Alcatraz is Not an Island.... or is it???

While watching "Alcatraz is Not an Island," I really enjoyed the sense of community and need for change that seemed to drive the occupants of the island. It seems that the island became its own little microcosm, engendering a community that, though founded on the grounds that change was needed, seemed to be based on a very old system of community. The main aspect of the story of the occupation of Alcatraz that really caught my attention was the emergence of the "leader" within the community. The competition for power that followed his departure showed a movement in the community towards just another hierarchy that had to be dominated over by one figure. The occupation of Alcatraz, though it was pioneered by a group hungry for change and intent on victory, ended with an almost stereotypical demise, and when I read about the Indian activist movements that followed on the PBS website, I wondered why one of the first attempts to remind American communities of the history and presence of Native Americans fell through so easily. The only conclusion that I could think of was that perhaps it was too soon for such a new community to attempt a statement so large. I also think that in the back of their minds, every person on that island was wondering when they would be stopped and sent home. On some level, a lot of the activists expected to be defeated, but that didn't change their desire for overall change. Alcatraz was an extremely important statement to the country, and because it was followed by such an abundance of activism, it seems that Alcatraz was only the prelude, it's main cause being to remind people that the Native American cultures still exists and still has power and meaning to those who are a member of it.
Question: Do you think the occupants of Alcatraz were more concentrated on obtaining the island itself, or were they more successful in a symbolistic sense?

As a kind of post script to my last post, I noticed that a lot of San Francisco landmarks are identified more for the legends and pop culture that they can be identified with rather than their history. It kind of makes me think of the modern nature of the city. Any thoughts?

Coit Tower

Coit tower is one of my favorite landmarks of San Francisco. Whenever I go there, I see it from almost anywhere in the city. According to the internet, and especially wikipedia.com (which by the way has great information about San Francisco!), Coit tower has been a major part of pop culture in San Francisco since it was built in 1933. The sad thing about a landmark like Coit tower is that it becomes so commonplace that it is often ignored as just a part of the same old San Francisco skyline. But when you start to look for it, a rich and interesting history is revealed. Alfred Hitchcock said that he used it in Vertigo as a phallic symbol. One legend says that the tower was built to resemble a fire hose nozzle because of it's benefactress's "affinity with firefighters." But in all the years that I have gone to San Francisco for one reason or another, I have never seen or heard very much about this famous San Francisco landmark, perhaps because it seems to symbolize something different to everyone, almost the same way that the city of San Francisco does to all that see it. The Coit tower, though, when taken in the context of the age of imperialism in the city, seems to take on a different meaning. The white art deco tower stands at the top of the city, at the summit of Telegraph Hill, which seems to be begging the tower to be an iconic symbol on the city skyline. San Francisco is to be the kind of city that has more landmarks than it knows what to do with, and all of them come from an age and symbolize that strange era when the city seemed to become it's own country. Seeing the images of Coit tower reminded of some of the ads that Brechin put in his book, again because of those images that invoke a feeling of San Francisco imperialism and individualism.
Discussion Question: Do you think that Brechin accurately portrays the individualistic nature of San Francisco as a city? What do you think of Brechin's portrayal of the city in general?

The Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem

The Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem
Because you always have a clock
strapped to your body, it's natural
that I should think of you as the
correct time:
with your long blond hair at 8:03,
and your pulse-lightening breasts at
11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30,
I know I'm right.

Brautigan's poem "The Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem" caught my eye as I skimmed through The Pill versus the Springhill Mining Disaster mainly because I often feel like the subject of the poem, as I'm sure most people in this crazy modern world of ours do. This poem comments on the state of our culture as one that has become a slave to time and perfection. Brautigan calls the woman in the poem "the correct time," which suggests the idea that not only is this woman the perfect member of modern society, always on time and always living up to the correct standards, but she embraces this fate of being essentially chained to her watch and therefore to her schedule.
The only describing characteristics of the woman in the poem is her "long blond hair," "pulse-lightening breasts," and "rose-meow smile." These descriptions convey a softer image of the modern woman, as well as an ideally feminine one. These soft images of femininity are juxtaposed against specific times, such as "8:03." The specific nature of these times puts further emphasis on the subject's devotion to time, as well as her desire to not waste a single second. After all, doing something at 8:03 exactly because there is another task to be done at 8:05 is a common occurence in the modern world, a world which Brautigan sees embodied in the woman who never takes her watch off.

Question for Week 4: The surreal nature of Brautigan's short story often seem cryptic and extremely strange. They are also often associated with nature and riddled with strange and vivid imagery. Does Brautigan's application of the surreal yet naturalistic (almost Kafkaesque) create a dream-like tone at all, or does it simply alienate in an attempt to confuse or shock the reader?

Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg

While Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti differ greatly in the style and overall tone of their writing, they also differ greatly on their overall expression of the "contado" idea that San Francisco seems to promote. San Francisco is indeed a city with a certain isolated and unique flavor to its streets, and though each writer interprets their experiences in San Francisco differently, the city's strange effect on all those who visit it can be see in both Ferlinghetti's and Ginsberg's writing.
Ferlinghetti's writing, though still with a dark edge to some of its subject matter, is far more idealistic that Ginsberg's poetry. Ginsberg's writing, especially "Howl" and "Footnote to Howl," convey the idea that Ginsberg, though still counting himself as a man living in the U.S., has taken refuge in San Francisco for its isolation from the rest of the United States. Ginsberg's poetry has the tone of a man who is recording his trip and assimilation into San Francisco, while Ferlinghetti's poems, like "The Great American Waterfront Poem," convey a character who seems to have assimilated directly into San Franciscan culture. Ginsberg clearly still focuses on America as a whole, writing not just about San Francisco in his great American poem, as Ginsberg does, but as the professor said, expressing that same "On the Road" mentality of a man going to San Francisco to seek some momentary asylum from the rest of the country.
Question: Is Ginsberg's "first thought best thought" beneficial to his expression of the "contado" idea? Does his later minor editing show that he may have had some regrets of his theory to not edit his work?