Fear of Hornets

Awhile back (sometime last summer), I took a job at a carwash up on East Pflaum. Basically, the job entails sitting on a stool and watching the security camera mostly, but it also includes hosing down the wash bays, glaring at the clock until it reads four p.m., and wearing a white t-shirt with a overly-optimistic smiling red car and the words "Magic Car Wash Pit Crew." There must be some confusion on the definition of the word "Crew" because me, another part-time employee, and the owner are the only members of the "Pit Crew," and only one of us is there at a time.

Working at Magic Car Wash also involves taking out the trash. In any season other than late summer, this is a brainlessly menial task, but when August and September roll around, this duty requires some creativity. During this time of year, flipping open the lids to the trash bins is like taking a baseball bat to a hornets nest, so you have to become inventive. Sometimes laying out a half-full cola can can provide a distraction for you to pull out the garbage can and take it to the dumpster. Yet sometimes strategies like these backfire. It's happened where I reached in for a soda can for a distraction and found it filled with bees. To anyone washing their car who happened to glance over, I must have looked like some kind of idiot doing a raindance.

These hornets are smarter than they look. If you become careless in picking up their trash can, they'll follow you--quite the traumatic experience. In this instance, you keep looking over your shoulder and seeing that one stubborn hornet is still persuing. You curse him under your breath. Sometimes you have to break out into a jog, making you feel like even more of an idiot. That's the hornet's most frightening quality: they make men feel like little children. They're demoralizing.

Writing Genre: Paddy Style

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been taking a lot of history classes lately, or just that I have a natural interest in culture, but I felt compelled to take on a part of my heritage as a topic for genre comparison. I began to explore Irish culture in writing and uncovered the following three examples, each belonging to a distinct genre:

Celtic Folk Song: The Rocky Road to Dublin

The song details a young Irish lad’s journey from his home in Tuam to Liverpool, England. It is absolutely loaded with Irish culture, which is a benefit of the song genre. It may not provide as much historical fact as a non-fiction book or article, but it gives an insight into the life of a young Irishman’s experience that an article could not. A song has more cultural significance than historical.

Listen

Non-fiction Book: Emigrants and Exiles

This book detailing the Irish migration to North America surely gives a much more thorough and historically-weighted look into Irish Americans. While not as poetic as the Celtic folk song, the book can provide much more information on the subject. The cultural experience received from reading a book is probably denser than the song, which is intended to give an entertaining glimpse into Irish history.

Short Article: History of St. Patrick’s Day

The History Channel’s website gives a convenient, informative history a well-known holiday. It is still historically denser than the song, but much more accessible than the non-fiction book. The article provides just enough information on the history of Irish in America for the reader to learn something new without getting dull.

Writing is a hand-stone: a seemingly simple mass, born from the earth. A stone, when placed in a writer’s palm, is an object of great worth, utility. Such a stone could be thrown, writing as a weapon. Such a stone could be placed in a garden, writing as a natural beauty. Such a stone could be skipped across placid waters to incite energy, writing as an exciter. Such a stone could be employed to create something completely new, writing as a tool. The stone of writing fears no boundaries, insists on being unique, and creates possibilities the bare hand cannot.

Choosing to wield, implement, or plant the stone of writing is undoubtedly a natural decision. Expressing one’s thoughts through a hand-stone is a powerfully primitive symbol of motivation. A writer is unafraid to use his or her stone, and observers automatically understand his or her intention. A spectator to someone picking up a stone or clicking open a pen can feel ensuing action. He or she understands that a statement is to be made—the variety of which is the mystery. I use a stone to translate my cerebral motivation to the outside world.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement was a speech written by decorated Vietnam hero, John Kerry, and given to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations in 1971. It is a piece of literary work that leaves the reader in disbelief. I chose this essay because it depicts events and sentiments in our nation's history that are by no means glorious. This speech's theme is that America was better than what she displayed in Vietnam. It does not demean the United States government or the effort given by the men and women fighting. This speech instead targets those who had a moral responsibility and failed to act upon it. The VVAW Statement is a classic American criticism in some respects, but in others, it's a cry to future generations to never allow anything like this happen again.

John Kerry is poetic. The veteran tells of excruciatingly horrible abuses of which American leadership is responsible. He makes strong, stunning points about how the United States has failed to live up to its morals, and offers a first-hand perspective of the nightmarish events of the conflict. As an orator, John Kerry displayed brilliance. The speech he delivered on the Senate floor in 1971 was one of tragedy, culpability, resolution, and hope. To convey such powerful themes, Kerry doesn't hesitate to employ painfully honest rhetoric. He states a clear opinion.

The closing of this work is perhaps the greatest part of the speech. Kerry calls for Americans not to view the loss of life in Vietnam in vain, but instead to see that those men lost their lives to "turn" America. Those men lost their lives to awaken America and help her to realize how far she has fallen. Kerry wants the audience to understand that such a cause is just as noble as winning. Reading this essay was honestly a great experience for me. It's a moral perspective that is sometimes lost when dealing with the late 1960s/early 1970s, and undoubtedly a speech I will recommend reading to anyone with a remote interest in that era.