Journal Six-Julianne P.

          One profile that I analyzed was the profile on Powers. Powers is the owner of the Coon Dog Graveyard, a graveyard for pure-blood Coon dogs only. (I looked up coon dogs; they're so adorable! And the funny thing is that I actually found an ad for that exact graveyard while looking them up. What were the odds of that?). Anyway, I liked up coon hounds and I learned that they're a type of hunting dog that is rarely seen today. Powers, who had a coon dog once, buried him and later decided to make the burial place into a graveyard for those with full-blood coon dogs as well. Coon Hounds are known to be rare, (like I said a few sentences ago) and loyal dogs, so the graveyard that is dedicated to these dogs is a bit of a symbol, almost as if to say, "This is the epitome of man's best friend. All dogs must follow these examples." The story of Powers and his Coon Dog graveyard are told from the perspective of the narrator which I think helps a little bit since he offers a little bit of background information that Powers doesn't offer during his interview. In short, if I was to summarize the purpose of this profile, I would say it would be to respect animals like we respect people, giving them the love, attention, and proper burial that the deserve rather than taking advantage of them.
          The two values that stick with me the most from this book would have to be to always follow your goal and treasure your heritage. A lot of the entries in the book involved the people holding onto old dreams or goals that they set out for themselves, such as opening a museum, boxing until the day you die, and continually building something that was started from someone years earlier, something that is important if you ever want to have some happiness in your life. The other thing was to treasure heritage, especially when it seems to start disappearing. This was seen a lot with the Native American entries as they are forced off their land and into a reservation where the times are rapidly changing and more and more pressure is being exerted for them to change to modern day standards. I liked reading this book a lot since I got to look at different topics and ideas from the perspectives of different people from different background. Some of them were weird, (like the checker players and the snakeism religion) and some of them were just scary, (like the spirit-talking town), but for the most part, I thought that it was really nice to get inside the head of someone else and see what it was like from their perspective. Hence the reason why I enjoyed the book so much.