THE LITTLE STORE

The little store written by Eudora Welty is a very interesting story of a special little store that she has a lot of love and fascination for and how she enjoys taking a trip to the store always whenever she was sent by the mother to buy groceries. It was through her mother’s request that she got to know the store since the mother requests for groceries. She found the place as a centre of amusement and adventurous. It was a good time for her to play games as she makes her way o the store. On page 155 of the story, she quotes, “I’d skipped my jumping rope up and down it, hopped its length through mazes of hopscotch, played jacks in its islands of shade, serpentined along it on my Princess bicycle, skated it backward and forward.” This shows how much fun she has on the way to the little store. Because of the fun that she has on the way, she does not hesitate whenever the mother wants someone to go to the store to get groceries. As shown on page 155 again, the mother asks, “Quick! Who’d like to run to the Little Store for me”? Then she would immediately respond “I would.” With pure joy because she knows what she was about to enjoy.
As the narration goes on, the author also gives insight on the things she likes about the store itself the things that go on in there. She also gives out what she experiences when she finds herself at the little store. In this part there are more descriptions mad on here. She describes how the building of the little store first looks from the outside as she says “It was a plain frame building covered over with brick.” On page 156 of the story she explains about the perception of smells she experiences while she enters the store. She quotes, “There were almost tangible smells- licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor.” She explains it in that way to give a clear idea that these smells al around depicts an old store.
The author’s story about the little store was narrated in a form of a story of a child or how it would be seen from a child’s point of view. On page 156 she even came out with a funny poem that her parents didn’t even understood her but she understood it from the perception she had about the little store. In the poem it quotes “there was a little boy and his name was Lindsey. He went to heaven with the influinzy.” It may sound weird to others but to her it meant a lot and she enjoyed it since it related to the little store where she finds a lot of fun for herself.

WHERE I’M FROM

They have a saying that the place you are from makes you as an individual. I am a kind of person who has an interesting background. I was born in Louisville, Kentucky but raised in Ghana, West Africa which is the origination of my parents. I spent almost 17 years of my early life living in Ghana so at my age of 23, I have acquired so many values and norms that I have grown to believe and also Identifies me as a Ghanaian and a West African as well. Even though I was born here in the United States, my behavior and actions and speech depict more of a Ghanaian more than of a complete American. Where I come from in Ghana West Africa, we believe in a lot of norms and values. We value norms such as being respectful our elders no matter if they are our parents or even if they are not related to us. In the home, young ones have to leave the living room to their bedrooms when parents get visitors as a sign of respect. As a young person I was also taught never to greet an elderly person with my left hand. This is perceived as a sign of disrespect unless I am naturally left handed. Even when I find myself in the United States, where a value like this doesn’t matter, I still find myself applying United States where earrings for men are considered as a fashion, my background believes it as a nuisance. Even with other fashionable things like getting tattoo on your body is perceived negatively where I am from. And also where I am from, we believe a lot in the connection of families whether they are the nuclear family or the extended family. Extended family involves uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and so on. We always try to keep in touch with one another especially when we find ourselves in the United States and even go out of the way to support each other financially or what ever kind of support needed. This is different from they way Americans see Family life. Americans, unlike us, just mostly focus on their nuclear family and mostly reunited with their extended families on special occasions. Basically, all these norms and values of where I am from adds up to my entre personality and also help people to identify me as a different and unique person in a multicultural society like the United States of America.

Annie Dillard's "Seeing" Response

For my project study work in architecture, I was supposed to study the movement of the sun for a day. I attended my site as early as 6am in the morning. I had some food and snacks with me plus a camera for taking pictures of sun positions. This experience actually reminded me of the concept of “Seeing” written by Annie Dillard. I relate this experience to the concept because 100% of the work involved is all about seeing or visualizing. The site of my observation was at the rear of the architecture building on campus facing the woods and the baseball field. My vision was towards the tall trees at the side of the baseball field. Because of the darkness of dawn, the trees along with the rest of the woods formed a dense dark cloud as they blended with the dark sky. They always say that it’s hard to study how the sky changes but “it’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open.” Around almost five minutes to 7am, the darkness in the sky started to fade into light blue as the sun began to rise up. I kept my eyes and camera at the same position as I saw the outline of the tall trees in the woods beginning to show and the dark cloud which was formed the entire woods started becoming semi opaque as the rays of the sun began to run through the branches and leaves. I began to hear sounds of the early birds. As I continue to focus my eye at the sun rise from behind the woods, about more than hundreds of leaves flew out of the branches of the tall trees, which in a second or two, I realized that they were birds instead of leaves. How amazing and interesting. At fifteen minutes after seven, the sun appears almost fully. And as the sun appears, everything that seems like they had a monochrome color began to acquire their unique and individual colors like the leaves, tree branches flowers and even the concrete ground. And animals like squirrels could be seen playing and leaping from tree to tree as the sun continues to rise. The only thing I could see was the small stream down the bushy area next to the field shielded by the tall plants and trees that overshadowed them, however, “still a great deal of light falls on everything.” By twenty minutes to eight, I could see shadows of objects facing the sunlight begin to form solidly including mine own shadow as compared to how blare they were at their outlines during 30 minutes earlier. In this I can say that, “I see what I expect.” After I got all the recording on my camera for the morning, I took a break to review the progress of what I got so far. On the recording, I fast forwarded it to find the motion and change in color of the environment. During the fast forwarding, the color of the environment smoothly turned for a monochrome of dark bluish gray color to a beautiful multicolored environment. The outline of trees slowly appeared and the leaves flew and smoothly turned into birds flying away. The concrete ground went from being visually smooth to having detailed rough textures as the sunlight hit the ground. These amazing changes are good signs which show that “we miss a great deal because we perceive only things in our own scale” instead of seeing and concentrating on the amazing things that makes the environment.