(BQ) The book is Occasions for writing, an exciting new collection of readings that helps you discover how everything you encounter in life is an occasion or reason to write! In addition to its large selection of untraditional, fascinating readings, this reader contains effective "Occasions for Writing" activities that help you to look closely at written text, photographs, other media-and literally everything in your life-guiding you in developing the fresh ideas that lead to strong, original essays. | Evidence, Idea, Essay An Occasion for Writing brings together images and written material that aims to stop us in our tracks. The Occasion should provoke us and elicit from us an interpretation of what we see and read. Any Occasion for Writing says quite simply, "Stop and t hink about what you see here." The acts of analysis, interpretation, and clarificatio n will reward you with the satisfaction t hat comes from figuring out something that only you can find. In Occasions for Writing we see something mysterious, beyond simple explanation, something that can teach us about ourselves, our needs, and the world in which we sometimes move so rapidly that we miss the most amazing things. This cover shot reveals only a portion of a larger art installation installed temporarily in 1991 on the landscape 60 miles north of Los Angeles, along Interstate 5 and the Tejon Pass. Christo and Jeanne-Claude (the artists) and 1880 workers installed 1760 yellow umbrellas in California and 1340 blue umbrellas on a different site in Japan. We see in this photograph the vastness of t he uncu ltivated grazing land of California, highlighted by t he color and placement of the umbrellas. What relationship exists between this installation, as you see it and the land itself? In what ways might art be enhancing or revealing the landscape, making it possible for us to see it in new ways? Does the land itself enhance the installation? In her essay "A Shark in the Mind of One Contemplating Wilderness" (pp. 480-484), Terry Tempest Williams suggests that "the natural world is becoming invisible, appeari ng only as a backdrop for our own human dramas and catastrophes: hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods. Perhaps if we bring art to the discussion of the wild we can create a sensation where people will pay attention to the shock of what has always been here . " How do you imagine Christo and Jeanne-Claude would react to Williams's suggestion? OCCASIONS EVIDENCE IDEA FOR .
