When meeting at the AIDS Quilt gallery, we were informed that early quilt panels were significantly lighter than those that came in later years. This was because the makers of early panels were angry, and bitter at the crisis occurring. The purpose of panels over the years changed. At first, the sole purpose was to make a stance and put a name in front of the government, who was often ignoring the crisis at hand. People hastily made panels with simply a name on them. As years passed and people were able to better handle their grief, the general population moved past the anger stage of grief, and the purpose of panels changed. In later years, they were made to memorialize lives lost, and personal artifacts were often attached to the quilt. In this case, the original maker's attitude is tangible in the quilt's construction. For this reason, we can analyze the panel or block of the quilt as a whole, or we can decide to analyze the attachments such as teddy bears or shirts individually. Knowing the time period the panels were in allows futher analysis. The context of an object can be more than time period, but is still important to know as it will change perception of the writer. Prownian analysis includes making guesses at the use ob objects, as is described in John Cline's "What is a Machete, Anyways?" due to the fact the machete serves so many purposes. The difference between the panels and the machete is that the maker of the panels influences the attitudes it reflects, while the maker of the machete is a completely unbiased source and it is actually the wielder of the machete that makes the difference.

This sentence agrees with Orwell's explanation (as discussed in Maguire's essay) of involving concrete objects. Orwell states that you should start with an object and find the words to fit. "When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit." This hunting is the generating of the carefully selected words to describe the object that we started with. Maguire used Orwell's quote to expand on the Fowler quote he included, which said "A writer uses abstract words because his thoughts are cloudy; the habit of using them clouds his thoughts still further; he may end by concealing his meaning not only from his readers but also from himself." Together, these quotes both emphasize the idea that analysis much extend far enough to formulate intentional language. Vagueness in description, be it by students or historians, weakens writing and is easily avoidable through genuine analysis of the object at hand.

John Maguire's article on The Atlantic, titled "The Secret to Good Writing" puts material culture in terms students can understand and apply to their writing. Maguire is a college writing instructor who often sees students with underdeveloped writing skills. Maguire knows and stresses the importance of "object based writing" to his students. Maguire's greatest emphasis is on the idea that abstract concepts can be contextualized through concrete nouns, but discusses two different ways to approach this in writing. He begins the article with the approach that you should take an abstract concept and turn it into concrete nouns in order to avoid abstractness. He uses Henry Fowler's "abstracticis" to describe why vagueness leads to abstract papers. He then follows Fowler's quote with a quote by Orwell, who further expands on the idea by saying you should start wordless, then use the visualization of an object to find the words to fit it. Maguire then discusses the opposing way of going about it, which is starting the process with physical objects in mind, then understand that an abstract concept encompasses a variety of physical facts. Haltman also agrees with the "analysis followed by interpretation" mindset that historians use in the field of Material Culture. Both Haltman and Maguire agree that language being used to describe material objects should be intentional, specific, and finding the correct words is a process. While Haltman discusses the ins-and-outs of Prownian analysis in the introduction to a set of essays that share that methodology and Maguire on the other hand is simply trying to put it into terms that students having issues with vagueness can understand, throughout both writings there are sentences and ideas that parallel that are further analyzed in my annotations throughout.

In Maguire's essay, he describes turning the word "market" into a concrete noun. "Show me a wooden roadside stand with corn and green peppers on it, if you want. Show me a supermarket displaying six kinds of oranges under halogen lights. Show me a stock exchange floor where bids are shouted and answered." If the word/concept of a market are not analyzed to this extent, it will remain a lofty economics concept. The word market can only be explained and contextualized as far as it has been comprehended as a concrete object.

definition: a printed document that advertises or describes a school, commercial enterprise, forthcoming book, etc., in order to attract or inform clients, members, buyers, or investors.

The objects' original makers can take on multiple roles in the attitude and belief related to the object. In "What is a Machete, Anyways?" Cline discusses the location that machetes were made in like English colonies. They were made in colonies in order to harvest, which was the conscious purpose of the object. However, the accessibility by oppressed people led to machetes having a pivotal role in revolts. An example given in the article is the Brazilian revolt during the War of Ragamuffins, which is a prime example of people in a tropical environment who have the tool for harvesting using it to express an underlying attitude in the group of people.

In John Cline's article "What Is a Machete, Anyway?" he discusses how a machete acts as both a weapon and a tool which shows the polarity of the object. "It’s possible to conceive of it as a weapon, yes, but it’s also very much a tool — not altogether different from, say, a shovel." The duality of a machete displays just how important the expression of language can be. In this case, I feel like the opposition is creation vs. destruction in the sense that as a tool the machete can be used to construct and harvest whereas it can also take a violent turn.

Interesting enough, the article also explains that the people who use a machete as a tool are also often the most likely to use it as weapon. This interesting to me historically, because it forces you to consider a perspective of history that is not typically presented well. The machete would most often be used by poor people, who typically are not documented well because their history is overridden.

Milieus is the plural form of milieu, which is defined as a person's social environment.

This goes hand in hand with our class discussion today. We said that having a material source can evoke a stronger emotional response because we can identify that someone else made it with their own hands who had an emotional connection to it. We were speaking of this emotional connection in terms of the AIDS quilt that we will be working with firsthand. In terms of the AIDS epidemic, it is sometimes hard to comprehend what a crisis it was in the United States, as the connotations around AIDS and the ability to talk about it publicly have changed since we were born.

When we were talking about the size of the AIDS quilt representing how many people died and were affected, it reminded me of a documentary I watched when I was younger. The movie, titled Paper Clips, follows a class in Tennessee as they attempt to collect a paper clip for every Jewish person killed in the Holocaust. They ultimately filled a German train car with the paperclips, and made an exhibit for the students to try to wrap their minds around the millions of people killed. In this case the ability to see the sheer number of lives taken increased the "degree of intimacy" as discussed in this section of the Introdution.

This massive simplification of "just describe what you see" and the mindset of not wasting words parallels Maguire's pleas to his students to stop using abstract words when they do not have clear ideas and instead to specify what they mean. He describes their papers in which they waste words as "mush."

I can relate to having the issue of getting lost in abstract concepts. When I was in middle school and learning to write, I often spent too much time trying to make my writing sound as complex as possible. I refused to use simple sentences, and would be completely redundant in order to avoid my writing sounding too basic. Eventually, teachers told me that I was talking in circles and getting lost in my own ideas, and when I finally took this critique to heart my writing got significantly clearer.

I believe that this is a relatively common problem among young writers, as there is sometimes a conflict between writing clearly and writing what seems "intelligent." When you are not entirely aware of what you are writing about, vagueness is a very comfortable way of not showing your lack of knowledge. I wish in my adolescence someone had told me earlier to stop getting so lost in my own ideas and make everything more concrete.

Maguire, John. “The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/.

In "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas," John Maguire makes his students make the same connections by making them turn any abstract concept into something they can "drop on their foot." By having his students turn abstract concepts into concrete nouns they make the same linkage into the material world that is described in this section of the text.