Awards Night

So, Erin was lucky enough to win an award, so I (with some of her other friends) went to support her.
There were all sorts of awards.  Bobby, for example, won an award for an essay he wrote, though he wasn't there to receive any praise.  Another young woman I occasionally talk to won an award for an essay she wrote on Pacific Islander fiction, which I know nothing about.  I'm particularly proud of Bobby, because he once told me that I had a positive influence on him.  When I first met him, I didn't think anything like I'm going to positively influence this boy, but I guess that's the way life worked out. 
For prizes, in addition to money, they gave away seed packets, which I really liked.  It's almost it's own metaphor: at school, teachers and books plant ideas in you; now you have seeds to literally plant.   
I had classes in this particular building, and at one point, I heard the nearby bell tower chiming, and it reminded me of one class I had.  It was in the morning, and I remember how much I enjoyed the quiet walk there, and how I was usually the first one there.  It was so warm in this room, I would usually go over to the window and open it up, and somehow, this was unintentionally timed to correspond with just about the time that same bell tower would chime. 
Erin got an award for creative writing, and she read a short piece about herself.  It was about how she doesn't like to be touched.  (I need to write on this same topic, now that I'm thinking about it.)  She read really fast, and honestly, I don't think anyone in the audience really got all of it. 
Erin tends to write longer pieces, which aren't really conducive to the format.  (Other winners, including Lia, were reading poetry or performing small pieces from a longer play.)  Erin needs to pick shorter pieces and she seriously needs to slow down.
I did get to see the professor in charge of screenwriting.  Erin had complained, in passing, that he wasn't much of a creative writing teacher but more of a public relations/advertising kind of guy.  The moment I saw him, I whispered to Erin "Seriously?" which made her choke and laugh. 
After the ceremony, Erin revealed that her parents and uncle were in town.  And she hadn't invited them to the awards night.  This surprised me a little and then it made me sad.  I would give anything to have my parents come to something like this, but they wouldn't.  Not that I'm ever going to win an award, but I would never not tell my parents about something like this, especially given that they were here anyway. 
They were at the coffee shop across the street, so a group of us walked over there.  I had never met Erin's parents before, but some of the other friends in the group, like Liz and Jon, had. 
Erin has told me a lot of stories about her parents over the years, so I thought I would know them better than some of my other friend's parents.  And there wasn't anything about them that struck me as a lie on Erin's part, but I had always imagined them differently. 

For example, I had always imagined her Dad to be tall, almost entirely bald, and had little tuffs of white hair, which he wouldn't comb and would stick out all over the place.  I imagined he'd wear glasses.  And be overweight.  Basically, I imagined George Bluth, the Grandpa, from Arrested Development. 
Instead, he was shorter.  And his hair was sandy, and possibly he had a comb-over, because it looked strangely similar to Donald Trump.  His face was wider instead of longer.  He didn't wear glasses.  And there was something Hobbit like about him. 
The other thing about him was that I imagined he would speak like Erin spoke, which is to say, like me.  But he had a distinct accent, something I've heard people refer to as a Yooper accent.  Erin hates that term, and I can understand why.  I would describe his accent as sounding something similar to a Finnish American. 
I imagined her Mom would look almost exactly like her, only older, but she was shorter and very slim and her face was longer than I had imagined.  She actually looked similar in appearance to Erin's brother. 
And her Uncle looked a lot like her Dad, except he had long hair.  Come to think of it, he looked a lot like I imagined Erin's brother would look like, before I had met him.   
This is a good example of why I want to meet people's families.  I want to know everything I possibly can about my friends, and their families are an important part of their lives.  And because my imagination is clearly off. 
Erin introduced us, and her Dad clearly remembered Jon and Liz.  We spoke briefly.  There were some awkward pauses, which I guess I should of expected too, but there was something about having the quirkiness of Erin's family confirmed that made this funny to me.  Erin was right, they were different, but in ways that I hadn't considered.  They were looking for somewhere to eat, and someone suggested one of the local bar and restaurants, so we trooped over there.
It wasn't really that late yet, but the bar at this place was totally full.  We had a big group so we got a long table for ourselves.  I sat near Carrie, Erin's brother, and Erin's Mom.  I ordered a burger and some drinks. 
I tried to make conversation.  Carrie and I talked about future plans.  I tried to talk to Erin's brother about what he was studying and where he lived, since these were some of the few things I knew about him.  He was sort of hard to talk to, not because he was mean, but because he didn't offer much.  I was hoping maybe he would talk about his program, since I had friends who were part of the same thing.  I asked him if he liked where he lived, but he didn't have much to say on the subject. 
I racked my brain for other things to talk about, but I really couldn't come up with much.  I remembered Erin complaining about the Bart Stupak controversy last year, and remembering something she had mentioned about him, I asked her Mom about it.  This turned out to be a mistake because Erin's Mom did not have the same political views as Erin, which I thought she did, because of the way Erin talked about her family's politics. 

Patriotic Poets

Today I'm reading up on some poet biographies.  Given that it is the 4th of July holiday still, I thought I would concentrate on a couple of American poets.  Things I've learned so far:

-Phillis Wheatley was from what is approximately modern Senegal in West Africa.  
-Even though Wheatley was "discovered" as smart early on in her life, they still made her work.  She wrote poems about how she wished she could stop being a servant and live the life of an academic.

-Wheatley published broadsides, which, for those of you not totally obsessed with the literary world, is a poster version of a poem, usually printed so that the words are indented into the page, so you can "feel" the word.  Broadsides are sort of a lost art in our culture, but I can assure you they're really cool.  

-Wheatley had asthma.  I honestly wasn't even sure people back then knew what it was. 
-When most Americans wouldn't publish Wheatley's work, she turned to a publisher in London. 
-Wheatley got to meet other famous people, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. 

-A lot of Wheatley's poems were written in couplets, including iambic pentameter (that's what much of Shakespeare is in) and heroic (which is the form favored by epics.)  This indicates to me that she must have been educated in the classics.  She also wrote about death, which everyone knows is a favored topic of poets. 
-Many British readers were uncomfortable with Wheatley's slave status.  They often criticized her "family" and owners for keeping her in slavery.  However, as a house slave, she got to avoid many of the worst aspects of slavery or the tough life of being a free slave in an overtly racist country. 
-Her husband was John Peters, who was a free black.  He may have been a lawyer.  Since he was ambitious, a lot of white Americans hated him. 
-"Refugee" slaves were slaves that were considered too sickly to work on things like sugar plantations in the Caribbean, so they were sold off as house servants in other parts of the world, including New England. 

-Walt Whitman's father was a admirer and friend of Thomas Paine.   
-Whitman was part of the first generation of American children. 
-Whitman's brothers and sisters were given patriotic names, including Andrew Jackson, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. 

-As a child, Whitman was apparently picked out of a crowd by the Marquis de Lafayette (who was instrumental in providing French support during the Revolution.) and carried young Whitman on his back. 
-Whitman's relationship with his father was imperfect; he respected him but they were never close.  There is some indication that his father may have been an alcoholic.  Whitman had a close relationship with his mother. 

-Like Shakespeare, Whitman didn't have a lot of formal schooling.  He spent six years in a public school in Brooklyn, and at around twelve began working. Whitman continued his education by spending time renting books from a library. 

-Whitman liked Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.  He liked Shakespeare's Richard III, which I also love. 
-Whitman was not just a writer but a publisher, beginning with become an apprentice printer as a young man, at around twelve or thirteen.