jay's museum of college writing

Jay's FOR THE LOVE OF FAMILY Thanksgiving Post - The House of Broken Angels - by Luis Urrea - The American Dream

  It’s not to difficult to figure out WHO this book is about.   The first chapter is  titled “Big Angel’s Last Saturday.”  The first words to the novel: “Big Angel was late to his own mother’s funeral.”  In Spanish, Big Angel translates to Angelote, I mean, if I were to look it up, that’s what I would find, but I’m not sure if the definition does Angelote justice.  Angelote is the in the center of everything.  He is the patriarch of his family on both sides of the border that separates the United States and Mexico. From the beginning to the end of the book, he sets rules and expectations for how his friends and family are to act and behave, but apparently these rules don’t appy to him.  I mean, he was LATE to his OWN MOTHER’S FUNERAL   My mother doesn’t speak much Spanish, but she knows a lot of Yiddish.  In Yiddish they would call Angelote a “Makher,” someone who thinks he/she is overly important.  In Spanish, I think they call people like Angelote a “Cabron!”

I’m not writing a book report here, but I enjoyed this book so much, I read it TWICE:  once in  English, and then again in Spanish. It’s like the third or fourth Luis Urrea book or novel I’ve read.  Like many of my students, Luis has lived on both sides of the border.   Luis’s father was born in Sinaloa and his mother comes from New York. I’m not sure where they met, but Luis was born in Tijuana and raised in San Diego. In all of his books, he devotes ample time to his vision of The American Dream. From the beginning to the end in House of Broken Angels, Angelote has been on  a mission to create a better life for his family.  He has been estranged from his younger brother, also named Angel, but referred to in the novel as Little Angel (or Angelito).  Angelito has always despised his older brother for his Old-School, Macho ways.   Angelito is like a New-School Chicano, more sensitive and worldly.   Where Angelote is shown to scratch and claw for everything he has ever believed in, Angelito abandoned the family early to pave his own way.  The author’s BIG IDEA is to bring everyone together one last time before it’s too late, and spoiler alert:  HE DOES.

If I were to run in to Angelote, like at work, in the neighborhood, Starbucks;  I’m afraid I would never get a chance to know him very well. I would keep my distance. From my sideways glance, I can see  he’s got an attitude, like he thinks he’s Bigger than Life.  He has something to say to everybody, even the most casual of strangers.  In the first chapter, he throws party a for himself.  TO CELEBRATE HIMSELF.  Because it’s his party, he talks down to everyone.  I’m sixty-five, and he’s closing in on seventy.  The difference in age is not that much, but I would always get the feeling he’s talking down to me.  Like I just don’t know anything.   How can I?  I’m a gringo. He has lived his life with a chip on his shoulder.  He has fought his way up from poverty in Mexico to live the good life just north of La Jolla.  For forty years, he he has worked for Pacific Gas and Electric.  He’s now an executuve with his own desk.  He’s a boss.  He's a jefe.  This is the guy who takes great pride in his wristwatch.  It’s BIG.  That’s so everyone can see it.   To be exact, it's a 43mm Invicta Dragon Lupah watch.  The kind you might see on  the writst of a bomber pilot. He liked to tap it. Like it was a musical instrument.  I don’t think he’s making any fashion statement here, but he’s telling the world that he got to where he is now by coming in  early and leaving late.  He wants to make sure everyone knows that.  It doesn’t matter that no  one  really knows what he does all day.  That’s beside the point.

I DON’T LIKE WATCHES.  I do not carry a cell phone where I can access it so easily.  For me, once you begin thinking more the time of day, you think less of what you should be doing.  Watches are a distraction.  The symbolism is lost on me.  In college I studied Kafka.  Kafka super-power was his writing.  He is now considered a literary genius, but during his lifetime he felt overwhelmed by his own misery and loneliness.  From what I read about his writing process, he could create a brilliant sentence in one minute and want to throw himself out a window in the next. Wearing a watch could throw him off the deep end, for he would constantly check the time to see how long he had been sitting there at his desk pen-in-hand without writing anything substantial. I found this poem about Kafka in a book written by another one of my literary heroes, Raymond Carver.  It’s called "Kafka’s Watch."   Kafka may have been the polar opposite of Angelote, but for me their relationships to their watches will always remain significant. 

I feel the pressure of the full eight or nine hours even in the last half hour of the day.  It’s like a train ride lasting night and day. In the end you’re totally crushed. /You no longer think about the straining of the engine, or about the hills ofl at country, but ascribe all that’s happening to your watch alone. / The watch which you continually hold in the palm of your hand. Then shake. And bring slowly to your ear in disbelief.

  But nevertheless,  I LOVE Angelote.   I take full responsibility for going off track here with my Kafka/Carver reference.  But I can’t stop myself.  In reading and re-reading The House of Broken Angels, I begin to see the sadness that Angelote carries deep inside his heart. At first, I couldn't help thinking that Angelote was all about Angelote, but after 300 pages I see that his love for his FAMILY is bigger than his love for HIMSELF.  This is the way he rolls. He embeds himself into the lives of his family and friends, whether they like it or not. He CARES, but in seventy years he hasn't really learned how to show it.  In his mind, getting everyone in one place for one last party is the best of all worlds.  Only a few people know this:  He has terminal cancer, and his doctors have told him he only has days to live.  He's bound to a wheel chair.  He is suffering so badly, his daughters  need to help him bathe and go to the bathroom.  This has to be a painful ending for such a Macho-Man.  But, he's not going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing his pain.  That's why they call him Angelote.

In the night before he dies, Anglelote feels good about everything he has done at the party, and for that matter, feels immense pride for everything he has done in seventy years.  NO REGRETS.  This leads us to a tender and naked moment he spends with Perla, his beloved wife.  Of course, he is on so many medications that prevent him from performing in bed, but that is not really his objective either.  He wants to tell his wife on this night, Perla, how much he loves her.  This is a tear-jerker, because the book begins with a chapter that describes the day he met her. It’s a poetic moment. This follows maybe 24 hours of difficult conversation with his little brother, Angelito.  They reminisce about pain and sorrow of their ongoing separation.  Their stories are different, but truths are the same.  FAMILY is EVERYTHING.

I’m sorry I may have implied Angelote was a cabrón.  Too few of us will understand what it was like for Luis Urrea to grow up in poverty-stricken, violence-ridden Tijuana, or for that matter, what it was like for Angelote to provide for his family in  third-world Sinaloa.  This book is full of sorrow and frustration.   Grief, sadness, regrets.   In the end, yes he does miss his own mother’s funeral. He can’t stand on his own two legs. He’s confined to a wheelchair.   He’s not Big.  He looks Small. But that doesn’t mean he will not push forward.  In the dawn’s early light, Angelote sees his American Dream come to fruition.  His family gives him the strength to do so. Today, he believes, and on to tomorrow. Luis Urrea writes, ”This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.”

Jay's PROOFREADING PARTY Post - Community Profiles - Student Collaboration - Making English Class Fun Again!

Writing for enjoyment is something we should all be doing in the classroom; like, I don’t mean we should dumb anything down to make writing EAZY,  but we should  look for ways to make writing FUN.  This semester, I have this queazy feeling in my stomach that many of my students not only hate writing, but they fear it.  I can see them shiver when I introduce my assignments – like  a cold wind  suddenly blows through the room and across their faces.   As a teacher, I try not to let their reactions scare me.  If they see frustration on my face, things are only going to get worse.  I mean, we are all in this TOGETHER.  How can I convince them of that?

It came to me this morning, maybe at 4:00 or so. I was out on the streets for my daily walk in Mexicali (I can’t run anymore because of a damaged hip) and  two cyclists came up from behind me out of the COLD and DARKNESS .  Their lights were flickering and their mouths were moving.  I think they were laughing.   I suspect they were on their way to cross the border for an extensive workout before their days get started.   They were talking to each other as if  they were at a Starbucks or in a cantina.  They paid me NO attention.  In Mexicali, I often see groups of bike riders taking on extreme workouts in the early mornings.  I wish I could join them.  They look like they are having  FUN. 

Jaja. I bet they felt the COLD a lot less than I did.  I thought how could I integrate the animation I heard in their voices into my classroom workshops?  Upon arrival to class, I suspect many students gear up for a SLOG.  For them it’s set in stone - they think wrting has to be hard work; otherwise it’s won’t become good work. My students sit STIFF at their desks, like they are waiting for a flu shot. But, this week it’s going to be DIFFERENT.  I’ve Invited them to a Proofreading Party.  Food.  Drink. Cheery Conversation.  Instead of writing in isolation, my goal is to get them to share their work. ENGAGE.  I bring in colored pens an amusing article about Chinese food to read.  I teach them how to identify errors in the text through the  use universal proofreading symbols. This week we to take ONE STEP CLOSER to SUCCESS in their English 110 courses.  Peer Review offers them the opportunity to provide and receive constructive feedback on their Research Projects.  Below, I provide the following information to help them engage with their classmates:

• Peer Editing Comment prompts
• Highlighting Instructions
• Jay's Sample Peer Editing Sheet 

Jay's Tip: I know.  I know, many of them may have little experience sharing their work with their classmates, but in my experience, it's always the BEST PART of the class. In Peer Review, my students find themselves writing for an audience.  SOMEONE THEY KNOW IS ACTUALLY GOING TO READ THEIR WORK AND RESPOND.   

THIS IS WHAT I TELL THEM:  Listen to the feedback.  Make the changes.  Feel more confident for the next assignment.  When I know someone is going to read my writing, I feel more FOCUSED and more MOTIVATED to get it right.  I want to get better with each assignment!

The purpose of peer review is to help each other advance beyond the current draft toward the finished paper. Writing is never done in a vacuum, and peer reviews demonstrate the way in which all writing is social, part of a community dialogue, and subject to change based on the responses of the particular audience. There is a triangular relationship among writer, reader, and text, with each contributing to the balance of the whole. Peer reviews make this dynamic happen.  At the same time, through peer reviews, students  learn effective writing strategies to apply to future papers.

Jay's Tip  to Students:  LEARN A PROFESSIONAL SKILL!

• Learn to become an ACTIVE and PRODUCTIVE participant at your job or in your future workplace.
• Your ability to provide positive feedback will enhance your value to the company or organization you work for.
• Please use the writing prompts listed below that will help you focus on effective questions or commentary to help your classmates.

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO:

• In small groups,  let's first talk about our Community Profile Topics.  Introduce to your classmates WHAT you wrote about and WHY it was interesting to do so.  You should have something INTERESTING to share.  Like, what did you learn?  What will be important for your classmates to know?
• This is when you will pass out PRINTED copies of your work to your classmates - Each individual of the group  will read  the first THREE paragraphs of his/her essay - OUT LOUD.
• This way, your classmates can read your work while you do - They will be able to identify your most important points and best writing.

Advice for Peer Review Participants: Don’t focus exclusively on grammar and mechanics. Your goal is not to edit but rather to offer constructive and helpful feedback.  Use a positive, encouraging tone, explain why a change should be made, and offer suggestions for effective revisions!

For starters,  When you share your work, the FIRST THING to do  is review the FORMAT of the work:

1. MLA heading is in order: student name, teacher name, hour, date (written out)
2. Title is unique
3. Title is centered and is in 12 point times font
4. Paragraphs are indented
5. Paper is double spaced with no extra spaces between paragraphs
6. Parenthetical notations are included

       Below, I provide a  few Peer Editing Prompts to help student feedback:

1. Title: What do you think of the title? Is it interesting, informative, and indicative of the

writer’s stance?  Is there an appropriate subtitle.  Did the writer make effective use of the colon?

* What would you say this essay is about.  Do you have a clear sense of why the writer is writing about this topic?

*  Now, do you care?  What is written here that may appeal to you or others in the class?   Is there something that grabs your attention?

2. Quote Sandwich: Has the writer made a good choice with the selected quote. I mean, does it capture your attention?  Is it interesting?  Now, do you want to know more about the topic?   Does the writer explain the  significance of the quote?

• Did the writer provide a little background for the quote?
• Is there an effective SIGNAL PHRASE to introduce the quote?
• Please check for PUNCTUATION. Quotations marks.    Periods.
• VERY IMPORTANT - Is there an in-text citation that follows the quote?
• Does the writer explain the significance of the quote?

3. Jay's Delayed Thesis:

•  Does the writer present an effective Research Question?
•  Before the thesis is presented, does the writer share bits and pieces of what he/she has read.?
•  Don't Forget: An in-text citation needs to be inserted to inform the reader where this informatin came from.
•  Does the THESIS appear at the end of the second paragraph - Is it in BOLD FACE - Has it been underlined?
•  DOES IT MAKE SENSE?
•   In  your own words, can you explain the author’s thesis or main idea?

4. Summary of a Research Article or Research Idea:

• Does this paragraph begin with a topic sentence - Is the main idea stated clearly inthe first sentence of  the paragraph?
• Does the writer identify the title of the article and the name of the author?
• Do you see specific reference/explanation to the WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW elements of the article.
• Do you see appropriate IN-TEXT CITATIONS that inform you where the information comes from. 

OK, Now you know what to look for - Please use your HIGHLIGHTERS to identify key elements of writing - Like this:

( Use your own choice of colors - Use what is available)

Last but not least, LEAVE A POSTIVE COMMENT -  What is the best part of this paper? Did you learn something new.  Did you appreciate the effort?  What can you say to support your classmate?

•  Below, I share a Sixties Research Paper for Janis Joplin
• I used Word Annotations because it was easier this way for me to present a model of Peer Review on Canvas
• I took a SNIP of the first paragraph - I tried to follow my own  directions the best I could.
• YOU should be able to leave  at least  FIVE comments for your classmate.

TAG!  - YOU ARE IT! - Use the following Peer Editing Suggestions to Complete your Peer Editing Assignment - to be submitted on Canvas.

For me, the worst part of a writing class is having to write what the teacher wants you to write, not what you want to write.  That’s so boring for the students.  That’s even worse for the teacher.  Everything looks and sounds the same.  This semster my students have chosen their own subjects and topics  for a Community Profile project. Their writing about Teen Pregnancy, Immigration Struggle, Broken Homes.  My goal  this week is to provide a positive, trusting atmosphere for my students to share their work and collaborate at their tables. They will discuss important issues that affect their lives.   LESS of ME.  MORE of THEM.  From what I’ve read so far, my students will have more insight into each other’s topics than I will.  This is the FUN part of writing: when students have the opportunity to explore their personal thoughts and feelings, and know someone will listen and care.

Jay's THE COMEDIANS Post - Graham Greene Novel - Haitians in Mexicali - Political Tyranny - Island Voodoo - Elizabeth Taylor - Furious Love

I pulled Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians off my shelf when Trump began maiking up stories about Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio.  The first we heard about it was at the Presidential debate with Kamala Harris at the end of September.  He said it on national television:  Haitians in Springfield were eating neighborhood pets!  An estimated 12,000 or 15,000 Hatians who had come to Springfield (LEGALLY) to work now suddenly felt the threat of violence in the air.  Many have already left.  They feel the hate of MAGA supporting residents.  This story had legs!  Trumps lies stirred racial tensions which continued right up and through the election.  

I write this now because a few years ago Mexicali faced the same type of Haitian influx.  2000 Hatian immigrants showed up seeking ayslum in the U.S. but were denied entrance at the border.  Many have taken a very circuituous route to get here.  A large percentage of them began their trek in South America after taking refuge in places like Brazil and Venezuela, and then worked their way north through Central America and Mexico. Now their future, especially after our most recent election,  is uncertain. The Mexicali authorities have created twelve new shelters for the immigrants, but the fear of deportation looms over their heads. Any promise of asylum in the U.S. looks slim to none. 

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The past few years I have been re-visiting novels that I had read in college.  I remember choosing  Graham Greene to read for his ventures into far-off places like Vietnam, West Africa, Haiti… and Mexico. Not only did this author provide me an escape from my dreary life, but he also opened my eyes to new cultures and world views. Each of his novels offers thoughtful but desperate characters that find themselves in the middle of violent political conflict.  These characters seem to have good hearts, but they eventually turn bad.  They succumb to their surrondings.  There is no escape. I’ll never assign The Comedians in any class I teach, but I continue to encourage my students to expore books beyond the reading lists they see in their class syllabi.

I'm calling this a DARK novel, one of many I've enjoyed reading from this author.  From his first pages Greene has a special skill to create a sense of IMPENDING DOOM. He wrote The Comedians upon a visit to Haiti in 1954.  This might have happened shortly after his The Quiet American and soon before his Our Man in Havana. Greene is known for searching nightmare republics to create a tone and setting for his novels.  Certainly all three of these novels check these boxes.  The Quiet American focuses upon covert American operations in Vietnam that instigated a bloody war that no one wanted. Our Man in Havana reveals the nasty international espionage that preceded the Cuban Revolution.  On the surface, Greene's characters seem good at heart, but everywhere they look they see corruption and violence.    In The Comedians, the novel's main character and narrator, a man named Brown, befriends a man named Smith and another man named Jones.  Nothing is as it seems.  Each one has a backstory that is difficult to believe.  This is why Greene calls his novel The Comedians.  In French, the language of Haiti, there is nothing funny about the word "comedian."  It translates to "actor."  These three friends each face cruel, life-threating circumstances on the island, but they have no one else to approach for help.  This is the era of Haiti's evil dictator/president Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, and his death squads, the Tontons Mancoute.  

 I'm not writing a book report here - That would be BORING - but I continue to post my appreciation of Greene's ability to convert his personal and professional experience and observations into strange, complex fiction.  Before he became a successful writer, Greene was a successful spy for his native England's military intelligence service, MI6, during World War II. Later, he made his money traveling to the world's troubled hotspots to report upon political violence and chaos. Greene's narrator in The Comedians,  Brown ( we never know his first name) is a a struggling ex-patriot hotelier in Port-au Prince, Haiti.  "Struggling" may be an understatement.  His hotel, the Trianon, has no occupants.  The novel begins on his return to the island from New York, where he tried to find a purchaser for his property.  He comes back by boat, and this is where he meets Smith and Jones.   Smith, who is with his wife, seems to be an honest and confident man. His wife tells everyone they meet he was a candidate for presidient of the United States in he 1954 election.  Jones is more of a shady businessman.  Over drinks, he says he is ex-military and fought in Burma.  Brown really doesn't know what to believe from either of them.  In everything Smith and Jones say, there is a shadow of a doubt.  This is the world that Greene knows so well.

When Brown finally makes it back to his hotel, it's really DARK in Port-au-Prince.  This is because of a black-out mandate to keep people off the streets at night. Anyone found outside could become subject to the brutality of the Tontons. At the bottom of his hotel's empty swimming pool, he shines his flashlight on a dead body. It's his friend Haitian friend Doctor Philipot.  Instead of the terror of being taken in by the Tontons at night, Doctor Philipot first slashed his wrists and then his own throat.  By the time Brown got to him, he had bled out in a pile of leaves. This is only the start of a pattern of terror that dominates the novel.  In the middle of all this gloom, Brown carries on a torrid love affair with the wife of a South American ambassador.  Of course they can’t make love in his hotel, for there are spies everywhere. They resort to clandestine trysts in the back of her car parked in front of aremote  statue of Christopher Columbus.  Throughout the novel, Brown is asked why has he returned to Haiti when the future looks so bleak.  She’s it.  She is  basically the only thing that rings true for him.  Her name is Martha, and she is the daughter of a Nazi general that was hanged at Nuremberg.  She has a little son with the ambassador, which means she will never get a divorce. Their relationship is bitter, sullen, and hopeless, but none of that matters.  She is as lonely as he is.  For Brown, Martha is the only thing that provides any meaning to his life.   He’ll risk everything and anything to be close to her.

Not surprisingly, the novel The Comedians was soon transformed into the film The Comedians. Graham Greene wrote his own screenplay.  They shot the movie in Africa because they knew they would never be left alone if they set the movie on the island of Haiti.  Not as long as Papa Doc was in charge.  The surpising part comes when you consider who was chosen for the starring roles of Brown and Martha.  Somehow the producers of the film were able to land Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  This is not too long after the two Hollywood legends had appeared in Cleopatra, and then again in Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In Cleopatra, the two stars met for the very first time in the studio commissary.  Hardcore alcoholic Richard Burton, dressed as Marc Anthony, was trying to raise a cup of coffee to his lips, but his hands were just not going to stop shaking enough for him to take a sip.   Queen Elizabeth Taylor, dressed as Cleopatra, saw her costar in distress and quickly approached to help him in his time of need.  Apparently there was something about his lips, the coffee, and the way they were dressed, that was going to transform the rest of their lives.  Soon they turned their backs on their loving  spouses and began a FURIOUS love affair that would make them the most famous couple in the world.  Maybe ever.

I’m not sure what will happen following the results of our most recent election to the Haitans in Springfield.  Soon I expect to see a few of them escorted across the border that separates Calexico and Mexicali. It’s a sad state of affairs that a "Nation of Immigrants" will no longer live up to this title. Considering the dearth of resources in Mexico,  I really don’t know how the first wave of Haitan immigrants is currently fairing in Mexicali.  On occasion, I will see Haitan immigrants working in construction, or selling knicknacks on the street,  but I don’t know how and where they live.  The other day, a young Haitian mother opened the door for me at an Oxxo.  She held her baby in one arm, and took  I took two 20-peso bills from my pocket and placed them in her free hand.   She said, “Merci.”   That’s how I knew she was Haitian. I said, “ ce n'était rien.”  It was nothing.  It isn’t too much to be nice to a person new in the country.  I mean, we all come from somewhere.

 

 

 

Jay's JANIS JOPLIN BEFORE and AFTER Post - Leonard Cohen - Kris Kristofferson - Patti Smith - OD at Age 27

A beatnik was a fifties person who was creative, poetic and/or intellectual. Janis Joplin was a beatnik before she was a hippie.  This was 1958, around the same time John Lennon and Paul McCartney were putting the "Beat" in the "Beatles."  Beatniks wore dark glasses and dark clothes. They smoked a lot of cigarettes and listened to weird music. Be-Bop. Jazz.  They developed their own language.   Beatniks didn't care about being popular; in fact, they often sought the opposite because they considered themselves rebels against conformity. Janis read a lot of books and sang a lot of songs by black artists. Her friends and family in Texas didn't like that.

I just read a very cool anecdote about Janis the other day in a book of anecdotes called One on One, written by Craig Brown.  Previously I had read a similar book by Mr. Brown about the Beatles in which he records first-person meetings of  famous (and no-so-famous) people with the Fab Four. 

In One on One, Janis is shown sneaking into a hotel elevator before the doors close.  This is like 4:00 a.m in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, a few days before her scheduled appearance at the historic Woodstock Festival in 1969.  Janis is but twenty-four-years-old and relatively unknown.  She has released her first album, and her career has yet to take off. Inside the elevator, there was just one man, all alone. He too, was a singer-songwriter who had released his first album.  His name was Leonard Cohen.  He may have been ten years older than Janis.

Thinking of something to break the ice,  Leonard asks Janis if she is looking for someone.

Yes,” she replies. “I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.”

“Little lady,”says Cohen, maybe pushing out his chest a little, “You’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.”

“I thought he was bigger,” says Janis.

“I used to be bigger,” replies Cohen, “but I’ve been sick.

I write this, for Kris Kristofferson just died a few weeks ago.  Like Leonard Cohen, he became one of Janis’s lovers.  He also wrote the legendary song “Me and Bobby McGee” that became her greatest hit. It’s a song about discovering the world on your own terms.  There is a line the song about independence that goes like this: “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.”  What brought Janis and Kris together was what drove them apart.   They both wanted to be free, but they would never feel that way in a long-term relationship. how she would be lonely on days and how she was apart from her family. She had a dream and her dream was to invest in the music, which she did, but somehow she wasn’t happily fulfilled. It’s true having fame and having the success you wished doesn’t always make you happy especially if your not putting some fun into it.

My students will appreciate this excerpt from Just Kids: Future punk star and memoirist Patti Smith had wandered into  the restaurant El Quijote next door to the Chelsea Hotel.   There is a tequila party going on. Jimi Hendrix is there in a bowler hat.  Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane occupy a table in the corner of the room.   Patti, who doesn’t drink or do drugs, must feel high as a kite just the same – I mean, she has just walked into her own hippie dream.  Janis Joplin is there, her hair covered in pink, magenta  and purple boa feathers.  She looks powerful and electric.  She’s flirting with a handsome man.  This is when Patti is pulled over by a friend towards their table.  She hears the words addressed to Janis:  “This is the poet Patti Smith.”    Whoa.  Take a deep breath, Patti…

It’s the beginning of beautiful friendship. On this very night, Patti stayed with Janis.  The handsome man Janis was flirting with didn’t.  This always happens to her, Janis sobbed. She’s famous for saying, “On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone."  Patti was asked to take Janis back to the Chelsea and keep an eye on her. Everyone there knew the trouble ( and hard drugs ) Janis could get into when she reached such a state.  That night Patti stayed with Janis in her Chelsea Hotel suite.  Could you imagine what it must felt like to see your idol/inspiration fall apart before your eyes?  Patti tries to lift her spirits in the best way she knew how. Before she leaves, she writes a song for Janis and shares it on her guitar: When the crowd goes home / And I turn in and realize I’m alone / I can’t believe / I had to sacrifice you.

 “That’s me man,” Janis said, wiping her tears.  “That’s my song..”  Patti ties it together. 

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Below I use Janis to model a submission for a Visual Analysis assignment.  I ask students to share an interesting image in their research papers. They identify the visual elements that make up the entire composition. Consider the identifiable objects in the piece (such as buildings, shapes, icons, people, and so forth) as well as more abstract visual elements, like colors, textures, typefaces, organizational layout, groupings, patterns, and so forth  WHAT CATCHESTHEIR  EYE?

Here, Janis appears on the cover of a Latin music fan magazine, La Mosca en la Pared.  The title translates to “The Fly on the Wall.”  The title implies that this magazine will give the reader a candid look at the subject of each article.  The phrase “Fly on the Wall,” is used to show a secret side to someone or something.  When someone says, “I wish I could be a ‘fly on the wall,’” he/she wishes to see what is really happening behind the scenes.

Unlike most of the images we see of Janis, she is not smiling or singing in this poster.  She looks glum.  Here eyes are dark. Her lips are turned down.   Her look doesn’t match the free-wheeling, crazy-ass rock-star of her legend.  In the bottom the poster, right below her name, a sub-title reads, “La Pequena Niña Triste.”  In this picture, Janis looks more like a young woman waiting in line at a community college to register for her classes.

The poster shows two sides to Janis.  First there is the Queen of Psychedlic Soul.  I mean just look at her hair.  It’s wild.  It’s bright.  She looks like a pink fire. She’s wearing her trademark jewelry. A collection of beaded necklaces hang from her neck. But, there is also the Janis we rarely see.  She looks insecure. Her face doesn’t express the same type of confidence we see on stage. She has her hand on her hip like she doesn’t know what to say or do.  The first thing I see when I look at this picture is the Janis we all want to see. She’s the girl with a dream. The one that ran away from home in Port Arthur, Texas to become a rock star legend. After studying the picture, I finally noticed the magazine cover featured two important names. The appeared to the right of Janis.  Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were both blues artists that became great influences on Janis’s music and life.  Both Bessie and Billie died much too early in tragic accidents.  Janis would soon join them.  She died of a heroin overdose at age 27.