Katya and Wastefulness

Katya was an emotional roller coaster near its end. I was taken by shock when Katya's whole family was killed, even though I'd seen the obituary at the beginning. I cried for deaths of the nobles charachters, and like Katya, I was most taken by the loss of Greta. But one of the most interesting aspects of the Kootzy's invasion scene is the one thing that really got Peter Vogt upset: wastefulness. Simeon Pravda and is followers kick Abram and his family out of their house, steal everything of value, trash the house, threaten to take the Vogt's house, and Peter is still calm, but when he notices the men destroying all of the canned food by throwing it out windows, he can't take it. "I have to say this, here, is wrong. Take the food,but don't spoil it. You could eat well this winter," Peter reasons with Pravda to steal the food, anything but wasting it. Peter Vogt is also portrayed as being the most honorable and dedicated Mennonite in Privol'noye, most representative of the ideal Mennonite values.
Those ideas together, we can discern that the the misdeed of wastefulness is actually seen as a higher sin than theft or brutality. Mennonites do not engage in brutality, but they understand the idea of taking something you want. They do not understand the idea of destroying something completely when it could be used for at least someone's benefit, even if not their own. This fact is actually what sets Peter off to the fact that Pravda and his men were severely dangerous, because they were unstable for wanting to waste. It was the instinct that wastefulness indicated mental instability, then, that allowed Katya and her sisters to live.
Later on, the idea of wastefulness comes up again: Katya is reported to some kind of community enforcement squad for wastefulness. The fact that she was reported is irrelevant because Liese would have reported her for something, but the fact that wastefulness was a crime that you could be executed for (as Willy Khran almost was) shows how important a value it was for the Mennonite community. And it still is an important value. Still today, frugality is celebrated and wastefulness of any kind will give you a poor reputation among the Mennonite community for ages, even among college-age Mennonite friend-groups. The value that kept Mennonites alive while they were impoverished and constantly migrating has become a permanent Mennonite value instilled in new and old, religious and cultural Mennonites alike.

Paraguay Primeval

When Carol Ann Weaver and Rebecca Campbell came into our clas on Thursday, they talked about the process of putting music to poems, bringing life to a work already written so well. Carol said she even has to change some word order around to fit the music or make different word choices.

It's one thing to be an editor of an anthology or a "Best U.S. Poems" book or something where deciding which poems to include and for what reasons is the hard part, which would really be difficult, but then there's the step further that Carol takes with the poems she chooses for her works. She is choosing the words that will tell a unique Mennonite story, and then choosing how to change them so that the music will flow through them and further tell that same story and communicate the emotions she's aiming for. I can only imagine the creative skill it would take to revise someone else's finished work for a different medium without changing the meaning too much, yet changing it completely for her use in music.

I haven't heard the music put to the words yet, but when I do, I will update this post.