Wk2Respond -Purcell Gates

Time for an army story. When I was doing basic training in Kentucky, we had a fellow soldier who had the oddest accent. Initially I thought he was from Australia and I believe the whole company believed it too. It comes to find out he was from West Virginia Appalachian area. It did not have a southern drawl, but it he did extend the pronunciations of his vowels when he talked. As Purcell Gates said, I think that the accent is due to the high level of isolation.
I also think it is this isolation that often fed to the many stereotypes about the Jenny and her fellow population. Humans too often ridicule customs that they don't understand, and given their accent, left them open for abuse.
In the section "Literacy Objects do not equal use", it talks about how Jenny has books within the house, but she doesn't use them for their purpose. Even before that Big Donny has apaper and pencil, but only uses them to draw and to give as gifts. Purcell_gates talks about how Jenny would pull down the books and "read" stories from them to her children. I'm wondering if the children actually wanted to be read to, or if they just wanted a story to be told. I find it interesting that they use the Bible and story books and pen and paper as "tools" in which the bible story is referenced when morality issues came up, and they used the pictures within the storybooks as inspiration to tell stories. I do find it quite odd within an illterate family, that children would asked to be read story from a book. How did they come up with that concept unless they had seen it somwwwhere else? How did they know that books were to be read to somebody and not to themselves? I wonder if the parents had seen them tell a story and then asked the children if they wanted a story read to them.