Category Archives: Reading Summaries

The article that I chose to read and respond to was called Color Walking. This article was written by Phia Bennin and Brendan McMullan and published in 2012. The article starts off by explaining where the idea of color walking came from. A teacher by the name of William Burroughs came up with color walking to help inspire his students. Burroughs wanted his students to walk outside and pick any color that catches the eye and follow that color from object to object.

Phia Bennin and Brendan McMullan decided to try out Burroughs little experiment to see if it worked. They began their walk in lower Manhattan. They first followed the color blue, which lead to them following the color pink, which lead to them following the color violet. At the end of their walk both authors saw the world in a completely different way, a more colorful way. They want to encourage others to try this experiment as well. Both authors wrote up a set of guidelines to keep in mind as you try the experiment. First, they suggest that you free up your schedule and get rid of all distractions around you. Second, they suggest that you pick a color that is important to you and makes you feel good on the inside. Third, they suggest that if you get lost while doing this experiment to pick another color, but if you get really lost then you are doing the experiment successfully.

I decided to give color walking a try with a few of my classmates. We decided to walk around the Georgia State campus and follow a color. The color that we chose to follow was the color green. At first I was skeptical about doing this experiment as I did not see the benefits of following around a color. After completing the experiment I have to admit that I was wrong to think that way. My eyes felt like it was seeing a brand new world. While walking around the campus I noticed just how beautiful the color green was and it almost made its way to number one on my favorite colors list. Some of the things that saw included; soft green leaves, lush green grass, transparent green windows, bright green traffic light, weird green tattoo, beautiful green flowers, dark green uniforms, loud green shoes, lime green pants, dull green shirt, and a mint green smoothie shop. Whats strange about all of these items is that I come in contact with them every single day, but I never even take the time to notice them. This color walking experience made me appreciate the color green more. I would recommend that people of all ages give color walking a try. Sometimes our brains need a break from the busy lifestyle that a lot of people have. Color walking gave me that break that I needed and helped to relieve a lot of my stress. I am glad that I was able to read this article and experience the positive benefits of color walking.

The authors of this article start off by stating facts about how the enrollment numbers for college are on the rise. With the enrollment numbers on the rise this has forced people to ask the question of what makes college campuses a good learning environment for students. The authors say that many students don’t pick colleges for small things such as technology upgrades or new buildings, but that they choose to go to the college that has the type of environment that best fits their needs. With college being both stimulating and demanding this can cause attention fatigue and begin to erode a students academic success and learning goals. This raised the question of how can a college campus’ environment help replenish a students cognitive functions.

The authors of this article state that one way a college campus can help replenish a students cognitive function is by having a lot of open space. In a study done in 1994 it was found that having a lot of open space on a college campus adds both quality and value to a campuses environment. A landscape designer by the name of Fredrick Olmstead claimed that the way a college campus looks has a direct impact on the way a student is able to learn. He states that natural scenery can be very influential in refreshing both the mind and the body. In a major body of research it has been discovered using the Attention Restoration Theory that nature is a catalyst when it comes to healing the human attention system.

According to this article a college campuses landscape is instrumental in providing an interconnected type of feeling. The authors state that with colleges beginning to employ a more holistic type of feeling, nature is starting to be implemented more frequently around college campuses. Interaction with nature has been shown to have positive effects on the mind and body as well as have positive effects on a person’s voluntary and involuntary attention system. When students experience this type of holistic feeling on a college campus this can definitely impact their college experience in a positive way.

The authors of this article stress the importance of finding a space that best fits a students needs. Some students like to be outdoors and some people like to be in a quiet area. If you feel stressed or feel like your attention is suffering find an open space on campus, preferably around nature to help freshen up your mind and body. It is very important when choosing a college campus to try and find a place where you feel interconnected with the environment around you, because in the end it will benefit your academic success and student goals.

This article by Emily Bazelon was an interesting read. Throughout the article she seems to preach on the importance of accommodation. Early on in the summary she explains that society has taught us that men belong in the men’s bathroom and women belong in the women’s bathroom. There was never really a discussion on which bathroom transgender people should use. Bazelon goes on to say that there are still many people that are truly against mixing different genders when it comes to using bathrooms and have even gone as far to make a “bathroom ordinance”. Bazelon makes the argument that some people feel this way because having someone with different genitalia in the same bathroom as you will ruin the common culture of being in a men’s bathroom or being in a women’s bathroom. With all of these protests that have gone on there has yet to be a final answer on where transgenders should use the bathroom.

Bazelon, provides a story in which an Illinois high school transgender student was forced to change in a distant room across the hall because there were a lot of privacy concerns that came along with changing with female students. Her parents later filed a civil rights complaint asking the district of the school if she could change with the female students. This is where the idea of a privacy curtain came into play. Of course, the privacy curtain can’t just be used for the transgender student, but for all of the girls. This is where Bazelon goes on to state the importance of accommodating.

Bazelon, gives many different definitions for the word ‘accommodation’, but the main idea in her definitions was to allow people of all kinds to be able to fit in without having to feel different or left out. She cites many different times in history where people have had to make accommodations and how the end result was something positive. In the case of transgender people, Bazelon feels like they are the ones doing all of the accommodating and does not think that’s right.  Bazelon expresses that in order for us to coexist as a civil society accommodations have to be made for all people including transgenders. Bazelon’s hopes are that in the future we will be past this and that it won’t even be a topic of discussion.

In this summary Morton talks about how homeless people are not truly homeless. Morton says that they have homes, but that they are not stable homes due to the amount of ease that it takes to destroy their home. In the public’s eye some of the places where homeless gather are usually forgotten about and sometimes appear to be lifeless, but Morton says that she traveled down into the tunnel where the atmosphere there was very much alive. She blames “spectacle” for the general public not knowing about the lives that homeless people live.

Morton talks to one man that basically says that living underground can be challenging because there’s no guide or step by step process on living underground. He has to do what he thinks is best for his desired space to feel at home in his environment.  Morton also talks about a man named Bob who said that living in the tunnel wasn’t so bad and that it helped him kind out who he really was. Bob says that living in the tunnel usually has that physiological effect on everyone and he also says that if you stay in the tunnel too long it will eat you alive.

To go along with the physiological effects that the tunnel offers, it also offers a sense of security for people that live there. Sense the general public views living in tunnels as being dangerous there aren’t really a lot of outsiders that go down into the tunnels unless they plan on living there. A resident to the tunnel by the name of Manny, describes a time where he was being attacked and ran into the tunnel where the people attacking him would not enter. Another resident of the tunnel by the name of Larry, says that in most instances he feels safer living underground because there is not much going on down there. He says that living in homeless shelters and living out on the streets can be more dangerous than living underground.

With having a sense of security while living in the tunnels, a sense of feeling at home also comes along with living there. Morton describes how many people living in tunnels use art to help them feel more at home. In some of the art that Morton has in her pictures you can see that some of the tunnel residents have their names present on their artwork. They put their names in the artwork to make it known that that space is their home. To a normal person this might seem strange or ghetto, but we have to remember that the people at the very top of the totem pole also put their names on their homes as well.

I really enjoyed reading this article. It gave me a new perspective on homelessness that I had never seen before. To Morton this is what she would have wanted. To open peoples eyes to a new world. The thing that I thought to be most interesting was how some homeless people felt safer underground then above ground. I thought that was pretty interesting because in the general publics eyes its the complete opposite. Overall, I would recommend this article to a friend. We as people need to stop looking down on homeless people so much and just respect them for what they have even if its barely anything.

I found this article to be fascinating. I liked how the author gave me a point of view that I had never even thought of before. One of the examples the author used was how an average person would look at a three seated park bench with arm rests and think it was only a part of the design, but how the person who engineered the bench might have been thinking that this bench would make it more difficult for homeless people to sleep on. This example goes to say that many of the architectural designs around us such as highways, transits, and roads all have many different reasons for being the way they are instead of just being the common thing that we see every day.

With me living in the suburbs of Georgia for most of my life I have always had a few questions that I wanted to be answered that did not make much sense to me. Why is it that Marta does not have a station in Johns Creek, Georgia? Why is it that there is so few bus stops around my neighborhood? Reading this article answered these questions for me. The author explains that many wealthy white neighborhoods in the suburbs refuse to have Marta in their neighborhoods because it would give easy access to poor people.  This means that most of the suburban jobs would be inaccessible to many poor people that don’t have cars because of the amount of difficulty that it would take to get to the suburban areas. As you can see in this picture, Marta does not run in many wealthy areas.

With many architectural designs being made for the purpose of excluding this has made situations dangerous for people not familiar with the area. For example, a young inner-city girl by the name of Cynthia Wiggins took the transit over to her job at the mall and the transit did not take her all the way to the mall therefore, she had to cross a busy road where she was hit and killed by a dump truck. This all happened because the owner of the mall refused to allow the bus to stop on the mall’s property. Allegedly, there was a conversation between the owner and another person where the owner was saying that he did not want to attract the kind of people that were being let off the bus that Cynthia Wiggins rode.

To go along with many architectural designs being made for the purpose of excluding the author talks about how earlier on in history, walls were built to separate white neighborhoods from black neighborhoods. Some of these walls are still present today. For example, in Detroit, there is a wall that was constructed in 1940 called The Eight Mile Wall, and its purpose of being constructed was to separate an old black neighborhood from a new white neighborhood. We can find another example in Hamden, Connecticut where a 1,500-foot long fence was constructed to separate primarily black public housing from a primarily white suburban neighborhood. Fortunately, the fence was removed in 2014, but the fence did cause a problem for residents living around the area. Just to go to the grocery store was usually a 3-mile trip, but with the fence being there it took 7.7 miles. Many people living in the primarily black public housing didn’t own cars so they would have to hop onto two buses and make a two-hour trip just to attend a grocery store.

I enjoyed reading this article. The author gave me a viewpoint that I had not even noticed before, and I found what the author said to be very insightful. The part that I found most surprising is we live in this world every day and fail to realize that a lot of unfairness is still going on in our communities. I believe that Atlanta needs to be more inclusive. I don’t think that you should be given more or less opportunity based on where you come from. Overall I enjoyed reading this, and I would recommend this article to a friend.