have that individual’s leaning and separate opinion as well.