Summer Time Teacher

Just reread some old blogs to reacquaint myself with myself...

I am not particularly inspired by anything, except maybe this new imac- cheese smile.

I'm in Asheville, North Carolina for the summer...learning in class and through the delightful individuals I have met on this journey.

Asheville, NC is a town seeping with a historical richness. It's a history that's multilayered- one that the passer-through, or even the weekend-stayer might miss. We've been on walking tours and sat on panels that reveal a dark history the beautiful mountain town does not readily reveal. I've marveled in the local art shops, the mom and pop bookstores, and draped myself in the blue mountain landscape. Yet there is a peculiar touch pulling at my delight. My class has illuminated the corner of a more private history, drenched in the very strange syrup our nation was founded- you know the syrup Im talkin about. It is a history of slavery, degradation, segregation, and misrepresentation.

My classes have me thinking a lot- duh, right? So much so that I find myself talking a lot- half of the time about nothing and the other half about everything; there's never much semblance.

I've been thinking a great deal about memory and literacy- not in a related sense, but as individual entities. Memory as a type of rhetoric, as a landscape, as a discourse. In my class we are reading African American lit against this idea of memory (when does memory become collective? how do we measure memory against history? what is the space between history and memory? what is truth? when is memory reliable? how do we account for sites of memory? whose memories have more value than others?) questions I've only begun to scratch at.


In my Hip Hop class, we are studying the myriad facets of Hip Hop and Hip Hop culture. Essentially, we are making  a case for it within the classroom as critical text. (Right up my alley, I know.) I'm intrigued by the concept of multi-modal literacies and how to incorporate them more deliberately into my classroom. I am also engaged with the political work, as Kirkland, my professor always terms it, that Hip Hop is up to and how ignoring it, is furthering a white patriarchal divide.

Despite the nebulous haze I am left with after class, after the readings, after the convos, I am left with ideas surrounding my own experience- my own story. How are our stories  predicated on memory and how does our voicing of them offer validity? A concept I will revisit. My brain hurts.

For now, I have some pictures of my trip. 

Yay pictures! Here are some from my tour of Asheville and of my own tour (:

 The best bookstore I ever found! It's a wine bar, coffee shop, and champagne bar. This is what I want my house to look like.

 One of the views from the highway. I almost crashed taking this...

I thought this was a statue for a week. It was only until I saw someone put a dollar in her basket that I saw her move. She's sooo good. They say she makes 80 bucks a day. hmm...can I stand still?

So, we went to 12 Bones- amazing, clog your arteries, but absolutely worth it food. It's where Obama goes when he comes to town! Here's the menya (menu). 

 On the tour, we walked past many places that were demolished during the Urban Renewal Project (1950s-1970s), one of the largest Urban Renwals in the southeastern region. Thousands of people, predominately African Americans, lost their homes; the effect for many was devastating. This is one of the buildings not yet "developed".

 This a mural on the side of the same building- freshly painted! I think it is about a week old.

 Ok, so this is a movie theatre that shows independent movies-it's not your Lowe's or Regal Theatre. It's a small, local stop. But...

There were two entrances to the movie theatre: one "for whites only," the main one, and this one "for colored's only." It's still there, and if we hadn't been on the tour with a tour-guide who told us this, we might have never known. hmm... what's goin on here?