The Islamic Woman's Struggle

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The Mystery Behind the Veil

Cubism and Composition with Three Figures

Untitled (Canada)

Henri Matisse: Open Window

Growing Up In Sparkle City

Spartanburg, South Carolina has had a definite impact on my family. My mother, Lynn Costine, was born in Asheville, North Carolina, but at a very young age her family moved to Spartanburg. Her parents chose to move their because her father, Luke Wilburn, was hired to work as a paton attorney for Milliken, one of the big European companies that Spartanburg attracted. My father, Andrew Costine, was born in Maine, but his family also moved to Spartanburg when he was very young. His family was also attracted to Spartanburg because his father worked as an engineer for several different companies, including Milliken. Because Spartanburg offered so many job options both my parents ended up growing up there. It is where they met, it is where they got married, and it is where I was born. Both of my parents attended Spartan High School, a huge school with several thousand students. They never knew each other in high school because my father is four years older than my mother, so he had graduated by the time she was a freshman. Still, the both remember the same teachers and the same traditions, Spartan High had a definite impact on their lives. My father attended the University of Tenessee for about a year and a half, before droping out because his parents would only pay for a business major. He moved back to Spartanburg, where he lived with his best friend from high school- and his best friend still today- Eli Frances. When my mom was a senior in high school she met my father through a mutual friend. She attended the College of Charleston, and then took a year off college to live in Spartanburg with my father. She finished her degree at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, and then moved to Spartanburg. Although both my parents left Spartanburg off and on while they were young, they always ended up coming back to Spartanburg. It was where they both grew up, and it is what brought them together. After working several odd jobs, my father settled into a job working with his best friend, Eli, at Stoeffurs, a large food company in Spartanburg. After my mom graduated from college, she and my father were married at the Piedmont Club of Spartanburg which her parents were members of. They lived and worked in Spartanburg for six years, during which I was born. When I was two years old my parents decided to move to North Carolina to the small town of Tryon, where I grew up. Although I was not raised in Spartanburg, it is still very important city to me. Tryon is just thirty minutes away from Spartanburg, and it is where the closest shopping center is, so I actually spend a lot of time together. My mother’s parents decided to stay in Spartanburg, and her mother still lives in the house that she grew up in. Both of my parents have very fond memories of growing up in Spartanburg. It is truly amazing how much a place can affect a person’s whole life. It is important for everyone to know and to understand their family and what affected them most in their lives. Personally, I have never liked Spartanburg that much, but learning more about it and realizing how much it affect my parents, and therefore my own, life has given me a greater appreciation for it. I am sure that I will want to share my experiences of Spartanburg with my own children- Sunday lunches at my grandmother’s house, Baskin Robbins ice cream, and the Unitarian church are just a few of my childhood memories that revolve around it. Spartanburg is a remarkable place that has made incredible leaps and bounds in the past fifty years, and it is only getting better. I know that I will always be proud to say that my family is from Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Cassandra Perkins

Cassandra Perkins grew up a typical modern American. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother in the small town of Bethesda Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. Although Cassandra does have two brothers, they are both a lot older than her and she didn’t really grow up with them. Cassandra says she ate a lot of frozen dinners growing up because her mom isn’t much of a cook, but when she did cook it was mainly rice beans, and meat. She says that it is very difficult for her to imagine eating a meal that doesn’t include some kind of meat- she considers it the focal point of the meal. Cassandra is a freshman at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and therefor she was required to read “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer this past summer along with the rest of her class. “Eating Animals” is a wonderful commentary on the impact that food- especially meat- has on our modern lives. Cassandra is a prime example of this impact, she has grown up eating meat on a very regular basis, and it’s even in her family heritage. Her mother’s family is Puerto Rican, and she says that nearly every dish they serve incorporates meat somehow. Cassandra says that she would definitely not consider herself to be a picky eater. She has always been open to trying new things but she has said that she “gets sick of the same food easily”. Although meat may be the focal point of her every meal Cassandra still enjoys variety in the way that it is cooked/ what it is cooked with. She says that her favorite food is “crab, because you can only get it in the summer”. The seasonal nature of crab forces Cassandra to not become sick of it. Cassandra says that her least favorite foods are orange juice and apple sauce, she feels that both of these have too sweet of a taste. Despite Cassandra’s lack of fear for trying new things she still prefers the meats and rice that she grew up eating to the sweeter taste of fruit. She describes it as a “sickly sweet taste. Growing up, Cassandra never considered vegetarianism. To her it was just never a realistic option and never something that she had even considered to be positive. After reading “Eating Animals” Cassandra was able to see both sides of the argument, the book had profound impact on her views of meat eating and where the meat had to come from. After reading the book Cassandra seriously considered going vegetarian for a while. Eventually, she decided to not because it would be too difficult a thing under the circumstances of her lifestyle. Her family would not understand, and it would be difficult for her to appreciate family gatherings- which often revolve around food- when she could not eat anything that it’s being served. Cassandra’s plight is something that many young college students may find themselves facing. As they step outside the boundaries of their families home- where they just what their mom served them, they must make some genuine decisions about what they are going to eat. Many, like Cassandra, come from meat eating families and are just learning about the possibilities and flexibility of being a vegetarian. Many may make the decision to change their lifestyle. While others, like Cassandra, will decide that for the sake of their background, and their heritage they will continue to eat the way they always have.

Spartanburg, SC

During the aftermath of World War II Spartanburg, South Carolina began to lay the groundwork for its future as a successful and industrialized community. Spartanburg began as a small railroad town surrounded by farms. In just fifty years Spartanburg has doubled in size to contain many large shopping centers and to be one of the largest, most prominent cities in the state. The original part of the city still contains that old railway town charm, with a small, beautiful park right in the center of downtown. Spartanburg contains a surprising number of European factories and European style homes for such a southern city. Large companies such as Milliken have made this once small town into the city it is today. The author of the book “Guten Tag Ya’ll: Globalization and the South Carolina Piedmont, 1950-2000” upon visiting Spartanburg for the first time, was absolutely amazed at the number of European influences throughout the town. After World War II Spartanburg gained an influx of young workers whom had previously been at war. These workers needed jobs, so Spartanburg began to encourage the building of new companies, most of them European, to give the young workers jobs. Over time, these companies flourished and grew so the Spartanburg was in a steady state of expansion. What is now known as the “East Side” of Spartanburg, was the entire original Spartanburg. In just the past thirty years Spartanburg has more than doubled in size, so that it is now split between the “East Side” and the “West Side”. The East Side features the downtown of Spartanburg, which has had a lot of work done in the past twenty years. Many of the older buildings have been refurbished to contain the new offices and companies that continue to come in. At the center of downtown there is a small, beautiful park called Daniel Square with a bell tower and a large statue of Daniel Morgan. Daniel Morgan was a Revolutionary War commander who is honored in the square because he won the Battle at Cowpens, which is a small town just outside of Spartanburg. The West Side of Spartanburg- the newer part- is very large, much larger than the original Spartanburg. Just thirty years ago the West Side was fields and fields of cow pastures belonging to the farms located near the railway station in Spartanburg. Now it is part of the large and prosperous city of Spartanburg. Spartanburg’s remarkable transformation from a small, unimportant town to a modern city is all due to the presence of European companies. These companies employed hundreds of workers, encouraging other people to move to Spartanburg to find work. They provided a different, more cosmopolitan standard of living for the once small town, country people of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Works Cited “Guten Tag, Y'all: Globalization and the South Carolina Piedmont, 1950-2000” Maunula, Marko. University of Georgia Press. Athens, GA, USA. 08/2009

Rene Magritte

In the book “Contemporary Literature” there is a section called “Visible Poetry: Metaphor and Metonymy in the Paintings of Rene Magritte”. This might seem unusual considering that this is a book of literature, and Rene Magritte is a painter. But as the title suggests, the author of this book claims that Magritte uses literary devices in his painting. The author quotes Magritte in saying that “the function of painting is to make poetry visible” this quote explains Magritte’s work. He is a surrealist in his ideas, but his actual painting is very realistic. Magritte paints very normal, commonplace objects, but he paints them in a way to reveal the irony within them. He paints things that do not seem so completely different to show their actual similarities and connections. Magritte also paints things that seem to go together but leaves out an important part that the viewer must then fill in with their mind. For example, the author of the book quotes Magritte in discussing a dream that he had where he saw a cage with an egg in it. Magritte describes how he immediately knew that the image was missing something- the bird. Magritte also uses a lot of irony in his art. One of his most famous pieces of art is the painting of an extremely simple, realistic looking pipe. Underneath the painting of the pipe Magritte has written “C’est ne pas une pipe.” or, “This is not a pipe.” At first glance this may seem to be a startling contradiction, but actually Magritte is right. The painting is not a pipe. It is oil paint on canvas in a certain shape that we have come to recognize as a pipe, but it is not physically the same thing. In this painting Magritte paints something very realistic looking, but her forces the viewer to think surrealistically and accept that not everything that they see is the absolute truth. In another of Magritte’s most famous pieces, Time Transfixed he shows how two things that seem to have no relation can go very well together. The piece features a small train engine coming out of an empty fireplace. The smoke from the train is being drawn up the chimney, and at first clance the fireplace closely resembles a large tunnel that the train is simply in the process of driving out of. The author of the book discusses how the similarities in the two objects in this painting are very visual, but without the painting to explain it would be very difficult for most people to be able to discuss the similarities between a fireplace and a train. The author also discusses how some of the similarities between the objects in Magritte’s paintings are very logical. In Hegel’s Holiday Magritte shows a glass of water balanced on top of an umbrella. The similarities would be that both of the objects, although very different in their basic nature, are objects invented by humans to control water. Magritte’s incredible ability to paint thoughts is both beautiful and thought provoking. He manages to see the metaphors and irony in everyday life, and then paint them so that they become more evident to the rest of us. The author claims that because Magritte made such significant observations about the similarities of art and literature, his work is still very important and always will be. He showed us a new way of examining our lives and the world around us. Works Cited Dubnick, Randa. "Visible Poetry: Metaphor and Metonymy in the Paintings of René Magritte." Contemporary Literature 21.3 (1980): 407-419. Print.

Dove's Tree Forms beyond Conform

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Frida Kahlo & Patriarchy

Sentimental; a complex Human Emotion

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View of Delft