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@askashadow-blog
My arrival [in Charlottesville] marked the beginning of a three-year experience during which I cannot recall being unafraid for any extended period of time. For many different reasons, some level of fear was a constant companion, in and out of the classroom, starting with the confederate flag hoisted high (outside someone’s dormitory window) on my first day on Grounds...This was September 1955.
John Merchant, the first black student to graduate from UVa Law
We both of us want a marriage that is a tremendous living thing, always alive, always hot, not dead and easy in parts as most marriages are. We ask a great deal of life, don’t we?
Virginia Woolf (May 1912)
On Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Visceral Voice
When I began brainstorming for a public speaker to write about for my public speaking class, I first thought of speeches—modern speeches, for the most part, since those are the speeches typically videotaped and accessible on Youtube. However, while I was looking over some famous speeches, it occurred to me that my assignment was not to choose my favorite speech. Instead, it was to choose my favorite public speaker. This distinction is important, for public speaking is not limited to speeches. Public speaking is the act of speaking to the public, which means that there are many modes of public speaking beyond speeches. When I recognized this distinction, my choice became clear. Who had spoken to the public in such a way that he or she was able to shape society and influence the public? One name came to mind: Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a very active first lady. She traveled the world, bringing awareness to issues she held close to her heart. Yes, she made speeches. But she also spoke in interviews and radio shows, holding 348 press conferences over the span of her husband’s 12-year presidency (Beasley). She wrote newspaper columns and books. Mrs. Roosevelt understood the power of communication; she wrote a column called “My Day” six days a week for over 25 years (until her death, in fact) (Cook). Eleanor Roosevelt wrote this prolifically for a very important reason: to overcome social isolation for women by making public communication a two-way channel (Beasley). Traditionally, a woman’s domain was at home, and not in the public eye. But Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the woman’s domain to include public speaking.
But how did Mrs. Roosevelt become someone that society wanted in the public eye? How did she become a dynamic public speaker and an authority on civil rights? One could argue that her husband’s presidency awarded her this, but many first ladies were not nearly as vocal or socially active. Eleanor Roosevelt won the respect of the public by her talented speaking and open line of communication.
Eleanor Roosevelt had several public speaking techniques. She knew how to capture the attention of her audience. In one speech, she opens with, “The day for which the people of the world have prayed for is here” (V-J Day), which grabs the attention of her audience. In the next line, she mentions an ideograph, “peace”, which instantly brings to mind the idea of peace and all that is associated with it. In that same speech, she uses parallelism to establish a pleasant rhythm to her speech: “Today we have a mixture of emotions, joy that our me are freed of constant danger, hope that those whom we love will soon be home among us, awe that man’s intelligence can compass, and a realization that intelligence uncontrolled by great spiritual forces, can be man’s destruction instead of his salvation” (V-J Day).
In another speech, Roosevelt foreshadows her next point in order to improve the organization of her speech: “…for a few minutes I look back because while I believe strongly that the past must never govern the future, I also believe that we much have the past in mind to help us shape the future” (NYDSC). She later uses repetition, another speech technique: “The misery of the world cries out to us for leadership. The hunger of the world demands our sympathy and our production” (NYDSC).
Eleanor Roosevelt was a very talented public speaker who changed the domain of women. It is both this and her passion for her cause, human rights, that make her my favorite public speaker. While Mrs. Roosevelt always believed passionately in human rights, her public speaking techniques allowed her visceral voice to shine through, making her a more dynamic speaker and giving more power to her cause.
Beasley, Maurine Hoffman; Holly Cowan Shulman; Henry R. Beasley (2001).The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Greenwood. pp. 469–70. ISBN 978-0-313-30181-0. Retrieved November 24, 2012.
Wiesen Cook, Blanche (1992). Eleanor Roosevelt: 1884–1933. Viking.ISBN 978-0-670-80486-3.
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/speeches/doc026453.cfm
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/displaydoc.cfm?_t=speeches&_docid=spc026185
For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost
Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths--and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it - perhaps your favourite sentence - to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
John Irving (via amandaonwriting)
A writer is a world trapped in a person.
Victor Hugo (via dixonngreene)
#1: Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich
I Whenever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk...if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces, and the red begonia perilously flashing from a tenement sill six stories high, or the long-legged young girls playing ball in the junior highschool playground. No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Maya Angelou (via observando)
The Hawthorn Tree
by Willa Cather
ACROSS the shimmering meadows-- Ah, when he came to me! In the spring-time, In the night-time, In the starlight, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Up from the misty marsh-land-- Ah, when he climbed to me! To my white bower, To my sweet rest, To my warm breast, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Ask of me what the birds sang, High in the hawthorn tree; What the breeze tells, What the rose smells, What the stars shine-- Not what he said to me!
But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.
Truman Capote (via misswallflower)
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.
John Steinbeck (via observando)
Words! Mere Words!
Belfast Tune, Joseph Brodsky.
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.
Sylvia Plath (via introspectivepoet)
The Wood-Pile by Robert Frost
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day, I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see." The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather -- The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled -- and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labor of his ax, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be.
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (via thegr8erfool)
Birches by Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm, I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
