Professor Young
English 1101
1/17
Reading Log Questions #1
1. Willa Lambert is an interesting girl from Friendswood, Texas. It appears that her parents are ashamed of her. In the beginning she and her dad used to go running on an old golf course early in the morning together. Only a few people would be out that early so they got a chance to talk. Her dad would ask what she'd been doing in school, until she might have told him about the things she had seen lately. Willa had "visions." Her parents stopped looking at her in the eyes. "This extra sight was a weird new ability like double-jointedness, come to her late in the summer, but she didn't know if it was real" (Steinke 20). She had not told anyone. In a spiral notebook she wrote down a list of all of her visions. It is possible that she has schizophrenia.
2. Dex lives in a trailer park with his mother and sister because his parents are separated. His father lived in Port Arthur. "Dex doubted any man would love his mother again. That would be left to Dex and his sister now" (Steinke 39). Layla, Dex's younger sister was a cheerleader. Their mother told Dex, "I think it is a shame that you kids don't date anymore, but whatever, same rules I had -- she can't go anywhere where there's boys and no parents. If she doesn't like that, tough" (Steinke 39).
Dex knew he had an inside self that was still unfamiliar to him. He "heard the whisper of it, and kissing Sue Williams, he'd felt it." "He knew the truth, that he was skinny and unsmooth, prone to getting shit from the football players, just as liable to get laughed at as liked. Only a girl like Sue could have changed that, taught him the language he needed to talk to that trapped stranger inside himself" (Steinke 40).
3. Hal is a real-estate agent. "At first he'd done pretty well, sold a big house out on Windsong to an executive at a drug firm, and another one just down the street to a surgeon" (Steinke 13). But now people rely on the Internet "so his luck got turned. He no longer felt like the son who'd got the blessing and more like the one who'd been cast out" (Steinke 13). He needed to pray more. He needed a clean slate. Memories of Dawn, a women he had an affair with, haunted him. The affair "only" lasted seven weeks but it nearly killed him. "The way he'd come home and feel sad at the sight of Darlene," his wife (Steinke 16). He had to stop himself.
Hal felt closest to his son Cully when he watched him play, he'd never been as good a player as his son was.
5. Lee lost her sixteen year old daughter, Jess, to a rare blood disease caused by chemicals in the environment. Lee "wanted to be grateful. After all she'd been through as a kid -- her mom's drunken fits and their sporadic shameful poverty -- she had this nice house, a husband who sang to her, and brought home trinkets he thought she'd like and didn't nag her. She had a daughter with sweet, curious eyes who liked to tell her jokes and tired to hard to be good" (Steinke 26). From the beginning Lee has allies. Lee disagrees with the EPA but no one wants to hear her warnings.
6. Sometime in 2015, Flint, Michigan started making the news. Headlines showed that high levels of lead where turing up in the blood of children, struggling in the industrial suburb of Detroit. "Early coverage hewed closely to what had caused the problems in Flint itself—a switch in its water supplies, and the political and cost-saving machinations that drove that decision. But as we’ve learned more, Flint’s travails are yielding much broader implications" (Sellers). After the switch, residents started complaining about the color, odor, and taste of the water. A General Motors Corporation even complained about the corrosiveness of the water toward their parts. "It may take months for lead levels to reach a point where the concentrations of all samples are below the action level. Clearly, there is much to be done before the water crisis in Flint is over" (Masten).
Works Cited
Steinke, Rene. Friendswood: A Novel. New York, NY, United States: Hudson Street Press (an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc), 2015.
Sellers, Christopher. “The flint water crisis: A special edition environment and health roundtable.” Commentary. Edge Effects, 4 Feb. 2016.
