Multi-Dimensional Peanuts

Bill Rife went out onto his drive and picked up his news paper. The walk from his door to the end of his drive was not a straight line as he would have preferred. Bill’s house sat at an awkward angle as a result of the building restrictions near the Minutemen. Thumbing through the paper he barely caught the names of articles. Khrushchev calls arsenal “nuclear deterrence”, Dr. No topped by sequel, protest held over evolution in… Bill stopped when he reached the page with the comics. Glancing down, he read Peanuts. Bill liked comics. You can’t read them the same way as you read a book. You have to look at the whole picture, reading the words alone won’t tell the whole story. Each panel had to be read separately then viewed as a whole for it to make sense. Scenery, characters, and text all had to be taken into account. Stereographics. He would ask Sue if she had read the strip over the weekend, it was a good one. Just in case he decided to fold the page up and bring it along on Monday.

War Games

The Americans took aim at the Russians on the field below the barn, they slowly cocked their Red Riders and looked down the steel barrel over the open sites.  Three Russians stood oblivious to the attack above them.  The Americans had them out numbered two to one. Drawing their breaths in and slowly releasing them, the Americans picked targets and prepared to fire. Now! A voice from below called. From behind the Americans in the barn a volley of BBs flew their way. Two men were hit, the Russians in the field had retreated to behind a stack of fire wood. The Americans were pinned down. A pincer attack one American screamed. They had been out maneuvered. Popping up to fire, four Americans covered the wounded two as they scrambled for cover. Jimmy and Tommy had been hit.  The BB had bounced off Jimm’y jacket, Tomy’s was stuck in his skin and would need to be popped out with a pocket knife later on. Racking the levers on their Red Riders the Americans fired again.  The Russians won in the end. After the war Russians and Americans alike went back to Jim’s house for dinner. 

Shift 0000-0600

David yawned and stretched as he stared out at the monitors in front of him.  His guards were patrolling with robotic perfection along the fence line.  David had stayed in the military after WWII. He thought those days were hell on earth.  He had fought for the men in his platoon more than anything else.  In his first year, his brother died in a plane crash.  David was told it was technical error, but he blamed the Japs.  David fought for his brother and for his pride of country “belief of justice perverted to revenge and spite.”  Part of him missed those days.  WWII was hell, but it was not the mind screw that this was turning out to be.  Plus in WWII at least you knew who you are supposed to shoot at, today there were commies every where.  Their were even commies in the damn streets of college towns, but those were ones you couldn’t shoot.  Truman said that once that it was communism that destroyed its own citizens.  Well, David thought it was taking too long he was ready of launch one of the Minutemen and end this thing now.  Truman was right, why wait for communism to spread, shouldn’t they do something now, wasn’t that his duty as a soldier?

On the ride home after the movies

With the SPECTERs and Dr. No defeated, what is next for James Bond?  Bond was able to take both Russian villains out without even messing up his perfectly styled hair.  Certainly we have spies like that in Russia.  Now obviously life isn’t a movie and the maniacal Russian masterminds would be harder to spot.  You know they wouldn’t all be dressed in dark leather clothes or lab coats with big mustaches and heavy accents.  Oh hey and a word to the wise… if you meet a scantily clad, super hot girl ask her out.  If you meet a scantily clad, super hot girl with an Eastern European accent run the other way!  Seriously though, we have to have guys as good as Bond over there.  I know he is English, but our guys have to be at least as good as their right?  And the Soviets?  Well… what if their guys are good too?  Do you think they have any here?  What if they do, who would they be after?  Would I know one if I saw him?  What if I do know him?

Truman the Tiger

Shortly after the drop of the atomic bomb, Truman had to stand and address the public on why he felt it a necessary action.  The damage was larger than expected, but he assured the American people that the results of the attack were calculated.  Sitting in Congress years later as the nation wondered if the Soviets would to to them as they had done to Japan, did Truman ever blame himself?  Truman represented a state in Congress. A state that due to its geographic position and lack of many major cities, was probably safe from direct attack.  Still, Truman knew possibly better than any other Congressman what the bomb was capable of.  He knew that he had to be strong against the Soviets, yet gentle enough to not provoke an attack out of fear.  American walked the precarious edge of brinkmanship where one had to be intimidating in presence while camouflaged in nature.  Something like a tiger.  A tiger is hard to detect, imposing physically, soft to the touch, but capable of killing anyone at a moments notice. Truman the Tiger.

Minutemen

There is an old road running the length of the boarder to Jefferson City Missouri.  The road is dotted with farms and barbed wire.  Rusted sings warn trespassers of dogs or guns or the law.  Tractors and Ford tucks tear ruts in the muddy road, kicking up rocks and sludge behind them.  Past the Greene’s and the Rife’s plots is the Minutemen’s plot.  Rusted signs warn trespassers of dogs or guns or the law.  Roaring transport trucks tear ruts in the muddy road.  Guards walk along the perimeter of its barbed wire fences with the slow, the measured steps of professional soldiers.  Some say that the Minutemen silos stand to protect America should she need it, some say it puts a bull’s-eye on the town.

 

 

Minutemen I Silos

  

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

Response 4

The three of them sat silently in their car as the bridge swayed evenly between the gales. The other vehicles around them were trapped in a similar situation, gridlocked. The boy looked out over the stretch of water beside the bridge. Overhead, the sky was a clear, pristine blue. Two mammoth storms waited at both horizons, slowly stalking nearer to the car. The boy marveled at this. Though he was an inquisitive boy, he had never understood the weather. No one had ever explained to him where a storm came from and he wondered what would happen when the two storms met over his car. Would they merge into one horrifyingly large mass? Would one overtake the other? Or would they both explode? The boy’s father sat in the chair beside him, gripping the wheel, his knuckles white. Every few minutes he would reach over and change the station on the radio, never quite distracted from the traffic. The father was not normally a tense man. He stared out of the windshield searching for the end of his trap. His search was in vain, a semi truck sat in front of him blocking his view of everything beyond a few feet. The trucks engine was still idling as if waiting for some signal to resume travel. A child lay across the back seats of the car. He twiddled his fingers, stretched, and tapped his feet. Motion for the sake of motion, motion for the sake of sanity. He dared not look out either of the side windows, afraid that if the storms knew he was there they would take him and change him into yet another shapeless cloud.
Outside the car a man paced, cursed, and spat. His face, though obscured by the veil of his hood, showed lines of desperation, confusion, and fear as he intently watched both skies. Thunder cracked overhead, though from which side it was impossible to tell. Still, no flashes lit the sky, and for this the man was thankful. Pacing, he eyed the walls around the bridge knowing no walls could halt the encroaching storms. Desperate, the man looked above him and watched as the thin blue strip of sky began to vanish before the storms. The man panicked, believing the strip dividing the storms was becoming too small, that the fragile layer of brinksmanship would soon shatter. He paced faster, knowing he had to stand on one side lest he remain in the middle. The storm to his east had taken up some dust from whatever land had spawned it. It gave the wind a red hue. Looking at this shimmering red curtain, the man began to walk towards it. In his mind he saw himself as he bade farewell and jumped of the bridge, to solitude, waving, carrying flowers, down to the river. With one foot upon the wall he stopped and looked back. The storm to his west looked equally inviting and terrifying as the one he stood before now. He stepped away just as the cavernous mouth of the storm was about to swallow him and knelt in the middle of the road under the thin streak of sky that was home to him, his tears mixing with the rain that was now beginning to fall.

Brinksmanship

The notion of brinkmanship can about during the height of the cold war.  I think the concept can be applied to the mindset of many individuals during cold war throughout the world.  The idea the entire world order was on a hair trigger and that one action, beyond the control of most everyday citizens could plunge their lives again into war is one that is hard to wrap your mind around today.  I would think the tension must have been unbearable.  There is no doubt that many kept going through their daily routines as if nothing was wrong, they had to say in motion to stay sane.   

Reaction 3

Part 1
The vehicle of the text can take on several forms. It can come in the shape of metaphor, imagery, or symbolism. Regardless of form, the vehicle is the surface layer of the text. It is stated, not implied. The vehicle acts as a method to deliver a subtle concept. The tenor, on the other hand, is the undertone of the text. It is what can be inferred from the vehicle. For example Berryman writes “after all, the sky flashes, the great sea years, we ourselves flash and yearn.” The image conjured by this line is the vehicle. The tenor takes a little more thought to derive. This line implies that man and his environment are one and the same. Man can no more detach himself from his surroundings than the sky can from the sea at the horizon. Man is subject to his environment and takes on the characteristics of it. He flashes and yearns along with it. Another example can be found in Bishop’s poem, The Bight. Bishop writes “Pelicans crash into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard, it seems to me, like pickaxes, rarely coming up with anything to show for it.” This description of crashing birds is the vehicle of the text. This vehicle serves to deliver the tenor through the poem. The tenor, then, is the underlying idea of the line. In this case, it is a line of reflection. It is reflecting on past labors that have failed. Although the pelicans dive hard, they return without the fruits of their labor.

Part 2
The use of figurative language serves as an alternative way of thinking about events. Often, events are simply stated. The accepted view of history places it as a chronological set of events that occur at set places and involved only a few key actors. It overlooks the complexity of the past and instead simplifies it into something that can easily fit into a textbook. History becomes an unquestionable, superficial study where everything within it is stated as fact. The use of figurative language allows one to draw individualized conclusions from the text. This allows for history to become more subjective, which can be argued is a problem as it could increase the chance for bias. Still, it allows for a person to connect at a deeper level to the event as he is not just reciting names and dates, but actually reacting to the concepts elicited by the event.
The myth that everything can be explained by a surface examination is both naïve and detrimental. During the cold war, American culture attempted to understand the cultures found is Asia. However, by not looking into the subtle nuances of the cultures they were not able to see the people as they truly were. This way of thinking lead Americans to pile all Asian societies together into one large, homogenized mass. The doxa then became that all Asian societies are the same and that they can all be treated as one group holding the same ideals and values.

Mirror Images?

In class we talked about how Americans both during the cold war and at present view the Russians. It got me wondering how the Russians view Americans. Is there a case of mirror imaging? Or is the dichotomy unilateral? More importantly I wonder how the Russians of today view the Soviets. More reading would be needed to see if the views expressed by many Americans against the Russians are mirrored by the Russians towards the Americans. In class I talked about the young American pianist who “beat Russia.” I found an article alluding to him and the contest today at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18026453.