A Grammary Way to Start the Day: Repost from Asylum.com

5 Grammar Rules People Break Most

The English language is a tricky devil to wrap your head around sometimes. It's a hard language to learn for non-native speakers, and it has more irregularities than an old-folks home. With that in mind, we're here to help by giving you a handy guide for those nagging issues and confusing rules (or exceptions) that arise from time to time to help make sure you're using your language correctly.

Affect vs. Effect
What a silly pair of words. Will you be affected by the effect? Not if you're not sure what you're talking about. So here's a handy tip for remembering which is the verb and which is the noun:

Lady Gaga affects the brain stem, leading to bleeding ears and other painful effects.

Who vs. Whom
Smarty threw a party and no one came -- remember that. A lot of people toss "whom" about willy nilly because they think it makes them sound smart like Frasier, but there's a time and a place for all whoms, which we're not even sure can be pluralized. Anyway, you want "who" when it's the subject and "whom" when it's the object of the sentence.

Who kicked whom in the groin?

Why is this correct and the reverse not? Replace who with "he" and whom with "him" and if the sentence makes sense, then Bob's your uncle.

Which vs. That
Most people won't give you trouble for this as grammar rules have loosened over the years, but if you want to be a stickler, "that" is important and "which" is not. Which is to say "that" is for essential parts of the sentence which, if they were removed, would change its meaning (and no commas are needed). "Which," on the other hand, is for use in sentences that have extra, non-essential information added.

The thing that bit me was a zombie.

The bite, which later turned me into a zombie, was oozing pus.

Notice in the second sentence that you can remove the whole part about the zombie and still appreciate the pus-oozing bite. If you remove anything in the first sentence you lose all kinds of meaning.

Me vs. I
This is another case where often people want to sound smart and for some reason "I" sounds smarter than "me." Saying "Jerry watched me and Billy Joe eat fudge all afternoon" just seems wrong to some people, when in fact it's perfectly fine, although that much fudge is not healthy.

Basically, in order to figure this out, take out any reference to other people and see if the sentence makes sense.

Billy and I drank Thunderbird and he passed out on me in the dumpster.

"Me drank Thunderbird" and "passed out on I" just don't sound right, now do they?

Its vs. It's
This one seems easy but it sneaks in all the time, and the reason is because it's just weird. We're used to the possessive of any word ending in an apostrophe-s, so we want to use "it's" to mean that something belongs to it. Unfortunately, "it's" was stolen by the contraction for "it is" and we can't have two contractions that look the same but mean different things; all hell would break loose.

It's not our fault its apostrophe is missing.

Assignments: Week 2

In Lonely Planet Part 1, do exercises #2,3,4,5 and 6. Use our trip to the North Side or our trip to the Vanka murals as your subject/subjects.

Read: In Toker, The Strip District
In Lonely Planet -- Part II
Brian O'Neill's The Paris of Appalachia


Write: In the comments section of this blog post, please leave comments for Joy and Liz on their pieces from class. Your comments should focus on the elements of good travel writing as outlined in Part 1 of the Lonely Planet text. Comment on such things as voice, vividness of description, intimate recounting of place, accuracy, clarity, and more.

Complete the exercises above. Bring copies of your exercises to our next class.

North Side Trivia

* Historians proclaim that the Felix Brunot mansion on Stockton Avenue was once a station on the underground railway, where fugitive slaves from the South stopped for food and shelter.
* The first World Series was played at Exposition Park by the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston (now known as the Boston Red Sox) in 1903.
* Charles Taze Russell organized what is now known as Jehovah's Witnesses at a house in the old city of Allegheny.
* The North Side has seven hills (Observatory, Monument, Troy, Spring, Seminary, Fineview, and Mt. Troy).
* Gus & Yia-Yia's Iceball Stand, selling fresh popcorn, peanuts, and old-fashioned iceballs (sort-of like a snow cone) hand-scraped from a block of ice, has been in West Park since 1934. The "orange concession stand with a brightly-colored umbrella" is something of an unofficial Pittsburgh landmark during the summer months.
* Mary Cassatt was born on Rebecca Street in 1844. Today Rebecca Street has become Reedsdale Street. If the house had not been torn down for Highway Route 65, it would be facing Heinz Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
* The Allegheny regional branch of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, located at 5 Allegheny Square was the first tax-supported library in the United States. It is now closed to the public following a lightning strike. A new building is being planned at 1210 Federal Street.
* George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. lived in Pittsburgh's present North Side when he invented the Ferris wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in an attempt to create something as impressive as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

Randyland

See Diana Nelson Jones' great piece on Randy Gilson and Randyland here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10016/1028575-51.stm

Then watch The Today Show's feature on Randy here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/34630224#34630224

The Mattress Factory

Find out more at www.mattress.org

The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art
that exhibits room-sized works called installations. Created
on site by artists from across the country and around the
world, our unique exhibitions feature a variety of media that engage all of the senses.

The Museum's unusual galleries are located in two creatively reused buildings on Pittsburgh’s historic North Side. Both buildings house a growing-and distinctive- permanent collection, featuring
artists James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, Winifred Lutz and Rolf Julius, as well as innovative exhibitions that change throughout the year.

Since 1977, the Mattress Factory has supported over 300 artists through our world-renowned residency program. Each year artists come to Pittsburgh, live at the museum, and create new work. During their time here, the museum supports them
completely while they experiment, take risks, and explore the
creative process.

Each exhibition is paired with a variety of engaging and
inventive educational programs including hands-on art projects,
workshops, lectures, and tours. The Mattress Factory
encourages all viewers, regardless of their background, to
discover connections between art, creativity and their
everyday lives.

Khet Mar at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Exiled Burmese writer relishes 'respite from fear'

By Angela Disipio
POINT PARK NEWS SERVICE
Saturday, December 12, 2009

Although the colorful mural isn't finished and its writing is indecipherable to most Pittsburghers, the house on Sampsonia Way has helped transform a drab alley into a unique sanctuary for exiled writers.

Khet Mar, a fiction writer and journalist from Burma whose prose tells about the struggles of ordinary people, lives there. She is the third writer hosted by the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization that keeps three North Side houses for writers forced from their homelands under threat of death or imprisonment.

Mar wrote the short story painted on her house after coming to Pittsburgh in March. The words, in Burmese, recount her feelings when she arrived: "Although anxious in Pittsburgh, I look forward to a respite from fear and persecution."

Threatened with death in Burma, Mar said she and her family feel safer here.

"In Burma there is a military government," she said. "There is no clear-cut guidelines, no security. People get arrested for anything. ... Pittsburgh is great for me because I can live and write safely here."

According to Henry Reese, who co-founded City of Asylum/Pittsburgh with his wife, Diane Samuels, the "House Publications" project, in which each writer paints art on their North Side home, became a tradition after the arrival of the first writer.

Huang Xiang "celebrated his free speech by putting it on his home," Reese said. "It was the first time he spoke in public without being locked up."

The Sampsonia Way houses are one way the organization brings awareness to and engages people in the mission of protecting free speech. Primarily funded by individual donations, with some support from foundations, City of Asylum/Pittsburgh provides a furnished house, living expenses of about $30,000 a year and medical care, and legal or language support that a writer may need for up to two years.

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh began in 1997 after a talk Salman Rushdie gave in Pittsburgh about a program that offered refuge to exiled writers in Strasbourg.

"At one point during the speech, Diane kicked me and we thought this was something we could do," Reese said.

The couple and Schuyler Foerster, who this month stepped down as president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, put together the grassroots plan.

"It's an example of civic leadership," Foerster said. "It wasn't set up by a university, not a town or a government. It was two common people, who happen to be uncommon, getting together and setting this up."

Program participants must comply with legal requirements necessary to live in the United States. The goal of the program, Reese said, is to help exiled writers get on their feet.

"We provide sanctuary for the writer to continue to write," Reese said. "We lose if these voices are silenced."

Supporters of the program said as long as the asylum-seekers are writing, even from thousands of miles away, their words have power in their countries through conduits such as the Internet and publications in expatriate communities.

Of the 10 or so cities Mar visited before joining the program, she said Pittsburgh was her favorite.

"It is beautiful and peaceful here," she said. "I especially like the people."

She intended to return to Burma but is thinking of making Pittsburgh her home.

Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, ranked Burma the third worst country in terms of freedom of the press and conditions for journalists this year, behind Turkmenistan and North Korea.

"We always have to worry because police and soldiers can come to my home and can take me anytime," said Mar, who was a political prisoner in her homeland. Humanitarian work she did there increased the government's suspicion about her, she said.

"As a mother, I have to think about what is best for my sons, their education and their safety," Mar said. "It is very good to be here to write without fear of persecution, but I still need to think about (how) to avoid censorship, as I still want to print my stories in Burma."

City of Asylum

Reposted from Ode Magazine:

Homes away from home
Katy Rank Lev | October 2008 issue

Huang Xiang covered City of Asylum's poet's house with the verse that made him have to flee Chinese authorities.
Photo: Henry Reese
On Sampsonia Way, a street of monotonous row homes in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Writer’s House stands out. Wooden wings carved by sculptor Thaddeus Mosley seem to fly from the brick facade. A passage by Nobel Laureate and exiled Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka is etched above the door. “I DESTROYED time.” The words of Soyinka, who spent 22 months in prison for speaking out against his country’s civil war, remind passersby that the mind, even in the solitude of a jail cell, can overcome any barrier. That’s a comforting thought to the novelist who lives in the house, Horacio Castellanos Moya.
Moya fled his native El Salvador when death threats followed the publication of his 1997 book Revulsion, a retelling of the assassination of San Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero that sparked violence in El Salvador. After the country’s 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992, El Salvador was plagued by a gang crisis, abject poverty and a government with no policy to stop crime. Moya’s book annoyed the conservative ruling party, still partially aligned with the death squads of the civil-war crisis. So Moya went into exile after publishing the book, living in various countries until Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum offered him a safe, creative space to write.
The organization is part of Cities of Refuge North America, which helps persecuted writers by giving them the ability to write free from censorship. Moya is the second exiled writer to find a new home in Pittsburgh. City of Asylum co-founder and president, Henry Reese, got the idea for the inscription on Moya’s house from exiled Chinese poet Huang Xiang, who lives in the nearby Poet’s House. Huang covered the exterior walls with his own poetry, written in white Chinese characters, some six feet tall. It was the first time, Huang said, he could express himself without fearing imprisonment. A third home is in the works, and City of Asylum expects to welcome a new writer this winter. During the dedication ceremony for Moya’s house, local writers and musicians were asked to respond to the question, “What is home?” For Moya, the answer isn’t a fixed place but “a state of being in which you feel a kind of safety, and a good energy for doing your work.”

Welcome to UPG's Travel Writing Course

Our first trip will be to the Maxo Vanka murals in Millvale. Please be sure to research the murals in advance and bring along a notebook and a good pen. A camera is optional.
Your assignment for our next class meeting is as follows:

Using your travel notebook, your research and more, write about your visit to the murals. Bring a copy of what you’ve made to our class in two weeks.

Read: In Travel Writing (How To) – pp. 6-54 and “Las Vegas,” by Simon Calder
Read: Pittsburgh a New Portrait by Toker
Prepare: For our next trip to The North Side -- City of Asylum and The Mattress Factory. Research. Add any interesting findings to this blog site to share.