Dog's umvelt, Elephant Crackup, Le Guin

The last readings: Le Guin’s Buffalo Gals, Dog’s Umwelt, Elephant Crackup, and the Secrets of the Mind video we watched were connected by the idea that perspectives are taken for granted by humans (and for all we know, raccoons and/or chimpanzees have the same problem) and by understanding our unique perspective, we could have a better idea of what makes us human. This was also emphasized by the observation assignment as we slowed down to examine our own perceptions closer. This lesson has helped me to understand my perspective better by realizing first of all, that other people may have different perspectives, and by understanding where mine differ greatly from other species and where I may share some with others. This helps me see the bigger picture of the universe, by helping me realize that others may see a different bigger picture….maybe… Overall, I think the lesson was very informative and eye-opening.

Jeff F.

Le Guin

The story of Buffalo Gals is a very diverse story. It begins with the idea that it will be a realistic story, with the little girls getting in a plane crash and then seeking out her father. After that, it becomes a much more imaginitive story with Coyote taking her in as her own. This kind of story pushes people to think beyond what they know and think interpretively about an animals way of life and the reasons behind it. It is difficult for people to connect a relationship between human and animal when it is not advertantly shoved in their face. In this story they give animals many human characteristics to make a comparison to them being humanistic. The animals take the form of humans even though they continue to live as animals. They live like animals, yet they are still are as civilized as most humans would be, such as taking in a wounded, scared child with no where else to go. I believe that this story is used as an eye-opener to get people to really think and use their imaginations to find the comparison and use that to interpret if and why, animals could really be as civil as humans.

Buffalo Gals

Buffalo Gals challenged me to think beyond what I was reading. I had to think about who coyote was and what she represented. Humans and animals are very alike in many ways. This story showed that animals have lives and families just like humans do. It showed how they helped and loved each other. They have emotions and struggles like humans have. The story really showed these similarities.

By the end of the story, the little girl was able to see the animal world and the human world as the same. She learned to give respect to living things. Unfortunately, she was also able to see the evil in the world when coyote was killed. She didn’t want to go back to world she came from where humans were all that mattered. She had been enlightened and inspired by her new life. The animals had taken her in and became her friends and family. She had suffered so much already, why would they make her go back?

I think the story was very good although a little strange. It was meant to make us think and to look at the situation with an open mind. Talking, fully dressed animals don’t really exist but the point was to show the reader a new world. The child was able to accept, fit in, and eventually love this world. It showed that if you are open-minded, new worlds may be possible to find.

LE GUIN

after reading some of these posts it was brought to my attention that coyote was a person. for whatever reason i was thinking it was some sort of wolf or animal.
another interesting thing in this story is that animals and humans are both "people" which is different from our society. it seems to be suggesting that we are similar to them, and they can talk so it gets confusing. i enjoyed the story because of how out of the ordinary it is. its challenging us to think past the norm and consider animals and humans coexisting together in a little town. Coyote is suggested as being crazy and the fact that she talks to her poop pretty much clarifys that. she acts like they are her children. this is another thing that makes this story weird, along with the fact that this little child with one eye can comprehend any of what has happened to her.

Quinn P.

Buffalo Gals

This story is amazing because its makes you wonder if animals would show so much kindness to a human, and it is also unbelievable how a little girl would lay next to a coyote, and not be scaried. There was one point in the story where the coyote explains to the Gal that there were only two kinds of people, and tells the child that the first people were animals, children etc. I that the coyote was inferring that the animals where the first people created. I do believe that animals were created first before humans. But i wouldn't call animals people though. I liked this story because, i loved the sensivity of the animals. And i do think that some animals a kind.

istar Abu

Le Guin

Human/Nature

MacCormack/Ghnaim

I wanted to point out the differences between left and right, west and east. These metaphors were present throughout the entirety of the work. Some quotes:

"She kept her hand pressed over the right eyesocket".- pg. 62 (hurting her eye)

"… only the long west (left) held a great depth of pale radiance. Eastward (right) the plains ran down into night".- pg. 67 (getting a new eye)

"The eastern mountains were a cloudy dark red as if the level light shone through them as through a hand held before the fire".- pg. 75 (waking, day of Coyote's death)

"Sun went down the last slope of the west and left a pale green clarity over the desert hills".- pg. 77 (Before Coyote eats poison)

I would say that based on these quotes the right would be the "bad", "dark" side, and the left is the "pure", "light" side. Every time right/east is mentioned, included is either night, red, fire, pain. Every time left/west is mentioned, included is either radiance or "pale… clarity".

evan t.

Buffalo Gals

Courtney Timms
Human/Nature
Alan MacCormack/Safa Ghaim

The Buffalo Gals
“So, to me you’re basically grayish yellow and run on four legs. To that lot-” Coyote from Le Guin

After reading this quote I began to think about how much as humans, we are drastically alike. We seem to separate ourselves with our person “identities” and in that we forget how similar each of us really is. To survive our basic needs need to be met. It made me realize in every person you see there is a similarity you and that person share, whether its slim; like needing food and water. Or may be more complex like sharing the same cultural customs, religion, or traditions. I have found myself in the past saying, “Well we don’t have much in common.” But in the realm of things if you dive deep enough to try and get to know one another you can find many things in common.

Ironic would be the first word that came to mind when reading Colombo’s Critical Thinking, Challenging Cultural Myths. Ironic, because here I was sitting in a a seemingly traditional classroom, being assigned a reading that encouraged me to challenge traditional thinking. I enjoyed the article right away because it opened up with a sentence I immediately could relate too; “beginning college can be a disconcerting experience.” Sure enough, I had some disconcertion going on.

I particularly liked what Colombo had to say about myth and culture. I’ve always viewed culture as something rich and distinctly unique to humanity, but I never thought of it as having negative connotations, as well. Colombo stated that through culture, comes rigid customs that take a true critical thinker to break and question why those customs are the way they are.

It is within our traditional education system that we learn to obey these myths and customs and are rarely challenged to question them. This takes me strait to Gatto. The soul of Gatto’s argument is that our education system is full of flaws. it’s boring, ridged, and and encourages mediocracy. Friere shared similar views and even went as far as to say that oppression in our schools is caused by the love of death and destruction, rather then creation.

The key points of these three articles run parallel. The connections between them are blatant and obvious, and Colombo, Gatto, and Friere share very similar views. As for buffalo gals, however, the connection did not come quickly. To be honest, it didn’t really come at all. Though, I did connect it to our discussion about what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. We made assumptions that we are the only species capable of language and deep emotions, but it could be that we’re just looking at it form a different perspective. Just like how gal saw coyote as a person, and horse saw gal as a colt. It all depended on perspective, and our perspective could be completely off. Buffalo gals was humbling in that way, and even though I didn't find a direct way to connect it to the other readings, Buffalo gals did spark a lot of critical thinking

Jordan Bird Reader Response

The reading I choose to do my reading response on was Buffalo gals. I thought this story was a little farfetched but enjoyable. I thought it was a little weird that a girl was in an airplane crash and came out with just a missing eye. I do however like the coyote character. I felt that she was a guiding presence for the young girl, she was caring like a mother but at the same time pushed her to do a lot of stuff on her own like a father would do, for example when they are running to the village the little girl stops a couple times because she is physically unable to keep going but the coyote comes back to push her to keep going. Soon enough they make it to the village with the tiny people and a doctor named Jay heals the young girl’s eye by using pine pitch; which the coyote then says to the girl “That eye looks like shit.” Then the coyote healed her pain once more by licking her face; a very weird relationship in my personal opinion.

When the child decided to sleep in coyote’s house her experience with the flea bed, muddy water, and hanging salmon for food made me think that she was switching the life of a coyote. She was experiencing how to live like a coyote and I believe she adapted quite well with her current circumstances. The scene that struck me in a weird spot was the scene where one of coyotes boyfriends trying to rape the little child. This story was very creepy and interesting at the same time. I am not sure if it’s my particular style that I am used to but it’s good in its own ways.

I used to put myself into the animal world. We used to imagine we were animals, because we could be in a different world. We got tired of being people, tired of using hair dryers and shoes and clothes. We pretended we were something else for hours. For some reason, the idea of being in the animal world was intriguing to us—being able to create lives in our imaginations that weren’t human. Then we would return to our human lives, to the televisions and microwaves and bath tubs. LeGuin lets me remember the life that animals have that we might not know about. Terrible as it sounds, animals are so unknown to us. Although they aren’t as needy, developed or “civilized” as humans, they have lives, like us. When people say “pets take sooo much work to take care of” we forget they are alive. She helped put back into perspective the way I remember saying “people” as we pretended we were unicorns, or mermaids at the pool. We were young girls, we did that. LeGuin’s story also captured me in the way the “animals” spoke. Coyote used the word fuck multiple times, and it caught me by surprise when I read it in the dialogue. It also intrigued me how the girl fell from the sky, like she fell out of her world and into the world of the animal kingdom, only the animals were more like people living in a dream. It reminded me of what we used to imagine. I got caught up on wondering what they ate, like the dream salmon mush, but there were so many different kinds of animals, they couldn’t all eat salmon that weren’t really salmon. It also got me how they all had the names of the animals they portrayed, but in their “human” form, and how they resembled the animals they were, like Horse, who had the body and spirit of a stallion, or Coyote, who was wild and unruly—like a coyote. I’ve read LeGuin’s Buffalo Gals before in a class where my teacher worshipped her, but not this story, and it kept my attention until the end, when things got difficult and the story wrapped itself up. I really liked the personas she gave the characters, including the girl who fell from the sky. I also liked how in the very beginning we learn about Coyote throwing her eyes into the tree, like the story of Coyote throwing his eyes into the sky. The way she related the eyes of the Coyote to the missing eye of the girl was well done but there are things that weren’t resolved, like the rocks in the mush pot and why her eye fell out. But we do learn that now the girl has obtained eyes that can see both into the animal world and back into the real world. When she sees the cattle and the ranchers and when Coyote is poisoned are key points to the story I feel. After Coyote’s death, when the girl is discussing the death with the other animals, and Grandmother says “Oh, don’t worry about Coyote! She gets killed all the time.” The story takes on a different tone. The last page is where the story really takes a turn. I liked the way Chickadee tells her to build gardens for her, and Spider tells her not to kill her “or I’ll make it rain…” but it’s sad that she may never see Coyote again. All in all, the story sort of brought back the child in me. It helped me to remember another world, and the story was a good read with a past built into its present.

Spencer's Response 1

Spencer McGee
Human/Nature- MacCormack
October 7, 2009
Le Guin and Gatto Response
When I started reading Le Guin I couldn’t figure out whether we were talking about humans or animals. Then I thought about Tuesday’s class and how we discussed what are the main differences between human and animals. As I kept this in mind the characters of Buffalo Gals kept switching between each body. I thought of this as trying to keep humans and animals alike as much as possible.
What I figured out was that we do not need structured education to learn. As I read the child in Buffalo Gals matured as a character. In the beginning she was “blind” in one eye and needed aid. The coyote took the child under her wing and taught the child ways while making connections with other people/animals. This is relevant to Gatto’s essay about the education system. He states that education is boring and allowing too much leeway for student’s activities. I believe what Gatto is trying to say is that us, as students, need adventure and challenges instead of sitting in a classroom all day long.
Bringing it back to Le Guin, the child in the story experienced adventure and important life lessons and was not bored with the education that was experienced. If we could some how make the educational system more exciting and “adventurous” it would be more successful and students would be more active in class.

Buffalo Gals

John Her
October 8, 2009
Human/Nature
Reflection
On this tale, the start was interesting. And why do I say that? It is because it’s ironic that the women’s name is coyote and I automatically thought, “What?” It talked to a child, an injured child. Coyote was actually a human. Therefore, the child had a busted eye. Knowing that it was a child, it was quite shocking how this child handled his pain so well. As the story flowed on it really caught my attention. I actually got engaged into the story. The way coyote and the child survived throughout the story was fascinating to me, it seemed like they never really eat much but until they got their hands on something, they went all out on the food.
What really disgust me in this story was coyote. She was a woman who had good morals except some action she does. The way she does things like how she would poop or pee anywhere was really disturbing. Also after going number two she would talk to the poop as if it was a person. It brings the reputation of coyote down and I how I would think of it. Coyote did take great care of the child and doing the right things for the child but just had some manner issues. She would always swear in front of the child. As they went on their journey, they came across many people. They met Chipmunk which was a lady who was like a mother. The child met Jay who was the doctor. The doctor seemed a little strange to me. Usually you think of doctors as kind and with a nice appearance, but apparently this guy was not. He was a bulky, tall and had huge hands; broad shoulder, a big head, and a short neck which made him look even scarier. Jay eventually help the child with the eye, he inserted a new yellow eye that seem to satisfy the child with her vision. They also came across Horse. Horse was the one who had been nice enough take the child to find her parents. As they go they meet a girl named Chickadee. Chickadee was their scout and so they tagged along with each other. I thought that it was such a coincidence that they would have all these people they came across to be so caring and needy.

Colombo and Le Guin

In “Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths”, Gary Colombo encourages us to go beyond the obvious meanings in day-to-day life. Colombo tells us that in order to think critically, we must explore and question the facts we are given, rather than simply accepting them as true. In order to achieve this, we must be able to look at the world through the perspectives of others. We must be capable of looking beyond our own cultural beliefs and myths, our own ideals. Only by beginning to question our own cultural myths may we learn to think critically by questioning other aspects of our society.

In Ursula Le Guin’s “Buffalo Gals”, we delve into a myth that is far from traditional. In Le Guin’s story, we enter the lives of the animals. We learn about their personal lives, their lovers, and their messy rooms. It is a rare occurrence that we think about the personal lives of the animals in our world. We instead see animals as creatures driven by instinct, acting purely out of their necessity to survive. Le Guin’s piece allows us to think critically by questioning the traditional myths and assumptions we have about animals.

Colombo states, “By questioning the myths that dominate our culture, we can begin to resist the limits they impose on our vision”. Perhaps Le Guin’s intention was to open our eyes to the generalizations we make about animals on a daily basis, encouraging us to think critically about their true impact on our lives and our world.