Seeing page 145

1)    In the painting the House by the Railroad, Edward Hopper directs our attention to the gaunty house in the middle of what looks like an empty plain, accompanied only by an abandoned train rail. The house itself looks old. The window shades pulled down half and the shadow that dominates the left side of the house gives it an eery feeling, almost like it doesn't want anyone looking in or at it. Despite it’s intimidating structure it is a spectacular figure for its surroundings, three stories tall in the empty plain it stands out, perhaps out of place. The railroad tracks seem as abandoned and old as the house does. They are red with oxidation and as desolate as mars, they too look out of place in the painting. The sky is pale around the house its only when it reaches outward that it turns blue.It has no clouds or birds no horizon behind the house, just a pale background. It would seem that the tracks and the sky both correlate with one another, they have the same attributes and they all surround the focal point of the painting which is the house. I tend to look into the windows and the porch because that's where the people usually are, but with the window shades being shut and the porch engulfed by shadow I am forced to believe that it’s empty.
2)     Hirsch touches upon the house’s roof, porch, windows and even the house’s presence giving them all human-like characteristics through personification. He describes the house like something of a plague ruining its surrounding landscape, or a downer at a party. He sets the mood, although melancholy, in a nice manor. By repeating words like ashamed, vacant, empty, desolate, and gawky Hirsch has recreated loneliness in his poem; which would have stayed true even without the painting on the page.

He gives the house a character one that seems to drive people and shrubs away, one that MUST be horrible because it simply looks so. Then he flips it around, instead of the house being the one to look at, the house looks at the man. The house observes the man and sees him no different than the man saw it. “...And somehow The empty white canvas slowly takes on The expression of someone who is unnerved, Someone holding his breath underwater.”  Hirsch made a comparison to the house and the onlooker (Hopper). Hirsch compared them both by their nature of being desolate and ashamed of themselves. Then cleverly changes his poem into an introspective towards himself by putting himself into Hoppers shoes, being the painter looking onto the house which, in essence, is himself. Which makes me look at the in a whole new way. Instead of seeing the house as a plague to the land Hirsch saw it as a victim ashamed of what it is.           

Page 127 Seeing #1

    I think Akiko Busch answered her own question best when she mentioned the incident involving the FBI agents snatching a piece of rubble from the World Trade Center. Victim families outrage towards the agents for taking a pieces of concrete, metal, and various nicknacks that would otherwise be a just that without the incident. Its the history that the item held. The emotional and personal girth that compelled the families to protest was the same properties made the agents want to gather such artifacts; to remember catastrophe and reteach it, not to sensationalize it. To hold a piece of history that would otherwise be an intangible to people who weren't there can prove to be valuable tool for learning.  I find this to be the most compelling argument, no matter how monumental or personal an event is, the object that accompanied us through it will be cherished as bookmarks to the past. Though I did think that Ms. Busch covered the more personal exchange of objects from one to another. A necklace, watch, ticket stubs, or even notes, are some object people hold dearly despite what they truly are. Take the note for example, its message can hold a beautiful poem from a loved one or a simple goodbye from a close friend; the word choice and illustration of the message is completely irrelevant to the actual action of the exchange. Its the thought that counts, if taken in a humble sense of the expression, it is the value behind cherished objects