Usually when someone is alone, they’re lonely. Plain and simple. I don’t know about all you photographers out there, but I find taking pictures by myself a lot more enjoyable than taking pictures with people around. Unless of course there are people in the picture. That way it’s a lot more peaceful.

The picture below was an old American Revolution hospital. While walking through the grass which acts as carpet inside the ruins, I can’t help but think what it would have looked like when it was being used. The mystery behind ruins and rustic, old buildings entices me. I always find myself imagining what was instead what could have been.

It was a lovely place. I’ll blog the rest of the photos tomorrow. Enjoy.

I apologize to the guy in this photo who happened to be playing on his phone at a really bad time. What can I say? You went well with the surroundings.

Things I love and hate.

I took some boring pictures in the semi-what-i-like-about-where-I-live column. Standing near the place where I took these photos was a lot more picturesque than the actual photo. Hence the said “boring pictures”.

But I will say what I usually say, which is I haven’t blogged in a while and I saw an opportunity. Enjoy.

And as always, enjoy!

[caption id="attachment_580" align="aligncenter" width="590"]

[caption id="attachment_581" align="aligncenter" width="590"] West Chester!

Look at this fancy door…

New shoes

When I’m stressed, I have nothing to talk about except being stressed. It consumes me and I have nothing else to think about except the damn future. Stress is such a pointless feeling. It increases your heart rate and produces that feeling that starts in your chest and works its way down through your body. You can even feel it in our toes. It’s almost like a cold sweat.

Excitement is also a feeling that is pointless. You mull over the future and it gets you, well, excited. I’ve always found it pointless because you have so many high expectations from excitement that most of the time whatever you’re excited about turns out to be disappointing. It’s just a different form of stress.

And while I’m sitting in class ignoring whatever they’re talking about on epigenetics,  everything is being pushed off and ignored. I’m probably one of the worst procrastinators that has ever lived. Exaggeration not need be implied.

That being said, here are some more of the pictures from West Chester. Personally, I like the ones blogged previously, but these are pretty good as well. Enjoy.

This is the tunnel that leads into West Chester University campus.

This is an old door to a bank in West Chester,

Francs! Franks? I forget out to spell European money…

This place is called Moon Flower.

You should know, I’m not disappointed in the actual movie itself, but what the movie lacked to follow up on. Gulliver’s Travels was originally a children’s story that had a hidden meaning: to mock the government of England.

Shocked?

Back in the early to late 1700′s, Northern Ireland was extremely poor and suffering from starvation. It was also part of Britain’s empire. Jonathan Swift, also Irish author of “A Modest Proposal“, was practically shunned from England due to his disagreement in politics. He then wrote “A Modest Proposal” to convey his high degree of annoyance and muted anger at England. His essay literally proposed to eat Irish children since they were going to die anyway from starvation so the adults wouldn’t have to suffer the same fate. Obviously, this wasn’t his actual intention of the proposal. He was using great amounts of sarcasm in his language to mock England for not helping their fellow colonies. In other words he’s basically saying, “The outrageous and horrific act of eating children is more beneficial to us then what you’re doing, which is essentially nothing.”

In short, I thought that Gulliver’s Travels was going to incorporate the distaste Swift has for England in the movie! What happened? Swift wanted to present a satirical view of England (or you can go as far to say Europe) to show it as an extremely strange and foreign land in custom and in nature.

This just serves to represent the decline in appreciation of literature our generation is leaving out and forgetting. Jeez, Hollywood! I miss the old days even though I was never alive to see them… The only few remnants of appreciation of literature just for sport are in blogs. I love blogging. In a weird, new way, it keeps history alive.

On a different note, I took some pictures of West Chester today since it was so nice out. I’m going show about five or six for the rest of the week to keep it interesting. So without further adue, enjoy.

This is the courthouse.

Spring!

The West Chester campus is really beautiful.

Patrick, I love you.

However, I see people still look at my previous posts which makes me super happy. I remember when I first made an account on WordPress and I was so determined to increase my view count. Now, that is if I actually stay faithful to my “paradox”, I just want to write.

But enough of me ranting about my plans. I had very little opportunity to go off on “photography adventures” just like I had very little time to blog. But anyhow, here are some pictures I’m rather fond of and want to share that I took earlier this year. They aren’t anything like last year, but here they are nonetheless.

My friend standing on the old fountain in Downingtown. I barely remember the last time they had it running.

A closeup of the fountain…

I took this picture under an old bridge. They had some insane icicles.

You can see my friend’s shadow…

I took pictures here last year. I think they were better in the previous blogs.

I wish I angled this correctly!

This barn is such a mystery. No one knows that it’s there and it seems like whoever the owners were just upped and left.

(To be painfully honest… (Actually I’m typing while I’m spectating. There’s no such thing as painful in that context)… But I like the old WordPress better!)

Everyone is lined below and waiting for the parade to start. You can tell throughout the pictures I had difficulty finding a good spot, but eventually we found a decent place. Anyway, I really like the symmetry here. Taking pictures of peoples’ expressions is an obsession of mine. A creepy obsession, yeah, but I think it’s beautiful nonetheless.

The symmetry here is also very pleasing to the eye. There are multiple positions the people randomly stand in; there’s walking to the right, walking to the left, standing nonchalantly, etc. My favorite is of the man selling cotton candy, though it is a little hard to see from the high amount of light exposure. The ground-to people-to light ratio is another great catch.

I swear, I could hear their clarinets squeaking for miles! But they were fifth graders, so, in light of the Christmas spirit, everyone was happy to smile and listen.

Still waiting… The crowd seems to go on and on and on…

And finally! The parade starts off with many of the township’s cars riding down Main street along with their children dressed up as elves handing out pieces of candy to other kids. He looks like he’s on a mission, handing out his candy canes and tootsie roles.

It’s a little blurry, but this picture speaks for itself.

That dog is just happy to be here. I love poodles!

This car was in the last parade. Honestly, it’s one nice car.

Another really nice car…

I couldn’t get myself to filter this one to black and white. It’s just too pretty!

This one is too cute. And I love how they take up 3/4 of the photo.

If you look closely, you can see each truck is pulling the other.

Sweet outfit. He was just happy to be there as well.

This shot is awesome. It’s one of those shots you’re weren’t expecting, then you upload your pictures and smile.

My high school marching band. I even played the flute for concert band. And honestly! Why so serious? They TELL them to frown and keep a dull face through the entire parade.

And lastly, a cop biking up and down the street after the parade.

Hope you enjoyed my pictures

In Open Secrets by Alice Munro, it is clear that she meant for the only segregated group in a society is women that wish to live in a devoted relationship with their tyrants who made them feel segregated in the first place. Women, who avoid falling for this unaltruistic idea in the past, suffer hardships from the rest of society as well, including those same women. Alice Munro fashioned her short stories “The Albanian Virgin” and “Carried Away” using the element of femininity to make her story reflect beliefs and culture of the time period and place.

Alice Munro shaped her short story “Carried Away” with the element of femininity to help better express the beliefs and culture of the time. Through this, it is understood that Louisa is a complete outsider period exactly because of the beliefs and the time period. The time during World War I, where the story starts, women were of a lesser class compared to men. The men were the ones who were expected to fight for their country while the women were expected to basically take care of the children.  If not already married, women were expected to find a husband, which is indeed what the main character, Louisa, is expected to do. Inside this culture in the United States, women were expected to find a husband who will support them since women were also expected to take care of their children instead of working at a job. This is especially prevalent in World War I. While the men were away to fight in the war, the women were expected to have full watch on the children, day in and day out. It was their primary job. As stated before, if not this, then it was to marry and then achieve this (Anthias, 2000).

When Louisa first appears in the story, Munro describes her as a single woman who works at a library and is unfamiliar with the territory because she just moved there. Already, Alice Munro sets the foundation of the story in that Louisa is isolated and strange compared to the ideals of women of the time period. There were little to none occupations for women to rightfully be happy to fulfill. Men were the ones expected work for money to support their family (Gilmore, 1990). Louisa is not married and has no one to support her, so she takes a job as a librarian. In the short story, Munro describes Louisa’s job as dry, boring, and dull. Barely anyone walks into the library to check out a book and Louisa is must suffer through this unflavored occupation in order to keep a living. Louisa is viewed as an outsider because women in that time did not work a job, and had different ideals than that of Louisa’s (Greenwald, 1980). These ideally reflect the beliefs of the time period during World War I. It is no wonder that Louisa is deemed the way she is, because she does not reflect the ideals of the time period for women. By making Louisa an outsider for matters that are insignificant, Munro expressed the beliefs and culture of the United States.

In short story, “The Albanian Virgin”, Alice Munro uses the element of femininity to help better express the beliefs and culture of the time period and place. Lottar, who is traveling in the mountains in Maltsia e madhe, is taken and forced to live the life with a foreign and unfamiliar tribe in Albania. Like Louisa, Lottar is isolated, and outsider and unhappy due to the differing cultures between her culture and theirs. This sets the foundation in Munro’s short story. Lottar is expected to achieve the same things as Louisa is expected to achieve meaning finding a husband, but in different context. Inside this particular short story, religion is much more a dictator to its main character, Louisa. Munro provides a clear and concise overview of the culture in Albania and much of the world by creating two different groups of people that practice a different religion. One can indefinitely understand the issues between the two groups of people from the ample amount of history expressing the raging problems between different religions. Also, Munro entwines the time period along with religion so one can understand how exactly society deemed women back then. Women, similar to Louisa, were expected to cook, clean, take care of the children, etc. while the men would work at a job, serve in wars if they must, and so on (Giele, 1977). The beliefs of these people are not strange from that time due to the massive amounts of religion that went along with them (Fogarty, 1971).

In the story, Islamic men would take the women from Lottar’s side to marry and never come back. A Muslim man wants to marry Lottar, and the priest who chose to look after Lottar chooses that she must become a Virgin, one who basically pretends to be a man and never gets married. After all this time of doom that is felt for Lottar, there is finally hope for her. If she were to become a Virgin, she would not have to marry the foreign man, nor would she have to be forced to follow the other women around and do the dull, boring work they all must do. Through becoming a Virgin, Lottar, to an extent, finally has a bit of freedom, more so than before that is. Before, she was just a woman in a society where women were deemed of a lower class to men (Bracewell, 1996).  Now, she is able to do achieve some of what the men do.

Alice Munro fashioned her short stories “The Albanian Virgin” and “Carried Away” using the element of femininity to make her story reflect beliefs and culture of the time period and place. She achieves producing a trying story of a woman who may have made mistakes in her past but want for the best and serve for the better. This is exactly what makes them such an outsider; they have a kind, but revolutionary heart that sets examples from generation to generation to set out to achieve and finish.

Works Cited

Anthias, Floya, and Gabriella Lazaridis. Gender and Migration in Southern Europe: Women on the Move. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Print.

Bracewell, Wendy. Women, Motherhood, and Contemporary Serbian Nationalism. Vol. 19. London: Elsevier, 1996. 25-33. Print. 1-2.

Fogarty, Michael Patrick., Rhona Rapoport, and Robert N. Rapoport. Sex, Career and Family: Including an International Review of Women’s Roles. London: Allen & Unwin, 1971. Print.

Gilmore, David D. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1990. Print.

Giele, Janet Zollinger., and Audrey C. Smock. Women: Roles and Status in Eight Countries. New York: Wiley, 1977. Print.

Greenwald, Maurine Weiner. Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980. Print.