Take the Cannoli Summaries

Shooting Dad:


      In the essay "Shooting Dad" by Sarah Vowell she stresses the fact that people, no matter how different they are, are held together by something small but powerful. Sarah writes about how her dad has a sincere passion for firearms and she can not relate to him because of this. When she first held a gun at age 6 she said "holding the pistol made me feel small" and that said she no longer touched guns. As the years went on she felt like she had a loss in her life because her dad and her could not be connected very strongly. During his last few years of life Sarah started to connect, not with guns, but with love for her dad. He once said to her " You get to drag this thing up on top of the Gravellies on opening day os hunting season. And looking off at Sphinx Mountain, you get to put me in little paper bags. I can take my last hunting trip on opening morning." Sarah committed to taking her fathers ashes and shooting him into the mountains because she cared for him and wanted him to be happy. Then Sarah said "I will plunge his remains into the barrel and point it into a hill so that he doesn't take anyone with him. I will light the fuse. But I will not cover my ears. Because when I blow what used to be my dad into the earth, I want it to hurt." That there proves she had a true bond with him but sometimes the bond doesn't always have to be apparent.




Vindictively American:


   People always say "Home is where the heart is" and I believe that is true after reading "Vindictively American" by Sarah Vowell. Don't you think listening to the beach boys thirty times and hugging an american novel is a cry for home? While Sarah is abroad studying, she and her friend see the news showing fires and riots in Los Angeles. Her friend, who is from Europe says to her "Why would you ever want to go back there?" Sarah turns to her and says "Because it's huge." But thats not really why Sarah wanted to go back, it was because she missed her quiet home in Montana, and the reality of life in America.  Later Sarah gets up and runs off crying to her room. She is deeply in love with America no matter what happens. America will always be her home, not some foreign country. Feeling lost and lonely she cries. Then the book says "And I wept. I tossed all my Mondrian books on the floor and hugged that apocalyptic American novel to my chest and rocked back and forth, missing all of it, death and Elvis and California and catastrophe. I wanted Jackson Pollock. And I wanted to go home. I got on my bike and rode to McDonald’s and read the book again, smearing its pages with fries." Reading that definitely made my mind up about what this story is really about: Missing home, where she wants to be no matter what. She has a passion for America and she is not willing to give it up for anything.




Music Lessons:


   Being yourself is what got Sarah Vowell so far. In "Music Lessons", an essay in the book "Take the Cannoli" Sarah was a band geek. She got made fun of often. Sarah made a point at the end of her essay that even though she went through VERY embarrassing moments she realized she needed to withstand embarrassment. In high school she always felt she shouldn't play an instrument if she wasn't good enough and when she got laughed at in front of the whole high school she realized she was a dork. But as life went on she got used to being called a loser or  dork, she learned that she needed to be proud of who you are and to withstand embarrassment! Just being yourself will make life so much better.




American Goth:


   Many of you have heard the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover", but have you heard the saying "Don't judge a person by their cover?" Many people will take one look at someone and classify them as ugly, poor, rich, fat, skinny and weird, but half the time we do that we don't really know what they are actually like, so why say things that are not entirely true? Maybe they are some of those things, but does it really matter what they look like? Maybe someone is weird, but they could be extremely nice. Maybe someone is poor, but they could be very giving. Maybe someone is ugly, but they could be the kindness person you ever met. There is a lot of guessing when you look at someone and classify them. In "American Goth" Sarah vowell goes undercover as a goth person at a goth club to see what it is like. She gets a complete makeover and commits to being goth for the night. Sarah Said "The club is about being seen" which expresses who these people really are in the club. In the goth club Sarah said you can act however you want "You don't have to do the getting to know you crap if you want to talk to someone." The real reason I think the essay is truly about not judging a person is because of the ending. When Sarah gets into a cab after the club party is over she slides into the backseat the cab driver looks at her strangely and Sarah realize she is being judged by her look. Usually the cab drivers love her fun personality but tonight she is pretending to be goth and all the cab driver does is stare at her in the rear view mirror. But, when she arrives at her destination she gets out and tips the cab driver ALOT! He then turns to her and says "Thanks hun." See, I told you that you shouldn't judge a person by their cover. They could be goth, but that doesn't mean they are not kind and giving!




Dark Circles


    Would you rather be the exact same as everyone else, like the same clothes on the same day, the same job, the same kind of dog, the same exact house and the same exact hair, eyes and height, OR would you rather be different and have different qualities and flaws? The reason Sarah Vowell wrote dark circles was because in the beginning she wanted to be just like her sister and have the same qualities like her. But she didn't, Sarah had dark circles under her eyes, brown hair, brown eyes and worst of all insomnia. Her sister on the other hand had blond hair, blue eyes, no insomnia and no dark circles. Do you wonder why Sarah had dark circles? It was because she had insomnia!!! She hated having only two hours of sleep a night. She always looked bad in pictures cause of her dark circles. So Sarah decided to try to fix her insomnia. She asked her mom, friend, doctor and the internet for help..... none of them helped! She realized that everyone is different and everyone has flaws. That's what makes people in the world who they are! Sarah is an insomniac and her sister isn't, THEY ARE DIFFERENT! 




Drive through please:


Friendship. There are many definitions of friendship but the one that related most to the essay "Drive through please" was an ally in a fight or cause; supporter. The reason I picked this definition to represent this essay was because of Sarah's friend. When Sarah does not know how to drive at the age of 28 her friend offers his help to her. He takes her out to a parking lot to drive for a couple of hours. She asks all sorts of questions like, "Which way do you turn the ignition, which one is the brake and the gas pedal, what am I supposed to see out of the rear view mirror?" Ira (her friend) answers all the question kindly. When the day is over she goes home and falls asleep, but the next morning Ira comes back for lesson number two. Sarah does not at all want to get back into the car AT ALL! She says she doesn't even remember driving and that she will never drive again. But Ira is persistent and eventually gets her back into the car to drive and she finally gets her license. That ending concluded that friends can help even if you don't want them too! The moral to the essay is that friendship is important and it will help you succeed in life!