A Red Stamp

"If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust, if they dusty will dirt a surface that has no extreme grace, if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue."

                                  -From Objects in Tender Buttons by Gertrude Steiner

It was a week ago when I received this abnormal story in class from my english teacher, Lacy. I was suppose to seek the meaning of one of the story in Tender Buttons. Quickly I skimmed through each of the eight stories listed on the paper since I was rushed to pick one as soon as possible. I couldn't really understand the first seven stories, but the last story listed I felt confident into looking at. It was called "The Red Stamp." Although I was not a hundred percent in comprehension, I was looking very hard at the words. Sometimes I would even scratch my head to help me dig in. The beginning of the phrase, "If lily are lily..." caught my attention because somehow this writer questions the identity of a lily. The very last part of the story, "if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue," tells me that something needs to be changed in order to make things back to normal. It took me a while to figure it out, but there was not a right or wrong. I knew I had to be creative so I played around with the story and I finally agreed with my mind what this piece meant to me.

Overall Message:  If I am not who I am, or if I act like somebody I'm not, I need to stop imitating and start being original. 

Wilfrid Gordon Mcdonald Partridge

I believe I've heard this story on November 3rd, from my English 1101 teacher, Lacy Manship. It was an early morning, at around eight o'clock when class started. Lacy read to my class a story called Wilfrid Gordon Mcdonald Partridge. This book wasn't any ordinary book, it was a child's book, so I began to wonder about this book. As Lacy was reading, she held the book high, facing the pages of pictures toward us. Suddenly I was in a different atmosphere.

I felt like I was in kindergarten for a minute. I mean, my mind sort of flipped. I was in a flashback. I remember the sounds of the pages flipping, the easy simple terms used to talk to children, the picture being larger than the words on the pages, and the slow pace of story telling.

Being able to grasp in my childhood's vision during story telling showed me how easy it was to be excited when hearing a story.

This is something I wrote in my journal for the Writing Into the Day, and this is my version of Wilfrid Gordon Mcdonald Partridge


"Something warm. My bed is as warm as a hot shower. My parents are as warm as the sun touching upon the earth. My friends are as warm as the inner core of the earth. My food should be warm. My school is a warm place inside. My clothes are as warm as me. Being warm is awesome!"

Annotated Bibliography

San, Randy. Rob's Eating Underlife Interview. 28 October 2012. wmv file.

In this cite, my ethnography group and I interviewed a college student at UNCC. We asked him some questions, some including why do he eat what he eat and who do he eat with? Some of Rob's response was "I like eating southern fried chicken" and "I usually eat with a group of individuals." This interview gave us a general conclusion that he is a very southern guy and he's actively social. My group concluded lots of things from Rob. It was the straight answers that we were looking for, it was the underlife behind the answers that we we interested in. We could tell what kind of guy Rob is, where he's from, what he likes, ect.




Eating in UNCC Crown Dining Hall, University of Charlotte. 28 October 2012. Public photograph by Drew. JPEG file.

In this cite, my ethnography group and I decided to have the experience of an average college student's eating habits by going to Crowns Dining Hall. Honestly my two group members, Drew and Rabee, usually eats here except for me. It was my first time! I wanted to not only experience a typical eating place for a resident college student here, but to see if I can find what type of people eat here. I was starving so as soon as my group and I arrived to Crown, I grabbed lots of food. I ate lots of junk food, including burgers, fries, pizza, and hot dogs. I began to ask a question to myself, are some students here not watching the kind of food they eat and not aware on how this food can affect them in the rare future? This was the underlife of eating how much of whatever you can eat. There are people out there who will eat disorderly and who will eat healthy, this can also show what kind of person these people are.




UNCC Crown Dining Hall Map, University of Charlotte. 28 October 2012. Public photograph by Randy San. JPEG file.

In this cite, my group drew a map of the whole Crown Dining Hall. In this map, we showed more than just people and objects. For example, we labeled where most of the students were eating. Why is that? Maybe because there are more seats available at that area or maybe because of the kind of people already there. We spotted where the mini groups, single individuals, and large groups sat at. Lots of groups were separated by race. I could tell that most african americans like to sit near other african american groups as to whites. Some group at the same kind of food as some ate different kinds of food. This told me that certain groups hangs out because of their likes. I was able to see the WHY to where people were sitting. It's easily said that people sit somewhere because it's a place to eat, but location and setting affects people choices, giving away that person's identity.