Korean Marriages

My dad got to talking tonight about how he and my mom married. It was in South Korea, after they met in Japan. My brother wanted to know if there was a large ceremony; nope. He wanted to know if there was a ceremony, period; nope. This was a marriage by paperwork. Sounds exciting, no?

While Koreans do have traditional weddings, my mom and dad opted out. They went through what really makes you married (proof besides to each other), and visited a...ward? I can't recall the term now, but analogous to a courthouse. They then began a seven-station trek.

Their journey was spawned by the way Koreans marry. In America, all you need to do to get hitched is get a certificate. That's the initial, and potentially sole, record of the relationship between a couple. There's no telling if either person was before married, or even currently married, on record. There is -no- centralized record system that'd be necessary to determine that. Hence, bigamy is incredibly easy in the 'States.

In South Korea, however, there is a much stronger sense of family, besides culturally: Up until recently (a decade or three ago, maybe less), this was the process: I'm going to describe it as man-woman, because I don't have a clue if the Korean culture allows for same-sex marriage. Put simply, the woman would remove herself from her family tree.

The link to her family would not be lost, of course. The rest of her life would simply be spent in the family of her husband, tree and all. This family-record system is a centralized item in the government, so a family tree is simple to query.

Recently, there was a push for men to move themselves to their wife's tree, and that happens now at the choice of the couple.

I don't know what the process is like for two Koreans to marry, but for an American to marry a Korean, as my dad did my mom, the process is arduous. Seven different forms have to be filled out, each at their own buildings. This was the wedding my parents had. The ending was a surprise for them, though.

The process started at courthouse 1, and then ran off to six other buildings to have my mom's tree trimmed. They finally returned to the first courthouse, their forms filled out. The administrator took the forms, and sanctified them with a remark.

"You know, you were married three stops back."

For the Composer of the Rattler's Narrative

To regular readers of Forest-Shaded Howls: In writing about the events of Olympia Chamber Orchestra during my first year in the group, I was freely dealing stinking opinions of the contemporary compositions. I usually used The Rattler's Narrative as an example of something that made no sense to me and didn't seem worthy of praise; I used this piece as a negative example in seven entries. On the last entry, about 20 days after I published it, the composer found out about all of this amazing negative publicity for that piece, radiating from someone in the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. I don't give any doubt to his method of finding me -- I was, and right now still am, the only relevant Google hit for The Rattler's Narrative (at least, on the first page). Understandably, he had two cents to give, and wrote me a letter, located here, as the last comment on the page.

I saw that letter almost exactly a minute after I woke up the same morning. I got started on a response immediately, but was eventually sidetracked by work and school. I can't bring myself to write a word on an OCO update until I have this business from last year, that I rudely provoked, taken care of.

This is my response.

To the composer, Richard Burkhardt:

As you gave me the courtesy of identifying yourself right off the bat, I shall try to let you know who I am. There is a name here but it may jog your memory to let you know that I am the tall violist of OCO that volunteered to sing bass in The Rattler's Narrative. This may seem like I two-facedly gave you a slight stabbing in the back; however, I volunteered because of a lack of available performers, and I absolutely abhor a show lacking because of no performers' interest. I did my part to assure a smooth show; what the orchestra did and did not do, however, remains completely distinct of that, and really their own issue. So please understand, the only insulting orchestra member who wrote badly about the piece on the internet (myself) does NOT officially represent the opinions of anybody, save himself. I would like to note at this time that as this is a personal weblog, I really can't claim representing opinions of anybody but myself.

This weblog, as a [not-so] private journal, is my freedom to record my thoughts, to inform others, and/or to be a complete jerk. Every person on the internet is entitled to do any, all, or none of the above. I do apologize that I took this right far outside of polite context in quite a few cases, however. I had to check for myself to see if I did say you "sucked." I realize now that I did crassly throw you and Ms. Warde unto and under that adjective; that was overstepping my boundaries of discussion of people, and for that I do apologize. I had intended to express my sour opinion, once again, on the composition that parts of the OCO played. Some of what I said about your work also was uncalled for (citing myself, "Contempocrap"); I also apologize to you and Ms. Warde for those stinking excerpts.

What I wrote about the pieces was born out of an extreme clash of tastes. While I acknowledge that there are people, particularly yourself, who enjoy modern compositions, and who enjoy mixing politics and abstract music into them, I believe I have expressed many times on this weblog that I am not one of those people. (I don't suspect you to be a regular enough reader to know that, but I'd like to note that I have stated that before.) I personally believe that this music which is so far abstracted from the relatively "Simple" world of themes, melodies, and form is doomed -- doomed to be lost to archives of academia as the political themes evolve away; and as the few people intimate with the pieces either die (taking their familiarity with them) or forget, the music will be left behind like so much poetry, and difficult to approach without appropriate training and background. This belief may stem from my shallow inability to appreciate poetry and most other expressive arts from people I don't know that aren't wholly amazing or perfectly-enough written; that is also an issue of time vs. sheer mass of subject matter.

However shallow that may make me, I won't say I'm an automatic fan of fame. I did not look forward to Mr. Staebler's piece because he was famous. That may have appeared to be the case, since he was the only composer OCO commissioned with a compositional history introduced to the orchestra in the year I've been there -- I apologize if we were informed of your background and my memory has omitted it. The point is, Mr. Staebler's fame wasn't a hooking point of his work, but the point that he was invited back for more compositions in countries around the world showed he had a moderately received reputation. As for the piece he composed for us, you've already read what I had to say about that.

I've let my opinion be open on the internet, exposed to anybody who would view it. I take risks by doing that, as your fairly deserving letter shows. However, I take the same risks as a performing musician (somewhat riskier because I am a student of mathematics, not music). I am open to the public's eye, and they have every right to say I have a good timbre, a good volume -- or that I suck. That's the risk every artist takes -- to have some member(s) of the population think his/her work just, "Wasn't up to par," or however they may so decide to express that phrase. Of course, as the most vocal negative critic you had with that one work, I won't try to deny you your write to respond to what I wrote, over the last 7 months or now. I do regret writing critical words about you as a person; I actually happened to find you pleasant to listen to, in that interlude between concerts. So, in response to your letter, I will edit out what I wrote about you, but as for the rest, I believe it would be cowardly to remove what I bore. I will note that what I wrote on this blog are my own thoughts, independent of the OCO, and anybody who takes offense to my severity can read this (hardly brief) correspondence.

As for your two last questions, I have the quirky answer for the penultimate: A "Swing Jig" is a move in East-Coast Swing Dancing, where the two partners are chest to chest, slightly on each others' right, and rhythmically kicking through each others' legs. It is a move done when you're familiar and friendly with your partner, for obvious male security reasons. In a political setting, admittedly the Swing Jig doesn't exist, and serves only to suggest an intimacy of some degree with the social topic. That is an example of the less-than-stellar writing and phrase-coining to be found on my blogs from time to time. However, this is a personal journal, free of rigorous standards -- for better or worse.

And, on the ultimate question: Great experiences in a group, to be remembered, cherished, and retold (or reperformed), are probably one of the greatest things we can do socially. While I do hold that notion dear, I fear that the OCO last year wasn't the place for a "Cherished Experience," by your account. My less-than-friendly commentary on your work probably exemplifies that. I do admire that you at least tried to have one of those experiences in the far-off location of Olympia. I admire that, as a person whose enjoyed social acts happen to be almost solely within Olympia. I hope you accept my apology.

--Alex Nelson

on Welsh's Lack of Franck Love

I was quite happy to give the opening speech for the evening November concert. I didn't realize that by citing Maestro Welsh's speeches at the petting zoo that I was, "Stealing material" from a talk he was going to have with the audience. He did realize it, though, and of course, let the whole house know that I had over-foreshadowed on a speech he was to have. He also ensured that I didn't steal his Thunder once more by asserting "I'M going to tell the story, Alex," before he presented the tale of Der Freischütz. I was amazed that I struck a chord (pardon the pun) by nabbing a bit of the Franck away from Maestro Welsh. I was even more surprised at the board meeting on the 10th, eight days after the concert.

Mr. Welsh started the meeting with a bit of discussion about the Franck, the concert, the rehearsal after the concert, la, dee, "I don't like the Franck," dah.

...What was that?

[BIG BOLD QUOTATION TEXT]
"I don't like the Franck." --John Welsh
[/end BIG BOLD QUOTATION TEXT]

You may be having one of those awkward moments of silence right now. The board had one, too.

He sure put up a fight with me before the concert. But now he doesn't even like the piece? This reminds one of last year's spring rehearsals and concert. He gave a fine speech at the last rehearsal, congratulating us on our hard work. It moved me to tears and I couldn't help but give him a huge hug then and there. Of course, amidst the orchestra's plentiful laughter, there was much grumbling from his general direction. Some of that grumbling + mumbling somewhat returned the sentiments--along the lines of "Yeah, love you too." After the concert, when he was overjoyed with the orchestra's work and gave congratulations through the principal strings, here was his order of operations: (1) Shake Ben's hand. (2) KISS Kyla on cheek. (3) Stare and look confused at Alex's offered cheek. (4) Shake hands with Lee. So much for returning sentiments.

I think the title of Maestro with John Welsh explains his contrary acts of varying compassion. "John Welsh" has no anagrams, but the letters of "Maestro John Welsh" can spell "Jolts hams nowhere." Is that the maestro in a nutshell? You decide.

--Alex Nelson, your debatably friendly neighborhood student representative

The Third Lie

This was one of the "Response" essays from my Writing 102 class. The class was assigned three essays to read; that weekend, they all had something to do with either statistics or 'fuzzy' numbers. I'll give you the titles of the essays I quoted now, since its sorta anticlamactic to end a blog entry with a Works Cited page.

____

Works Cited

Budiansky, Stephen. "The Numbers Racket: How Polls and Statistics Lie." Hatch 164-171.

Hatch, Gary Layne, ed. Arguing in Communities. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.

Lutz, William. "From Doublespeak." Hatch 171-177.
____

There was a quote that Lutz used to end his essay, supposedly from Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics" (177). The authors Lutz, and Budiansky revolve around the same topic, from essentially the same viewpoint: Statistics are the Third Lie.

The Third Lie is considered a lie because of a simple concept in statistics. The mathematics of statistics involves analyzing large amounts of data and seeing how far data fall from the 'norm' of the sample, which is defined by the data en masse. The theory is fine and well, but there is a fundamental underlying problem with statistics: the data. At a dinner, I was in a conversation with one of the executives of Washington State Department of Social Health and Services, and a statistical model came up as a topic. "Now, this model addresses one of the most fundamental issues of statistics..." he started, until I interrupted, "Gathering them?"

While it drew a sagely chuckle from everyone in the room, it was, in context, equal to a well-placed joke about the weather that one would tell on any normal day. To gather raw, unbiased (by the pollster) data is a difficult science of itself. No amateur with a clipboard can draw good data from a crowd. I speak of this as one of those amateurs.

I had a fine exercise in gathering data for a response-to-Freire survey. I surveyed my brother first, who had no objections to answering questions, and answered honestly. That was the most success I had with my surveying career, though; the next person I asked was also a good friend of mine, and after I got the last Boolean response from him, he told me this: "Nobody tells the truth when they see a clipboard and pencil."

I showed up to the next class with six sets of survey answers. Because of what my good friend told me, and my absolute disgust in public opinion polls in the first place, I just faked the last four entries. "...All too rarely is the truth behind the numbers questioned" (Budiansky, 165) - thanks to rarity, I got away with supplying four imaginary opinions. As Budiansky showed the illegal-drug-trafficking industry's 'imaginary number,' I too gave some data to be used without questioning; I just couldn't be sure that anything I would be receiving was the truth, since my poor short-term memory hitches a clipboard to me for data gathering. (See footnote 1)

I discovered, after the survey project was finished, that I had made an error in the survey without thinking about it. In drafting the questions, I had added one word to a question (not my partners; I was alone in suggesting it). I biased a question by inserting one word, emboldened here:
"Would you think the majority of your time in school was blatant memorization?"
"Loaded questions...are one way results can be tilted" (Budiansky, 168). I know I at least influenced the answer of my friend to that question. Of course, I got the answer that I wanted; he and my brother both said yes to that question.

Thus by their yeses, and my predictions that all of the people that I would ask that question would say yes, I got my first illicit poll to give the results I was looking for. Though, everyone in my group would have come to the 'yes' vote on that question with or without my numeric contribution - they all got yeses too, and I will assume them to have shown a little more dignity than I did, by getting flesh-and-blood yeses to prove our point. "Polls seem to present concrete, specific evidence" (Luntz, 174), but as both essay authors made clear, this concrete is only as rock-solid as you are told.

Footnotes:
1.) Was I justified in doing this? Of course not; however, will there be billions spent upon my decision? Since that is also a no, I felt a little less guilty about inventing 66% of my data; however, you all have my confession.

Advertising excerpt

Nike chose Pruett, a racecar driver, as a spokesperson as the company entered the Indy racing scene (Goldman & Papson, 41). Pruett was, according to the authors' implications, chosen because of his "do it" attitude, exemplified by racing after breaking his backbone in a crash. So, does advertising choose us, or make us choose, because of an attitude? If this attitude that fits the product is present, then must we sponsor this product? If so, advertising has found a new system of measurement; advertising will become a Boolean science, applying a string of 0's and 1's, falses and trues, to each individual for each mutually exclusive "attitude." If the product market continues to grow, one can imagine a second billion-bit long string of information that represents us as individual people, one that could even rival our first definitive information string. Thus shall the age of DNA pass, into the age of the "socially relevant."

Self-Assessment

The last major essay of Writing 101 is usually a Portfolio of 101 work. In this portfolio, for Lisa Lawrenson's class, was to be two revised essays and a self-assessment essay that covered my two revisions and my thoughts on my reading, writing, collaboration, and critical thinking.

At first, I decided to write about Vaughn, instead of the essay requirements. (I will never cease to be disappointed with the one hundred and seventy-eight classroom hours I burned away under that woman's watch.) I eventually snaked all of the other requirements into the essay.

I got an A on the six-page essay; I got an A on the portfolio; and Lisa announced to the class that my self-assessment essay was the most entertaining one that she had read.

Now, before I present it to you, I'd just like to note that I do not actively encourage anybody to point Vaughn in this direction. (Note my use of 'actively.' I wouldn't care if she stumbled upon it by misfortune, but I don't particularly want that misfortune to occur from any of us. I've gotten my A out of her, and that's about all that I needed from the class she pinned her students down with.)

Without further ado, please enjoy my finest essay of Writing 101.

______

My writing history that I can stand and be proud of begins in June of 2002, which at the time of authoring this essay, was about six months ago. In my writing's prehistory, all that I produced with Microsoft Word were bland, dry, or obscure papers with poor MLA citation, if any, mainly because of most of my English classes from high school.

My Junior (and coincidentally, my Freshman) English teacher was a burned out husk of a K-12 grunt. She utilized the overhead and markers on transparencies once a day, and then left the transparency for the four later classes to copy. She had us color in class, as juniors, with markers on printer paper. She taught writing in two single-day lessons: parallel structure, and a diagram for the five-point, compare-and-contrast essay. Worst of all, two of her assigned essays were papers applying that diagram, of minimal length three double-spaced pages; worse than the worst, she assigned but three essays for the year, and gave three weeks to do each. In fairy tales, most things come in 3's, like Goldilocks's three bears and the three little pigs. In that woman's class, notably the bad things came in 3's.

Happily I greeted the end of that academic year, and jumped straight into summer with school. Now, I was enrolled for a writing class at Evergreen. I spent that summer in a pair of classes of Sara Rideout's "Rhetoric" series (Clarity and Elegance). The Rhetoric of Clarity exposed the bad writing that exists in the world, particularly in Sociology journals, and commanded us to fix it. For the final project of the first class, we were to take a sample essay that we wrote and revise it for clarity; I picked the worst of my three essays from my last English class.

Re-reading that sole essay with a mind tuned to elements of writing was disappointing. I thought the essay was garbage cooked up to satisfy an assignment that the Rhetoric of Elegance class unanimously voted stupid. Sara, at first glance, thought the essay was a warning that she "finally had a clinically insane person in her class." What else could come from an essay on the five senses in a natural place? I revised that essay as my final project for the summer, finishing the class.

I walked away from the "Rhetoric" series with six pieces of writing under my belt. I wrote a literary sandwich paragraph, with about four levels of depth; I wrote about being myself, but feeling puny in my Physics class next to a 6'6" behemoth of a jolly man; my favorite of the half dozen, though, was a paragraph on my brother's habit of waking up at noon.

A consistent point of all of this writing, though, was that none of my writing was college-level, though it was produced in a college class. The high school essays were all fairly useless, and the Evergreen writing felt clever, but not intellectual. Only in Writing 101 did I finally make college-level papers. In two of those papers, I wrote arguments that couldn't argumentatively persuade by their first versions that I turned in as "final." I set to revising them through a practice that Sara Rideout left me with from the Rhetoric of Elegance: I used the comments of my peers, instructor, and a different personal perspective to make these essays more persuasive.

Collaboration was my forte in my Evergreen class; every four-hour class session revolved around discussing the essays written by class members, revising them, and so forth. I had every intention of bringing my forte to Writing 101 as well. I made it a point to avoid one-word answers on peer review sheets, since I knew how little information could be gleaned from a Boolean response like "Yes, the essay improved." Unfortunately, my Evergreen experience left me with the four-hour timeframe to think in, instead of the allotted sixty-five minutes. I didn't realize that I would have a problem with this truncated evaluating period until peer review for essay two: I spent forty to forty-five minutes on one essay, writing a bit over a page of comments for the peer review worksheet response. I only read one other person's essay that day, and I was in a group of four people.

Most of the writing I do in my peer reviewing is fairly critical, almost to the point of not even thinking critically for the author's arguments. I note whatever I find odd about essay structures, like paragraph flow or ignored ideas, in most of my peer review sheets. I do try to keep cheery and friendly about my criticism, though; in peer-reviewing one person's essay revision, I summed up the flow of his four-page essay that had five paragraphs in this sentence: "Your paragraphs are ginormous." I hope that some joker in his high school pointed out the next level of gigantic and enormous like someone did in my school.

The peer review that I've received, though, has been (nicer? more casual?) friendlier. Most of my reviewers liked my essays, not saying much otherwise. As a result, I've done most of my revising by being as picky as possible with my essays - at least, with essay three. Essay two couldn't get the same picking-over that essay three got, mainly because of the almost bigoted thesis.

I have had the darnedest time thinking of theses to use as bases of my essays. For essay two, I thought to myself that it would be pretty easy to define an American Dream based on the required sources, but that definition would be anything but friendly. Starting to feel a crunch for time, I finally settled on a thesis a week before the essay was due. Essay two was written on racism and white social superiority in America, and it required some hard thinking based on the work of Billy Frank, Jr., Anne Garland and Malcolm X. To write the essay without freezing my face into a permanent grimace, I even made my writing a little narrow-minded to stay true to my thesis. This almost angrily argumentative state that I imbued the essay with didn't leave much room for other arguments, though. When revising time came, I had to add both another source and another side to my "American Dream" essay. I tried adding Thomas Jefferson, mainly because I wanted the world to know that Jefferson called blacks stinky by race, but a stink alone does not make an argument. By the instructor's suggestion, I added an essay on the Great American Frontier by Turner. Using Turner's fairly optimistic viewpoint, I introduced the element of enterprise to my essay. I junked my old ending paragraph to fit enterprise in, and ended up concluding with an example of defeat of skin colors through cotton (Nelson, "American" 3).

Before I could come up with that new ending paragraph, though, I had read through my previous conclusion dozens of times, trying to change it so that I could at least happily call it a conclusion. After I stopped using my normal reading method, and after I wrote something better, I realized the conclusion was garbage and deleted all of it.

I have a fairly passive method of reading. I will let my eyes start on word one and travel to the end of the paragraph at a constant speed, only re-reading if I realize my mind stopped paying attention to my eye's input. I have recently added to this process with the wonderful invention of Sticky Notes - I'll write down something that I believe fairly important to the assignment, or just silly, and slap that note in the text, to be discovered later. On the silly note, I made sure to note Jefferson declaring blacks noisome because they had darker skin.

I tend to not remember the most critical, or even useful, of facts from my readings. From last year's reading, the only phrase I can remember clearly from my text of history text A History of Western Society is, "the daily consumption of 'heroic' amounts of beer." This is not to say that I don't remember anything of practical use. With the power of critical thinking and Sticky Notes behind me, I wrenched about a half-dozen ideas from Dreams in the Mirror, E.E. Cummings's biography, to use in my third essay.

I chose to base my third essay on E.E. Cummings and his poem "ITEM." This was my hardest essay to write, because of the empty-headed legacy of my K-12 English teacher. Her poetry lectures were the same topics that I had been getting since the seventh grade, not even evaluated further.

As a result, poetic analysis comes too slowly for me; I can't find "significance" in poetic passages on my own, due to the induced and absolute turnoff to anything related to poetry. In class discussion, I once lost the purpose of a poem by Wendy Rose by starting an argument I couldn't finish; I finally got the purpose when someone whispered it to me for the third time from the back of the room. Analyzing the poems of E.E. Cummings, I didn't even acknowledge the notion of metaphor.

Equipped as poorly as I was, I used a form for analysis of a poem to prime writing my third essay. The response to this sheet ended up being my essay that I turned in for my final draft. Unfortunately, no item on the poetic analysis sheet pertained to an opposing interpretation, so I didn't have one in the final version of my third essay.

In revising the third essay, one goal was to create an alternative viewpoint of the poem, and then defeat that as convincingly as possible with my old viewpoint. I never met this goal. Instead, I ended up defending the woman denounced throughout the essay. I even used Cummings's ideas as a shield to defend her, encompassing her and a compassionate man (Nelson, "ITEM" 3).

I know that my third essay was at least persuasive of one point. A classmate who reviewed the draft of its revision commented that she wouldn't enjoy E.E. Cummings's poetry as much, because my essay convinced her that he was "a dirty old man."

After taking Writing 101, I can list off proud accomplishments. I've written college-level essays, not just paragraphs and short stories in a college class. I've written essays from viewpoints that I wouldn't dare tactlessly bring up in a normal conversation, showing that I can adopt any viewpoint, given the right sources. Finally, I've written about poetry in a persuasive essay, and even convinced someone of an idea presented in that essay. I can rest easy, for a few weeks anyway, knowing that my K-12 English teacher and her brain-dead legacy stand defeated.

Sandwich of Many [Literary] Dimensions

Double the fun of a single slice of bread, Ken set two bread slices on a plate as the basis of a snack on the patio. Having opened one of two jars, Ken spread peanut butter on one slice, resetting it on the plate after the last stroke. After exhuming contents of the jar labeled "Strawberry," Ken sloppily crafted the second half of his sandwich, salivating at the thought of the first bite. His hands being occupied by bread and butter-knife, he dropped his second slice, now plummeting away from the tabletop. As Ken watched in horror, it undecidedly rotated, freely, touched only by gravity. Thus it became, "The Decker."