Author: Claire Wallace

Dandelions, white and green. Their stems are straight and tall but their heads are round and soft. They sit next to little yellow flowers with frilly ends. I thought they were different species that are different from one another but they are the same. In the life cycle of those flowers, the frilly yellow ones, the dandelions are only lingering ghosts of the sunny, yellow pedals they used to shine when they were younger. Now only a dandelion remains, waiting to be blown away like dust and disappear as all things do eventually.

They say if you blow on them and let each seed dissipate in the wind, that whatever you wish for will come true. I have tried many times to blow out each dandelion infructescence but I have never been able to do so in one try. When this happens, your wish has not worked and it cannot be granted. It always disappointed me then, like I had missed my one chance at my one wish, and now it would not come true. Still, I would blow on it a few more times, but a few of the white puffs still lingered, clinging on to their home flower, like they were not yet ready to disappear. In capitulation, I’d pluck those off with my fingers and drop the green stem back to the ground. The stark realization that none of my wishes would come true that day. And why should they?

When I was a child, there were yellow buttercups that sprouted in our backyard every summer. All the neighborhood kids would pluck them from the ground and hold one under their neighbor’s chin. “If it glows, that means you like butter,” they all said. The golden light cast its own shadow on their skin, underneath their chin. I can’t remember now the last time someone tried to see if I liked butter, but I’d bet it was a long time ago.

I wonder if those flowers still sprout on my lawn. I don’t see why they shouldn’t but I no longer live there, and although I visit, it has been too long of a time since I last checked. As we grow older, those flowers and dandelions become ghosts forgotten behind everything else. We step on them now, just like we plucked them then, forgetting they are living until they are not.

My landlord was mowing the lawn just yesterday, and he paid no mind to the taraxacum or the buttercup flowers. The grass must be trimmed, so that houses look nice and you are not judged by your neighbor. This is the colonization of land. This is how we have dominated nature. This is all that we know. And despite these irreversible effects we have cast on nature, we still torment her. We use her and defile her because she can give us what we need but she is running out. She will become a ghost like the rest of us. We are all doomed to the same fate.

Throughout this course, I have learned a multitude of new information about modern-day technology that I was not aware of before. During my first week, I had not expected to be learning the specifics of coding, and I was also not aware that I could do so on my own computer by downloading a simple software application onto my laptop. While downloading the software and setting up Visual Studio Code was challenging at first, I’ve now managed to work with both properly. At first GitBash, the coding software we used for this course, had some problems when it came to using certain codes. This got confusing when I would try to follow along with the instructions we were given in class but I would run into some sort of error when I would do so on my own. This proved to be a very frustrating introduction, but overtime, it has gotten easier.

One thing I found by practicing these codes is that once you get the hang of them, they can be quite impressive to watch. These past few weeks, we learned to open a journal file on Visual Studio Code through the GitBash code commands. I typically like to have both set up as a split screen on my computer and now I am able to watch the file open itself once I type in ‘code journal.’ It’s a simple task, and one I am able to do manually, but it’s rather satisfying to watch one application open another exactly how I want it to be formatted. This is also a rewarding task, as it makes me feel like I am keeping up with the rest of my peers and improving with the code commands.

With all this new information we have learned, it’s very helpful to make notes about each of the different commands. While most of them are abbreviations, it’s a lot of new material and I try to write down as much as I can. While it’s difficult to remember most of these commands, I’ve managed to become familiar with a few of the basics such as “pwd, cd ~, ls, clear…). I think with more practice, I will get better at remembering these codes which will help me move forward more effiently in the course.

I’d say the main connection between computers and humanities that I hadn’t thought of before was that computers were originally human. As we learned in our readings, there were certified computers, or people and more specifically women, that made computations and calculations before these technologies were established. In this modern age, I think it’s easy for my generation to brush over the technicalities and origins behind the technologies we have today. Similar to my photography class, where we learned how a camera actually functions through light and mirrors, it’s easy to focus on the product itself rather than the work and the science behind how it was made. Most of the time, it’s because for a lot of us, it’s almost unfathomable that these inventions were created with what we had at the time, so it’s really interesting to learn how these products came to be.