"Subway Buskers" ~Reading Response~

I respect illustrator Victor Marchand Kerlow in deciding that no captions were necessary to relate the purpose of the piece to the reader. The pictures themselves were enough to explain the purpose and the emotion of the point.

The emotion and dedication of each of the performers is evident through body language and facial expression alone. The common look in the performers faces is not one that would be expected, there is no look of excitement or thrill from performing, it is more of one similar to despair and struggle. The people in these photos are not performers who can enjoy their talents, it is their means for survival. No longer a hobby, it is a job.

Boris Rose ~Reading Response~

What stuck out most about this piece was the title. Boris Rose: Prisoner of Jazz, is absolutely perfect to sum up the main point. Boris Rose has an addiction to which he is a prisoner of and this obession becomes obvious from several panels.

The first two panels that show just how much Boris was obsessed with recording jazz music are on page 21. They are the two in the center. The first one shows how Boris has to wake up at 2:45 in the am in order to record certain broadcasts. The second one shows how Boris, in order to get better service, may go to a friends house late at night. It seems crazy that anyone would sacrifice sleep or even annoy a friend in order to record music, but Boris must truly be a prisoner, a prisoner of jazz.

A third panel that shows the seriousness of Boris's obsession and the magnitude of the collection that he had. The last panel on page23 states, "He continued to issue more and more of his LP transfers, but to this day somewhere around 95% of all his material has not been issued." While it seemed throughout the entire piece that he was steadily handing out and selling music, this was a big misconception. Only 5% was given out, thus the total amount that he had was immense, a gigantic amount.

There is absolutely no doubt after reading this piece, that Boris does not have an extreme obsession with recording jazz music.

Penny Sentiments ~Reading Response~

Who knew how important postcards, or "postal cards" used to be. While it seems as if texting is todays quick postcard, the original postcards seem much more efficient. Lack of emotion is often a problem with text messages leading to misconstrued opinions of meanings etc. You would imagine that with postcards the same problems would occur, but from the reading you realize this is not the case.

"Question marks occur in curious places~ like a knowing wink~ and the special positioning of the stamp meant something in secret code that the addressee alone could decipher." That is soo special and unlike any text that can be sent nowadays. Postcards have greatly diminished, but their use should resume. They add much greater originality and personality to messages and are of much greater one on one status.

"West Side Improvements" ~Reading Response

Before reading this piece, I had never hear anything about the mole people that lived under the tracks in Riverside Park. Their story is fairly sad seeing that they were icked out of their home, having done nothing wrong. It is also confusing as to why these people were punished, while the guys who did graffiti all of those years were not. It definitely was an eye opener for me to say the least.

As for the purpose of this piece, it is definitely a toss up between an attempt at telling a history or if it is an attempt as justifying graffiti as a form of art. In some senses it is both, through telling the story of Riverside Park improvements an underlying story emerges of the relationships in the tunnel. This story almost redefined the feelings that people have about "homeless" people. In this reading they seem to make amazing companions and the life in the tunnel doe not seem so bad.