It Really Do Be Like That Sometimes

When many people think about swamps, many of the initial adjectives that come to mind are not pleasant––infested, smelly, and uncomfortably humid. For example, a passage about Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia notes that all the organisms that live there "exist only to compound the misery of life."  In fact, the most prominent representation of a swamp in popular culture is Shrek's Swamp from all three of the Shrek  movies.  I don't know about you, but the following portrayals don't provide the best connotation of swamps: While I'd say that Shrek doing the Fortnite default dance in front of a Papa John's is very powerful and indicative of our society as a whole, having an ogre and a donkey as the face of swamps in popular media isn't helping. In reality, swamps and their still water sources provide the perfect location for millions of organisms, big and small, to thrive. The mildly warm weather encourages plant and animal growth, and wildlife is draw...

When reading Marrying Absurd , it struck me as, well, absurd that when this piece was written, a pre-marital blood test was the norm. Didion writes, "The State of Nevada, alone among these United States, demands neither a pre-marital blood test nor a waiting period before or after the issuance of a marriage license." I did some research, and found out that the pre-marital blood test had been largely eliminated from marriage licenses in 1980, but the only state that still mandates them today is Montana. Joseph Price, Kasey S. Buckles, and Melanie Guldi summarized the reasons for the pre-marital blood test here: https://www3.nd.edu/~ndlaw/conferences/lawecon/Buckles-ChangingthePriceMarriage-EvidenceBloodTestRequirements.pdf Historically, many states have required applicants for a marriage license to obtain a blood test. These tests were for venereal diseases (most commonly syphilis), for genetic disorders (such as sickle-cell anemia), or for rubella. The tests for...

Growing up, I've always known that it's commonplace to eat with your hands in India. Even though my parents still ate rice and other traditional Indian food by hand, I always preferred to use a spoon because that's what I grew up with. In 2009, shortly before a trip to India to see all our relatives, my parents made an effort to teach me eat rice by hand, but it just didn't come naturally to me like it did for them. I was uncoordinated and rice went everywhere, unlike the comparatively coordinated hand movements my parents made. One thing that I learned back then is that you're only supposed to pick up the food with your fingertips, and you really shouldn't let food touch your palm or anywhere else on your hand. So it was definitely less messy than I initially imagined. When I got to India, I slowly learned by observing. However, I still vastly preferred a spoon, knife, or fork over hands. And while I eventually got the hang of it, I never really enjoyed...

In class this week, we discussed  Serving in Florida , by Barbara Ehrenreich. I found it a very interesting piece, because personally, I haven't worked a job, let alone a minimum wage job. While reading the piece, it was readily apparent that Ehrenreich went out of her way to focus on the negative aspects of the job she worked at Jerry's and Hearthside. For example, just the opening paragraph makes me feel disgusted: "a stomach leading to the lower intestine that is the garbage and dishwashing area, from which issue bizarre smells combining the edible and the offal: creamy carrion and pizza barf". While there are the occasional positive moments like Ehrenreich's time with George, Ehrenreich's takeaway is largely a negative one. To me, it seems like Ehrenreich went out of her way to find the worst possible minimum-wage jobs as possible, just to further the dramatic aspect of her piece. First, she took a job at Jerry's, which we can infer is a poorly...