Welcome / Reaction Paper One

Welcome to our course blog! This week, you'll be posting your first reaction paper/essay here. The topic is Kim Zorn Caputo's essay in Blind Spot magazine. I encourage you to approach reaction papers with a sense of freedom in your writing. They are truly opinion papers that will give me and your classmates an idea of how you felt about the assigned reading. I also encourage you to insert images where appropriate. The beauty of a blog is that is allows us to do this pretty easily.

Here is a sample reaction paper from a previous class:

Our memory is indeed one of life’s greatest, most precious gifts.  Often, we take it for granted until the day it fails us.  Having worked with dementia or Alzheimer’s  patients for years, this topic hits home.  Patients who are starting to forget often have a journal where they write down each days happenings so that the next day when they have forgotten the last, they can look back and see what went on.  Often times, their families will put together photo albums of common, everyday things as well as photos of those who are special to them in a hope that they will not forget. 

Kim Zorn Caputo has an interesting way of describing how memories of long ago can be inadvertently triggered when doing the most menial of tasks.  We are reminded through her writings it is important to document our lives in some fashion so that we have that to look back on when our memory fails us.  Without a memory to remind of us of all of our love, family, friends, good times, etc…we are basically empty.   Through art, we all have a way to document our lives.

The photos in Blindspot #3 were amazing.   The two I found to be the most tied to the subject of memory were the photos by Robert Selwyn and Duane Michaels.  Both of these encouraged extra thinking and processing of the visual information on the part of the onlooker.  The first photo, untitled, by Robert Selwyn was blurry, a little creepy and reminded me of an old-time puppet doll.  The second photo by Duane Michaels was a photo of a man obscured by light.  Both are great photos to spark thought. 

The photo I found to be my favorite and the most interesting was the photo by Vernon Reid of the cemetery.  It actually gave me chills upon seeing it.  It is so sad to me that we all work so hard our whole lives to be “somebody”.   It seems so important in today’s society to have certain things or to look a certain way.   This photo brings me back to reality that we are all the same, we all have the same destiny.  All these “things” we all think we “need” are, in the end, meaningless.