Morgan Konz
Welcome to Our Library Blog!
Happy Nerdy Friday, everyone!
We have updated our online book displays. February 26th is National Tell a Fairy Tale Day, and we have a few fairy tale classics (and maybe some new classics) out on display. Make sure you check them out!
You still have time to enter to our bookmark contest! On our bookmark contest webpage, we have blank bookmarks or stop by the Library or your branch campus for bookmarks. This year's theme is 'my happy space'. Bookmarks can be given to branch campuses, given to the Library staff, or e-mailed into library@witcc.edu.
Bookmarks are due by March 1st.
A reminder: The Library and Campus will be closed March 11th and 12th for Staff Development. We will be having special hours during Spring Break, so please check back with us for specific times.
Guest Blogger: Chuck Polk, Humanities Instructor: "To Read a Good Story"
Imagination is our only weapon in the war against reality-- The Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland.
Too often we settle for the "truth"; the world is set on an uncaring and fixed course. Those of us with more gray hair than not can be heard complaining, "you people today just don't know how the world works". "No one cares about your feelings, work harder". We imagine the world is a giant cosmic machine and learning your place as a cog in its eternal grind is the best we can hope for. We are functional, limited. Our job is to recognize our role and fill it.
As cool as dragons, wizards, and magic rings are, I read because I refuse to accept being a cog in the machine. An imagination combining birds and lizards or lizards and fire is an imagination able to combine and repurpose those cosmic cogs and springs into something new. A story's power is imagining "what if?" and "why not?" A good book does more than let us escape reality for a little bit; it reminds us we have the power to shape what is real.
The real world is not set in stone; we create, adapt, and modify the world around us. A good story allows me to practice my desire to create, to see the world as it is and make something new. This is not just for the few "creative types"; the desire and ability to create is part of the human condition. No other animal on this planet can change the world in such significant ways as the human being. We create ice in the desert, redirect rivers, flatten mountains, and edit a being's genes. Imagining a world where a green sun exists and what changes in plant and animal life such a sun would create is an ability that can be applied to thinking out the consequences of damming up a river or carving out the top of a mountain. Story asks us to imagine a world full of "what ifs?" in a way that can help us re-imagine our actions in the real world.
I realize this all sounds fantastically magical, but it is a hope, a belief, we can be more. The world is not a blank canvas waiting for our brush strokes. It is already being created, shaped, molded. Much of what we experience everyday began in the actions of others in unnumbered yesterdays. We find ourselves in the middle of a grand story forced to deal with the choices and mistakes of others as we choose for our next step. To be swept up in such an adventure is an seemingly overwhelming impossibility. The cog is predictable, known, easy, but not safe. A cog is used up and replaced, powerless to imagine anything else. The imagination that settles for the cosmic machine rarely sheds a tear for the ground up cogs and broken springs. The world and the lives of others are disposable, the cost of doing business, fuel to keep the machine grinding. The cosmic machine simply grinds us down.
To read a good story is to imagine, hope, believe in more. A good story can open our eyes to the oppressive powers and broken "realities" of our world, but most potent magic is found when we turn our gaze upon ourselves. I read because I choose to become more. I find in the desires, choices, lives of my favorite character an imagine of my ideal self.
Who I am destined to become is created in who I imagine I can be. Perrin Aybara, a protagonist in the Wheel of Time series, is a young man who knows his strength and deliberately measures his actions. Perrin finds himself in a battle for the world in which he must defend what he loves. Throughout the story, he struggles with the use of violence. While I have long had an academic interest in violence and its limits, in Perrin, I find my desire to build a thriving world given a voice and body.
Roger Jordan's world did not create this create this desire in me, but it drew me in where I could see, feel, and give voice to parts of me that seems inexpressible. Ultimately Perrin creates a hammer to fight in last battle, a tool to build and forge, not a weapon to simply destroy.
The hammer could be either a weapon or a tool. Perrin had a choice, just as everyone who followed him had a choice. Hopper had a choice. The wolf had made that choice, risking more in defense of the Light than any human—save Perrin—would ever understand…
[he] felt a need to create, as if to balance the destruction he'd seen in the world, the destruction he'd helped create…
He breathed in and out, his lungs working like bellows. His sweat was like the quenching waters. His arms were like the anvil. He was the forge…
He felt something leaking from him, as if each blow infused the metal with his own strength, and also his own feelings. Both worries and hopes. These flowed from him into the three unwrought pieces...as if all of his strength and emotion had been forged into the metal...
A hammer. He was making a hammer. These were the parts. He understood now.
He grew to his task. Blow after blow. Those beats were so loud. Each blow seemed to shake the ground around him, rattling tents. Perrin exulted. He knew what he was making. He finally knew what he was making.
–Towers of Midnight “A Making”
The choice to create is as much the self as it is the object. "Equal and opposite reaction..." We cannot re-imagine, reshape, repurpose a part of our world without imagining, shaping, giving ourselves purpose. To imagine a new world is to imagine a new me.
The happy ending, the vanquishing of evil, inspires hope, but life doesn't seem to always follow this plot. Despite our best efforts and intentions, we sometimes fail. Yet, we still must act. We still must live.
In the Simarillion, the Elvish army seeking to expel Morgoth from Middle Earth is betrayed and begins retreating from the battlefield. The Elvish king, Turgon, makes his way back to his hidden city of Gondolin as Orcs follow his army. Hurin stands in the Orcs' path to protect Turgon's retreat. Hurin swings his ax as the Orcs swarm him. With each swing, Hurin cries, "Day shall come again," until he is surrounded by piles of Orc bodies and captured by enemy forces. Hurin is then forced to watch as Morgoth unveils the tragedy he has planned for Hurin's son, Turin.
"Day shall come again", is a cry of hope in the midst of betrayal and tragedy. Good does not always win and hope is sometimes not enough, but it may still be the best choice. Faced with a real possibility of failure, I must still act. Remaining steadfast to the bitter end is a better choice, a courageous act, in the face of tragedy. I choose to strive to see "day come again", even if it seems the sun will never shine again, so I may not forget the hope I seek to create in the world.
Stories filled with orcs, dragons, fire, and evil are not for the faint of heart. Entering the story is an act of resistance, a refusal to become a used up cog or overstretched spring. It imagines the machine can be disassembled and repurposed, even those times when the machine seems to lurched ahead.
To read a story is to have hope.
WITcha reading?
Let us know WITcha reading, WITCC by emailing the library at library@witcc.edu and let us know if we can put you in our Blog!
WITcha recommend? Let us know what books you recommend. You can find recommended books in our books tab!
WITcha Listening To?
What podcasts are you listening to? What are you recommending?
Let us know WITcha listening, WITCC by emailing the library at library@witcc.edu and let us know if we can put you in our Blog!
Say 'Hello' To Our New Books
Don't forget to stop by our books webpage for our new books and see what books are being recommended!
Thank you for joining us for our nerd week! We hope you had time to relax.
Next week we are taking a break, but we will see you the following week for an exciting time!
